• Short-link
• Link
• Embed

substantial fragment survives in the Paul Levi necessary to compare the suppressed section of theedition, Berlin, 1925. chapter with Mandel's Europe versus America?, orthe current "inter-imperialist rivalry" theses of theNettl's bibliography also attributes to Militant, Daffy World, International SocialistLuxemburg the authorship of the middle section of Review, and Political Affairs, to discover Waters'Chapter 12 of Franz Mehring's Karl Marx, The motives.Story of His Life, the section subtitled "3. TheSecond and Third Volumes" (of Capital). Indeed, Luxemburg's view of Marx's Capital is summedthe style and content of this section are up in the cited chapter from Mehring's Karl Marx.unquestionably Luxemburg's, to the degree that This account coincides exactly with that whichone concludes that Mehring made an absolute must be adduced by any scholar who has masteredminimal number of editings of the manuscript, the work as a whole, especially as he resorts to themost instructive comparison between Capital andOf these writings, only the following selections the first portion of Hegel's The Phenomenology ofhave been previously published in English: Social Mind.Reform or Revolution?, The Accumulation ofCapital, and, in addition to the inclusion of "the In Volume I, Marx starts from the simplest factsSecond and Third Volumes" in Mehring, the first of "sense-certainty," to be isolated for treatmentchapter of Einfuehrung as "What is Economics?" in a dialectical fashion. The simple facts ofexchange-value-in-itself and use-value-in-itself areThe publishing history of the last item is itself dialectically resituated as momentary aspects of ainstructive. The translation of this chapter was continuous, organic process of social reproduction.accomplished as a project of Socialist Workers After this standpoint has been introduced in theParty member, T. Edwards, a product of his key, first chapter of that volume, Marx proceeds,sabbatical assignment to the "Trotsky School" of through Volume I exploring the phenomena ofthe early 1950s. For a decade, this translation capitalist reproduction from more or less theexisted in a soon out-of-print mimeographed limited standpoint of the individual capitalist firm.edition of Pioneer Publishers, but has beenrepublished as a 1968 Ceylonese printed pamphlet The more superficial socialist reader comes awayby Sydney Wanasinghe. Part of this chapter was from Volume I falsely assuming that Marx's "Lawrecently republished in the collection, Luxemburg of Value" is essentially a matter of relationshipsSpeaks (1970), omitting a major section of the determined at the localized point of caplitalistchapter. The means to which the collection's editor production. It is such a shallow viewpoint,(also Militant editor, Mary-Alice Waters) resorted projected upon Volumes II and III, whichto justify the suppression is exemplary of the Luxemburg assails in her economic-theoreticaltradition of slanders against Luxemburg polemics.inaugurated by Karl Radek and later adopted bythe Stalin regime. In Volume II, Marx shifts the focus away fromthe local point of production to the process ofWaters scribbles: "The abridged version of the general capitalist circulation of commodities andfirst chapter omits several sections which money, however, limiting the analysis of theconstitute a side polemic on the nature of process of circulation to the standpoint of simpleeconomy today as an international rather than reproduction.strictly 'national' entity." What is omitted, sectionsII-IV, not only constitutes approximately half of In Volume III, Marx makes a second major shiftthe entire chapter, but is absolutely no "side of the subject matter, as follows. Firstly, hepolemic." It is a statement of Luxemburg's most introduces the "general rate of profit," whichfundamental views on the development and nature shifts the theoretical focus of the study from thatof capitalist economy. The contrary view, of the relationships among individual capitalistexpressed by Werner Sombard especially during the firms and national capitalist economies into aperiod of Luxemburg's writing, has been lawful process of world capitalist economy as aresurrected by both the Western Communist whole. On this basis he proceeds to an examinationparties and Ernest Mandel as the "theory of of the fallacious Ricardian conception of a "fallinginter-imperialist rivalries" today. It is only rate of profit" tendency, showing that capitalist33

34crises do not arise from the more than 10% (because of a depreciation of themechanistic-mathematical conceptions of Ricardo cost of materials through higher productivity), ifet al., but from the fact that the capitalist the ratio of Fixed Capital to total wages paid riseseconomy involves two antagonistic processes, in to that of ten-to-one, the calculated rate ofwhich the process of capitalists' accumulation of capitalists' "return on investment" in productioncapitals interpenetrates but also ultimately opposes would tend to fall catastrophically, in one examplethe lawful development of the social-productive to something in the order of 10% of the previousforces, on whose expansion the possibility of rote of profit!realizing larger masses of surplus value depends.From the standpoint of the .productive forcesThis latter feature of Volume III, which has themselves, the depreciation of Fixed Capital isnever been acknowledged or understood by any meaningless, since workers' economies, unlikesocial-democratic or "Trotskyist" writer, is the capitalism, are not concerned with buildingkernel of Luxemburg's differences with her time-machines with which to deliver payments topro-capitalist and socialist critics alike, the dead past. From the standpoint of capitalistaccumulation respecting extant means ofThe leading irony of capitalist economy for production, this rising productivity of expandedMarx and Luxemburg is that capitalist crises and employed labor power, which is the greatestultimate capitalist collapse are caused by the very potential boon to humanity, is a disaster.means which enables capitalism to develop as aform superior to every antecedent society: the In the later sections of Volume III, Marxrising social productivity of labor power. The proceeds to situate the preceding theoreticalexpansion of the capitalist economy, the sine qua development respecting the productive side ofnon of sustainable capitalist accumulation, results capitalist accumulation within the monetary-creditin and depends upon a rising social-productivity as processes. Capitalism does not experience simplewell as expansion of the employed working class as production-trade crises on account of thea whole. Because of capitalism's attempt to "falling-rate tendency." Rather, through thecreditmaintain the current value of "Fixed Capital," system, capitalism covers the losses to "Fixedwhile the mass of "Fixed Capital" is rising relative Capital" during boom periods by issuingto current production, even in an economy in promissory notes to itself. To the extent thatwhich all capitalist investments and payments were current surplus values are inadequate to maintainlimited to useful agricultural and industrial the rate of profit, on account of the demand forproduction, capitalism would be subject to payments offsetting depreciated Fixed Capitals,periodic boom-bust crises, the capitalists pay themselves collectively withpromissory notes against future surplus values.For, the rising productivity of labor power, by Thus, capitalist crises, arising from thecheapening all commodity production in terms of contradictory relationship of Fixed to Circulatingsocially-necessary labor power, depreciates the Capitals, nonetheless do not occur as simplecurrent replacement value of the mass of Fixed "over-production" crises, but as monetary crises, asCapitals valued on the basis of yesterday's the consequences of an apparent over-expansion ofless-efficient production in general. To the extent credit. Since the credit was advanced principally tothat capitalism struggles to maintain the current cover the depreciation of Fixed Capital throughvalue of Fixed Capital, the effect of rising rising productivity, the credit-monetary crisis is theproductivity of labor power is to depreciate capital form in which the actual crisis born in capitalistto the ultimate point that the capitalists abort productive relations accumulates to aproductive investment generally, and thus create breaking-point within the credit-monetary realmcapitalist crises, itself.Obviously, as the mass of Fixed Capital increases Taking these features of Volume III fully intoin respect to current production, the effects of this account, Luxemburg turns to another aspect ofdepreciation become increasing deductions from Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, Marx'scurrent profits. While a 10% increase in the general analysis of "primitive accumulation," to locate aproductivity of labor, for example, must tend to capitalist solution to a problem which Marx seemsincrease the rate of profit on current investment by to leave undeveloped.