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Abstract:
This paper provides some reflections on the centenary of publication of Rosa Luxembourg's The Accumulation of Capital in 2013. It does so in four sections. The first section discusses some of the circumstances surrounding the writing of The Accumulation of Capital, and its original publication in 1913. It also provides some biographical background on the economic studies of its author. The second section summarises the book's contents, with emphasis on its major contributions to the economics of crises and of imperialism. Section three reviews selected interpretations of Luxembourg's book: by Paul Sweezy in 1949, by Michal Kalecki in 1967 and by Joan Robinson in 1951, as well as by some more recent commentators. The final section presents some conclusions, including some observations on the possible influence on Luxembourg's work by J.A. Hobson's writings, and on the major sources of inspiration of her work.
The Accumulation of Capital reveals her as that rarest of rare phenomena - a Marxist critical of Karl Marx. (Werner Stark 1951: 11)
Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party - however numerous they may be - is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently... (Luxemburg 1917, 1961: 23)
1 Introduction
In February 1913, one hundred years ago, Rosa Luxemburg published her major book, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals. Ein Beitrag zur ökonomischer Erklärung der Imperialismus. The publisher was Vorwärts in Berlin. A second edition was posthumously published in 1921, and this was also included as volume 1 of her collected works published in 1923, a project not completed because of the rise of Hitler in 1933. Subsequently, it was published as volume 5 of her collected works in 1990 by Dietz in Berlin. Given the original year of publication, and its important contributions to the 'macro-dynamics' of imperialism and underconsumption (Bronfenbrenner and Wolfson 1984: 180-1, 183-4), its centenary deserves to be commemorated. The associated Anti-Kritik, written in 1915, was published in 1921. In it, Luxemburg defended her theory against the many hostile criticisms her book had received during its first two years of publication. An English translation by Agnes Schwarzchild, published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1951 (Luxemburg 1951 [1913]), is...