Towards an Integration of Imperfect Competition and Macrodynamics: Kalecki, Keynes, Joan Robinson

In Chapter 1 of the companion volume, I have traced Joan Robinson’s contributions to economic theory and philosophy. There, on numerous occasions, I referred to the paramount influence of Keynes and Kalecki on her. As time went by, she became more and more Kaleckian in her interpretation of Keynes and in her perceptions of the great intellectual upheaval associated with his name. As early as 1952, referring to Kalecki’s independent ‘discovery of the General Theory’, Joan Robinson (1952, p.159) wrote that ‘by now it is impossible to distinguish what one has learned from which’. In fact, writing in 1948, she (1951, 1978 p.134) admitted that when she refers to the General Theory