1899–1970. One of the most significant economists of the twentieth century, who worked largely outside the academic mainstream.
Kalecki developed as early as 1933 — before keynes en‘s General Theory (1936) — an independent theory of effective demand: output and employment are determined not by supply but by aggregate demand. Since he published in Polish, this priority long went unrecognised. Structurally he arrived at the same insight as Wilhelm Lautenbach in Germany — all three independently of one another.
In several crucial respects he went further than Keynes:
- Profit equation: Capitalists earn what they spend; workers spend what they earn. Aggregate profits arise from expenditure, not from restraint — structurally identical to Lautenbach’s entrepreneurial-profit equation.
- Degree of monopoly: The distribution of income between wages and profits depends on the degree of monopoly power — not on marginal productivities.
- Dynamic business-cycle theory: Capital investment generates cyclical fluctuations because it raises profits while simultaneously expanding the capacity that compresses future profits.
- Political aspects of full employment (1943): Capitalists systematically undermine sustained high employment because it erodes their bargaining power vis-à-vis workers — a structural argument, not a market failure.
Main works: Studies in Economic Dynamics (1943), Theory of Economic Dynamics (1954).