Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, by Rosa Luxemburg and Nikolai Bukharin (Allen Lane The Penguin Press, £4.00)
The revolutionary left in this country is only Just emerging from many decades of political and theoretical under-development. One of the first conditions for a revitalisation of Marxist thought is an awareness of the traditions and debates in the history of the workers' movement. growth of accumulated values adjusts to the So we should welcome the publication of two important articles, one by Rosa Luxemburg and the other by Bukharin on the subject of Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital. Rosa Luxemburg's whole life was devoted to a struggle against capitalism and the reformist ideas of a corrupted socialist movement. She recognised that the struggle to smash the power of the bourgeoisie required a continual fight against bourgeois theories within the working class.
FINAL BREAKDOWN?
The reformists in the Second International had put forward the theory that capitalism was gradually, of its own accord, developing in the direction of socialism: capitalist crises would become less and less severe, production would become more and more rationally planned. The task of the socialist movement was to achieve piecemeal reforms, not to change the economic basis of capitalist society by revolutionary upheaval. Luxemburg attacked these ideas in Social Reform or Revolution? and The Accumulation of Capital. In the latter work she developed the theory that capitalism cannot expand indefinitely, that it comes to a point where no economic recovery is possible. In short she put forward the idea of the final breakdown of capitalism. After severe criticism she published a concise reply and re-exposition of her theories, and this essay is found in the volume which is the subject of this review. Because of its lively and cogent style this essay is probably the best introduction to her theory.
Luxemburg examined Marx's schemes on how capital is reproduced in an expanded form and found what she thought was a serious problem. If these reproduction schemes are conceived in terms of values (i.e, amounts of embodied labour time) then the expansion of value is explained by the enlargement of the supply of available labour. But if they are viewed in price terms then where does the additional money capital come from? In vain she searches for an answer. Do the capitalists borrow the additional money capital to finance economic growth from the national bank? That, according to Luxemburg, would be to suggest that additional value can be created out of mere paper. She concludes that capitalism must eventually break down because of these difficulties in the sphere of circulation.
But, she argued, before the collapse, capitalism manages to finance expanded reproduction by the imperialist plunder of the colonies. At the same time imperialism ensures that capitalist relations of production are established on a world-wide scale, and once this comes about there are no more non-capitalist markets to sustain expanded reproduction. Hence imperialism only delays the final collapse and does not prevent the breakdown of the capitalist mode of production. The leading theoreticians of the Second International such as Kautsky and Otto Bauer, all missed the point in their criticisms. Bauer, for instance, gave a useful analysis of the way the supply of labour time. Luxemburg pours unjust scorn on Bauer's theory, the result being that neither Bauer nor Luxemburg identifies the crux of the problem.
FUNDAMENTAL ERROR Bukharin alone provided an effective refutation of Luxemburg's theory. He attacks Luxemburg for confusing the accumulation of capital with the accumulation of money. This is her CHOSE fundamental error. Bukharin points out that the accumulation of capital involves the accumulation of money values, of values and the reproduction of capitalist social relations on an expanded scale. Moreover, "It is true that the amount of circulating money usually grows. It is incorrect that the accumulation of capital necessarily pre-supposes an increase of money." (page 199).
This is Bukharin's first major achievement - he clearly separates money values from values, i.e. embodied labour time. Rosa Luxemburg's misconception is to confuse price with value, and that is why she shrinks from any suggestion that expanded reproduction can finance itself by credit or an injection of newly minted money by the State Bank.
Reproduction schemes were conceived by Marx in terms of values. Prices are indeed determined by values, but they are not proportional to values, even in the long-run average sense. It is the interaction of price and value which is one of the crucial dynamic features of the capitalist system. For example, the rate of profit, which appears to the capitalist in terms of prices, determines investment behaviour which causes a change in the magnitude of values.
It follows that the quantitative dynamics of the capitalist system cannot be examined in value terms alone. Luxemburg attempts to analyse the system in terms of one unit of account: it is not surprising that she finds apparent inconsistencies in the process.
PERIODIC Bukharin's second important achievement is to successfully attack any notion of the permanent breakdown of capitalism. The debate within the Second International was falsely polarised between opponents and advocates of capitalist breakdown. Luxemburg was unable to escape from the false terms of this debate.
Only Lenin, Bukharin and the Bolsheviks saw crises as periodic rather than permanent. Lenin's statement that "there are no crises from which capitalism cannot recover" is a counter-part to A new regular series which aims to combat wrong or confused ideas about the nature of capitalism. Marx's own assertion that "permanent crises do not exist." Lenin and Bukharin attacked the vulgar breakdown theory and thereby paved the way for an effective demonstration of a theory of revolutionary action in October 1917. The theoretical heritage of the Third International, of which Bukharin was a leading member, is only partially accessible to the contemporary Marxist left. If we are to understand the epoch in which we live, this heritage must be rediscovcred. Bukharin's brilliant polemic is a welcome addition to the works now available in English. Geoff Hodgson.
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