Paul Alexander Baran | |
|---|---|
 Economist Paul A. Baran as he appeared in the late 1950s | |
| Born | 25 August 1909 |
| Died | 26 March 1964(1964-03-26) (aged 54) Palo Alto,California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Academic career | |
| Field | Macroeconomics |
| School or tradition | Neo-Marxian economics[1] |
| Influences | Karl Marx,Michał Kalecki,Josef Steindl,John Kenneth Galbraith |
| Contributions | Economic surplus |
Paul Alexander Baran (/ˈbærən/; 25 August 1909 – 26 March 1964) was an AmericanMarxisteconomist. In 1951, Baran was promoted to full professor atStanford University. He was the only tenuredMarxian economist in the United States until his death in 1964 (citation needed). He wroteThe Political Economy of Growth in 1957 and co-authoredMonopoly Capital withPaul Sweezy.[3]
Baran was born inMykolaiv,Imperial Russia. His father, aMenshevik, left Russia forVilnius,Lithuania in 1917. From Vilna the Baran family moved toBerlin, and then, in 1925 back toMoscow, but Paul stayed inGermany to finish his secondary school. In 1926 he attended thePlekhanov Institute in Moscow. He left again for Germany in 1928 accepting an appointment as an assistant on agricultural research with his advisor, Dr.Friedrich Pollock. Baran remained in Germany associated with theFrankfurt School Institute for Social Research. He received the Diplom-Volkswirt (graduate degree in political economy, equivalent to a master's degree) in 1931 from the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Breslau. He next wrote a dissertation underEmil Lederer on economic planning, and received hisPhD from the University of Berlin in 1933. During these years in Germany, he metRudolf Hilferding, author ofFinance Capital and wrote under the pen name of Alexander Gabriel for theGerman Social Democratic Party journalDie Gesellschaft.
After theNazi regime took power, Baran fled to Paris and then back to the USSR, and then toVilnius, Lithuania. With theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact and just before the Nazi invasion of Poland he emigrated to the US, where he enrolled atHarvard and received a master's degree. Short of funds, he left the PhD program and worked for theBrookings Institution and then for theOffice of Price Administration and then theOffice of Strategic Services. He worked underJohn Kenneth Galbraith at theStrategic Bombing Survey traveling to post-war Germany and Japan. Baran then worked for theUnited States Department of Commerce and lectured atGeorge Washington University. He then worked for theFederal Reserve Bank of New York before resigning to join academia.
He married Elena Djatschenko, had a son Nicholas but soon divorced.[4] Baran had his academic career in theUnited States, teaching atStanford University from 1949.[3] From 1949, he was an active participant in the formulation of editorial ideas and opinions inMonthly Review magazine edited byPaul Sweezy andLeo Huberman. Baran visitedCuba in 1960 along with Sweezy and Huberman, and was greatly inspired. In 1962 he revisited Moscow,Iran, and Yugoslavia. In his last years he worked onMonopoly Capital with Sweezy. He died from a heart attack in 1964[3] before it was completed by Sweezy. He is associated with theNeo-Marxian economics.
Baran introduced the concept of "economic surplus" to deal with novel complexities raised by the dominance of monopoly capital. With Paul Sweezy, Baran elaborated the importance of this innovation, its consistency with Marx's labor concept of value, and supplementary relation to Marx's category ofsurplus value.[5] Monthly Review has recently published a book of correspondence between Sweezy and Baran, which illuminates the development of their ideas on political economy, and in particular, their collaboration in writing their seminal work,Monopoly Capital. SeeThe Age of Monopoly Capital, The Selected Correspondence of Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, 1949–1964, edited by Nicholas Baran and John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2017.[6]
According to Baran's categories, "Actual economic surplus" is "the difference between society's actual current output and its actual current consumption," and hence is equal to current savings or accumulation. Potential economic surplus," in contrast, is "the difference between that output that could be produced in a given natural and technical environment with the help of employable productive resources, and what might be regarded as essential consumption." Baran also introduced the concept of "planned surplus"—a category that could only be operationalized in a rationally planned socialist society. This was defined as "the difference between society's 'optimum' output available in a historically given natural and technological environment under conditions of planned 'optimal' utilization of all available productive resources, and some chosen 'optimal' volume of consumption."[7]
Baran used the surplus concept to analyze underdeveloped economies in hisThe Political Economy of Growth. Baran with Paul M. Sweezy applied the surplus concept to the contemporary US economy inMonopoly Capital.
Notable among Baran's students wasRichard D. Wolff.[8]
