An Essay on Marxian Economics

by Joan Robinson

An Essay on Marxian Economics is a 1942 book about the philosopher Karl Marx by the economist Joan Robinson.

Genres: Economics, Philosophy, Politics

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Joan Violet Robinson FBA was an English post-Keynesian economist who was well known for her work on monetary economics and wide-ranging contributions to economic theory.

Reviews

[Tiarnán · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some sections were too technical for me to understand - you need a decent grounding in orthodox and non-orthodox mid-20th century academic economics to really get the maximum out of this book. Her short summaries of a number of key Marxian concepts (from all three volumes of Capital, which in itself is unusual and impressive) in the early chapters are lucid and insightful, even if she disagrees fundamentally with Marx on several core issues (like the LTV, falling profit rate), and defaults to a Kaleckian-Keynesian underconsumptionist position of certainty that seems less strong in the wake of the stagflation crises of the 70s that killed a number of orthodox Keynesian assumptions about inflation, macro-economics, the role of wages and profits, employment, etc. The simultaneous critique of orthodox Marshallian/marginalist economics she outlines is a bit too technical for me but seems spot on from the gist of it I could grasp.

An intelligent and sharp (at times overly-sharp) and concise writer, like all Cambridge trained thinkers. One smart cookie.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Robinson negates the law of centralization and accumulation of capital as well as the tendency of falling rate of profit...

In what world did she lived?

[altesse sérénissime]

[éditions sociales, préface d’Ulysse Lojkine]

Qui trop embrasse mal étreint ! J’ai pas tout bien saisi malgré la clarté et la concision de la prose de Robinson. Bonne préface, à relire ultérieurement

[Sarbajit Ghosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It sets the stage for further reading, exactly what it was written to do.