Work · Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory
The Accumulation of Capital
Capitalism needs non-capitalist markets to realise surplus value – hence imperialism, and hence its limit.
Introduction
Luxemburg wrote this long economic study while teaching at the Social Democratic party school in Berlin and published it in 1913. Starting from Marx’s schemes of reproduction in the second volume of Capital, she argues that a closed capitalist economy cannot realise all of its surplus value, so capitalism must keep absorbing non-capitalist regions and social strata – through colonial expansion, foreign loans and armaments. When nothing outside it is left, accumulation must break down. Otto Bauer and other Marxist economists rejected the argument as a misreading of Marx; Luxemburg answered them in an “Anti-Critique” written in prison in 1915 and published in 1921. The thesis is still cited in debates on imperialism.
Connections
Criticizes
- Capital1867 · Karl Marx
More works by Rosa Luxemburg
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