Collected Works of Maurice Dobb 9780415523097, 9780203119501, 9780415523608, 9780203120873, 0415523095

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COLLECTED WORKS OF MAURICE DOBB

ON ECONOMIC THEORY AND SOCIALISM

ON ECONOMIC THEORY AND SOCIALISM Collected Papers

MAURICE DOBB

Volume 2

First published in 1955 Reprinted with an additional note 1965 This edition first published in 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1955 The Estate of Maurice Dobb All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-415-52309-7 (Set) eISBN: 978-0-203-11950-1 (Set) ISBN: 978-0-415-52360-8 (Volume 2) eISBN: 978-0-203-12087-3 (Volume 2) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

PREFACE are as much in vogue as they seem to be at present, republication of scattered, and perhaps deservedly forgotten, essays and papers may require less apology than was formerly the case. For the making ofsuch collections, however, no standard criteria seem to exist; and if one were to be quite logical, no line could probably be drawn between including all or including nothing. Once, wisely or unwisely, a start has been made, it is not easy to avoid repetition, or to avoid altogether the ephemeral or what in retrospect may appear trivial, mistaken or outdated. I do not expect to find much agreement that the choice here made has been a reasonable one. The result is admittedly a curiously mixed bag -a mixture of things composed at different dates, in different contexts and for different audiences. I can only hope that readers will appreciate this, and will tum a tolerant if not a blind eye tp what is not their particular pabulum; and, further, that anything which is read will be looked at with its date as well as its audience in mind. Articles and essays have been arranged (so far as possible) chronologically within each of the three parts into which the collection has been divided. Part I consists chiefly ofarticles written for academic journals and for specialist readers; Part 2 of lectures or essays intended for a wider and less specialised public; to Part 3 have been relegated such shorter notes and reviews ~ seemed (rightly or wrongly) to be just worth including. Here again, the line between Parts I and 2 has not been at all easy to draw and there may be some overlap between them. A few corrections have been made, and occasional excisions, where it seemed only fair to the reader to do so (e.g. phrasing or argument that was obscure or misleading or references that had become quite obsolete); but apart from these there has been no attempt to revise the imperfect or the out-moded or to rewrite what the author would put differendy today. Explanatory notes have been inserted at the beginning of most items (in one case as prefatory to a group of three essays). Where footnotes have been added in this collection and were not in the original, they have been placed in square brackets and marked in the text with an asterisk WHEN COLLBCTED REPRINTS

v

PREFACE

instead of a number. Acknowledgements for permission to reprint are made below in the appropriate places. One article (No. m C), the bulk of one of the two lectures (No. IX) and one short note (No. xvn) have not

previously been published. M.H.D. Cambridge, April 1954.

CONTENTS page v

PllBPACB

Part One I. THB BNTllBPllENBUll MYTH

u. m.

[19 2 4]

A SCEPTICAL VIEW OF THE THEORY OF WAGES

[1929]

THREB ARTICLES ON THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMIC

33

CALCULATION IN A SOCIALIST ECONOMY

A. Economic Theory and the Problems ofa Socialist Economy [1933] B. A Note on Saving and Investment in a Socialist Economy [1939] C. A Review ofthe Discussion Concerning Economic Calculation in a Socialist Economy [19S3] IV. THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF CLASS CONFLICT

v.

34 41 5S 93

[1937]

ON SOME TENDENCIES IN MODERN ECONOMIC THEORY

[1949] VI. RATES OF GROWTH UNDBR THE FIVE-YEAR PLANS

vu.

3 16

[1953]

104

lIS

A NOTE ON THE SO-CALLED DEGRBE OF CAPITALINTENSITY OF INVESTMBNT IN UNDER-DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

[1954J

138

Part Two VID. A LECTURE ON LENIN IX. A LECTURE ON MARX

x.

[1939] [1942]

BERNARD SHAW AND BCONOMICS

[1946] [1950]

XI. FULL EMPLOYMENT AND CAPITALISM

IS7 178 205 215

XII. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THB ROLE OF THE ECONOMIC FACTOR

[19SI] vii

226

CONTENTS

Part Three XIII. ECONOMISTS AND THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM XIV. COMMENT ON SOVIET ECONOMIC STATISTICS

xv.

239 247

A NOTE ON THE DISCUSSION OF THE PROBLEM OF CHOICE BETWEEN ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT PROJECTS

XVI. THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL XVll. A NOTE ON THE TRANSFORMATION PROBLEM

INDEX

258 266 273 28 3

Part One

I THE ENTREPRENEUR MYTH! [192 4] This rather jejune essay in criticism of some traditional notions has been included here since it contains the germ of certain ideas about the origins and growth of capitalism that were developed more fully by the writer twenty years later. Based on a paper read to a Cambridge society the year before, it was publishe