The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System, Being also a Theory of Crises, translated and abridged - Softcover

Grossmann, Henryk

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745304591 ISBN 13: 9780745304595

Verlag: Pluto Press, 1992

Inhaltsangabe

'First published in German in 1929, this is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the development of Marxian economic theory.' Science

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Douglas Dowd is a widely respected academic and political activist. He has taught at Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Berkeley, and San Jose State University and is currently teaching at the University of Modena in Italy. He is the author of Capitalism and its Economics (Pluto, 2004).

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System

Being also a Theory of Crises

By Henryk Grossmann, Jairus Banaji

Pluto Press

Copyright © 1992 Pluto Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-0459-5

Contents

Foreword TONY KENNEDY, ix, 
Henryk Grossmann and the Theory of Capitalist Collapse TONY KENNEDY, 1, 
Introduction by Henryk Grossmann, 29, 
1 The Downfall of Capitalism in the Existing Literature, 35, 
2 The Law of Capitalist Breakdown, 
3 Modifying Countertendencies, 
Bibliography, 202, 
Index, 206, 

CHAPTER 1

The Downfall of Capitalism in the Existing Literature

The point at issue

Already prior to Marx certain representatives of political economy had a clear presentiment of the historically ephemeral character of the bourgeois mode of production. Jean C L Simonde de Sismondi was the first to uphold it against David Ricardo. He argued that in the course of time every mode of production becomes 'intolerable' and 'the social order, continually threatened, can only be maintained by force' (cited Grossmann, 1924, pp. 63–4). However, in terms of capitalism, this conclusion was based not on an economic analysis of its mode of production but purely on historical analogies. Therefore Marx was right to say that:

at the bottom of his [Sismondi's] argument is indeed the inkling that new forms of the appropriation of wealth must correspond to productive forces and the material and social conditions for the production of wealth which have developed within capitalist society; that the bourgeois forms are only transitory and contradictory forms. (1972, p. 56)

A quarter of a century after Sismondi, Richard Jones developed the same insights when he described capitalism 'as a transitional phase in the development of social production' (cited Marx, 1972, p. 428). But like Sismondi, Jones gained his insight into the historically transitory character of capitalism through a mainly historical-comparative analysis of successive forms of economy.

The development of the productive power of social labour is the driving force of historical evolution. When the earliest modes of production proved unable to develop the productive forces of society any further, they were bound to disintegrate:

Hence the necessity for the separation, for the rupture, for the antithesis of labour and property (by which property in the conditions of production is to be understood). The most extreme form of this rupture, and the one in which the productive forces of social labour are also most powerfully developed, is capital. (Marx, 1972, p. 423)

Elsewhere Marx writes:

It is one of the civilising aspects of capital that it enforces this surplus-labour in a manner and under conditions which are more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations and the creation of the elements for a new and higher form than under the preceding forms of slavery, serfdom, etc. (1959, p. 819)

At a certain point in its historical development capitalism fails to encourage the expansion of the productive forces any further. From this point on the downfall of capitalism becomes economically inevitable. To provide an exact description of this process and to grasp its causes through a scientific analysis of capitalism was the real task Marx posed for himself in Capital. His scientific advance over Sismondi and Jones consisted precisely in this. But how did Marx carry through this analysis? He says, at a certain stage: The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production

which has flourished alongside with and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and the socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. (1954, p. 715)

Marx refers to an antagonism between the productive forces and their capitalist shell. What is this, however? There is nothing more erroneous than the prevalent identification of the development of productive forces with the growth of c in relation to v. This simply confuses the capitalist shell in which human productivity obtains a form of appearance with the essence of that productivity itself. The development of productivity has in itself nothing to do with the capitalist valorisation process which, as a process of formation of values, has its roots in abstract human labour. The antagonism that Marx refers to is between the forces of production in their material shape as elements of the labour process – as means of production and labour power – and these same forces in their specifically capitalist shell, in the shape they assume as values c and v in the valorisation-process. In Capital Volume Three Marx attacks:

the confusion and identification of the process of social production with the simple labour-process ... To the extent that the labour-process is simply a process between man and nature, its simple elements remain common to all social forms of development. But each specific historical form of this process further develops its material foundations and its social forms. Whenever a certain stage of its maturity has been reached, the specific historical form is discarded and gives way to a higher one ... A conflict then ensues between the material development of production and its social form. (1959, pp. 883–4)

The form of the productive forces peculiar to capitalism, their capitalist shell (c:v) becomes a fetter on the form they share in common with all modes of production (M:L). The solution of this problem forms the specific task of this book.

It is quite characteristic of the intellectual crisis, even decay, of contemporary bourgeois economics that it denies that there is any such problem as accumulation. The apologetic optimism of bourgeois economics has simply extinguished all interest in a deeper understanding and analysis of today's mechanism of production. Economists like J B Clark (1907) and Alfred Marshall (1890) imagine that the psychological and individual motivations driving capitalists to 'save' account for the entire problem of the accumulation of capital. They do not bother to ask if there are objective conditions that determine the scope, the tempo and finally the maximal limits of the accumulation of capital. If accumulation is purely a function of the subjective propensities of individuals and the number of these individuals grows constantly, how do we explain the fact that the tempo of accumulation shows periodically alternating phases of acceleration and slow down? How do we account for the fact that the tempo of accumulation in the advanced capitalist countries is often slower than that in the less developed, although the number of those individuals is obviously greater in the former?

Elsewhere Marshall tries to explain things with the banal observation that the extent of the demand for capital depends on the level of the rate of interest. But Marshall breaks off his analysis where the real problems begin. Prior to the First World War the USA was massively in debt to Europe despite high domestic interest rates. On the other hand, in 1927 the USA exported capital sums totalling 14.5 billion dollars, and this export of capital showed no signs of abating, although the rate of interest at home had already fallen to 3.5 per cent. This also contradicts the analogous view of G Cassel that the 'low rate of interest that prevails during a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1992
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745304591
• ISBN 13: 9780745304595
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland