Capital accumulation Luxemburg

This reading of Luxemburg throws up two parallel questions Where does the demand and money come from for capital accumulation Possible... 

Similarly, Bleaney (1976 194) points out that Luxemburg clearly identifies the importance of demand for means of production as part of capital accumulation. It is not just demand for consumption goods that is important to capital accumulation hence the non-underconsumptionist character of Rosa Luxemburg s ideas . 

Second, Rosa Luxemburg s Accumulation of Capital provides an exceptionally detailed examination of Marx s reproduction schema. Aznar (2004 253) argues that Luxemburg believed this book to be a continuation of Capital book 2, which Marx had left unfinished . Key to Luxemburg s interpretation is the role of demand, which she argues is obscured by Marx s specific focus on the question, Where does the money come from Marx is criticized for assuming that capital can accumulate unimpeded, without identifying how new capacity can be profitably realized. 

For scholars of Marx, a common complaint is that Marxian economics, as practiced in the universities, fails to reflect the original purpose of Marx s writings. Models of reproduction, in particular, ignore the importance of money and the way in which Marx uses the schema to expose the perceived dogma of Adam Smith (see Moseley 1998). A close reading of Luxemburg s Accumulation of Capital, as we shall see, does not disappoint on either of these fronts. 

The money could be found in the transition from simple reproduction to expanded reproduction, when capitalists reduce their own consumption, making money available for accumulation (ibid. 147). Aside from these very narrow circumstances, however, Luxemburg argues that Marx s focus on where the money comes from is a major distraction. Marx finds the money for accumulation on the basis of a reduction in consumption, a restriction of demand. For Luxemburg, It is not the source of money that constitutes the problem of accumulation, but the source of the demand for the additional goods produced by the capitalized surplus value (ibid. 147). 

Naqvi (1960 22) describes this as the false problem of priority of one department over the other . In the same vein, Luxemburg also considers Marx s second numerical example in which accumulation proceeds uniformly in both departments (Luxemburg 1951 124). Although this example is less arbitrary, the same problem arises of how Department 2 will acquire the precise amount of additional capital goods produced by Department 1. 

Luxemburg, R. (1951) The Accumulation of Capital, London Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1913. 

Zarembka, P. (2000) Accumulation of capital, its definition a century after Lenin and Luxemburg , Research in Political Economy Value, Capitalist Dynamics and Money, 18 183-241. 

Rosa Luxemburg s The Accumulation of Capital critics try to bury the... 

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