Abstract
Maurice Dobb was undoubtedly one of the outstanding political economists of this century. He was a Marxist, and was one of the most creative contributors to Marxian economics. As Ronald Meek put it, in his obituary of Dobb for the British Academy, ‘over a period of 50 years [Dobb] established and maintained his position as one of the most eminent Marxist economists in the world’. Dobb’s Political Economy and Capitalism (1937) and Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946) stand out as his two most outstanding contributions to Marxian economics. The former is primarily concerned with economic theory (including such subjects as value theory, economic crises, imperialism, socialist economies), and the latter with economic history (particularly the emergence of capitalism from feudalism). These two fields – economic theory and economic history – were intimately connected in Dobb’s approach to economics. He also wrote an influential book on Soviet economic development. This was first published under the title Russian Economic Development since the Revolution (1928), and later in a revised edition as Soviet Economic Development since 1917 (1948).
This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1st edition, 1987. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman
Bibliography
Bergson, A. 1949. Socialist economics. In A survey of contemporary economics, ed. H.S. Ellis. Philadelphia: Blakiston.
Hobsbawm, E.J. 1967. Maurice Dobb. In Socialism, capitalism and economic growth: Essays presented to Maurice Dobb, ed. C. Feinstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maurice Dobb Memorial Issue. 1978. Cambridge Journal of Economics 2(2).
Meek, R. 1978. Obituary of Maurice Herbert Dobb. Proceedings of the British Academy 1977 53: 333–344.
Pollitt, B.H. 1985. Clearing the path for ‘Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities’: Notes on the Collaboration of Maurice Dobb in Piero Sraffa’s edition of ‘The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo’. Mimeographed.
Sraffa, P. 1960. Production of commodities by means of commodities: Prelude to a critique of economic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sraffa, P., with the collaboration of M.H. Dobb. 1951–73. Works and correspondence of David Ricardo. 11 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steedman, I. 1977. Marx after Sraffa. London: New Left Books.
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Sen, A. (1987). Dobb, Maurice Herbert (1900–1976). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_71-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_71-1
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Dobb, Maurice Herbert (1900–1976)- Published:
- 11 March 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_71-2
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Dobb, Maurice Herbert (1900–1976)- Published:
- 17 October 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_71-1