Maurice Dobb
Encyclopedia
Maurice Herbert Dobb was a British Marxist economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

, and a lecturer 1924-1959 and Reader 1959-1976 at Cambridge University
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

 1948-1976.

Life

Dobb was born in London and admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...

 in 1919 as an exhibitioner to study history. However after his first year he changed the subject of his studies to economics and gained firsts in both parts of the tripos in 1921 and 1922. After two years at the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 in a research post and producing his PhD he returned to Cambridge to take up a post as University lecturer in 1924, also teaching at his old college.

The controversy surrounding his divorce from his first wife Phyllis, whom he had married in 1923, and his devotion to Marxism contributed to his losing his dining rights
Dining rights
Dining rights, in the United Kingdom, are the right to use the dining facilities offered to the members of certain organisations such as universities, clubs, colleges and bodies such as the House of Lords, and the Hawks' Club.They are typically offered to ex-members of such institutions, alumni,...

 and his students. However, Dobb soon found a position at Trinity College
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, keeping his connection with the college for 50 years, although he was not to be offered a fellowship until 1948. He did not receive a University readership until 1959.

In 1920 Dobb joined the Communist Party and in the 1930s was central to the burgeoning Communist movement at the university. One of his recruits was Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...

, who later became a high-placed mole within British intelligence. It has been suggested that Dobb was a "talent-spotter" for Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

.

Theory

Dobb was an economist who was primarily involved in the interpretation of neoclassical economic theory from a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 point of view. His involvement in the original economic calculation problem
Economic calculation problem
The economic calculation problem is a criticism of central economic planning. It was first proposed by Ludwig von Mises in 1920 and later expounded by Friedrich Hayek. The problem referred to is that of how to distribute resources rationally in an economy...

 debate consisted of critiques of capitalist, centrally planned socialist, or market socialist models that were based upon the neoclassical framework of static equilibrium. Dobb charged the market socialist model of Oskar Lange
Oskar Lange
Oskar Ryszard Lange was a Polish economist and diplomat...

 and the contributions of "neo-classical" socialists of an illegitimate "narrowing of the focus of study to problems of exchange-relations." (Economists and the Economics of Socialism, 1939.)

Many of his works have been published into different languages. His short publication Introduction to Economics was translated to Spanish by Mexican intellectual Antonio Castro Leal
Antonio Castro Leal
Antonio Castro Leal was a Mexican diplomat and intellectual.-Biography:Antonio Castro Leal was born on March 2, 1896 in San Luis Potosí. He received his licenciate and doctor of law degrees from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his PhD from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C...

 for the leading Mexican publishing house Fondo de Cultura Economica
Fondo de Cultura Económica
Fondo de Cultura Económica is the most important publishing house in Mexico and one of the most important ones in Latin America. It was originally established in 1934 by Daniel Cosío Villegas as a way to provide students of economics with books in Spanish on the subject...

, which has gone through more than ten editions since 1938.

For Dobb, the central economic challenges for socialism are related to production and investment in their dynamic aspects. He identified three major advantages of planned economies: antecedent coordination, external effects and variables in planning.

Antecedent coordination

Planned economies employ antecedent coordination of the economy. In contrast a market economy atomizes its agents by definition, the expectations which form the basis of their decisions are always based on uncertainty. There is a poverty of information which often leads to disequilibrium that can only be corrected in a market ex-post- after the event, and thus resources are wasted. An advantage of antecedent planning is removal of significant degrees of uncertainty in a context of coordinated and unified information gathering and decision-making prior to the commitment of resources.

External effects

Dobb was an early theorist to recognize the relevance of external effects to market exchanges. In a market economy, each economic agent in an exchange makes decisions on the basis of a narrow range of information in ignorance of any wider social effects of production and consumption. When external effects are significant, it invalidates the information transmitting qualities of market prices so that prices will not reflect true social opportunity costs. Contrary to the convenient assumptions of mainstream economists, significant external effects are in fact pervasive in modern market economies. Planning that coordinates interrelated decisions before their implementation can take into account a wider range of social effects. This has important applications for efficient industrial planning, including decisions about the external effects of uneven development between sectors, and in terms of the external effects of public works, and for development of infant industries; this is in addition to widely publicized negative external effects on the environment.

Variables in planning

By taking the whole complex of factors into consideration, only coordinated antecedent planning allows for fluid allocation where things that appear as "data" in static frameworks can be used as variables in a planning process. By way of example one can enumerate the following categories of "data" that under coordinated antecedent plan would assume the form of variables that can be adjusted in the plan according to circumstances: rate of investment, distribution of investment between capital and consumption, choices of production techniques, geographical distribution of investment and relatives rates of growth of transport, fuel and power, and of agriculture in relation to industry, the rate of introduction of new products, and their character, and the degree of standardization or variety in production that the economy at its stage of development feels it can afford.

Publications

  • 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
  • Soviet Economic Development Since 1917, 1948
  • Some Aspects of Economic Development, 1951
  • On Economic Theory and Socialism, 1955
  • An Essay on Economic Growth and Planning, 1960
  • Papers on Capitalism, Development and Planning, 1967
  • 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
  • "Some Historical Reflections on Planning and the Market", 1974, in Abramsky, editor, Essays in Honour of E.H.Carr, London, Macmillan Press

  • Dobb contributed to the omnibus An Outline of Modern Knowledge
    An Outline of Modern Knowledge
    An Outline of Modern Knowledge, published by Victor Gollancz in 1931, was an “omnibus” volume intended to survey the full range of human knowledge....

    , edited by William Rose and published by Victor Gollancz
    Victor Gollancz
    Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking...

     in 1931, along with other leading authorities of the time, including Roger Fry
    Roger Fry
    Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...

    , C. G. Seligman, F. J. C. Hearnshaw
    F. J. C. Hearnshaw
    Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw was an English professor of history, specializing in medieval history. He was noted for his conservative interpretation of the past, showing an empire-oriented ideology in defence of hierarchical authority, paternalism, deference, the monarchy, Church, family, nation,...

    , and G. D. H. Cole
    G. D. H. Cole
    George Douglas Howard Cole was an English political theorist, economist, writer and historian. As a libertarian socialist he was a long-time member of the Fabian Society and an advocate for the cooperative movement...

    .

External links

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