Capitalism; Imperialism; Saving and investment; Socialism
Marx's diagram of enlarged reproduction adheres to these conditions.
Accumulation here takes its course, but it is not in the least indicated
who is to benefit by it, who are the new consumers for whose sake
production is ever more enlarged. The diagram assumes, say, the
following course of events: the coal industry is expanded in order to
expand the iron industry in order to expand the machine industry in
order to expand the production of consumer goods. This last, in turn, is
expanded to maintain both its own workers and the growing army of coal,
iron and machine operatives. And so on _ad infinitum_. We are running in
circles, quite in accordance with the theory of Tugan Baranovski.
Considered in isolation, Marx's diagram does indeed permit of such an
interpretation since he himself explicitly states time and again that
he aims at presenting the process of accumulation of the aggregate
capital in a society consisting solely of capitalists and workers.
Passages to this effect can be found in every volume of _Capital_.
In volume i, in the very chapter on 'The Conversion of Surplus-Value
into Capital', he says:
'In order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity,
free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances, we must treat the
whole world as one nation, and assume that capitalist production is
everywhere established and has possessed itself of every branch of
industry.'[333]
In volume ii, the assumption repeatedly returns; thus in chapter 17 on
'The Circulation of Surplus-Value': 'Now, there are only two points of
departure: The capitalist and the labourer. All third classes of persons
must either receive money for their services from these two classes, or,
to the extent that they receive it without any equivalent services, they
are joint owners of the surplus-value in the form of rent, interest,
etc.... The capitalist class, then, remains the sole point of departure
of the circulation of money.'[334]
Further, in the same chapter 'On the Circulation of Money in Particular
under Assumption of Accumulation': 'But the difficulty arises when we
assume, not a partial, but a general accumulation of money-capital on
the part of the capitalist class. Apart from this class, there is,
according to our assumption--the general and exclusive domination of
capitalist production--no other class but the working class.'[335]
And again in chapter 20: '... there are only two classes in this case,
the working class disposing of their labour-power, and the capitalist
class owning the social means of production and the money.'[336]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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