Maurice Dobb

Maurice Herbert Dobb (born July 24, 1900 in London , † August 17, 1976 in Cambridge ) was a British Marxist economist . From 1924 until his death in 1976 he taught at Cambridge University , until 1959 as a lecturer , then as a reader ; from 1948 he was there also a Fellow of Trinity College .

Life

Born in London, he attended Pembroke College (Cambridge) from 1919 with the help of a scholarship and studied history. After a year, however, he changed the subject and now studied economics. In 1921 and 1922 he completed the Classical Honors Tripos (a Cambridge-specific three-year study of classical literature). After spending two years as a researcher at the London School of Economics and earning a PhD, he returned to Cambridge, where he got a position as a lecturer in 1924. In this capacity, he also taught at his old college.

After divorcing his first wife Phyllis and turning to Marxism, he was deprived of the right to take part in the common meal, and his students turned away from him. However, Dobb soon found a job at Trinity College , with which he was associated for 50 years, although he was not made a Fellow until 1948 and a Reader in 1959.

Dobb, who joined the Communist Party in 1920 , was the center of the communist movement that unfolded in the university in the 1930s. One of those he promoted for the party was Kim Philby , who later became a highly settled "mole" in British intelligence. Dobb is said to have recruited numerous capable employees for the Comintern .

In 1971 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy .

The theoretical work

Dobb was an economist whose main concern was to interpret neoclassical theory from a Marxist point of view. He took part in the debate about economic accounting under socialism, in particular he criticized market models based on capitalist-market economy, socialist-planned economy or market socialist ideas based on a neoclassical equilibrium. Dobb criticized Oskar Lange and his market socialist model as well as the contributions of "neo-classical" socialists for their "narrowing of the perspective on exchange relations" (Economists and the Economics of Socialism, 1939.)

Many of his works have been translated into other languages. His short Introduction to Economics was translated into Spanish by the Mexican intellectual Antonio Castro Leal for the important Mexican publisher Fondo de Cultura Economica and had more than ten editions.

For Dobb, the central economic challenges for socialism are to properly control the dynamics of production and investment. He identified three main advantages of a planned economy: prior coordination, the consideration of external effects and the possibility of planning variables.

Prior coordination

A planned economy requires a prior coordination of the economic sectors. In contrast, a market economy treats the actors as atoms whose decisions are not based on reliable information. There is a lack of information, which often leads to an imbalance, which in turn can only be corrected ex post by the market, resulting in a waste of resources. One advantage of prior planning is the elimination of this uncertainty - at least to a certain extent - through coordinated and standardized collection of information and decision-making that precedes the use of resources.

External effects

Dobb was one of the first scientists to recognize the importance of externalities for a market economy. In a market economy, each actor makes decisions based on limited information, ignoring wider social impacts of production and consumption. When there are significant externalities, the information that contains statements about market prices becomes ineffective, so that these prices do not reflect the real social opportunity cost. Contrary to popular belief by mainstream economists, significant externalities are effective everywhere in modern market economies. Planning that coordinates interrelated decisions before putting them into practice can address a wider range of social impacts. This has important implications for efficient industrial planning, including decisions regarding the externalities of uneven development of different economic sectors, externalities in public works and in the development of young industries. Added to this are the much-noticed negative effects on the environment.

Planning variables

If one takes into account the whole complex of factors under consideration, then it becomes clear that only planning that includes prior coordination enables a smooth allocation of resources, because much that appears as data in a static model can be used in a planning process as Variable to be handled. Examples are: the investment rate, the distribution of investments between capital and consumption, the choice of suitable production technology, the geographical distribution of investments, the determination of the relative growth rates of the transport, fuel, energy and agriculture sectors in relation to the growth of industry, the pace of the introduction of new products, the choice of which new products are introduced, the degree of standardization of production and its diversity according to the stage at which the economy is at.

Fonts

• Capitalist Enterprise and Social Progress , 1925
• Russian Economic Development since the Revolution , 1928
• Wages , 1928
• "Economic Theory and the Problems of a Socialist Economy" , 1933, EJ.
• Political Economy and Capitalism: Some essays in economic tradition , 1937
• Marx as an Economist , 1943
• Studies in the Development of Capitalism , 1946
  • German: The development of capitalism from late feudalism to the present , translated by Franz Becker, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1970.
• Soviet Economic Development Since 1917 , 1948
• Some Aspects of Economic Development , 1951
• On Economic Theory and Socialism , 1955
• Wages , 1956
  • German: Der Lohn , EVA, Frankfurt a. M. 1970
• An Essay on Economic Growth and Planning , 1960
  • German: Economic growth and planning , translated by Erwin Weissel, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1960.
• Papers on Capitalism, Development and Planning , 1967
• On the political economy of “capital” . In: Marxist sheets . Special issue 2/1967. Marxist sheets 1967, pp. 30–36.
• Welfare Economics and the Economics of Socialism , 1969
• "The Sraffa System and Critique of the Neoclassical Theory of Distribution" , 1970, De Economist
• Socialist Planning: Some problems . 1970
• Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith , 1973
  • German: Value and distribution theories since Adam Smith: an economic dogma history , translated by Cora Stephan , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1977, ISBN 3-518-10765-8
• "Some Historical Reflections on Planning and the Market" , 1974, in Abramsky (ed.), Essays in Honor of EHCarr , London, Macmillan Press

• Article in the anthology An Outline of Modern Knowledge , edited by William Rose and edited by Victor Gollancz , 1931, along with other scholarly authorities of the time such as Roger Fry , CG Seligman, FJC Hearnshaw, and GDH Cole.

Secondary literature

• Eric Hobsbawm : Maurice Dobb . In: CH Feinstein: Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth: Essays Presented to Maurice Dobb . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1967, pp. 1-9.
• Harvey J. Kaye: The British Marxist Historians . 2nd, expanded edition with a foreword by Eric Hobsbawm. Macmillan, Basingstoke 1995, ISBN 0333662423 [first edition: Polity, Cambridge 1984].
• David Ormrod: Agrarian Capitalism and Merchant Capitalism: Tawney, Dobb, Brenner and Beyond . In: Jane Whittle (Ed.): Landlords and Tenants in Britain, 1440-1660: Tawney's Agrarian Problem Revisited . Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2013, ISBN 9781299789531 , pp. 200-215.
• Timothy Shenk: Maurice Dobb: Political Economist . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2013, ISBN 9781137297013 .
• Willie Thompson: Setting an Agenda: Thomson, Dobb, Hill and the Communist Party Historians . Socialist History Society, London 2012, ISBN 9780955513855 .
• Ronald L. Meek : Maurice Herbert Dobb, 1900–1976 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 63 , 1978, pp. 333-344 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Web links

• Tim [othy] Shenk: A Marxist in Keynes' Court , in: Jacobin 11-12, 2013.
• Papers of Maurice Herbert Dobb - Archive overview of Dobb's bequeathed writings in Trinity College Library, Cambridge.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Phillip Knightley, Philby: The Life and Views of the KGB Masterspy , Andre Deutsch, London, 1988, pp. 30-31, 45.
2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 21, 2020 .