Kalecki and Cambridge

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper discusses Michał Kalecki’s impact on Cambridge’s major protagonists and, in turn, the impact they had on him during the time he spent in Cambridge. It concentrates on the criticisms he was met with on the part of Keynes, Kahn and Robinson, especially on his notion of the ‘degree of monopoly’. This was the reason for his departure from Cambridge, although he continued to receive support from his Cambridge friends. The rift between him and Cambridge can be explained by the fact that, Sraffa excepted, Keynes, Kahn and Robinson were (at the time) thinking within the Marshallian framework of price determination and—quite rightly—found Kalecki’s approach to be incompatible with it. Robinson later became converted to an approach to prices and distribution which has Kalecki, alongside Sraffa, as one of the contributors and now it is part of what she herself had christened post-Keynesian economics.