Henryk Grossman Works, Volume 3

Henryk Grossman (1881-1950) was the preeminent Marxist economist of the twentieth century. He was the founding theoretician and secretary of the Jewish Socialist Party of Galicia; a Professor at the Free University of Warsaw; then, as a member of the Institute for Social Research, at the University of Frankfurt; and later at the University of Leipzig.Rick Kuhn is a member of Socialist Alternative in Australia. In addition to numerous other publications, he wrote the Deutscher Prize winning biography Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism (University of Illinois Press, 2008), co-authored Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class (Cambridge, 2011) and edited Class and Struggle in Australia (Pearson, 2005).

“Henryk Grossman’s The Law of Accumulation and the Breakdown of the Capitalist System is a classic work of Marxist political economy.”—Tony Phillips, International Socialism

• AcknowledgementsList of Figures and TablesEditor’s IntroductionRick KuhnContextGrossman’s ArgumentInitial Reception, Translations, Republications and Later LiteratureCriticisms and ResponsesConventionsIntroduction1 The Downfall of Capitalism in Previous Discussions1  The Points at Issue2  The Conception of Breakdown in Previous Literature3  The Final Abandonment of Marx’s Theory of Accumulation and Breakdown by Karl Kautsky2 The Law of Capitalist Breakdown1  Is There a Theory of Breakdown in Marx?2  Preliminary Methodological Remarks. Economic Coordinate System: The Necessity of Simplifying Assumptions; The Assumption of Constant Prices as the Starting Point for the Analysis (Constant Value of Money; Equilibrium State of the Capitalist Mechanism, under Which Prices Coincide with Values; Exclusion of Competition)3  The Equilibrium Theory of the Neo-harmonists. Otto Bauer’s Reproduction Schema4  The Conditions and Tasks of the Analysis Using the Schema5  Why Were the Classical Economists Disquieted by the Fall in the Rate of Profit. Despite Growth in the Mass of Profit?6  The Views of the Classical Economists on the Future of Capitalism, Ricardo. and John Stuart Mill7  Marx’s Theory of Accumulation and Breakdown8  Marx’s Theory of Breakdown Is Simultaneously a Theory of Crisis9  An Anti-Critical Interlude10  The Logical and Mathematical Basis of the Law of Breakdown11  Causes of the Misunderstanding of Marx’s Theory of Accumulation and Breakdown12  The Factors of the Breakdown Tendency. The Problem of the Periodicity of Crises. The Course of the Cycle and the Problem of Establishing the Duration of Its Phases – The Cycle Research Institutes’ Symptomatology. – The Provisional Exclusion of Credit. – The Tempo of Capital Accumulation (in the Upswing) and the Extent of Population Growth13  The Crisis and Underconsumption Theory. – Incorporating Credit into the Analysis. – The Cycle within the ‘Three Markets’: The Impetus to the Boom within the Sphere of Production (Business). The Spillover of the Wave Movement from Production into the Money Market (Money), Finally to the Stock Exchange (Speculation)14  The Elasticity of Accumulation. The Problem of Sudden Leaps and One-Sided Development in Individual Branches of Production. The Relationship between the Extent of the Apparatus of Production and the Extent of Sales Turnover15  Fetters on the Development of the Productive Forces under Capitalism16  Marx’s Theory of Insufficient Valorisation Due to Overaccumulation and Luxemburg’s Theory of the Impossibility of ‘Realising Surplus Value’ under Capitalism3 Modifying CountertendenciesVerification of the Abstract Theoretical Analysis by Concrete Appearances of Capitalist Reality1  Restoring Profitability through Internal Structural Changes in the Mechanism of Capitalist Countries2  The World MarketConcluding Observations1  The Breakdown Tendency and the Class Struggle (Marx’s Theory of Wages. The Factors That Determine the Wages. The Historical Tendency of Wage Levels. The Class Struggle and the Final Goal)2  The Collapse of Capitalism and the General CartelAppendix: Corrections of Grossman’s CalculationsReferencesIndex, including Abbreviations and Micro Biographies