Abstract
If we are to take journal citations as the measure of academic influence, then Michał Kalecki was not immediately recognised as one of the most important economists of his time. In his study of Ralph Hawtrey, Patrick Deutscher included a study of citations in the literature of macroeconomics and monetary theory in the inter-war period and during the Second World War. Obviously before 1936 the English-speaking world had no knowledge of the obscure Pole, since Kalecki had not published in English until 1936. Even after this, between 1936 and 1939, Kalecki’s work was not cited significantly. It was only during the Second World War that his work came to be more commonly referred to in the macroeconomics discussion. Deutscher has him ranked, by number of citations, as sixth after John Maynard Keynes, J.R. Hicks, Gottfried Haberler, Dennis Robertson, and Hawtrey. Kalecki appears in the ranking with the same number of citations as Keynes’s Austrian-American rival, Joseph Schumpeter, whose voluminous alternative explanation of the 1930s depression, Business Cycles was published in 1939. Much of Kalecki’s distinction was due to Keynes’s public acknowledgement that Kalecki’s wages theory was the one clearly implied in his General Theory.
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Notes
- 1.
Patrick Deutscher R.G. Hawtrey and the Development of Macroeconomics 1990 p. 194.
- 2.
Joseph Schumpeter Business Cycles 1939. In this book, Schumpeter gave a summary account of Kalecki’s theory of the business cycle, before dismissing it on the grounds that it ignores the ‘equilibrating mechanism’ in the form of the rate of interest, that would secure ‘equilibrium’ by making saving equal to investment (ibid., p. 189). This remark places the Austrian in the ranks of what Keynes called the ‘neo-classical’ school, for whom the source of the disequilibrium was the difference arising between saving and investment. In that ‘neo-classical’ view that difference was met by a change in credit advances or repayments, which then constitutes the monetary disturbance to equilibrium (see Keynes General Theory pp. 177 and 183). In fact Kalecki argued that saving was always equal to investment (for a closed economy with no government) and by the time he wrote his General Theory, Keynes also held this view.
- 3.
See Chap. 11 in volume 1 of this biography.
- 4.
Lopez and Assous Michał Kalecki p. 227, Note 14.
- 5.
R. Skidelsky John Maynard Keynes Volume Three Chap. 1.
- 6.
Keynes Papers, NIS/1/80.
- 7.
Kalecki Papers, PAN III-319/32.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
J.M. Keynes Ogólna teoria zatrudnienia, procentu i pieniądzu Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe 1956.
- 10.
Kalecki ‘Some Remarks on Keynes’s Theory’ 1936.
- 11.
Keynes General Theory 1936, p. 10.
- 12.
Keynes ‘Relative Movements of Real Wages and Output’ 1939; Kaldor ‘Personal Recollections’ 1989.
- 13.
Keynes, ibid.
- 14.
Keynes, ibid.
- 15.
Harrod The Trade Cycle 1936, pp. 86–87; Kalecki ‘The Distribution of the National Income’ 1938. This is further discussed in the first volume of this biography, pp. 101–102 and Chap. 13.
- 16.
Keynes, ibid.
- 17.
See volume 1, pp. 127–133.
- 18.
M. Kalecki Studies in the Theory of Business Cycles Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1969.
- 19.
Letter of Michał Kalecki to Joan Robinson, dated 30 January 1939, quoted in Osiatyński Collected Works of Michał Kalecki Vol. II 1991.
- 20.
Kalecki Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations 1939a, p. 75.
- 21.
Kalecki ‘Płace nominalne i realne’ 1939a. Kalecki translated his essay into English, and it was published by Basil Blackwell in 1969 in the volume Studies in the Theory of Business Cycles 1933–1939.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Ibid. Kalecki’s Introduction is included in the editorial notes to Volume II of the Kalecki Collected Works on p. 517 of the volume.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Kalecki ‘Płace nominalne i realne’ 1939a. The original Polish title of his study is ‘Nominal and Real Wages.’ In translating this as ‘Money and Real Wages,’ Kalecki introduced, probably unawares, a suggestion that his study would also consider money and credit, which indeed it does.
- 26.
See Sawyer The Economics of Michał Kalecki pp. 91–107; Sawyer ‘Kalecki on Money and Finance’; López and Assous Michał Kalecki 2010, Chap. 6; Chilosi ‘Breit, Kalecki and Hicks on the Term Structure of Interest Rates’ 1982; Toporowski Michał Kalecki An Intellectual Biography Volume 1 pp. 63–64.
- 27.
Kalecki ‘Płace nominalne i realne’ 1939a.
- 28.
Kalecki Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations 1939a.
- 29.
Keynes General Theory 1936, pp. 315–326.
- 30.
Hawtrey A Century of Bank Rate 1938, pp. 187–188. Hawtrey, it should be noted, was the principal exponent of the ‘Treasury View’ in Britain that urged the wisdom of lowering money wages as a remedy for mass unemployment. See Hawtrey Trade Depression and the Way Out 1931, pp. 44–48.
- 31.
Hicks Value and Capital 1939 Chap. XI.
- 32.
Harrod The Trade Cycle 1936 p. 112; Kalecki Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations 1939 p. 113.
- 33.
Kalecki ‘Płace nominalne i realne’ 1939a.
- 34.
Rueff ‘Les variations du chômage en Angleterre’ 1925. Pigou recalculated Rueff’s figures using prices of finished goods, and concluded that Rueff’s conclusion about the relationship between real wages and employment still holds. Pigou Industrial Fluctuations (1929) pp. 198–203.
- 35.
Kalecki ‘Płace nominalne i realne’ 1939a.
- 36.
Kalecki’s original translation has ‘received’ rather than ‘obtained.’
- 37.
See Toporowski Michał Kalecki An Intellectual Biography Volume 1 Chap. 5, pp. 96–97, and Chap. 13.
- 38.
Ibid., pp. 130–131.
- 39.
Kalecki ‘Płace nominalne i realne’ 1939a.
- 40.
Kalecki Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations 1939, p. 91.
- 41.
Henryk Holland Ludwik Krzywicki—Nieznany (The Unknown Ludwik Krzywicki) 2007, Tadeusz Kowalik O Ludwiku Krzywickim 1959, Chaps. 3 and 4.
- 42.
See Kalecki, ‘Stimulating the World Business Upswing’ 1933a.
- 43.
Krzywicki ‘Preface’ to ‘Money and Real Wages’ in J. Osiatyński (ed.) Michał Kalecki Collected Works Volume II.
- 44.
Ibid.
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Toporowski, J. (2018). Wages in ‘Free and Fair Competition’. In: Michał Kalecki: An Intellectual Biography. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69664-5_1
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