Hello, you're very welcome to Longreads, a Jacquin podcast where we look in depth at

political topics and thinkers. My name is Daniel Finn and the features editor here at Jacquin,

and I'll be presenting the show.

In an article for the Financial Times last year, journalist Martin Sanbu announced the

return of class conflict as a central theme for economics. According to Sanbu, every

downturn rekindles interest in John Maynard Keynes. This one should call attention to Michael

Kalecki. Kalecki is best remembered today for his celebrated essay on the politics of full

employment, which has lost none of its topical value. Our guest today is Jan Toporowski.

He's a professor of economics at Sowa's in London and the author of a two-volume intellectual

biography of Michael Kalecki. The name of Michael Kalecki is often linked with that of John Maynard

Keynes, but the social and political backgrounds from which they came were quite radically different.

What was the environment in Poland that shaped Kalecki?

Well, the environment in Poland in his childhood and in his youth was essentially one of

economic instability, nationalism, and anti-semitism. His father was a factory owner, but

in the city of Łódź, now Łódź was a major industrial center for the Russian Empire.

In 1905, it was one of the centers for revolutionary activity in the 1905 revolution,

and that ruined the business that Kalecki's father ran textile business.

And plunged Łódź into a kind of ten-year,

and longer than that, about a 12, 13-year period of disorder, the place was

rife with conspiracies, whether it was the socialists who were agitating for socialism and trade union

rights, and a faction of them which thought that these were best obtained if Poland became independent.

A group of nationalists who believed that Poland's interests were best served by becoming independent

...