Cambridge Journal of Economics 1978, 2, 115-120

Random biographical notes

Maurice Dobb

Early education

Born in a suburb of N.W. London (24 July 1900) of a family of small business men
(father and grandfather had a draper's retail business; mother came of a decayed
Scottish-merchant's family, in poor financial circumstances). Ordinary religious (nonconformist-Presbyterian) and conservative upbringing (as a child read patriotic books,
e.g. about the Boer War, and once wept inconsolably for the death of General Gordon
in the Sudan). The family had little cultural background; but was sent to ordinary
middle class schools for educationand eventually to Charterhouse (an English public
school of the second rank). An unsuccessful schoolboy who showed no prowess at games
and little proficiency at classics (the main subject of his education). His academic
interest was only aroused when in his last year at school he was allowed to specialise in
History with the intention of taking a Scholarship Examination for Cambridge, studying
the subject under a talented master of liberal ideas and tendencies.
He would have joined the army on leaving school in December 1918 if the First
World War had lasted a month longer. As it was, he had three-quarters of a year
between leaving school and going up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to which he
had obtained an Exhibition (but not a full Scholarship). It was in these nine months in
London as an ex-schoolboy that he made his first contacts with the Labour Movement,
with Socialism and with the ideas of the Russian Revolution (then just a year old); it
was also at this time that he first read Marx (with very limited understanding) and
other unorthodox writers such as J. A. Hobson, Bernard Shaw and William Morris.
It was at the same time that there was born in him the desire to study Economics
which he did (instead of History) on going to the University in October 1919.
First socialist contacts

The reasons for this early interest in socialist ideas (perhaps at first sight surprising
considering the environment) may be just worth mentioning. Probably it had its origin
in an increasing conflict in his last school-year with the more militarist-minded of his
schoolfellows whose only thoughts were of careers in the Army as officers, preferably in
some obsolete but snobbish branch like the Cavalry or Guards. Against them he

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These notes, written in 1965 for Tadeusz Kowalik, provide an apt introduction to this issue of the
Cambridge Journal of Economics which is dedicated to the memory of Maurice Dobb, for
they reveal the political commitment and humanity of a modest but essentially courageous man. The
essays which follow examine a variety of aspects of the wide range of Maurice Dobb's contributions
to economic knowledge. All display a spirit of constructive criticism which is appropriate in approaching the work of such a major figure.

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M. H. Dobb

At the University, 1919-22

The result was that on going to Cambridge as a student he joined the University
Socialist Society within the first few days (its Secretary, whom he first approached to
join, was H. D. Dickinson, the future economist and author of The Economics ofSocialism).
Other members of the Socialist Society included J. D. Bernal (later Professor of Physics
and of Crystallography, University of London), Kingsley Martin (later editor of the
New Statesman), R. B. Braithwaite (to become a Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge),
and Allen Hutt (who was to be chief Typographer and sub-editor for the Daily Worker
over several decades). This society was fairly small and its discussions mainly theoretical
(a paper being read, followed by general discussion). In his second or third year at
Cambridge he assisted in forming (together with the son of the Labour Party leader
Arthur Henderson) the wider Cambridge University Labour Club which engaged in
more public activities, public meetings, etc., on the basis of the programme of the Labour
Party. He became Secretary of this Labour Club and later (in his final student year)
its Chairman (with Ewen Montagu, elder brother of Ivor Montagu, as secretary and
joint colleague).
In his first student year he also joined a local branch of a pacifist society called the
Union of Democratic Control; one of its first public meetings was broken up by angry
ex-servicemen students; this caused a clash with the authorities of his College, and he
himself narrowly escaped having his room wrecked by ex-officer-students of his own
College.
In either his 2nd or 3rd year as a student he helped in organising and addressing a
public meeting in London organised by the University Socialist Federation (a federation
of university socialist clubs or societies) in support of the so-called Triple Alliance strikemovement (a general strike of Miners, Railwaymen, Dockers and other transport
workers). As a result of this he (and also H. D. Dickinson) were invited to go for an
intensive three weeks of speaking and organising by the Unemployed Workers' Council

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championed the idea (without finding any support) of the need to know something of
politics in view of the coming problems of end-of-war and peace. He was much influenced
by an idealistic lecture at the school by Professor Gilbert Murray on the day the war
endedabout the need to ensure permanent peace and no-more-war. He got friendly
with an old servant at the school whom he found to be an early member of the British
Labour Party, and found him much more interesting to talk to than his schoolfellows.
As a result, on returning home to London he started to go to such Labour and Socialist
meetings as he saw advertised (it was the time of the 'Hands-off Russia' campaign,
which held monster meetings in the Albert Hall; also of heated discussions between
advocates of affiliation to the Second and the Third International). He bought left-wing
papers and pamphlets, and found a second-hand bookseller of left-wing sympathies who
advised him on books to read. He answered a poster advertising for helpers for the
Hampstead Labour Party in a local election; and from this worked for several months
as a volunteer with the Information Department of the Independent Labour Party
which was presided over by Emile Burns (later to be a foundation-member of the
British CP)also joined a local branch of the Independent Labour Party in a working
class district of London, where he made friends with young workers and actually spoke
on one occasion at a street-corner meeting. There were also some big strikes in this
post-war year of rapid inflation, and these moved him to passionate enthusiasm for the
strikers' cause (as well as to a romantic feeling that revolution was near).

Random biographical notes

117

Research Student at London School of Economics 1922-24

In his two years (1922-24) in London as a research student, he worked on the history
and theory of capitalist enterprise (nominally 'the Entrepreneur'). He wrote a thesis
(under the nominal supervision of Professor Edwin Carman) which won him a Ph.D.,
and which formed the basis for the rather unsuccessful book entitled Capitalist Enterprise
and Social Progress (published in 1925)an unsuccessful and jejune attempt to combine
the notion of surplus-value and exploitation with the theory of Marshall (but it contained some historical material about the origins of capitalism and the role of monopoly
and class-advantage which was to be developed 20 years later in his Studies in the
Development of Capitalism).

It was at the beginning of this two-year period in London that he joined the Communist Party, recently founded about a year previously; joining first an intellectuals'
branch called the West Central branch and then (on the dissolution of this branch)
transferring to a branch in the working class district of Camden Town in north London.
He did some speaking at this time to CP branches, workers' circles, etc., received some
experience of the eastern boroughs of London (Poplar, the dockland area etc.); and it

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movement in the so-called Black Country, north of Birmingham (a badly-depressed

iron and engineering and coal area). When By-Elections (for Parliament) took place
in Cambridge town, he spoke and canvassed for the Labour candidate (who at that
time was Hugh Dalton, an economist and later a Minister in Labour Governments).
In summer vacations he attended 'Summer Schools' organised by the Labour Research
Department (a left-wing organisation), which attracted both intellectuals and trade
unionists; here he came into contact with figures like G. D. H. Cole, Bernard Shaw,
Ellen Wilkinson, R. Page Arnot. In these various ways he acquired at this time some
practical experience of politics and of the working class movement. He also took part
in political debates in the Cambridge Union Society, a student club and debatingsociety, and for a short time also edited a student paper called Youth.
As regards his academic studies at Cambridge, he studied economics from the first,
without however abandoning his interest in history, especially economic history (including the history of capitalism and the history of trade unionism in Britain). At this
time he considered himself a Marxist and a supporter of the Soviet Revolution in
Russia; although at this time very little of the Marxist classics was available in English
apart from Marx's Capital, and Lenin's State and Revolutionfirstappeared in an English
translation about 1920. He had very little liking for Marshall, and only succeeded in
reading completely his Principles of Economics (essential at [that] time for examination
purposes) after the end of his 2nd year as a student of economics. On becoming a
member of Keynes's Political Economy Club (which met in Keynes's rooms in King's
College) in his 2nd or 3rd student-year, he read a paper at one of his first meetings on
Karl Marx (a paper approved of by Keyneswho liked unorthodoxy in the young, up to
a point). Among other writings, apart from Marx, that he can remember having
influenced him, were those of the Webbs and Labriola, Croce's essay on historical
materialism and the economics of Karl Marx, also for a time Georges Sorel (his Reflexions sur Violence), also Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, and the writings of the
Guild Socialists. He was successful in getting first class honours in both parts of the
Economics Tripos (an examination taken in two parts, one at the end of the 2nd year
of study, the other at the end of the 3rd and final year). On graduating he was able to
get a Studentship for Research at the London School of Economics.

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M. H. Dobb

was at this time that he started to be active in the educational movement called the
Council of Labour Colleges, engaged in working class education of a Marxist tendenz
(he was for some years a committee member of its propaganda-organ, the Plebs League,
and for a short time edited its monthly magazine called Plebs, for which he wrote
frequently between 1923 and 1928). He also did work for the Labour Research Department (formerly the Fabian Research Dept).
Cambridge as a lecturer from 1924

The 1930s
From the early 1930s up to the war, with the rise of Fascism and the war danger, his
time and energies were increasingly occupied in political activity (mainly on a local
and regional basis) and polemical writing. This was also the time of the formation and
growth of the Communist Student Movement, and of a wave of interest among intellectuals in Marxism. Thus he organised a local (i.e. Cambridge) Anti-War Council
of Labour and trade union and pacifist organisations and became its Secretary (this was
inspired by the international movement and appeal of Henri Barbusse). One of its
achievements (apart from the holding of regional conferences covering the Eastern
Counties) was to organise a portable Anti-War Exhibition which later toured the
country; it was followed two years later by an Anti-Fascist Exhibition in which a number
of artists collaborated. In 1936 he was active in organising a regional Committee for

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He returned to Cambridge at the end of 1924 on being appointed as a Lecturer in

Economics in the Faculty of Economics and Politics (at that time a small and understaffed Faculty). In 1925 he paid his first visit to the Soviet Union, going in the company of Alexander Wicksteed, who had originally been a famine-relief worker in 1921
with the Quakers' Relief Mission in the famine districts of the lower Volga, and then
stayed on in Moscow as a teacher of English. While he was in Moscow he obtained
certain privileges as a visitor to the Bicentenary Celebrations of the Academy of Sciences
(to which Keynes was an official visitor), and he was present (along with the Swedish
E. Heckscher) at a meeting between Keynes and Gosplan economists (with Smilga
in the Chair, and Strumilin present inter alia) at which Keynes was presented with a
copy of the first 'Control Figures' which had just come from the printer.
This visit stimulated his interest in Soviet economy, and caused him to write a work
on the first ten years of Soviet economy which appeared in 1928 as Russian Economic
Development Since the Revolution. (As he could not at the time read Russian he had to work
with the assistance of H. C. Stevens as translator.) Both in 1929 and 1930 he was to
visit the S.U. again, travelling down the Volga from Nizhny (Gorki) to the lower Volga,
to Rostov, Novorossisk, Kharkhov for some weeks. These were the turbulent years of the
start of the First Five Year Plan; and on return to England he wrote several pamphlets
and lectured in various places about USSR.
Reverting to 1926 and the General Strike of that year. During the strike universityteaching virtually closed down, since all but a few students had gone off to strikebreak (i.e. work on railways, drive buses, etc.). As a result, he with a few other comrades
organised a publicity service for the strikers under the local Labour and Trades Council
(which acted as a local strike committee); and then when the Trade Union Congress
nationally started its own newspaper, The British Worker, organised its collection from
London and its regional distribution to the main towns of the Eastern Counties during
the General Strike.

Random biographical notes

119

Post-Second World War

At the end of the war and after (when academic duties were at a minimum owing to
the small number of students) he had an intensive period of academic study, the product
of which was two books, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946) and an enlargement
and extension of his earlier study of Soviet economy, Soviet Economic Development Since
1917(1948). In 1948 he was elected a Fellow and Lecturer ofTrinity College, Cambridge
(which entailed an increase in teaching-duties). At the same time he started collaborating
with P. SrafTa in completing the editing of the 10-volume edition of the Works and
Correspondence of David Ricardo and in writing several editorial Notes and Introductions
(including the Introduction to vol. I). In 1951 he visited India as Visiting Professor at
the University of Delhi School of Economics, and lectured extensively in Delhi, Aligarh,
Allahabad, Lucknow, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Bombay. From this dated his interest
in the problems of underdeveloped countries, and hence in the theory of growth and
development; which bore fruit in several articles on this subject (in Economie Appliquie
and Review of Economic Studies) and eventually in the theoretical booklet An Essay on

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aid to republican Spain, which among other things raised money to send a food ship
to Spain. About this time the Anti-War Council changed its name to the Cambridge
Peace Council, at the same time broadening its appeal to take in various religious bodies;
this organised marches and torchlight processions as well as meetings. Nationally he
was for some time a committee-member of the National Peace Council.
One result of this preoccupation in the 1930s with current political and polemical
work was a certain divorce from theoretical work and a partial separation from felloweconomists. He tended at this time to do the minimum (only) of his academic duties;
but, for example, took no part in the theoretical discussions among Cambridge economists at the time (discussions which both preceded and followed the publication of Keynes's
General Theory). From all this he stood apart. He did not lecture in the University at the
time on theoretical questions but mainly on 'applied' problems (e.g. a course on Social
Problems which included practical questions such as Labour Legislation, Social Insurance, Poverty Studies, Unemployment, Trade Unions and Wages). This followed on
his writing (in 1928) an elementary students' textbook on Wages for a textbook-series
(edited by Keynes) called the Cambridge Economic Handbooks. During this decade he
took part in the revived debate among economists about Mises's Wirtschaftsrechnung and
a socialist economy, but mainly in a polemical and perhaps (regarded in retrospect)
in a too negative manner. He also wrote his Political Economy and Capitalism (1937), partly
expository, partly polemical in intentioncriticising the Subjective Theory of Value and
seeking to explain and defend the Marxian approach in a manner understandable to
economic students trained in the Marshallian tradition. (The sub-title of the book was
Essays in Economic Traditiona reference to the tradition of Classical Political Economy
and of Marx as standing in that tradition.) But the book was too hurriedly written and
not based sufficiently deeply in theoretical thinking, so that much of it was superficial,
too-little constructive or matured from the standpoint of theoretical analysis (this is
most apparent probably in the chapter on Economic Crisessomewhat rewritten in
1940 under the influence of Kalecki's work and contact with Kalecki in Cambridge
and in the chapter on Economic Law in a Socialist Economy). As a result the book
fell between two stoolsto academic economists it seemed too polemical and negative
and remote from contemporary discussion; to many Marxists it seemed to make too
many concessions to Marshallian language and to have too-academic a form.

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t Maurice Dobb also received honorary degrees from the Universities of Budapest and Leicester. He was
a Fellow of die British Academy [eds].

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Economic Growth and Planning in 1960. In 1952 he attended the International Economic
Conference in Moscow as a member of the English delegation (of economists and business
men); and in 1956 he was a member of the party of English economists invited to
Poland by Polish economists. Here he was a witness of the 'Poznan events'from which
painful event perhaps came the first full realisation that contradictions were possible in
a socialist society. He participated actively in the intense discussions later in the year
in British communist and left-wing circles around the events in Hungary; and at the
1957 Congress of the British CP (to which he was a delegate from Cambridge) he
made a speech seconding an amendment to the main resolutionan amendment to
state that 'dogmatism' (in place of'revisionism') was the main danger to be combatted
(the amendment was defeated). He also supported some other minority resolutions and
amendments (in this reflecting the opinions of the branches on whose behalf he was a
delegate).
The Polish economists' discussion of 1956, which he had the opportunity of hearing,
revived his interest in the problems of pricing-policy in a socialist economy and the
need to experiment with more decentralised models. While still insistent on the value
and importance of planning for the 'macro-relations' of a socialist economy, he was
now convinced of the need to examine positively in the light of experience the role of
prices and of economic incentives. He proceeded to study in some detail current Soviet
discussions and experience of this, and wrote some articles about this (e.g. in Soviet
Studies and in Science and Society); some of his conclusions appeared in the final chapter
of his Essay on Economic Growth and Planning. He hopes in the future to devote a book to
a theoretical re-examination of this question, possibly linking it up with discussions
among bourgeois economists about 'welfare economics' and a 'welfare optimum'. (It
happened that at this time he was lecturing at the University on these subjects as part
of a course dealing with the general subject of 'Welfare Economics'; to which was to be
added from 1962 onwards a shorter course of lectures on 'The Planned Economies of
Eastern Europe'.)
In the second half of the '50s he was also engaged in discussions in Marxist circles
and journals (e.g. in the English journal Marxism Today) about the special features and
changes in post-war capitalismfollowing earlier historical discussion around his
Studies in the early '50s (e.g. the discussion with Sweezy, Takahashi etc., in Science and
Society of New York). On these subjects, historical and contemporary, he lectured
in the early '60s both in Bologna and in Rome (at the Gramsci Institute). He was a
member of the Editorial Board of Modern Quarterly and later of Marxism Today; also
for a time of the historical journal Past and Present.
In 1959 he was appointed a Reader in Economics (in English Universities a Reader
is a grade between Lecturer and a full Professor, and in Cambridge the post is created
ad hoc for individuals nominated by the Facultyat diis time other Readers in the
Faculty were Reddaway, Kaldor and Joan Robinson). In 1964 he was awarded an
honorary degree as Doctor of Economic Science at the Charles University of Prague in
a ceremony at the Karolinum.t He is due to retire from both his University and College
posts in 1967. He hopes after retirement to have time to write also a book on the history
of economic thought (about which he has lectured in the University for some 10 years
or more), concerned especially with the problem of ideology and apologetics in
Economic Theories at various times.