ABSTRACT
In his old age, Hobson professed himself gratified that ‘Mr J.M.Keynes, though not in full agreement with myanaXysis, has paid a handsome tribute to my early form of the oversaving heresy’.1 This tribute, extending to seven pages, printed in a prominent position in the twentieth century’s most famous book on economics, has in itself guaranteed Hobson’s reputation a measure of continued professional recognition. The result has been that students of economics almost invariably know his name-but often little more than his name. Whether Hobson’s work in this field deserves to be remembered as more than an extended footnote to the General Theory is a question that has, from time to time, provoked sympathetic economists into making stronger claims on his behalf. The most far-reaching, and also the most influential in left-wing circles, was that advanced by G.D.H.Cole: ‘For me at any rate, what is commonly known as the Keynesian was much more the Hobsonian revolution in economic and social thought.’2
