Maurice Dobb

This volume consists of lectures and articles by Maurice Dobb selected from among those delivered or written by him during the 1950s and 60s. It includes three lectures delivered at the University of Bologna on ‘Some Problems in the History of Capitalism’, two lectures on economic development given at the Delhi School of Economics, articles on the theory of development, and a number of articles on various questions of soviet economic planning contributed to specialist journals. The collection ends with a note in retrospect on Marx’s Das Kapital published in recognition of the centenary of the appearance of Volume One of that work in 1867.

This volume collects published papers and essays from widely scattered and inaccessible sources, some of which appeared for the first time when this book was originally published. In the first part of the book the subjects range from the theory of wages and recent trends in economic theory to economists’ criticism of capitalism and socialism, investment-policy in under-developed countries, and economic growth under the Soviet Five Year Plans. The second part includes papers on Lenin and Marx, a study of the economic ideas of Bernard Shaw, and an essay on historical materialism.

This important essay dates from the end of the fifties. During this era, the dominant theories of economic growth were based on conditions of private ownership of capital and where investment is primarily under the control of private individuals or firms. Dobbs, however, considers the alternatives. He asks: Do such theories have a more universal application? Can they be applied to planned economies? If they can, in what form may such an application be made? Half a century later, with the global regime of unfettered international capital markets in a state of utter collapse, the time has come for a return to the possibility of rational social and economic planning. This short clear book is again a necessary theoretical starting point for a post-capitalist future.

Mr Dobb examines the history of economic thought in the light of the modern controversy over capital theory and, more particularly, the appearance of Sraffa’s book The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, which was a watershed in the critical discussions constituted a crucial turning-point in the history of economics: an estimate not unconnected with his reinterpretation of nineteenth-century economic thought as consisting of two streams or traditions commonly confused under the generic title of ‘the classical tradition’ against which Jevons so strongly reacted.