Essential On Re-reading Marx. Collection [wbGYMRfN]

A collection of three polemical essays on Marxist economics, titled ‘Would You Believe it?’, ‘A Lecture Delivered at Oxford by a Cambridge Economist’, and ‘An Open Letter from a Keynesian to a Marxist’, that Robinson describes as having been ‘written in a hilarious mood after reading Piero Sraffa’s Introduction to Ricardo’s Principles which caused me to see that the concept of the rate of profit on capital is essentially the same in Ricardo, Marx, Marshall and Keynes’ (The Accumulation of Capital, viii). ‘Joan Robinson’s flirtation with Marx is very curious. It has all the charm of a meeting and all the clamour of a clash. She is no doubt attracted by Marx’s general conception of society. She finds in Marx much that she approves of. But she finds his scientific nucleus embedded in, and in need of being liberated from, ideology. … Her writings on Marx are specifically aimed at ‘separating the wheat of science from the chaff of ideology’. … She is always looking at Marx as ‘a serious economist’. Accordingly, she always tries to go straight to what she thinks is his economic analysis’ (New Palgrave).

Sraffa 5042.