Beyond Common Sense - LaRouche

LaRouche and the SWP, then, so he claims, they were onlyminon(9)In 1954, aged 30, LaRouche drifted away from the SWPorganisation when he moved to New York, but found the Trotskyistsin New York “narrow,” “bigoted” and “non-thinking.” LaRoucheclaims to have made his great breakthroughs in economics atthat time, the early 1950s. (1o)In his 1980s autobiography he claims:“Marx’s notion of ‘extended reproduction’ on which histheory of the business cycle depends, is a clever hoax. AsMarx himself emphasises repeatedly, his model of investmentleaves out of consideration technological progress in thesuccession of these investments. On this basis, he pretendsto show, that as the capital-intensity of production increases,the net effect is an inflation of costs, which lowers profit rates,and thus causes a self-feeding contraction of investmentand employment levels in production. This sort ofdevelopment does appear in economies which inhibittechnological progress, but it is not a natural tendency withinmodem agro-industrial economies.”‘Naturally because of my own discoveries in economicscience during that period, it is his centrally thematic featureof Marxs Capital which 1 recognised most immediately as afundamental error. “ (12)Was LaRouche always a hostile critic of Marx as his 1987autobiography attempts to portray? In the mid 1970s he was a“ reformist’ Marxist and his political movement was founded onMarxist principles.The seeds of organisation of the Citizens Electoral Councils,are found in LaRouche’s 1970s Marxist writings. At the core isthe Marxist debate over a concept known as “extendedreproduction.” LaRouche, in 1973, made a great effort topromote15