Jan Toporowski, recently retired from the position of Professor of Economics and Finance at SOAS University of London. His research is concentrated on monetary theory and policy, finance, and the work of Michał Kalecki, whose intellectual biography he has written in two volumes. Jan studied economics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and the University of Birmingham, UK. He worked in banking and finance before becoming an academic. His most recent book is Interest and Capital the monetary economics of Michał Kalecki (Oxford University Press 2022). 

Michal Kalecki and the Political Economy of the Twentieth Century 

Michał Kalecki’s (1899-1970) contributed to the political economy of the twentieth century, principally as co-author of the Keynesian Revolution and critic of the Cold War. In the 1930s depression he put forward the essential features of Keynes’s thinking in his General Theory, but showing how they were rooted in the ideas of Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg. This criticised the economic analysis emanating from the Third International. But Kalecki was also sceptical of the idea that capitalism would naturally embrace full employment. After the Second World War, he criticised the military Keynesianism that was maintaining high levels of employment in capitalist industrialised countries. However, his last intervention in political economy, the idea of a ‘crucial reform’ that would guarantee full employment, was overtaken by the use of mass unemployment as an instrument of policy by the Thatcher and Reagan governments. 

Series Convenors: 

Sara Bernard, CEES, University of Glasgow, sara.bernard@glasgow.a.c.uk 

Taras Fedirko, Social Anthropology and Migration, University of Glasgow, taras.fedirko@glasgow.ac.uk 

The CEES Seminar Series is kindly supported by the Macfie Bequest. 

For more information and to confirm your attendance, email Taras Fedirko

First published: 1 January 2025

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