Maurice Herbert Dobb (24 July 1900 – 17 August 1976) was an English economist at

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and a Fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

. He is remembered as one of the pre-eminent Marxist economists of the 20th century. Dobb was highly influential outside of economics, having helped to establish the

Communist Party Historians Group The Communist Party Historians' Group (CPHG) was a subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) that formed a highly influential cluster of United Kingdom, British Marxist historiography, Marxist historians. The Historians' Group de ...

which developed

social history Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians. Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...

and attracted future members of the Cambridge Five to Marxism in the 1930s.

Biography

Early life

Dobb was born on 24 July 1900 in London, the son of Walter Herbert Dobb and the former Elsie Annie Moir. He and his family lived in the London suburb of

Willesden Willesden () is an area of north-west London, situated 5 miles (8 km) north-west of Charing Cross. It is historically a parish in the county of Middlesex that was incorporated as the Municipal Borough of Willesden in 1933; it has formed ...

. He was educated at

Charterhouse School Charterhouse is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Godalming, Surrey, England. Founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian monastery in Charter ...

in Surrey, an elite British public school. Dobb began writing after the death of his mother in his early teens. His introversion hindered him from building a network of friends. His earliest novels were fictional fantasies. Much like his father, Dobb initiated practice in

Christian Science Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes in ...

after his mother's death; the family had previously belonged to the

Presbyterian Church Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Christianity, Reformed Protestantism, Protestant tradition named for its form of ecclesiastical polity, church government by representative assemblies of Presbyterian polity#Elder, elders, known as ...

. Saved from military

conscription Conscription, also known as the draft in the United States and Israel, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it conti ...

by the Armistice of November 1918, Dobb was admitted to

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 students and fellows. It is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from ...

, in 1919 as an exhibitioner to read economics.Meek, "Portrait: Maurice Dobb," p. 61. He gained firsts in both parts of the economics tripos in 1921 and 1922 and was admitted to the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

for graduate studies under Edwin Cannan and Hugh Dalton. In 1920, after Dobb's first year at Pembroke College,

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originall ...

invited him to join the Political Economy Club, and after graduation Keynes helped him secure his Cambridge position. Dobb was open with students about his communist beliefs. One of them, Victor Kiernan, later reported, "We had no time then to assimilate Marxist theory more than very roughly; it was only beginning to take root in England, although it had one remarkable expounder at Cambridge in Maurice Dobb." Dobb's house, "St Andrews" in Chesterton Lane, was a frequent meeting place for Cambridge communists, known locally as "The Red House".

Communism

Dobb joined the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

while in London in 1922. In the 1930s he was central to the development of the Communist Party at the university. One recruit was

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secr ...

, who later became a high-placed mole within British intelligence. It has been suggested that Dobb was a "talent-spotter" for

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

. Dobb was a highly placed communist revolutionary in Britain at the time. He was politically very active and spent much time organizing rallies and presenting lectures on a consistent basis. As an economist commonly focused on vulnerability to economic crisis and pointed to the United States as a case of capitalist money assisting military agendas instead of public works.

Academic career

After gaining a PhD in 1924, Dobb returned to Cambridge as university lecturer. Dobb's position at Trinity connected him to it for more than 50 years. He was elected a fellow in 1948, at which time he began joint work with

Piero Sraffa Piero Sraffa Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (5 August 1898 – 3 September 1983) was an influential Italian Political economy, political economist who served as lecturer of economics at the University of Cambridge. His book ''Production of Co ...

assembling the selected works and letters of

David Ricardo David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British political economist, politician, and member of Parliament. He is recognized as one of the most influential classical economists, alongside figures such as Thomas Malthus, Ada ...

. The results were eventually published in eleven volumes. He did not receive a university readership until 1959. Over his career he published twelve academic books, more than 24 pamphlets and numerous articles for general audiences. He often wrote on political economy, drawing a connection between the social context and problems in society and how that influences market exchange. "Economic relations of men determine social associations of men," he said in his Marxian economics class. Dobb believed the capitalist system created classes and with class came class warfare. After a 1925 trip to Russia with Keynes, Dobb refrained slightly from his interests in political conflict. Other positions held by Dobb around 1928 include teaching in a summer school, acting as Chairman of the Faculty of Economics of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and helping to launch the party's own film company. He encountered differing opinions within the party, pushing that intellect and political activity are not mutually exclusive. In 1931, Dobb married Barbara Marian Nixon as a second wife for the rest of his life. She never claimed to be a communist, but was active in the Labour Party and held a seat on

London County Council The London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today ...

while pursuing a career in acting. Dobb's personal life was of particular interest to his colleagues, and due to the controversy Pembroke College dropped Dobb as a Director of Studies and withdrew his dining rights. In the same year he gave a lecture on his recent trip to Russia, which prompted some to call him a "paid official of the Russian government", again causing a small scandal at Cambridge. Dobb responded with an article in ''The Times'' claiming no connection with the Soviet Union. In the 1930s he befriended the philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...

, who stayed with Dobb and his wife for a period.

The Hogarth Press

The

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing Imprint (trade name), imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in London Boro ...

, founded by

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

and

Leonard Woolf Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British List of political theorists, political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party and the Fabian Socie ...

, was a printing press intent on publishing items that encouraged free exchange of ideas. Leonard Woolf himself was an anti-imperialist. He also believed intellectual exchange was the same as economical exchange in material form; Dobb's publications were both intellectual exchange through introduction and defense of Marxism and pieces of work that could be sold. Publications possibly reflected the opinions of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Leonard Woolf later commissioned ''The Political and Social Doctrine of Communism'', having originally asked Maurice Dobb and another author, who both refused. Between "1924 and the late 1930s, the Hogarth Press published eight pamphlets on Russia, communism, and Marxism… the motives, supported by Leonard Woolf, were political and educational." Dobb published two pamphlets with Hogarth Press. The first, ''Russia To-day and Tomorrow'' (1930), was written after his return from Russia with Keynes. He commented on the Soviet economy, politics, industry, and culture in what became a strong seller in the 1930s. His second pamphlet, ''On Marxism To-Day'' (1932) was intended as a rudimentary introduction to communism directed to the general public.

Death and legacy

Maurice Dobb died on 17 August 1976. By then he had started to question his earlier devotion to Russia's economics. His socialist ideals, however, did not die with him. He had two notable students,

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher. Sen has taught and worked in England and the United States since 1972. In 1998, Sen received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions ...

and

Eric Hobsbawm Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. His best-known works include his tetralogy about what he called the "long 19th century" (''Th ...

. Sen won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and

Bharat Ratna The Bharat Ratna (; ) is the highest Indian honours system, civilian award of the Republic of India. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conferred in recognition of "exceptional service/performance of the highest order", without distin ...

in 1999 for his work in welfare economics, and the inaugural Charleston-EFG John Maynard Keynes Prize for his work on welfare economics; he later became Master of Trinity (1998–2004), Dobb's own college. Hobsbawm, meanwhile, was a Marxist historian specializing in the nineteenth century but writing on other periods as well, who produced numerous works and was active in the Communist Party Historians Group and the

Economic thought

Dobb was an economist primarily involved in interpreting neoclassical economic theory from a

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

point of view. His involvement in the original

economic calculation problem The economic calculation problem (ECP) is a criticism of using central economic planning as a substitute for Market (economics), market-based allocation of the factors of production. It was first proposed by Ludwig von Mises in his 1920 article ...

debate consisted of critiques of capitalist, centrally planned socialist or market socialist models based on the neoclassical framework of

static equilibrium In classical mechanics, a particle is in mechanical equilibrium if the net force on that particle is zero. By extension, a physical system made up of many parts is in mechanical equilibrium if the net force on each of its individual parts is ze ...

. He was also critical of the marginalist thought within neoclassical economics. Since Marx's death, this had become popular within the field, with Dobb arguing on behalf of Marx.

Marginal utility Marginal utility, in mainstream economics, describes the change in ''utility'' (pleasure or satisfaction resulting from the consumption) of one unit of a good or service. Marginal utility can be positive, negative, or zero. Negative marginal utilit ...

, the main foundation of marginalism, posits a way to quantify levels of satisfaction as a person consumes each additional unit of a good. The level of satisfaction also depends on the person's behaviour. These ideas showed that the prices set for goods are more, if not completely, influenced by individual willingness to spend. The perceived value an individual gives to a good is the opposite of Marx's labour theory of value described in ''Value, Price, Profit'', which states that the price for a good is set by the amount of socially acceptable labour that goes into production. In Dobb's ''Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith: Ideology and Economic Theory'', he argued that marginal utility and individual satisfaction cannot determine prices, as marginalism suggests. He saw a person's preferences and level of satisfaction as heavily dependent on individual wealth, so that marginal utility is determined by spending power. This, according to Dobb, was the distribution of wealth that could alone change prices, as price depended on how much someone would spend. So he argued that individual behaviour cannot influence prices, as there are many other factors such as labour and spending power to affect them. Dobb dismissed the market-socialist model of

Oskar Lange Oskar Ryszard Lange (; 27 July 1904 – 2 October 1965) was a Polish economics, economist and diplomat. He is best known for advocating the use of market (economics), market pricing tools in socialism, socialist systems and providing a model of m ...

and contributions of "neo-classical" socialists as illegitimate "narrowing of the focus of study to problems of exchange-relations."''Economists and the Economics of Socialism'', 1939. Many of Dobb's works have appeared in other languages. His short ''Introduction to Economics'' was translated into Spanish by the Mexican intellectual Antonio Castro Leal for the leading Mexican publisher Fondo de Cultura Economica, and has gone through more than ten editions since 1938. For Dobb, the central economic challenges for socialism relate to production and investment in their dynamic aspects. He identified three major advantages of planned economies: antecedent co-ordination, external effects and variables in planning.

Antecedent co-ordination

Planned economies employ antecedent co-ordination of the economy, whereas a market economy atomises its agents by definition and the expectations that form the basis of their decisions are always based on uncertainty. There is a poverty of information that often leads to disequilibrium and can only be corrected in a market ''ex post'' (after the event), so that resources are wasted. An advantage of antecedent planning is removal of marked 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 recognise the relevance of external effects to market exchanges. In a market economy, each economic agent in an exchange makes decisions based on a narrow range of information in ignorance of wider social effects of production and consumption. When external effects are significant, this invalidates the information transmitting qualities of market prices, so that prices do not reflect true social-opportunity costs. Dobbs claimed that 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 publicised negative external effects on the environment.

Variables in planning

By taking the 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 will 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 relative 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 standardisation or variety in production that the economy at its stage of development feels it can afford.

Footnotes

Works

*''Capitalist Enterprise and Social Progress'', 1925 *
Russian Economic Development since the Revolution
'' Assisted by H. C. Stevens. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1928. *''Wages'', 1928 *''"A skeptical view of the theory of wages"'', 1929, ''Economic Journal'' *''Russia To-Day and Tomorrow'', 1930, The Hogarth Press *''On Marxism To-Day'', 1932, The Hogarth Press * *''Political Economy and Capitalism: Some essays in economic tradition'', 1937 *''Soviet Planning and Labour in Peace and War: Four Studies.'' London: George Routledge & Sons, 1942 *"How Soviet Trade Unions Work." San Francisco: International Bookshop, n.d.

942 Year 942 (Roman numerals, CMXLII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – The Hungarian raid in Spain (942), Hungarians invade Al-Andalus (modern Spain) and besiege the f ...

Leaflet *''Marx as an Economist: An Essay.'' London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1943 *''Soviet Economy and the War.'' New York: International Publishers, 1943 *
Studies in the Development of Capitalism
', 1946 *
Soviet Economic Development Since 1917
', 1948 *''Reply (to Paul Sweezy's article on the transition from feudalism to capitalism)'', 1950, ''Science and Society'' *''Some Aspects of Economic Development'', 1951 *
Economic Theory and Socialism: Collected Papers
', 1955 *''An Essay on Economic Growth and Planning'', 1960 *
Economic Growth and Underdeveloped Countries
'' New York: International Publishers, 1963 *
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: Ideology and Economic Theory.'' London: Cambridge University Press, 1973 *"Some Historical Reflections on Planning and the Market," in Chimen Abramsky (ed.), ''Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr'', London, Macmillan Press, 1974 *''An Essay on Economic Growth and Planning.'' London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976 *''The Development of Socialist Economic Thought: Selected Essays.'' London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2008 * A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, was edited by Maurice Dobb in English language.

External links

Papers of Maurice Herbert Dobb
at marxists.org
“The Development of Capitalism”, by Maurice DobbThe Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: A Contribution to the Sweezy-Dobb Controversy
H. K. Takahashi and Henry F. Mins. ''Science & Society'' Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall, 1952), pp. 313–345 {{DEFAULTSORT:Dobb, Maurice English economists Marxian economists Historians of economic thought 1900 births 1976 deaths People educated at Charterhouse School British Marxists Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Cambridge Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Communist Party of Great Britain members 20th-century English historians Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin Communist Party Historians Group members