Contributions to Political Economy (1997) 16, 23-47 MARX AND KALECKI

This paper aims to make explicit what Kalecki often left as understood in the more abstract presentations of his analysis. In particular, it identifies the starting point of his theories in the work of Marx and the classical economists. The first step in this demonstration is to establish the contribution to Marx ' analysis of a capitalist mode of production to Kalecki's theories, both their analytical framework and content. The second is to consider the particular implications of Marx for Kalecki's theories of investment, pricing and technological change, and their interaction. It is not unusual to acknowledge the Marxist background to Kalecki's theories.1 Sometimes the impact of this is compared to that of Keynes's Marshallian back-ground, and the differences between the two are identified in Kalecki's use of class, his political sympathies and his incorporation of imperfect competition, a more con-temporary stage of capitalism, into his analysis. But rarely are the implications of Kalecki's Marxism for his spare models pursued. There are two steps in this task. The first is to establish the contribution of Marx's analysis of a capitalist mode of production to Kalecki's approach to theory, both it