Rosa Luxemburg

Theory of Accumulation and Imperialism

T. Kowalik

• Éditeur: Palgrave Macmillan
• Année: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137428349
• Sujet: Economics
• Sous-sujet: Econometrics

The purpose of this translated volume Tadeusz Kowalik's book is to examine Rosa Luxemburg's contribution to economic theory. The essential subject-matter is the dependence of capital accumulation on effective demand, the dependence of economic growth on specific capitalist barriers to growth.

Part I

Capitalist Barriers to Growth

1

The Origin of the Problem: A General Outline of the Work

1

Rosa Luxemburg’s first economic paper was her doctoral thesis written in Switzerland in 1893, published in 1898 under the title Die industrielle Entwicklung Polens.¹ This work was a historical economic monograph on the subject of the development of industry in the Kingdom of Poland and the dependence of that industry on Eastern markets. The author argued that industry in the Kingdom of Poland, to a large extent, owed its establishment and rapid expansion to the protectionist tariff policy of the annexing state Russia. In this way, the Russian occupiers sought to tie the interests of the Kingdom’s capitalist class to the Russian Empire. Consequently, capitalism in the Kingdom of Poland relied on the vast markets in the East (both Russian and Asian).

Rosa Luxemburg focused not on a general analysis of capitalism, but on the capitalist industrial development and even more specifically on the development of heavy and semi-heavy industry. The problems of capitalist development in agriculture and in small-scale urban-industrial production remained in principle outside the scope of her interest. It was precisely in reference to the heavy industry that Rosa Luxemburg’s claims of the predominant role of the eastern markets and the state economic policy (tariffs in particular) were justified.² In order not to return later to the issue of the political conclusions which Rosa Luxemburg derived from the economic analysis, it needs to be emphasized that her fundamental policy on the national question was formulated, in our opinion, on an excessively narrow economic basis. The author tended to apply her thesis of the fundamental convergence of economic and political interests between the Russian capitalist class and the Polish haute bourgeoisie to the whole bourgeois class in Poland, even the petty bourgeoisie. This pars pro toto fallacy was the basis of Luxemburg’s erroneous policy on the national question. However, these political conclusions did not necessarily stem from her economic analysis, as critics of ‘luxemburgism’ attempted to prove. Furthermore, they are not and cannot prove that her analysis – though incomplete – is incorrect.

At this point, it is worth clarifying the misunderstanding arising from the fact that Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital has often been contrasted in Marxian historiography with Lenin’s Development of Capitalism in Russia. It was argued that these studies were based on two distinct, and even conflicting, theories of capitalist development. However, this notion does not seem to be justified. Engaging in a polemic with the Narodniks, in the preface to the aforementioned work, Lenin expressed his conviction that ‘it was necessary to examine the whole process of the development of capitalism in Russia, to endeavour to depict it in its entirety’.³ Nevertheless, he treated this statement as a hypothesis and introduced a number of distinct limitations of the analysis that are forgotten:

It goes without saying that such an extensive task would be beyond the powers of a single person, were a number of limitations not introduced. Firstly, as the title itself shows, we treat the problem of the development of capitalism in Russia exclusively from the standpoint of the home market, leaving aside the problem of the foreign market and data on foreign trade. Secondly, we limit ourselves purely to the post-Reform period. Thirdly, we deal mainly and almost exclusively with data concerning the interior, purely Russian, gobernias. Fourthly, we limit ourselves exclusively to the economic aspect of the process.⁴

Lenin’s book confirms that he abided by the very rigorous limits of the subject matter imposed in the preface. He exceeded them only briefly in the last chapter of the book while sketching the general picture of the development of Russian capitalism. Consequently, issues crucial to the general theory of capitalist development, such as the role of the state (in terms of tariffs policy, trade protection, etc.) for the development of capitalism in Russia, the processes of primitive accumulation, the significance of the more distant territories for the economic development of central Russia, and so on, remained outside his analysis. In this light, it is clear that treating his work as a general theory of capitalist development or as an account of the general development of capitalism and even of a general path of this development in Russia is certainly not what Lenin intended. Such interpretations ascribed to Lenin an understanding of the process of capitalist development that was closer to Adam Smith than to Marx. The latter himself emphasized that not only was history of capitalism related to various forms of non-economic coercion, but capital also emerged ‘dripping from every pore, with blood and dirt’.

It is equally incorrect to apply the same reasoning to the work of Rosa Luxemburg, who was preoccupied with the external conditions of the development of (heavy) industry in the western borderland of the Russian Empire. She was prompted to such research by the nature of the statistics on which her study was based. She did not have access to the outstanding statistics of the administrative districts, much used by Lenin and allowing for a thorough analysis of the first stages of capitalist development. Instead, she had to rely on the heavy industry statistics, and particularly on the export and import data, which were at the time the most readily available. Furthermore, her analysis was complemented by statistics on tariffs.

The conclusion is clear. The disparity of views between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg was determined primarily by different subject matters characterizing their respective books. From a historical perspective, the two approaches seem to be complementary rather than competing, as argued by critics of luxemburgism. Both studies provide a resource for generalization and theoretical synthesis. Did Rosa Luxemburg have a complete idea of the Accumulation of Capital while writing her pioneering⁵ work on the industrial development in the Kingdom of Poland? There is no basis for such a conclusion. Rather, it is safer to adopt a more modest hypothesis that the empirical material, encountered by Luxemburg at that time, revealed the significance of the state and external markets in shaping capitalist relations. Only at a later stage was this specific historical experience transformed into a need for a different theoretical view of capitalist development and the conditions of capital accumulation in general.

2

The first independent reflections of Rosa Luxemburg on the theory of political economy are found in the well-known pamphlet Social Reform or Revolution, written at the turn of the twentieth century. In a polemic with Eduard Bernstein, she took into consideration such issues as the role of cartels and credit in exacerbating the internal contradictions of the capitalist economy, the nature and causes of over-production crises, the character of the cooperative movement under capitalism and the problem of the demise of capitalism. Out of all these considerations, we discuss here only one issue that is most genetically connected with the Accumulation of Capital.

Luxemburg argued that Bernstein’s views on the role of cartels, trusts and new credit institutions in alleviating the internal contradictions of capitalism and eliminating anarchy and crises, undermine the major foundation of scientific socialism. If Bernstein’s proposition, that development of capitalism does not lead to its destruction, is accepted then socialism ceases to be ‘objectively necessary’. It was through such reasoning that the issue of crises and the end of capitalism came to the forefront of Luxemburg’s polemics. In the part of her argument concerning the new phenomena in capitalist economy, namely cartels, trusts and modern credit institutions, Luxemburg’s response was surprisingly mature and convincing. However, she did much worse in confronting the view of crises and the demise of capitalism that was already standard in socialist literature. Her response to these problems was so unsatisfactory that it allowed Bernstein to triumph. Nevertheless, even here Luxemburg formulated some interesting ideas, planting a seed for her future theory of capitalist development.

Above all, Rosa Luxemburg emphasized the need for the separate treatment of two issues, which had hitherto been inseparable in the socialist literature. The demise of capitalism was widely regarded as a consequence of ever-increasing crises of over-production, as part of a more general issue of crises. Luxemburg opposed this approach, writing that:

socialist theory up to now declared that the point of departure for a transformation to socialism would be a general and catastrophic crisis. We must distinguish two things in this theory: the fundamental idea and its external form. The fundamental idea consists in the affirmation that, as a result of its own inner contradictions, capitalism moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible. There were good reasons for thinking of that juncture in the form of a catastrophic general commercial crisis. But, nonetheless, that is of secondary importance and inessential to the fundamental idea.⁶

These original thoughts did not, however, give rise to a broader analysis of the economic causes of capitalist breakdown. Instead, they became the basis for the formulation of a both original and unconvincing concept of crises. In this way, Rosa Luxemburg argued that the period of ‘tranquillity’ in the world market at that time was of a temporary character. It implied that the crises typical of the early stage of capitalism ceased to occur, while the crises of advanced capitalism had not yet emerged. She regarded the identification of major cyclical commercial crises at that time with the crises of advanced capitalism formalized by Marx, as a misunderstanding. In economic history, Luxemburg argued that the global crises emerging from 1825 up until the 1870s were related to acquiring new markets and realizing new types of large investments. The cause of these downturns was a sudden expansion of capitalist economic activity rather than its contraction or exhaustion. Marx’s theory pertained only partially to the commercial crises at that time, as:

the Marxist formula for crises, presented by Engels in Anti-Dühring and by Marx in the first and third volumes of Capital, applies to all crises only in the measure that it uncovers their international mechanism and their general basic causes. However, in its entirety this formula applies only to the advanced capitalist economy, when the existence of the global market is already taken for granted. Only then can crises repeat themselves in the mechanical manner adopted by Marx, resulting from the internal process of production and exchange, without the external impulse in the form of a sudden shock of the market production relations. We have not yet entered the phase of a completely mature capitalism, which is assumed by the Marxian scheme of the periodical nature of crises. The global market still remains in the phase of development.⁷

Furthermore, Luxemburg’s assessment of world capitalist production led her to conclude that this form of production constituted merely a small portion of the world economy. Only in the 1870s did Germany and Austria enter the capitalist phase, while Russia did so in the 1880s. France was still a predominantly small-scale industrial country. The Balkan states had not yet broken the shackles of the natural economy. America, Australia and Africa entered the path of systematic trade with the capitalist Europe as late as in the 1880s.

Thus, the average economic conditions prevailing in the world for 20 years were a characteristic feature of the transition phase of capitalism, ‘in which crises no longer accompany the emergence of capitalism, but are not yet a symptom of its collapse.⁸ Nevertheless, Rosa Luxemburg expressed her conviction that development leads inevitably to crises of advanced capitalism. When the global market fully expands, the unconstrained rise of labour productivity will eventually lead to a conflict between the productive forces and the limits of the market. Occurring repeatedly, the conflict will inherently tend to become more acute and turbulent.

There is no need to undertake a scrutiny of these views, since Luxemburg herself soon recognized their immaturity. Preparing the second edition of her book, she removed all fragments referring to the ‘early’ and ‘advanced’ stages of capitalism or to the transition phase.⁹ The entire concept was immature not only in terms of the vague/indeterminate character of the recession-free transition stage, but primarily because it assumed the stabilization of the world market. However, that era had already seen a period of increased expansion into external markets, shaping the global imperialistic system.

What is nevertheless interesting in Luxemburg’s concept is a clear movement towards the new phase of capitalism; an intuitive but strikingly accurate periodization of capitalism distinguishing between three stages of capitalist development: the phase of early capitalism, the transition period and finally advanced capitalism, the last stage of development.¹⁰ Another interesting issue was Luxemburg’s conviction that in the advanced phase of capitalism some of the fundamental economic phenomena (e.g. crises) would take place differently, in a different form. Unfortunately, she simultaneously expressed her belief that the Marxian theory of capitalist development, particularly in terms of crises, would explain the future advanced capitalism, characterized by a fully developed world market, more succinctly and precisely than it was able to do at that time. This conviction prevented her from undertaking an independent analysis of the specific characteristics of advanced capitalism.

Nonetheless, in this reasoning it is easy to identify the origins of the main strand of theoretical investigation conducted later in the Accumulation of Capital. Already at that time Rosa Luxemburg analysed capitalism from the point of view of its expansion into the entire world economy. The crises of capitalism were, in her opinion, a result of the expansion and contraction of (primarily) external markets. Thus, she regarded the Marxian thesis, that the main source of the business cycle lay in the reproduction of constant capital, as an exogenous and insignificant element of the theory of crises. Furthermore, it was in relation to capitalism’s expansion into world markets that Luxemburg analysed the phase of advanced capitalism and its demise.

A similar conclusion is encountered in the last chapter of the Introduction to Political Economy (1912), where general tendencies of the capitalist economy are described. However, it contains certain new aspects reflecting Luxemburg’s increasing doubts as to the correctness of her own understanding of capitalism at that time.

Analysing the relationship between capitalist production and the expansion of markets, Luxemburg observed that the tendency of capitalism to stagnate was an inevitable future of all industrial economies. She remarked that the reason for Britain’s rapid development in the 1860s and 1870s was its domination in world market. When Germany and the USA progressively crowded Britain out of the global market, Britain’s pace of growth slowed down substantially. Further, Luxemburg predicted that a similar fate imminently awaited German and North American industry, and eventually the industry of the whole world. ‘With every step of its development’, she wrote, ‘capitalism inevitably draws near to the moment when it will become increasingly more difficult to develop and expand and that development will take place more and more slowly’.¹¹

Would this prophecy of stagnation be realized in the distant or near future? In Luxemburg’s answer it is possible to detect a great deal of doubt and hesitation. Repeated accounts of the development of the capitalist mode of production led her to conclude that the development of capitalism itself still had a long way ahead, since capitalist production in general constituted an insignificant portion of world production. Nevertheless, Luxemburg deemed it necessary to reduce ...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translators’ Note
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Capitalist Barriers to Growth
• Appendix I: The Theoretical-Analytical Significance of the Reproduction Schemes
• Appendix II: Critics and Heirs of Rosa Luxemburg
• Part II Imperialism and the Theory of Accumulation
• Notes
• Index