An Introduction to Kalecki and His Ideas

Abstract

The widely varying evaluations of the work of Michal Kalecki made by economists tells us much about the state of economic thinking about capitalism. For some, Kalecki occupies a place amongst the greatest economists. The Cambridge Journal of Economics, for example, places Kalecki alongside Keynes and Marx as the three main sources of traditions which have ‘much to contribute to the understanding and treatment of current economic and social issues’. The series of books, of which this book is one, cites Kalecki with Marx and Sraffa as providing a ‘more fruitful point of departure’ than the prevailing orthodoxy. Joan Robinson (Robinson, 1980, p. 122) as well as Eichner and Kregel (1975, fn. 1) acknowledge the contribution of Kalecki’s ideas rather than those of Keynes, to the tradition which labels itself post-Keynesian.¹ Galbraith has acknowledged ‘how much those of us the world around have owed to the intellectual capital you (Kalecki) have provided over these past decades’ (quoted in Feiwell, 1975, p. 17 from a letter from Galbraith to Kalecki). Worswick (1977), until recently director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, London, has indicated that ‘I thought him [Kalecki] the best [economist in the world] when I knew him in the war, and I still think so’.