<p>“Henryk Grossman’s <em>The Law of Accumulation and the Breakdown of the Capitalist System</em> is a classic work of Marxist political economy.”<br />
<strong>—Tony Phillips,<em> International Socialism</em></strong></p>

The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System, Being also a Theory of Crisis was Henryk Grossman’s most important, influential, and also most denounced work.

As official Communist economic thought was petrifying, to comply with the needs of the Stalinist state in Russia, Grossman’s book challenged the developing dogma. Combining Marx's method and insights with a comprehensive assessment of the very substantial literature on crisis theory, Grossman demonstrated how the capitalist system, even under supposedly ideal conditions, will break down economically. Grossman’s recovery of Marx’s explanations for capitalism’s crises and tendency to break down is as timely as ever, and thanks to Jairus Banaji and Rick Kuhn, this wonderful, first full English translation is now available.

The Law of Accumulation is the third of four volumes of Grossman's works.

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Long awaited, this volume offers the first full English language translation of Henryk Grossman's The Law of Accumulation

 Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables

Editor’s Introduction
  Rick Kuhn
  Context
  Grossman’s Argument
  Initial Reception, Translations, Republications and Later Literature
  Criticisms and Responses
  Conventions

Introduction

1 The Downfall of Capitalism in Previous Discussions
 1  The Points at Issue
 2  The Conception of Breakdown in Previous Literature
 3  The Final Abandonment of Marx’s Theory of Accumulation and Breakdown by Karl Kautsky

2 The Law of Capitalist Breakdown
 1  Is There a Theory of Breakdown in Marx?
 2  Preliminary Methodological Remarks. Economic Coordinate System: The Necessity of Simplifying Assumptions; The Assumption of Constant Prices as the Starting Point for the Analysis (Constant Value of Money; Equilibrium State of the Capitalist Mechanism, under Which Prices Coincide with Values; Exclusion of Competition)
 3  The Equilibrium Theory of the Neo-harmonists. Otto Bauer’s Reproduction Schema
 4  The Conditions and Tasks of the Analysis Using the Schema
 5  Why Were the Classical Economists Disquieted by the Fall in the Rate of Profit. Despite Growth in the Mass of Profit?
 6  The Views of the Classical Economists on the Future of Capitalism, Ricardo. and John Stuart Mill
 7  Marx’s Theory of Accumulation and Breakdown
 8  Marx’s Theory of Breakdown Is Simultaneously a Theory of Crisis
 9  An Anti-Critical Interlude
 10  The Logical and Mathematical Basis of the Law of Breakdown
 11  Causes of the Misunderstanding of Marx’s Theory of Accumulation and Breakdown
 12  The Factors of the Breakdown Tendency. The Problem of the Periodicity of Crises. The Course of the Cycle and the Problem of Establishing the Duration of Its Phases – The Cycle Research Institutes’ Symptomatology. – The Provisional Exclusion of Credit. – The Tempo of Capital Accumulation (in the Upswing) and the Extent of Population Growth
 13  The Crisis and Underconsumption Theory. – Incorporating Credit into the Analysis. – The Cycle within the ‘Three Markets’: The Impetus to the Boom within the Sphere of Production (Business). The Spillover of the Wave Movement from Production into the Money Market (Money), Finally to the Stock Exchange (Speculation)
 14  The Elasticity of Accumulation. The Problem of Sudden Leaps and One-Sided Development in Individual Branches of Production. The Relationship between the Extent of the Apparatus of Production and the Extent of Sales Turnover
 15  Fetters on the Development of the Productive Forces under Capitalism
 16  Marx’s Theory of Insufficient Valorisation Due to Overaccumulation and Luxemburg’s Theory of the Impossibility of ‘Realising Surplus Value’ under Capitalism

3 Modifying Countertendencies
Verification of the Abstract Theoretical Analysis by Concrete Appearances of Capitalist Reality
 1  Restoring Profitability through Internal Structural Changes in the Mechanism of Capitalist Countries
 2  The World Market

Concluding Observations
 1  The Breakdown Tendency and the Class Struggle (Marx’s Theory of Wages. The Factors That Determine the Wages. The Historical Tendency of Wage Levels. The Class Struggle and the Final Goal)
 2  The Collapse of Capitalism and the General Cartel

Appendix: Corrections of Grossman’s Calculations
References
Index, including Abbreviations and Micro Biographies

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This book will find an extremely eager, if relatively small, audience among marxist economists, but may be of interest to wider audiences with an interest in political economy and the history of the socialist movement.

Les mer
More than twenty years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of Marxism as a (supposed) state ideology, this peer-reviewed book series attempts to meet the need for a serious and long-term Marxist book publishing program by releasing original monographs, newly translated texts, and reprints of "classics."
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781642597790
Publisert
2022-11-01
Utgiver
Haymarket Books
Høyde
228 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
01, G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
577

Forfatter
Redigert og oversatt av
Oversetter

Biografisk notat

Henryk Grossman (1881-1950) was the preeminent Marxist economist of the twentieth century. He was the founding theoretician and secretary of the Jewish Socialist Party of Galicia; a Professor at the Free University of Warsaw; then, as a member of the Institute for Social Research, at the University of Frankfurt; and later at the University of Leipzig.

Rick Kuhn is a member of Socialist Alternative in Australia. In addition to numerous other publications, he wrote the Deutscher Prize winning biography Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism (University of Illinois Press, 2008), co-authored Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class (Cambridge, 2011) and edited Class and Struggle in Australia (Pearson, 2005).