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"The purpose of this translated volume Tadeusz Kowalik's book is to examine Rosa Luxemburg's contribution to economic theory. The essential subject-matter is the dependence of capital accumulation on effective demand, the dependence of economic growth onspecific capitalist barriers to growth. The second part of this book is devoted to the relationship between capital accumulation and economic and political imperialism.Kowalik attempts to vindicate the analysis of Rosa Luxemburg in her Accumulation of Capital as a Marxist classic. He puts forward as an alternative under-investment theory of capitalist stagnation that was accepted among Marxists, and links this interpretation of Luxemburg with Marx's critique of Say's Law and with the development of Luxemburg's theory in the work of Michal Kalecki and John Maynard Keynes. Luxemburg's analysis is contrasted with the underconsumptionist theory of capitalist crisis that prevailed among her critics. Although Kowalik recognises Luxemburg's analysis as incomplete, he argues that she correctly identified the realisation of surplus as the key constraint on expanded production in capitalism. This then points to a reinterpretation of Kalecki and Keynes, placing their analysis in a clear line of descent from Marx. Kalecki's analysis of militarism complements neatly Luxemburg's analysis, while Kowalik identifies neo-colonialism as a type of Luxemburg's imperialism, providing markets that allow for the realisation of profits in the advanced capitalist countries.Toporowski and Szymborska's accessible translation of Tadeusz Kowalik's masterpiece will appeal to professional economists, scholars, researchers and students of the history of economic thought and economic theory"--
List of contents
Introduction PART I: CAPITALIST BARRIERS TO GROWTH 1. The Origin of the Problem. A General Outline of the Work 2. The Russian Dispute Over Markets. From the Narodniks to Lenin 3. Aggregate Demand and the Accumulation of Capital 4. The Unsuccessful Attempt to Complete Marx's Scheme or Reproduction 5. The Misunderstanding Around the Role of Money in the Process of Capital Accumulation 6. Appendix I: The Theoretical-analytical Significance of the Reproduction Schemes 7. Appendix II: Critics and Heirs of Rosa Luxemburg PART II: THE THEORY OF ACCUMULATION IN RELATION TO IMPERIALISM 8. The Historic Conditions of Capital Accumulation 9. Militarism and Economic Growth 10. Imperialism and the Process of Capitalist Decline 11. Rudolf Hilferding's Theory of Finance Capital 12. V.I. Lenin on Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital
About the author
Tadeusz Kowalik (1926-2012) studied law and economics at the University of Warsaw, Poland. This book arises from the research that he did for his post-doctoral thesis, supervised by Oskar Lange (1904-1965). Tadeusz Kowalik worked with Micha? Kalecki and was active in dissident circles. He was expelled from Poland's ruling party in 1968, and then emerged in 1980 as an adviser to the Solidarity trade union, which he assisted through the discussions in 1989 that prepared the transition to democracy in Poland. A prolific writer, he became Poland's pre-eminent political economist and a fierce critic of the new capitalism that was installed in Poland's transition.
Jan Toporowski is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.
Hanna Szymborska is a researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.
Report
"It provides a key to the analysis of her work and its importance to the political economy of the first half of the twentieth century. It is also a reading of great interest to the history of economic thought in a more general sense ... . The book is concise and analytically dense, but also very readable, with chapters and parts well articulated with each other." (Alexandre Mendes Cunha, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 23 (4), 2016)
