ABSTRACT
There is a thread ranning from the satirical `Lecture Delivered at Oxford by a Cambridge Economist' 2 to the pamphlet History versus Equilibrium (Robinson 1974), written around twenty-five years later, which clearly identifies what Joan Robinson considered to be the essential point of Keynes' (and her own) approach to economics. The lecture is built around the necessity of making a careful distinction between a static equilibrium position and the process of change required to reach that equilibrium: `In time, there is an exceptionally strict rule of one-way traffic¼the distance between today and tomorrow is twenty-four hours forwards, and the distance between today and yesterday is eternity backwards' (Robinson 1953:256). As a result you can `[n]ever talk about a system getting into equilibrium, for equilibrium has no meaning unless you are in it already' (ibid.: 262).3
