A historiographical exhumation of J.A. Hobson's Over-Saving Thesis: General theory versus historiography

Craig Medlen

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2012, vol. 19, issue 5, 785-795

Abstract: The discussion of J.A. Hobson's understanding of over-saving has been largely confined within John Maynard Keynes' famous critique in the General Theory . I argue that gauging Hobson's contribution by ‘general theory’, that is, by an ahistorical, non-evolutionary yardstick, is to miss the larger part of Hobson's achievement. Hobson's conception of over-saving was contained within an evolving historiography of capital accumulation and took on various meanings depending on whether Hobson was discussing a competitive or monopolistic environment. I show that Keynes' ‘corrected’ version of over-saving was implicitly contained within Hobson's analysis of an evolving monopolistic industrial structure.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2010.540348

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