Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 09:08:32 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Rosa Luxemburg


Adam Rose wrote:

> I cannot believe her theories were a kind of early
> Keynesianism.

You are correct. She was certainly not a pre-Keynesian, although, like 
the Keynesians, she examined the question of effective demand (which is 
why some Keynesians, most notably Joan Robinson, looked favorably on her 
theory of accumulation).

Luxemburg's writings on political economy, I believe, need also to be put 
in the context of political divisions within German Social Democracy. Her 
_Accumulation of Capital_ was intended, in part, to counter the reformist 
wing of the party led by Eduard Bernstein which argued that capitalism as 
modified since Marx's time was capable of almost limitless expansion. 

> I believe she tended to look at the mismatch between Departments I and
> II ( I - producing the means of consumption; II - producing the means
> of production ) rather than the rate of profit ie Capital I + II rather
> than Capital III.

One should recall that V3 was published many years after V2 in 1894 (even 
though the drafts edited by Engels of what became V3 were written many 
years before most of the drafts for what became V2). In general, most of 
the Marxists of this period  (including the German and Austrian 
Social Democrats and the Bolsheviks) built their analysis of accumulation 
and crisis (and imperialism) on the foundations of the V2 reproduction 
schemes. This reflected the fact that most adhered to either 
underconsumptionist and/or disproportionality theories of crisis.

> The stuff about the permanent arms economy is, I'm proud to say, quite
> distinctive to the International Socialist tendency ! :-).

Didn't Seymour Melman, a left Keynesian professor at Columbia University, 
first coin the term?

Jerry


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