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Rosa
Luxemburg sought to keep her balance – as any serious
revolutionary must – with
a pungent honesty and a lively sense of humor.
By
the time she was in her mid-forties, she confessed to an
intimate friend that “in theoretical work as in art, I
value only the simple, the tranquil and the bold.
This is why, for example, the famous first volume
of Marx’s Capital, with its profuse rococo
ornamentation in the Hegelian style, now seems an
abomination to me (for which, from the Party standpoint,
[Luxemburg joked] I must get 5 years’ hard labor and
10 years’ loss of civil rights....).”
She hastened to add that Marx’s economic
theories were the bedrock of her own theoretical work,
but also emphasized that her “more mature” work was
in “its form...extremely simple, without any
accessories, without coquetry or optical illusions,
straightforward and reduced to the barest essentials; I
would even say ‘naked,’ like a block of marble.”
Delving
into theoretical questions -- explaining the economic
expansionism of imperialism that arose out of the
accumulation of capital, which became the title of
her 1913 classic -- was a creative labor through which
“day and night I neither saw nor heard anything as
that one problem developed beautifully before my
eyes.” The
process of thinking -- as she slowly paced back and
forth, “closely observed by [her cat] Mimi, who lay on
the red plush tablecloth, her little paws crossed, her
intelligent head following me” -- and the actual
process of writing combined as an experience of
trance-like and profound pleasure.
Yet
this was someone for whom -- despite her banter about
Hegel -- dialectical thinking came most naturally.
Applying the dialectical approach to her economic
studies, Luxemburg understood capitalism as an expansive
system driven by the dynamic of accumulation.
Capital in the form of money is invested in capital
in the form of raw materials and tools and labor-power,
which is transformed -- by the squeezing of actual labor
out of the labor-power of the workers -- into capital
in the form of the commodities thereby produced, whose
increased value is realized through the sale of the
commodities for more money than was originally invested,
which is the increased capital out of which the
capitalist extracts his profits, only to be driven to
invest more capital for the purpose of achieving ever
greater capital accumulation.
Luxemburg’s
analysis of the capital accumulation process involves a
complex (and for an economic novice like myself, an
overly-complex) critique of the second volume of
Marx’s Capital.
As part of her resolution of what she considers
to be an under-developed and incomplete aspect of
Marx’s analysis of how surplus value is realized, she
focuses on the global dynamics of the capitalist system
and argues that imperialism is at the heart of
capitalist development.
As Harry Magdoff once put it, “imperialism is
not a matter of choice for a capitalist society; it is
the way of life of such a society.”
In
her classic The Accumulation of Capital (1913)
she offers an incisive economic analysis of imperialism.
There are several distinctive features of
Luxemburg’s theory of imperialism that sets it off
from that of other leading Marxist theorists – Rudolph
Hilferding, Nikolai Bukharin, and V.I. Lenin.
She makes a great deal of the co-existence in the
world of different cultures, different types of society,
and different modes of
production (or forms of economy – different economic
systems). Historically
the dominant form of economy worldwide was the communal
hunting and gathering mode of production, which was
succeeded in many areas by a more or less communistic
agricultural form of economy which she characterized as
a primitive “peasant economy.”
This was succeeded in some areas by
non-egalitarian societies dominated by militarily
powerful elites, constituting modes of production that
she labeled “slave economy” and
“feudalism.”
Sometimes co-existing with, sometimes
superceding, these was a “simple commodity
production” in which artisans and farmers, for
example, would produce commodities for the market in
order to trade or sell for the purpose of acquiring
other commodities that they might need or want.
This simple commodity mode of production is
different from the capitalist mode of production, which
is driven by the already-described capital accumulation
process, overseen by an increasingly wealthy and
powerful capitalist minority.
Three
features especially differentiate the analysis in The
Accumulation of Capital from the perspectives of
other prominent Marxists.
1)
Luxemburg advances a controversial conceptualization of
imperialism’s relationship to the exploitation of the
working class in the advanced capitalist countries.
Because workers receive less value than what they
create, they are unable to purchase and consume all that
is produced. This
under-consumption means that capitalists must expand
into non-capitalist areas, seeking markets as well as
raw materials and investment opportunities (particularly
new sources of labor) outside of the capitalist economic
sphere.
“
Non-capitalist organizations provide a fertile soil for
capitalism,” she noted, which means that “capital
feeds on the ruins of such organizations, and, although
this non-capitalist milieu is indispensable for
accumulation, the latter proceeds, at the cost of this
medium nevertheless, by eating it up.”
Penetration into non-capitalist economies
facilitate the capital accumulate process, but
capitalist accumulation “corrodes and assimilates”
these economies. This
constituted a new contradiction: “capital cannot
accumulate without the aid of non-capitalist
organizations, nor, on the other hand, can it tolerate
their continued existence side by side with itself. Only
the continuous and progressive disintegration of
non-capitalist organizations makes accumulation of
capital possible.”
The inevitable tendency this leads to will be
“the standstill of accumulation,” which “means
that the development of the productive forces is
arrested,” leading to capitalist collapse.
(We
will see that Luxemburg did not conceive of this leading
to a painless transition to socialism, but rather to the
desperate escalation of militarism and war.)
2)
Another distinctive quality of her conceptualization of
imperialism is that it is not restricted to “the
highest stage” or “latest stage” of capitalism.
Rather, imperialism is something that one finds
at the earliest beginnings of capitalism – in the
period of what Marx calls “primitive capitalist
accumulation” – and which continues non-stop, with
increasing and overwhelming reach and velocity, down to
the present. Or
as she puts it,
“capitalism
in its full maturity also depends in all respects on
non-capitalist strata and social organizations existing
side by side with it,” and “since the accumulation
of capital becomes impossible in all points without
non-capitalist surroundings, we cannot gain a true
picture of it by assuming the exclusive and absolute
domination of the capitalist mode of production.”
Quoting Marx, she concluded: “The historical
career of capitalism can only be appreciated by taking
them together. ‘Sweating blood and filth with every
pore from head to toe’ characterizes not only the
birth of capital but also its progress in the world at
every step, arid thus capitalism prepares its own
downfall under ever more violent contortions and
convulsions.” This
meant, on the international arena, “colonial policy,
an international loan system -- a policy of spheres of
interest -- and war.
Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly
displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it
requires an effort to discover within this tangle of
political violence and contests of power the stern laws
of the economic process.”
3)
Another special feature of Luxemburg’s contribution is
her anthropological sensitivity to the impact of
capitalist expansion on the rich variety of the
world’s peoples and cultures that one cannot find in
the key works of Hilferding, Lenin, and Bukharin.
The
survey of capitalist expansionism’s impact in her Accumulation
of Capital includes such examples as:
* the
destruction of the English peasants and artisans;
*
the destruction of the native-American peoples (the
so-called Indians);
*
the enslavement of African peoples by the European
powers;
* the
ruination of small farmers in the mid-western and
western regions of the United States;
* the
onslaught of French colonialism in Algeria;
* the onslaught
of British colonialism in India;
* British
incursions into China, with special reference to the
Opium wars;
*
the
onslaught of British colonialism in South Africa (with
lengthy reference to the three-way struggle
of black African peoples, the Dutch Boers,the British).
“Each
new colonial expansion is accompanied, as a matter of
course, by a relentless battle of capital against the
social and economic ties of the natives,” she wrote,
“who are also forcibly robbed of their means of
production and labor power.”
Observing that “from the point of view of the
primitive societies involved, it is a matter of life or
death,” she noted that the invariable consequence
involved “permanent occupation of the colonies by the
military, native risings and punitive expeditions are
the order of the day for any colonial regime.”
The economic underpinnings of such realities was
always emphasized: “Their means of production and
their labor power no less than their demand for surplus
products is necessary to capitalism,” Luxemburg wrote.
“Yet the latter is fully determined to undermine their
independence as social units, in order to gain
possession of their means of production and labor power
and to convert them into commodity buyers.”
But the destructive impact of all this on the
cultures of the world’s peoples was emphasized by
Luxemburg as by no other Marxist theorist of her time:
“The unbridled greed, the acquisitive instinct of
accumulation must by its very nature take every
advantage of the conditions of the market and can have
no thought for the morrow. It is incapable of seeing far
enough to recognize the value of the economic monuments
of an older civilization.”
These
strengths in Luxemburg’s analysis were drawn together,
two years later, in the eloquent anti-war polemic
composed from a prison cell:
" Capitalist
desire for imperialist expansion, as the expression of
its highest maturity in the last period of its life, has
the economic tendency to change the whole world into
capitalistically producing nations, to sweep away all
superannuated, pre-capitalistic methods of production
and society, to subjugate all the riches of the earth
and all means of production to capital, to turn the
laboring masses of all zones into wage slaves.
In Africa and in Asia, from the most northern
regions to the southernmost point of South America and
the South Seas, the remnants of old communistic social
groups, of feudal society, of patriarchal systems, and
of ancient handicraft production are destroyed and
stamped out by capitalism.
Whole peoples are destroyed, ancient
civilizations are leveled to the ground, and in their
place profiteering in its most modern forms is being
established.
"This
brutal triumphant procession of capitalism through the
world, accompanied by all the means of force, of
robbery, and of infamy, has one bright phase: it has
created the premises for its own final overthrow, it has
established the capitalist world rule which, alone, the
socialist world revolution can follow. This is the only
cultural and progressive aspect of the great so-called
works of culture that were brought to the primitive
countries. To
capitalist economists and politicians, railroads,
matches, sewerage systems, and warehouses are progress
and culture. Of
themselves such works, grafted upon primitive conditions
are neither culture nor progress, for they too dearly
paid for with the sudden economic and cultural ruin of
the peoples who must drink down the bitter cup of misery
and horror of two social orders, of traditional
agricultural landlordism, of super-modern, super-refined
capitalist exploitation, at one and the same time."
It
can be argued that capitalism is more complex, more
dynamic than Luxmburg’s allows.
There is more truth than she seems aware in her
assertion that “the accumulation of capital, as an
historical process, depends upon non-capitalist social
strata and forms of social organization.”
Non-capitalist regions of the globe are certainly
the target of capitalist penetration and degradation for
the sake of maximizing profits – but such penetration
is also relentlessly taking place in the multifaceted
non-capitalist aspects of our lives and environment,
within highly developed capitalist countries.
The destructive profiteering expansion not only
into the cultures and lives of people in economically
“under-developed” economies but also into the
cultures of lives of people who live highly developed
economies. “Capital
needs the means of production and the labor power of the
whole globe for untrammeled accumulation,” Luxemburg
wrote. “It
cannot manage without the natural resources and the
labor power of all territories.”
This
is true of all territories indeed, including the
territories of our bodies, our family life, our
friendships, our creative drives, our sexuality, our
dreams, and multiple community and social and cultural
activities -- all of which are permeated by
pre-capitalist and non-capitalist dimensions and
energies even in expanding global regions where an
advanced capitalist economy predominates.
Paul
Sweezy shrewdly cites Luxemburg’s comment that a
conception of “limitless of capital accumulation”
will mean that “the sold soil of objective historical
necessity is cut from under the feet of socialism.”
Her analytical preference tilted her toward the
notion that not only were non-capitalist portions of the
globe necessary for the accumulation process, but that
once these were inevitably incorporated into the global
capitalist economy, the accumulation process would break
down – propelling the laboring masses to socialist
revolution. It
cannot be denied -- the tendency of “limitless capital
accumulation,” although rejected by Luxemburg, has
asserted itself in ways that dramatically undermined the
revolutionary socialist outcomes that she anticipated.
Regardless
of powerful criticisms leveled at Luxemburg’s Accumulation
of Capital, her discussion of the workings and
impacts of imperialism clearly retain considerable
validity. Modern
economist Joan Robinson once commented, after an
extremely critical survey of The Accumulation of
Capital, that “for all of its confusions and
exaggerations, this book shows more prescience than any
orthodox contemporary could claim.”
The
importance of foreign investment and foreign aid, the
process of “modernization,” the role of the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund, are all
anticipated in her discussion of “international
loans.” Noting
the dramatic increase in “the world-wide movement of
capital, especially in Asia and neighboring Europe: in
Russia, Turkey, Persia, India, Japan, China, and also in
North Africa,” she observed that economically
developing areas – particularly newly independent
countries – become targets for foreign loans that
while “indispensable for the emancipation of the
rising capitalist states … are yet the surest ties by
which the old capitalist states maintain their
influence, exercise financial control and exert pressure
on the customs, foreign and commercial policy of the
young capitalist states.” Luxemburg observed that
modernization schemes, such as railroad construction,
irrigation projects, etc., “almost exclusively served
the purposes of an imperialist policy, of economic
monopolization and economic subjugation of the backward
communities,” devastating the original economic and
cultural patterns and relationships, drawing increasing
numbers of people into the embrace of the capitalist
market. She
also observed that “there was an element of usury in
every loan, anything between one-fifth and one-third of
the money ostensibly lent sticking to the fingers of the
European bankers.”
Asking “how-where were the means to come
from” that would pay off the mounting debts, she
pointed to the intensifying exertions and rising tax
burdens of the peasant masses and laboring poor. “Although
it became evident at every step that there were
technical limits to the employment of forced labor for
the purposes of modern capital, yet this was amply
compensated by capital's unrestricted power of command
over the pool of labor power, how long and under what
conditions men were to work, live and be exploited.”
No
less dramatic is her perception of the economic role of
militarism in the globalization of the market economy:
"Militarism
fulfils a quite definite function in the history of
capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase
of accumulation. It plays a decisive part in the first
stages of European capitalism, in the period of the
so-called 'primitive accumulation', as a means of
conquering the New World and the spice-producing
countries of India. Later, it is employed to subject the
modern colonies, to destroy the social organizations of
primitive societies so that their means of production
may be appropriated, forcibly to introduce commodity
trade in countries where the social structure had been
unfavorable to it, and to turn the natives into a
proletariat by compelling them to work for wages in the
colonies. It is responsible for the creation and
expansion' of spheres of interest for European capital
in non-European regions, for extorting railway
concessions in backward countries, and for enforcing the
claims of European capital as international lender.
Finally, militarism is a weapon in the competitive
struggle between capitalist countries for areas of
non-capitalist civilization."
But
more than this, military spending “is in itself a
province of accumulation,” making the modern state a
primary “buyer for the mass of products containing the
capitalized surplus value,” although in fact – in
the form of taxes -- “the workers foot the bill.”
In
fact, the workers “foot the bill” of militarism in
more ways than one – which Luxemburg emphasized in her
1915 Junius Pamphlet, noting that “the world
war is a turning point in the course of imperialism,”
when “for
the first time, the destructive beasts that have been
loosed by capitalist Europe over all other parts of the
world have sprung, with one awful leap, into the midst
of the European nations.”
Integral to this was “the mass destruction of
the European proletariat. … Millions of human lives
were destroyed in the Vosges, in the Ardennes, in
Belgium, Poland, in the Carpathians and on the Save;
millions have been hopelessly crippled. But nine-tenths
of these millions come from the ranks of the working
class of the cities and the farms.
It was our strength, our hope that was mowed down
there day after day, before the scythe of death.”
Emphasizing that not only was the World War “a
blow … against capitalist civilization of the past,
but against socialist civilization of the future,” she
concluded: “Here capitalism reveals its
death’s head, here it betrays that it has sacrificed
its historic right of existence, that its rule is no
longer compatible with the progress of humanity.”
Much
has happened since Luxemburg wrote these lines.
But what she had to say so many years ago has
resonated in the subsequent history of the 20th
century, and in the realities of globalization that we
have touched on earlier in this volume.
End
Notes
Stephen Eric Bronner, ed., The Letters of Rosa
Luxemburg, New Edition (Atlantic Highlands:
Humanities Press, 1993), 185, 204.
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