The Unsuccessful Attempt to Complete Marx’s Scheme of Reproduction

Abstract

While holding the cognitive values of Marxian reproduction schemes in high regard, Rosa Luxemburg argued that Marx did not manage to utilize this analytical tool in analysing the specific features of reproduction and accumulation of aggregate social capital. She considered that this part of Capital (the third chapter of the second volume) was the least developed and the analysis of accumulation was barely initiated. Without further modifications, Marx’s scheme is useless in analysing capital accumulation since it contains a number of misleading simplifications that prevent the understanding of how aggregate capital moves. In her view, the defects of the accumulation scheme rest on a few erroneous assumptions:

• 1. The scheme assumes that capitalist production creates its own, adequately sized market. Consequently, there is an impression of identity between production and realization, which is, of course, contradictory to the ‘spirit of Marx’s theory itself’, and with many statements contained in the first and particularly in the third volume of Capital, where Marx emphasized the tendency of purchasing power (aggregate demand) to lag persistently behind rapidly growing production.

• 2. Marx omitted in the scheme the monetary form and phase of capital in the process of capital accumulation.