Paul A. Baran

Paul Alexander Baran (born December 8, 1910 in Nikolajew , Russian Empire ; died March 26, 1964 in Palo Alto ) was an American, Marxist- oriented economist .

Life

Born in Russia to Jewish parents, he studied in Berlin and lived in the USA from 1939 , where his scientific career also took place. His father was a doctor and had strong links with the Group of the Mensheviks of the Social Democratic Party of Russia .

Baran studied economics at Lomonosov University in Moscow. In Berlin he took a position as a research assistant at the Agricultural University Berlin . In the same position he worked at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.

Baran completed his dissertation under the economist Emil Lederer . Baran made the acquaintance of the Marxist economist Rudolf Hilferding and wrote for his newspaper Die Gesellschaft .

After Hitler came to power, Baran left Germany and emigrated to the United States. Here he met Paul Sweezy and completed a graduate degree at Harvard University . During the Second World War he worked for the Office of Strategic Services and in the USAS on the Strategic Bombing Survey under the direction of John Kenneth Galbraith .

After the end of the war, he became a Federal Reserve employee and then a professor at Stanford University . Using a pseudonym, he began to write under the name Historicus for the socialist journal Monthly Review founded by Paul Sweezy .

He was best known for the work Monopoly Capital , written together with Paul Sweezy .

Fonts (selection)

• Otto Nathan: The Nazi Economic System. Germany's Mobilization for War. Duke University Press, Durham 1944. (Paul A. Baran collaborated on Chapter 10: "The Effect of the Military Economy on Civilian Consumption".)
• The Political Economy of Growth , Monthly Review Press, New York 1957, ISBN 0-85345-076-5
  • German: Political economy of economic growth , translated by Christel Klose and Gottfried Frenzel, Luchterhand, Neuwied 1966
  • On the political economy of the planned economy , translated by Michael Bärmann and Malte C. Krugmann, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1966
• with Paul Sweezy , Monopoly Capital
  • German: monopoly capital . An essay on the American economic and social order , translated by Hans-Werner Sass, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1973.
• Paul A. Baran: Oppression and Progress. Essays. Suhrkamp, ​​1968.

literature

• Michael Krüger: Baran, Paul Alexander. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Adler – Lehmann. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 25-28.
• Frederico Hermanin, Karin Monte, Claus Rolshausen (eds.): Monopoly Capital. Theses on the book by Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy , Frankfurt 1973

Web links

• (Criticism of Baran's (and Sweezy) theses from the perspective of the SED and CPSU, condemnation as “revisionist” and “un-Marxist”) .
• Literature by and about Paul A. Baran in the catalog of the German National Library