Maurice Dobb (1900–76)

Abstract

His many Australian friends and admirers will be sad to know that Maurice Dobb died suddenly on Tuesday, 17th August. Maurice was a great economist, the foremost English academic Marxist of the last fifty years. He greatly influenced countless students through his Cambridge lectures and supervisions, and through supervising their research. He wrote prodigiously for wage-earning and trade union groups. His main influence, though, was through a steady stream of distinguished books and articles. I would nominate at least two as classics — Political Economy and Capitalism, first published in 1937, and his last major work, Theories of Value and Distribution since Adam Smith, published in 1973. (A shorter version of the latter was the subject of his 1973 Marshall Lectures which were a resounding success.)

Reprinted from Economic Record, 52, September 1976, pp. 395–6.