By Timothy Shenk
Even Maurice Dobb's critics, and there have been many, said that he used to be one of many world's most important Communist economists. From his outpost on the collage of Cambridge, the place he used to be a protégé of John Maynard Keynes and mentor to scholars starting from Eric Hobsbawm to Amartya Sen, Dobb made himself into one in every of British communism's most effective intellectuals. in the past, this notable existence has been all yet forgotten. but following Dobb's existence from his start in 1900 to his loss of life in 1976 does greater than simply recuperate the occupation of 1 of contemporary Britain's so much paradoxical thinkers. It finds a stunning heritage that casts new mild at the connections that certain economics, politics, and gear jointly within the 20th century—a heritage whose legacy nonetheless endures, lengthy after the Soviet Union's fall.
Reviews:
"A fantastic and richly illuminating depiction of Dobb's existence and ideas, written within the most sensible culture of scholarship at the background of financial notion. In delivering a wealth of recent information regarding Dobb, Shenk arrives at notable new insights in regards to the transformation of either Marxist scholarship and the economics occupation in the course of his lifetime." - Angus Burgin, Johns Hopkins University
"A significant account of the existence and considered Maurice Dobb. but, this publication strikes a ways past traditional biography to discover, in such an relaxing and fascinating means, the whole background of financial concept. via Dobb's novels, performs, letters, lectures, released works, and unpublished ruminations, Shenk invitations the reader in the course of the small window of Maurice Dobb's attention-grabbing existence, which has a extraordinary view onto the heritage of the 20th century." - Johanna Bockman, George Mason University
"Timothy Shenk has written a full of life and soaking up account of a primary determine within the terribly gifted workforce of mid-twentieth century Cambridge Marxists. he's to be thanked for furnishing us with this kind of clean and lucid research of a seminal life." - Robin Blackburn, college of Essex
"This awesome biography of Maurice Dobb is soaking up and instructive. the writer has captured uncannily Maurice's character and his remarkably complete and stressful political lifestyles. Timothy Shenk is to be congratulated on writing this kind of high-quality paintings of scholarship, which i believe certain Maurice, although he could were embarrassed, may however have licensed of." - Geoffrey Harcourt, collage of Cambridge
"graceful and considerate . . . Maurice Dobb: Political Economist (Palgrave, 2013), by means of Timothy Shenk, grabbed my curiosity and held it to the very end." - David Warsh, writer of information and the Wealth of Nations
"an impressive accomplishment . . . Maurice Dobb: Political Economist is one of the most crucial books at the historical past of capitalism released this 12 months, and it's going to be assigned to each seminar devoted to the exploration of that turning out to be sub-field. just like the top non-academic writers at the historical past of monetary suggestion (the New Yorker’s John Cassidy involves mind), Shenk possesses the infrequent present of without difficulty translating tricky theorizations of the industry into transparent English." - Kurt Newman, U.S. highbrow heritage weblog
Preview of Maurice Dobb: Political Economist (Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought) PDF
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Additional resources for Maurice Dobb: Political Economist (Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought)
Stalin’s regulations had made Lenin’s unique imaginative and prescient possible, yet good fortune had rendered them archaic. fifty three but whether quick industrialization were precious, that didn't excuse the thuggish strategies Stalin used to carry it approximately. The revised Soviet financial improvement didn't forged Stalin as a mass-murderer, yet Dobb used to be satisfied to depict him as a philistine. The Nineteen Twenties, he saw, had witnessed brilliant, technically subtle debates between Soviet economists over making plans. Stalin quashed those discussions after he consolidated strength, yet they expected in the most important respects conversations socialists may begin to have back within the Fifties (and that western Poznan´ Mementos 177 economists had stumbled upon a bit ahead of their rediscovery within the USSR). fifty four In 1948, Dobb had defended Soviet economists, preserving that “practical initiatives” had “excluded recognition to idea. ”55 twenty years later, he conceded the inadequacy of prior Soviet economics and insisted that Stalin used to be accountable. fifty six there has been extra friction among Dobb’s condemnations of Stalinist oppression and his endorsement of Stalin’s improvement guidelines than he said. Dobb had claimed in his lectures at Bologna “that we need to recognize the current age as being one during which a dividing line can not be drawn (if it ever should be) among fiscal difficulties and political difficulties. ” He were making statements like that for many years. It was once, in spite of everything, the principal subject of Russian fiscal improvement. yet he had continually had hassle reconciling the mixing of the political and the industrial with Stalinism. the matter used to be noticeable: he desired to hold a lot of Stalin’s economics whereas rejecting his totalitarian politics. He resolved the matter in Soviet monetary improvement through ignoring these politics, cordoning off Stalin’s worst offenses so that they wouldn't infect what Dobb valued. fifty seven yet population of the underdeveloped nations Dobb earnestly advised stick to the trail the USSR had taken within the Thirties may were justified in asking why they can count on to take purely the easiest from the Soviet event. What attraction may the promise of democracy after industrialization carry for international locations that had now not but industrialized? Dobb may have answered to this question with a forceful safety of his place, however it is most unlikely to wager what this may were, simply because, not less than in his released paintings and what continues to be of his deepest writings, he by no means requested it. It was once a lot more straightforward to target communism’s current than to mirror on its prior. development within the USSR used to be regular and ambitious, simply beating 5 percentage each year and lending credibility to Khrushchev’s assertion that the Soviet Union may quickly whole the transition from socialism to communism – an evolution whose form Dobb sketched with glaring excitement in an editorial for Marxism at the present time. in the midst of the Sixties, Dobb’s optimism survived a dip in Soviet monetary functionality, Khrushchev’s elimination from energy, and a next shift in legit rhetoric from trumpeting coming near near communism to extra backward-looking commemorations of an alreadyachieved “developed socialism.