ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the theoretical dilemma of using orthodox economics to analyse economic questions from a socialist perspective. The history of economic theory in Britain has closely followed the development of market economics. Historically, one of the basic aims of British socialists has been to replace the individual capitalist system of private property rights over the means of production by their public ownership for the collective good of all. The development of Keynesian theories in the 1930s provided a new rationale for government intervention, which had important repercussions on socialist thinking about the operation of the capitalist system and plans for a socialist economy. Modern economists for most purposes separate economic theory into two branches, microeconomics and macroeconomics. British democratic socialists, who rejected Karl Marx for political reasons, were unlikely to accept his unorthodox economics. The simple-minded socialist view was that periodic unemployment was the fault of the capitalist system; once socialism was introduced, it would vanish.
