science

Maurice Dobb

Maurice Dobb is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Maurice Dobb rather than just read about it. In short: Maurice Herbert Dobb (24 July 1900 – 17 August 1976) was an English Marxist economist at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Dobb also helped to establish the Communist Party Historians Group which developed social history and attracted future members of the Cambridge Five to Marxism in the 1930s.

Key takeaways

Maurice Dobb belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Maurice Dobb to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Maurice Dobb from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Maurice Herbert Dobb (24 July 1900 – 17 August 1976) was an English Marxist economist at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Dobb also helped to establish the Communist Party Historians Group which developed social history and attracted future members of the Cambridge Five to Marxism in the 1930s.

Biography

Early life Dobb was born on 24 July 1900 in London, the son of Walter Herbert Dobb and the former Elsie Annie Moir. He and his family lived in the London suburb of Willesden. He was educated at Charterhouse School in Surrey, an elite British public school. Dobb was admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1919 as an exhibitioner to read economics. He gained firsts in both parts of the economics tripos in 1921 and 1922 and was admitted to the London School of Economics for graduate studies under Edwin Cannan and Hugh Dalton. In 1920, after Dobb's first year at Pembroke College, John Maynard Keynes invited him to join the Political Economy Club, and after graduation Keynes helped him secure his Cambridge position. Dobb was open with students about his communist beliefs. One of them, Victor Kiernan, later said, "We had no time then to assimilate Marxist theory more than very roughly; it was only beginning to take root in England, although it had one remarkable expounder at Cambridge in Maurice Dobb."

Communism Dobb joined the Communist Party of Great Britain while in London in 1922. He attracted the interest of British security authorities, and in 1923 he was investigated by MI5. In the 1930s he was central to the development of the Communist Party at Cambridge University. One of his recruits was Kim Philby, who later became a high-placed mole within British intelligence. It has been suggested that Dobb was a "talent-spotter" for Comintern.

Academic career After gaining a PhD in 1924, Dobb returned to Cambridge as university lecturer. Dobb's position at Trinity connected him to it for more than 50 years. He was elected a fellow in 1948, at which time he began joint work with Piero Sraffa assembling the selected works and letters of David Ricardo. The results were eventually published in eleven volumes. In the 1930s he befriended the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who stayed with Dobb and his wife for a period.

Death and legacy Dobb died on 17 August 1976. His students included Amartya Sen and Eric Hobsbawm.

Economic thought In Dobb's Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith: Ideology and Economic Theory, he said that marginal utility and individual satisfaction cannot determine prices, as marginalism suggests. He saw a person's preferences and level of satisfaction as heavily dependent on individual wealth, so that marginal utility is determined by spending power. This, according to Dobb, was the distribution of wealth that could alone change prices, as price depended on how much someone would spend. So he argued that individual behaviour cannot influence prices, as there are many other factors such as labour and spending power to affect them. Dobb said the market-socialist model of Oskar Lange and contributions of "neo-classical" socialists were illegitimate "narrowing of the focus of study to problems of exchange-relations."

Footnotes

Further reading Feinstein, C. (ed.) (1967). Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth: Essays Presented to Maurice Dobb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hobsbawm, E.J. (1967). "Maurice Dobb." In Feinstein (1967) Maurice Dobb Memorial Issue. (1978). Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2(2), June Meeks, Ronald. (1978). Obituary of Maurice Herbert Dobb. Proceedings of the British Academy 1977, 53, 333-44 Pollitt, B.H. (1985). Clearing the path for ‘Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities’: Notes on the Collaboration of Maurice Dobb in Piero Sraffa's edition of 'The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo'. Mimeographed Sen, Amartya. (1990). "Maurice Herbert Dobb." In Eatwell, Milgate, & Newman, (1990) Shenk, Timothy. (2013). Maurice Dobb: Political Economist. London: Palgrave Macmillan Shenk, Timothy. (2013). "A Marxist in Keynes' Court". Jacobin Magazine. October 9 issue

External links Papers of Maurice Herbert Dobb Maurice Dobb Archive at marxists.org “The Development of Capitalism”, by Maurice Dobb The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: A Contribution to the Sweezy-Dobb Controversy H. K. Takahashi and Henry F. Mins. Science & Society Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall, 1952), pp. 313–345

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Maurice Dobb

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Maurice Dobb claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Maurice Dobb before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Maurice Dobb ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Maurice Dobb

In research: Maurice Dobb appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Maurice Dobb in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Maurice Dobb is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1900 births, 1976 deaths, 20th-century English historians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Maurice Dobb outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Maurice Dobb in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Maurice Dobb means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Maurice Dobb in simple terms?

Why does Maurice Dobb matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Maurice Dobb?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Maurice Dobb.