Maurice Dobb facts for kids

Maurice Herbert Dobb (born July 24, 1900 – died August 17, 1976) was an important English economist. He taught at Cambridge University and was a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is known as one of the most important Marxist economists of the 20th century.

Maurice Dobb's Life Story

Maurice Dobb was born in London on July 24, 1900. His parents were Walter Herbert Dobb and Elsie Annie Moir. He grew up in Willesden, a part of London. He went to Charterhouse School in Surrey, which is a famous private school in Britain.

Dobb started writing when he was a teenager, after his mother passed away. He was a quiet person and found it hard to make many friends. His first stories were fantasy novels. Like his father, Dobb became interested in Christian Science after his mother's death. Before that, his family belonged to the Presbyterian Church.

Dobb did not have to join the military because World War I ended in November 1918. In 1919, he started studying economics at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did very well, getting top grades in economics in 1921 and 1922. After that, he went to the London School of Economics for more studies. He earned his PhD in 1924 and then returned to Cambridge as a university lecturer.

In 1920, after his first year at Pembroke College, a famous economist named John Maynard Keynes invited Dobb to join the Political Economy Club. After Dobb graduated, Keynes helped him get his teaching job at Cambridge. Dobb was open about his communist beliefs with his students. One student, Victor Kiernan, later said that Dobb was a great teacher of Marxist ideas in England. Dobb's house, called "St Andrews," was a common meeting place for communists in Cambridge. People in the area called it "The Red House."

Dobb joined the Communist Party in 1920. In the 1930s, he was a key figure in the growing Communist movement at the university. He was very active in politics, organizing events and giving lectures often. As an economist, he often talked about how economies could face crises. He also pointed out how capitalist money in the United States was sometimes used for military goals instead of public projects.

His Career and Work

Dobb worked at Trinity College for over 50 years. In 1948, he became a fellow there. Around this time, he started working with Piero Sraffa to put together the writings and letters of David Ricardo. Their work was eventually published in eleven books. Dobb did not become a university reader until 1959.

During his career, Dobb wrote twelve academic books, more than 24 small books (pamphlets), and many articles for general readers. He often wrote about political economy. This field looks at how society and its problems affect how goods and services are exchanged. Dobb believed that the capitalist system created different social classes. He thought these classes often led to conflict between them. After a trip to Russia with Keynes in 1925, Dobb became a bit less focused on political conflict. He was known for giving long lectures that sometimes had few students.

Around 1928, Dobb also taught at a summer school. He was the Chairman of the Economics Faculty for the Communist Party of Great Britain. He also helped start the party's own film company. He had different ideas from some people in his party. He believed that being smart and being politically active could go together.

In 1931, Dobb married Barbara Marian Nixon. She was his second wife, and they stayed together for the rest of his life. Barbara was not a communist, but she was active in the Labour Party. She also held a position on the London County Council while working as an actress. Dobb's personal life was of interest to his colleagues. Because of some disagreements, Pembroke College stopped Dobb from being a Director of Studies and took away his dining rights. In the same year, he gave a lecture about his recent trip to Russia. This led some people to call him a "paid official of the Russian government." This caused a small stir at Cambridge. Dobb replied with an article in The Times newspaper, saying he had no connection with the Soviet Union.

Working with The Hogarth Press

The Hogarth Press was a publishing company started by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. They wanted to publish books that encouraged new ideas. Leonard Woolf was against imperialism, which is when one country takes over another. He also believed that sharing ideas was like trading goods. Dobb's books were both about sharing ideas, like explaining and defending Marxism, and things that could be sold. The books published by Hogarth Press often showed the opinions of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Leonard Woolf later asked Dobb to write a book called The Political and Social Doctrine of Communism, but Dobb refused. Between 1924 and the late 1930s, Hogarth Press published eight pamphlets about Russia, communism, and Marxism. Their reasons for doing this were political and educational.

Dobb published two pamphlets with Hogarth Press. The first was Russia To-day and Tomorrow (1930). He wrote it after his trip to Russia with Keynes. In it, he talked about the Soviet economy, politics, industry, and culture. This pamphlet sold very well in the 1930s. His second pamphlet, On Marxism To-Day (1932), was a simple introduction to communism for everyone.

His Death and Lasting Impact

Maurice Dobb passed away on August 17, 1976. By then, he had started to question some of his earlier strong beliefs about Russia's economy.

However, his ideas about socialism continued to influence others. He had two famous students: Amartya Sen and Eric Hobsbawm. Amartya Sen won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his work on welfare economics. He also became the Master of Trinity College (1998-2004), which was Dobb's own college. Eric Hobsbawm also went to Cambridge University. He was a Marxist historian who wrote many books about Marxism. He was also active in the Communist Party Historians Group.

Maurice Dobb's Economic Ideas

Maurice Dobb was an economist who mainly looked at neoclassical economic theory from a Marxist point of view. Neoclassical economics focuses on how people make choices and how markets work. Marxist economics looks at how society's structure and class differences affect the economy.

Dobb was involved in a debate called the economic calculation problem. This debate was about whether a centrally planned economy (where the government controls everything) or a market economy (where individuals and businesses make decisions) works better. Dobb criticized both capitalist and socialist models based on the idea of static equilibrium. This means a state where economic forces are balanced and not changing.

He also disagreed with "marginalist" ideas in neoclassical economics. After Karl Marx died, these ideas became popular. Dobb argued for Marx's views. Marginal utility is a main idea of marginalism. It suggests that you can measure how much satisfaction a person gets from using each extra unit of a product. This satisfaction also depends on how the person behaves. These ideas suggested that prices are mostly set by how much individuals are willing to spend. This idea is different from Marx's labor theory of value. Marx's theory, explained in his book Value, Price, Profit, says that the price of a product is set by the amount of socially acceptable work put into making it.

In Dobb's book, Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith: Ideology and Economic Theory, he argued that marginal utility and individual satisfaction cannot set prices, as marginalism suggests. He believed that a person's preferences and satisfaction depend a lot on how wealthy they are. So, he thought that marginal utility is decided by how much money someone has to spend. According to Dobb, only the way wealth is shared could change prices, because prices depended on how much someone would spend. So, he argued that individual behavior alone cannot change prices. Many other things, like labor and spending power, also affect them. Dobb did not agree with the market-socialist model of Oskar Lange. He saw these "neo-classical" socialist ideas as focusing too narrowly on how things are exchanged.

Many of Dobb's books have been translated into other languages. His short book, Introduction to Economics, was translated into Spanish. It has been printed more than ten times since 1938.

Dobb believed that the main economic challenges for socialism were about production and investment, especially how they change over time. He pointed out three big benefits of planned economies: planning ahead, considering wider effects, and being able to adjust things.

Planning Ahead (Antecedent Co-ordination)

Planned economies use "antecedent co-ordination," which means they plan the economy ahead of time. In a market economy, people and businesses make decisions on their own. Their plans are often based on guesswork. This can lead to a lack of information and imbalances, which are only fixed after problems happen. This wastes resources.

A benefit of planning ahead is that it removes a lot of uncertainty. Decisions are made together, using all available information, before resources are used.

Considering Wider Effects (External Effects)

Dobb was one of the first thinkers to see how "external effects" matter in market exchanges. In a market economy, each person or business making a trade often decides based on limited information. They might not know about the wider social effects of what they produce or consume.

When these external effects are big, market prices do not show the true social costs. Dobb said that, unlike what some economists assumed, important external effects are very common in modern market economies. Planning that connects decisions before they are put into action can consider a wider range of social effects. This is important for efficient industrial planning. It helps with decisions about how different parts of the economy grow unevenly. It also helps with the effects of public projects and developing new industries. This is in addition to well-known negative effects like pollution on the environment.

Adjusting Plans (Variables in Planning)

By looking at many factors together, only planned economies can change things easily. What seems like fixed information in simple economic models can be changed in a planning process. For example, things like how much to invest, how to divide investment between capital and consumption, and what production methods to use can all be adjusted. Also, where to invest, how fast transport and energy grow compared to industry, how quickly new products are introduced, and how much variety to have in production can all be changed based on the economy's stage of development.

See also

In Spanish: Maurice Herbert Dobb para niños