Die Akkumulation des Kapitals (German Edition)

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This distinction is not arbitrary, but follows from the fundamental theoretical presupposition of historical materialism: Marx starts by analysing the conditions for equilibrium in the exchange between both departments in conditions of simple reproduction, i. He comes to the conclusion that in simple reproduction, the sum of variable capital invested in wages and surplus value in sector I ought to be equal to the constant capital means of production in department II. Marx then proceeds to study the conditions for expanded reproduction accumulation. In other words, under the assumptions of accumulation, the increase in value of the means of production exceeds the increase in value of the consumer goods: Productive consumption consumption of means of production by capitalists therefore grows more quickly than does the individual consump- tion of consumer goods.

This progressive increase in productive consumption is just an expression, in terms of value, of the development of productive forces. Capitalist society employs an increasing proportion of the annual labour available in the production of means of production, which cannot be resolved into the categories of income wages and the different forms of surplus value , but can only function as capital. Marx draws a series of diagrams showing that an equilibrium between the two major departments of social production is possible under the assumptions of accumulation.

Her criticism of Marx's economic theory revolves around the idea that the realisation of sur- plus value more specifically, of that part of the surplus value not destined to the personal consumption of the capitalists, but to reinvestment , and hence the accumulation of capital, are impossible under 'pure' capitalism, i. Based on this reason- ing, Rosa Luxemburg offers the following definition of imperialism and its historical tendency: 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 … with their increasingly severe competition in acquiring non-capitalist areas, imperialism grows in lawlessness and violence … But the more violently, ruthlessly and thoroughly imperialism brings about the decline of non-capitalist civilisations, the more rapidly it cuts the very ground from under the feet of capitalist accumulation … This is not to say that capitalist development must be actually driven to this extreme: His political conclusion deserves to be emphasised: A more sober assessment was written after the war had started by the main economist of the revisionist current, Conrad Schmidt, a former correspondent of Friedrich Engels.

According to Eckstein, in those schemes Marx analysed the issue of interdependence between production and consump- tion, at first studying it in its simplest form, and then introducing variables — such as accumulation — which made the diagrams resemble more and more the actual function- ing of the economy. Though in his reproduction schemes Marx demonstrates the possi- bility of an equilibrium between production and consumption, and between the two major departments of production producing means of production and consumer goods , the purpose of his analysis was not at all apologetic; indeed quite the opposite: The study of those equilibrium-conditions in production made it possible for the first time to understand the disturbances in that equilibrium, much as physicians must first thoroughly research the processes in healthy bodies before they can reach an understanding of illnesses.

But production is managed only with a view to the highest possible profit, thus deviating quite significantly from social needs. The adjustment takes place from time to time, violently, in the form of crises. In the model constructed by Comrade Luxemburg, the difficulty is not only very great; it is insuperable. According to Eckstein, this made no sense, because Luxemburg herself had shown that those countries and strata of the population were brutally exploited by capitalism.

The centrist perspective developed: She believes that the part of surplus-value which is to be accumulated cannot be realised at all unless capitalist production can sell its excess values outside its own sphere, to non-capitalistically producing petit bourgeois and small peasants.

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This explains the pressure of capital for the extension of its markets. Hence the effort to destroy natural economy, to transform simple commodity production everywhere into capitalist production, to make the whole earth into a market area for capitalist industry: But once the market area can be expanded no further, capitalism can no longer sell a large part of its commodities. Its last hour approaches. He therefore drew up a new series of diagrams, which incorporated population growth as a new variable.

His argument was this: In the case of capitalism, this is done through a process of capital accumulation. Each year, the capitalists take a portion of the surplus value and reinvest it in consumption articles that will be used by the new population, and in more means of production, which will be used by the new workers.

In other words, Bauer explains the accumulation process in terms of demographic growth: What sort of commodities are they? They are the very means of production which the capitalists need to expand their productive capacity, and the very consumer goods which are required to feed the growth in the work-force.

If these commodities were to be ejected from the capitalist world, production on an extended scale in the following year would be altogether impossible; there would be neither the necessary means of production for the extension of productive capacity nor the food supplies required to feed an increased work force. The withdrawal of this part of the surplus-product from the capitalist market would not, as Rosa Luxemburg believes, make accumulation possible; on the contrary, it would make any accumulation impossible.

The problem, as Bauer saw it, was that under capitalism the necessary adjustments were made spontane- ously, driven by the pursuit of individual benefits by individual capitalists, so that any equilibrium between population growth and accumulation was unstable. Of course, there will always be, according to Bauer, spontaneous deviations of the proportions required for maintaining an equilibrium between the rate of accumulation and the rate of population growth.

In some cases, there will be subaccumulation: But in both cases, Bauer thought, accumulation would ultimately return to equilibrium conditions. In cases of overaccumulation, increased wages and a fall in profits would precipi- tate a crisis as a means of restoring the necessary quantitative relations between accumu- lation and population growth.

Bauer offered the following demographic theory of business cycles: Prosperity is overaccumulation, which destroys itself in the crisis. The ensuing depression is a time of underaccumulation which also brings itself to an end, inasmuch as the depression itself produces the conditions for renewed prosperity.

The periodic alternation of prosperity, crisis, and depression is the empirical expression of the fact that the mechanism of the capitalist mode of production automatically generates overaccumulation and underaccumulation, with the accumulation of capital adjusting again and again to the growth of population. Instead of postulating a gradual adjustment between accumulation and population growth, Marx considered the secular expansion of the industrial reserve army to be the basis of the economic cycle, marked by alternating periods of prosperity and acute crisis.

At this point, i.

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Bauer himself feels the absurdity of this argument, and defends himself in advance against the charge of beautifying the mechanism of the capitalist system, saying: While accumulation in an isolated capitalist society is not impossible, it is nevertheless confined within limits. Imperialism extends the limits to the accumulation of capital by destroying pre-capitalist economic forms thus generating new wage workers , favours the growth of branches of capital with a higher organic composition, provides capital with material elements of production from outside its domestic market and therefore powerfully accelerates the development of the produc- tive forces.

Finally, imperialism provides a reserve market when conditions of over- accumulation generate goods that are difficult or impossible to sell in the home market, thus facilitating the overcoming of crises.

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Bauer asserts, therefore, that there is a link between the accumulation of capital and the expansion of capitalism into non-capitalist areas, but does not consider this expansion a precondition for accumulation. Bauer concludes his review with the following words: Capitalism will not founder on the mechanical impossibility of realising surplus-value.

It will succumb to the indignation to which it drives the masses. Capitalism will break down, not when the last peasant and the last petit bourgeois on the entire earth are converted into wage- labourers, so that no extra market is open to capitalism. What many of the positions of the centre and right wings had in common was the idea that imperialism was not a necessary product of the capitalist system, but a particular policy that could be modified. However, the reaction of the theoreticians from the left wing was not what she had expected.

The reception on the left: The dia- grams show an increase in the production of both departments that is absorbed i. What she calls an absurdity from the capitalist point of view because it would represent an aimless circular motion — to produce more and more means of consumption in order to feed more workers, who would produce more and more means of production that serve for the production of those means of consumption — only appears to be absurd because the decisive factor was left out of consideration.

The goal of producing more and more is to extract and accumulate more and more surplus-value, but those accumulated masses of capital can only fulfil their goal of producing new surplus-value by being thrown again and again into the whirlpool of production. The self-valorisation of capital in the creation of profit, the transformation of profit into new capital, is the driving force giving sense and a goal to that alleged absurdity: Pannekoek responds by saying that the diagrams simply follow the method of generating abstract and simple examples that allow the basic conditions of any phenomenon to operate without interference.

She then offered an example in which the ratio between constant and variable capital grew gradually as a result of technical progress, and the numbers did not fit together Luxemburg And where these markets do not exist, capitalists must create them. The exis- tence of a commodity exchange with non-capitalist economic formations and classes is a fact, because capitalism has developed from a non-capitalist milieu, although not a necessity without which capitalism could not exist.

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Therefore, their area must be constantly increased, often forcibly; here lies the real cause of the struggle against natural economy. It is not fortuitous; it has an economic cause, even if it is entirely different from the one Comrade Luxemburg thought she found. And that is why her detailed description of the praxis of capitalist expansion is not a superfluous presentation of casual events.

We would, therefore, like to denote by imperialism the striving of modern capitalist powers to bring the largest possible areas of foreign continents directly or indirectly under their political control and to combine them into a world empire. This imperialism finds its economic explanation not in the necessity of new markets for sales or in the interests of selling commodities, but in capital exports. Pannekoek's critique of Rosa Luxemburg was approved by Lenin, who, shortly after its publication, sent a letter to Pannekoek, stating: She has got into a shocking muddle.

She has distorted Marx. I am very glad that Pannekoek and Eckstein and Otto Bauer have all with one accord condemned her, and said against her what I said in against the Narodniks. The Narodniks pointed out the crises arising from the difficulties of realisation as a proof of their thesis about the impossibility of realising the surplus value in the domestic market. Lenin replied that such difficulties, due to the imbalance in the distribution of social labour among the various industries, exist for all parts of the capitalist product, and not just for the surplus value.

Due to the anarchic, unplanned character of produc- tion under capitalism, difficulties arise constantly, not only in the realisation of surplus value, but also in the realisation of the variable and constant capital, not only in the realisation of the product consisting of consumer goods, but also in the realisation of the product consisting of means of production. Without such difficulties, and without crisis, all capitalist production — i. The problem of the realisation of the product in capitalist society the theory of the internal market consisted in finding for each part of the capitalist product the other part that replaces it in the market, both in terms of value constant capital, variable capital and surplus value and of its material form means of production and consumer goods, specifically necessities and luxury articles.

According to Lenin, the Narodniks reduced the problem of the realisation of the product to the realisation of surplus value, whereas, in fact, the difficulty of explaining realisation consisted in explaining the realisation of constant capital. To be realised, the constant capital must be incorporated back into production, and that is directly possible only in the case of the capital of department I, whose product consists of means of production.

But in the case of the capital of depart- ment II, whose product consists in consumer goods, this product cannot be employed directly in production; it is necessary to exchange it for means of production. Please enter recipient e-mail address es. The E-mail Address es you entered is are not in a valid format.

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