ON JOAN ROBINSON'S CRITICISM OF MARX 19 the bourgeoisie how the capitalist system works, and how the crises which engulf it from time to time can be overcome ? Or is it the science which helps the working class to understand how capitalism works in such a way that it limps from crisis to crisis, and how it can be replaced by a new, socialist system if only the working class organises itself and leads all other oppressed classes in a militant people's army headed by a vanguard which is skilful enough to defeat the counter-revolutionary measures of the class enemy ? The role assigned to themselves by bourgeois political economists from Adam Smith and Ricardo down to Keynes is to explain how capitalism works and can be made to work. It is of great significance that the last of these, Keynes, arose at the very time when the bourgeoisie required a brilliant political economist to tell them how to get out of the deepest economic crisis in the history of capitalism. Everyone of these eminent bourgeois political economists—from Adam Smith and Ricardo to Keynes— has made great "original contributions" to the science. Mrs Robinson seems to bracket Marx with them, because he, too, made "great original contributions". That is why, as was pointed out in my earlier article, she in her lecture "Marx, Marshall and Keynes" assessed him to be as brilliant and wise, but as erroneous on some points as these bourgeois intellectuals. It was this bracketing of Marx with'the bourgeois scholars of political economy that I was objecting to. I have no quarrel with Mrs Robinson on her assessment that Marx was an "erudite scholar of political economy55 and that he made "great original contributions55 to the science. I, however, disagree that Marx's "original contributions55 are to be bracketed with those of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Marshall, Keynes and so on. For, although they talked of political economy as Marx did, although many of the basic laws of economy as propounded by them are the same as Marx's, their science of political economy is basically different from, even opposed to, Marx^. Marx as the theoretician of the revolutionary proletariat was elaborating the laws of proletarian revolution, teaching the working class and its revolutionary class allies how to overthrow capitalism, while the bourgeois political economists were propounding the laws in accordance with which the bourgeoisie can make the capitalist system work and save it from crisis. Each of them was studying the laws of political economy in the interests of the class which he represented. Marx^ "original contributions55 were to the political economy of proletarian revolution while those of Adam Smith, Ricardo and so on were to that of the completion of bourgeois revolution. As for Keynes, he was trying to salvage capitalism from ruin. An Integrated Theory Marx began, Mrs Robinson points out, as a philosopher and ended as an economist. She seems to attach no importance to the fact that