Joan Robinson's intelligible Marxism and The Accumulation of Capital: a generalisation of the two-sector reproduction scheme

Joan Robinson sought to make Marx's economics intelligible to both academic colleagues and followers of Marx, in a twofold approach. First, she adopted Kalecki's antipathy to the labour theory of value and his insights (following Rosa Luxemburg) into realisation problems in the schemes of reproduction; second, following Sraffa's reading of Ricardo, she recognised the importance of surplus production as an alternative to neoclassical theory: both culminating in a stripped down two-sector scheme her mature work, The Accumulation of Capital. This scheme is recast here as an input-output framework, providing a generalisation that addresses some of its limitations: the need for an interface with the Kahn/Keynes employment multiplier, the absence of circulating capital inputs, and the lack of a systematic treatment of prices. Furthermore, a somewhat surprising result is the derivation of a core role for Marx's category of surplus value in the employment multiplier derived from Robinson's system.

Automated summary

Joan Robinson adopted the insights of Kalecki and Sraffa to make Marx's economics more understandable. In her work "The Accumulation of Capital," she proposed a two-sector scheme recast as an input-output framework to address limitations and recognized the core role of Marx's surplus value in the employment multiplier.