38 chapters
12 hour read
Selected Chapters
38 chapters
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
This is an original translation not only of the main body of the work but also of a number of quotations from foreign authors. Page references thus usually indicate the original foreign sources. In so far as possible, however, I have availed myself of existing translations and have referred to the following standard works: Karl Marx: Capital , vol. i (transl. by Moore-Aveling, London, 1920); vol. ii (transl. by E. Untermann, Chicago, 1907); vol. iii (transl. by E. Untermann, Chicago, 1909) The P
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
A NOTE ON ROSA LUXEMBURG
A NOTE ON ROSA LUXEMBURG
Rosa Luxemburg was born on 5 March 1870, at Zamosc, a little town of Russian Poland, not far from the city of Lublin. She came from a fairly well-to-do family of Jewish merchants, and soon showed the two outstanding traits which were to characterise all her life and work: a high degree of intelligence, and a burning thirst for social justice which led her, while still a schoolgirl, into the revolutionary camp. Partly to escape the Russian police, partly to complete her education, she went to Zur
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Academic economists have recently returned from the elaboration of static equilibrium to the classical search for a dynamic model of a developing economy. Rosa Luxemburg, neglected by Marxist and academic economists alike, offers a theory of the dynamic development of capitalism which is of the greatest interest. The book is one of considerable difficulty (apart from the vivid historical chapters), and to those accustomed only to academic analysis the difficulty is rendered well-nigh insurmounta
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I THE OBJECT OF OUR INVESTIGATION
CHAPTER I THE OBJECT OF OUR INVESTIGATION
Karl Marx made a contribution of lasting service to the theory of economics when he drew attention to the problem of the reproduction of the entire social capital. It is significant that in the history of economics we find only two attempts at an exact exposition of this problem: one by Quesnay, the father of the Physiocrats, at its very inception; and in its final stage this attempt by Marx. In the interim, the problem was ever with bourgeois economics. Yet bourgeois economists have never been
28 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II QUESNAY’S AND ADAM SMITH’S ANALYSES OF THE PROCESS OF REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER II QUESNAY’S AND ADAM SMITH’S ANALYSES OF THE PROCESS OF REPRODUCTION
So far we have taken account only of the individual capitalist in our survey of reproduction; he is its typical representative, its agent, for reproduction is indeed brought about entirely by individual capitalist enterprises. This approach has already shown us that the problem involves difficulties enough. Yet these difficulties increase to an extraordinary degree and become even more complicated, when we turn our attention from the individual capitalist to the totality of capitalists. A superf
24 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III A CRITICISM OF SMITH’S ANALYSIS
CHAPTER III A CRITICISM OF SMITH’S ANALYSIS
Let us recapitulate the conclusions to which Smith’s analysis has brought us: (1) There is a fixed capital of society, no part of which enters into its net revenue. This fixed capital consists in ‘the materials necessary for supporting their useful machines and instruments of trade’ and ‘the produce of labour necessary for fashioning those materials into the proper form’. [77] By singling out the production of such fixed capital as of a special kind, and explicitly contrasting it with the produc
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV MARX’S SCHEME OF SIMPLE REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER IV MARX’S SCHEME OF SIMPLE REPRODUCTION
Let us now consider the formula c + v + s as the expression of the social product as a whole. Is it only a theoretical abstraction, or does it convey any real meaning when applied to social life—has the formula any objective existence in relation to society as a whole? It was left to Marx to establish the fundamental importance of c , the constant capital, in economic theory. Yet Adam Smith before him, working exclusively with the categories of fixed and circulating capital, in effect transfor
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V THE CIRCULATION OF MONEY
CHAPTER V THE CIRCULATION OF MONEY
In our study of the reproductive process we have not so far considered the circulation of money. Here we do not refer to money as a measuring rod, an embodiment of value, because all relations of social labour have been expressed, assumed and measured in terms of money. What we have to do now is to test our diagram of simple reproduction under the aspect of money as a means of exchange. Quesnay already saw that we shall only understand the social reproductive process if we assume, side by side w
24 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI ENLARGED REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER VI ENLARGED REPRODUCTION
The shortcomings of the diagram of simple reproduction are obvious: it explains the laws of a form of reproduction which is possible only as an occasional exception in a capitalist economy. It is not simple but enlarged reproduction which is the rule in every capitalist economic system, even more so than in any other. [96] Nevertheless, this diagram is of real scientific importance in two respects. In practice, even under conditions of enlarged reproduction, the greater part of the social produc
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII ANALYSIS OF MARX’S DIAGRAM OF ENLARGED REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER VII ANALYSIS OF MARX’S DIAGRAM OF ENLARGED REPRODUCTION
The first enlargement of reproduction gave the following picture: This already clearly expresses the interdependence of the two departments—but it is a dependence of a peculiar kind. Accumulation here originates in Department I, and Department II merely follows suit. Thus it is Department I alone that determines the volume of accumulation. Marx effects accumulation here by allowing Department I to capitalise one-half of its surplus value; Department II, however, may capitalise only as much as is
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII MARX’S ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE THE DIFFICULTY
CHAPTER VIII MARX’S ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE THE DIFFICULTY
Complete abstraction from the circulation of money, though making the process of accumulation so smooth and simple in the diagram of enlarged reproduction, has great disadvantages of its own, we see. There was much to be said for this method in the analysis of simple reproduction, where consumption is the be-all and end-all of production. Money there had an ephemeral part, mediating the distribution of the social product among the various groups of consumers—the agent for the renewal of capital.
28 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX THE DIFFICULTY VIEWED FROM THE ANGLE OF THE PROCESS OF CIRCULATION
CHAPTER IX THE DIFFICULTY VIEWED FROM THE ANGLE OF THE PROCESS OF CIRCULATION
The flaw in Marx’s analysis is, in our opinion, the misguided formulation of the problem as a mere question of ‘the sources of money’, whereas the real issue is the effective demand, the use made of goods, not the source of the money which is paid for them. As to money as a means of circulation: when considering the reproductive process as a whole, we must assume that capitalist society must always dispose of money, or a substitute, in just that quantity that is needed for its process of circula
27 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM
HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM
FIRST ROUND SISMONDI-MALTHUS v. SAY-RICARDO— Mac CULLOCH...
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X SISMONDI’S THEORY OF REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER X SISMONDI’S THEORY OF REPRODUCTION
The first grave doubts as to the divine character of the capitalist order came to bourgeois economists under the immediate impact of the first crises of 1815 and 1818-19 in England. Even then it had still been external circumstances which led up to these crises, and they appeared to be ephemeral. Napoleon’s blockade of the Continent which for a time had cut off England from her European markets and had favoured a considerable development of home industries in some of the continental countries, w
29 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI MacCULLOCH v. SISMONDI
CHAPTER XI MacCULLOCH v. SISMONDI
Sismondi’s emphatic warnings against the ruthless ascendancy of capital in Europe called forth severe opposition on three sides: in England the school of Ricardo, in France J. B. Say, the commonplace vulgariser of Adam Smith, and the St. Simonians. While Owen in England, profoundly aware of the dark aspects of the industrial system and of the crises in particular, saw eye to eye with Sismondi in many respects, the school of that other great European, St. Simon, who had stressed the world-embraci
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII RICARDO v. SISMONDI
CHAPTER XII RICARDO v. SISMONDI
MacCulloch’s reply to Sismondi’s theoretical objections evidently did not settle the matter to Ricardo’s own satisfaction. Unlike that shrewd ‘Scottish arch-humbug’, as Marx calls him, Ricardo really wanted to discover the truth and throughout retained the genuine modesty of a great mind. [193] That Sismondi’s polemics against him and his pupil had made a deep impression is proved by Ricardo’s revised approach to the question of the effects of the machine, that being the point on which Sismondi,
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII SAY v. SISMONDI
CHAPTER XIII SAY v. SISMONDI
Sismondi’s essay against Ricardo in the Revue Encyclopédique of May 1824, was the final challenge for J. B. Say, at that time the acknowledged ‘prince of economic science’ ( prince de la science économique ), the so-called representative, heir and populariser of the school of Adam Smith on the Continent. Say, who had already advanced some arguments against Sismondi in his letters to Malthus, countered the following July with an essay on ‘The Balance Between Consumption and Production’ in the Rev
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV MALTHUS
CHAPTER XIV MALTHUS
At the same time as Sismondi, Malthus also waged war against some of the teachings of Ricardo. Sismondi, in the second edition of his work as well as in his polemics, repeatedly referred to Malthus as an authority on his side. Thus he formulated the common aims of his campaign against Ricardo in the Revue Encyclopédique : ‘Mr. Malthus, on the other hand, has maintained in England, as I have tried to do on the Continent, that consumption is not the necessary consequence of production, that the ne
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM
HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM
SECOND ROUND THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN RODBERTUS AND von KIRCHMANN...
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV v. KIRCHMANN’S THEORY OF REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER XV v. KIRCHMANN’S THEORY OF REPRODUCTION
The second theoretical polemics about the problem of accumulation was also started by current events. If the first English crisis and its attendant misery of the working class had stimulated Sismondi’s opposition against the classical school, it was the revolutionary working-class movement arisen since which, almost twenty-five years later, provided the incentive for Rodbertus’ critique of capitalist production. The risings of the Lyons silk weavers and the Chartist movement in England were vast
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI RODBERTUS’ CRITICISM OF THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL
CHAPTER XVI RODBERTUS’ CRITICISM OF THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL
Rodbertus digs deeper than v. Kirchmann. He looks for the roots of evil in the very foundations of social organisation and declares bitter war on the predominant Free Trade school—not against a system of unrestricted commodity circulation or the freedom of trade which he fully accepts, but against the Manchester doctrine of laissez-faire within the internal social relations of economy. At that time, after the period of storm and stress of classical economics, a system of unscrupulous apologetics
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII RODBERTUS’ ANALYSIS OF REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER XVII RODBERTUS’ ANALYSIS OF REPRODUCTION
To begin with, what does it mean that a decrease in the workers’ share is bound immediately to engender over-production and commercial crises? Such a view can only make sense provided Rodbertus takes the ‘national product’ to consist of two parts, vide the shares of the workers and of the capitalists, in short of v + s , one share being exchangeable for the other. And that is more or less what he actually seems to say on occasions, e.g. in his first Letter on Social Problems : ‘The poverty of t
28 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM
HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM
THIRD ROUND STRUVE-BULGAKOV-TUGAN BARANOVSKI v. VORONTSOV-NIKOLAYON...
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII A NEW VERSION OF THE PROBLEM
CHAPTER XVIII A NEW VERSION OF THE PROBLEM
The third controversy about capitalist accumulation takes place in an historical setting quite different from that of the two earlier ones. The time now is the period from the beginning of the eighties to the middle of the nineties, the scene Russia. In Western Europe, capitalism had already attained maturity. The rose-coloured classical view of Smith and Ricardo in a budding bourgeois economy had long since vanished ... the self-interested optimism of the vulgarian Manchester doctrine of harmon
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX VORONTSOV AND HIS ‘SURPLUS’
CHAPTER XIX VORONTSOV AND HIS ‘SURPLUS’
The representatives of Russian ‘populism’ were convinced that capitalism had no future in Russia, and this conviction brought them to the problem of capitalist reproduction. V. V. laid down his theories on this point in a series of articles in the review Patriotic Memoirs and in other periodicals which were collected and published in 1882 under the title The Destiny of Capitalism in Russia . He further dealt with the problem in ‘The Commodity Surplus in the Supply of the Market’, [277] ’Militari
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX NIKOLAYON
CHAPTER XX NIKOLAYON
The second theorist of populist criticism, Nikolayon, brings quite a different economic training and knowledge to his work. One of the best-informed experts on Russian economic relations, he had already in 1880 attracted attention by his treatise on the capitalisation of agricultural incomes, which was published in the review Slovo . Thirteen years later, spurred on by the great Russian famine of 1891, he pursued his inquiries further in a book entitled Outlines of Our Social Economy Since the R
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI STRUVE’S ‘THIRD PERSONS’ AND ‘THREE WORLD EMPIRES’
CHAPTER XXI STRUVE’S ‘THIRD PERSONS’ AND ‘THREE WORLD EMPIRES’
We now turn to the criticism of the above opinions as given by the Russian Marxists. In 1894, Peter v. Struve who had already given a detailed appraisal of Nikolayon’s book in an essay ‘On Capitalist Development in Russia’, [292] published a book in Russian, [293] criticising the theories of ‘populism’ from various aspects. In respect of our present problem, however, he mainly confines himself to proving, against both Vorontsov and Nikolayon, that capitalism does not cause a contraction of the h
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII BULGAKOV AND HIS COMPLETION OF MARX’S ANALYSIS
CHAPTER XXII BULGAKOV AND HIS COMPLETION OF MARX’S ANALYSIS
The second critic of ‘populist’ scepticism, S. Bulgakov, is no respecter of Struve’s ‘third persons’ and at once denies that they form the sheet-anchor for capitalist accumulation. ‘The majority of economists before Marx’, he declares, ‘solved the problem by saying that some sort of “third person” is needed, as a deus ex machina , to cut the Gordian knot, i.e. to consume the surplus value. This part is played by luxury-loving landowners (as with Malthus), or by indulgent capitalists, or yet by m
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIII TUGAN BARANOVSKI AND HIS ‘LACK OF PROPORTION’
CHAPTER XXIII TUGAN BARANOVSKI AND HIS ‘LACK OF PROPORTION’
We have left this theorist to the end, although he already developed his views in Russian in 1894, i.e. before Struve and Bulgakov, partly because he only gave his theories their mature form in German at a later date, [316] and also because the conclusions he draws from the premises of the Marxist critics are the most far-reaching in their implications. Like Bulgakov, Tugan Baranovski starts from Marx’s analysis of social reproduction which gave him the clue to this bewildering maze of problems.
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIV THE END OF RUSSIAN ‘LEGALIST’ MARXISM
CHAPTER XXIV THE END OF RUSSIAN ‘LEGALIST’ MARXISM
The Russian ‘legalist’ Marxists, and Tugan Baranovski above all, can claim the credit, in their struggle against the doubters of capitalist accumulation, of having enriched economic theory by an application of Marx’s analysis of the social reproductive process and its schematic representation in the second volume of Capital . But in view of the fact that this same Tugan Baranovski quite wrongly regarded said diagram as the solution to the problem instead of its formulation, his conclusions were
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXV CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN THE DIAGRAM OF ENLARGED REPRODUCTION
CHAPTER XXV CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN THE DIAGRAM OF ENLARGED REPRODUCTION
In the first section, we ascertained that Marx’s diagram of accumulation does not solve the question of who is to benefit in the end by enlarged reproduction. If we take the diagram literally as it is set out at the end of volume ii, it appears that capitalist production would itself realise its entire surplus value, and that it would use the capitalised surplus value exclusively for its own needs. This impression is confirmed by Marx’s analysis of the diagram where he attempts to reduce the cir
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVI THE REPRODUCTION OF CAPITAL AND ITS SOCIAL SETTING
CHAPTER XXVI THE REPRODUCTION OF CAPITAL AND ITS SOCIAL SETTING
Marx’s diagram of enlarged reproduction cannot explain the actual and historical process of accumulation. And why? Because of the very premises of the diagram. The diagram sets out to describe the accumulative process on the assumption that the capitalists and workers are the sole agents of capitalist consumption. We have seen that Marx consistently and deliberately assumes the universal and exclusive domination of the capitalist mode of production as a theoretical premise of his analysis in all
28 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVII THE STRUGGLE AGAINST NATURAL ECONOMY
CHAPTER XXVII THE STRUGGLE AGAINST NATURAL ECONOMY
Capitalism arises and develops historically amidst a non-capitalist society. In Western Europe it is found at first in a feudal environment from which it in fact sprang—the system of bondage in rural areas and the guild system in the towns—and later, after having swallowed up the feudal system, it exists mainly in an environment of peasants and artisans, that is to say in a system of simple commodity production both in agriculture and trade. European capitalism is further surrounded by vast terr
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVIII THE INTRODUCTION OF COMMODITY ECONOMY
CHAPTER XXVIII THE INTRODUCTION OF COMMODITY ECONOMY
The second condition of importance for acquiring means of production and realising the surplus value is that commodity exchange and commodity economy should be introduced in societies based on natural economy as soon as their independence has been abrogated, or rather in the course of this disruptive process. Capital requires to buy the products of, and sell its commodities to, all non-capitalist strata and societies. Here at last we seem to find the beginnings of that ‘peace’ and ‘equality’, th
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIX THE STRUGGLE AGAINST PEASANT ECONOMY
CHAPTER XXIX THE STRUGGLE AGAINST PEASANT ECONOMY
An important final phase in the campaign against natural economy is to separate industry from agriculture, to eradicate rural industries altogether from peasant economy. Handicraft in its historical beginnings was a subsidiary occupation, a mere appendage to agriculture in civilised and settled societies. In medieval Europe it became gradually independent of the corvée farm and agriculture, it developed into specialised occupations, i.e. production of commodities by urban guilds. In industrial d
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXX INTERNATIONAL LOANS
CHAPTER XXX INTERNATIONAL LOANS
The imperialist phase of capitalist accumulation which implies universal competition comprises the industrialisation and capitalist emancipation of the hinterland where capital formerly realised its surplus value. Characteristic of this phase are: lending abroad, railroad constructions, revolutions, and wars. The last decade, from 1900 to 1910, shows in particular the world-wide movement of capital, especially in Asia and neighbouring Europe: in Russia, Turkey, Persia, India, Japan, China, and a
41 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXI PROTECTIVE TARIFFS AND ACCUMULATION
CHAPTER XXXI PROTECTIVE TARIFFS AND ACCUMULATION
Imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment. Still the largest part of the world in terms of geography, this remaining field for the expansion of capital is yet insignificant as against the high level of development already attained by the productive forces of capital; witness the immense masses of capital accumulated in the old countries which seek an outlet for their surplus pro
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXII MILITARISM AS A PROVINCE OF ACCUMULATION
CHAPTER XXXII MILITARISM AS A PROVINCE OF ACCUMULATION
Militarism fulfils a quite definite function in the history of capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase of accumulation. It plays a decisive part in the first stages of European capitalism, in the period of the so-called ‘primitive accumulation’, as a means of conquering the New World and the spice-producing countries of India. Later, it is employed to subject the modern colonies, to destroy the social organisations of primitive societies so that their means of production may be a
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter