In a previous life (back in 1986), I read Henryk Grossman's "La ley de la acumulación y el derrumbe del sistema capitalista" (Siglo XXI Editores, Mexico, 1979) and took notes. With a few annotations and edits, here's the translation of my bottom-line summary of the book.
For context, I should say that at the time I had fresh in my mind three works that I particularly liked: One, a 2-vol. set compilation of articles by several Soviet authors (Krasnov and Fridman, inter alia) titled "Modelos económico-matemáticos" (1983, Spanish translation by Mercedes Álvarez Valle, mimeo, UH, Ciudad Habana, Cuba). Two, Anwar Shaikh's "Introducción a la historia de la teoría de las crisis" (1983), which was originally written in English and must be on the net, and Roman Rosdolsky, "Génesis y estructura de El Capital de Marx (estudios sobre los Grundrisse)" (Siglo XXI, México, 1978), which has a version in English: I don't have Grossman's book with me now, either in English or Spanish, and I'm not planning to buy it. Neither do I have any of those other works referred above. So I can't really see now whether I was fair or unfair in my judgments. Still, the notes may help Charles in his study of Grossman. Good appetite. * * * First published in 1929 (lucky year!), among the Marxist works of the time, Grossman's exhibits an above-average understanding of the methodology of Marx's Capital. He seems to have a fair sense of the method as he enunciates it in general. However, *the whole point of his book* suggests that he doesn't really grasp it. If one tries to straighten out the confusion, theoretically, Grossman's idea of the breakdown as the result of capitalist accumulation is either trivial or incorrect. It is trivial, if we take as Grossman's view his preemptive remarks against a "pure economistic" interpretation of the breakdown. In this view, he has in mind the idea of capitalism's concrete breakdown through the workers' class struggle. In this sense, he doesn't add anything to Marx in, say, ch. 32 [vol. 1, Capital]. Nothing automatic about the breakdown. In fact, no "theory" of breakdown as such. Only the notion that "inexorably" (inexorable inasmuch as social life under capitalism is an "organic process" of "natural history") capitalist production creates its negation (individual appropriation on a higher base made possible by advanced capitalist production: large-scale cooperation plus the common ownership of the means of production). How? Through a process whose details cannot be specified in advance (workers will make a trail as they walk it) whereby the expropriators are expropriated by the mass of producers, etc. It is also trivial if we take as Grossman's view of the breakdown the notion that, at some level of abstraction, i.e. under given parameters (e.g. a declining rate of profit), a path of social reproduction will have the profit rate converging to zero. That result will follow from assuming that the profit rate declines and/or from the other assumptions. Grossman suggests that the gradual approximation to the concrete evolution of capitalism imposes a certain order or sequence in the series of assumptions made/relaxed. That is an appealing idea, but I don't think Marx established that. Nor is that order or sequence obvious in any way. And Grossman's confused ways don't help in determining the proper path of determined [or "real"] abstraction. [I'm now totally sure that there's no such deterministic path. Capitalism is always a moving target. And I don't think Marx envisioned any strict, deterministic sequence of abstractions. Instead, he seemed to have been grappling with that sequence as any artist would grapple with a work of art.] If we want to derive a practical conclusion from this theoretical exercise though, the conclusion is that, under a host of conditions, the social reproduction of capital can run into disruptions, interruptions, obstacles. [Curiously, I made a point similar to this in a recent post in reply to Les.] That may loop back to the previous notion that, workers in the course of their lives will problematize such events to the point at which they find the whole system that generates them [i.e. capitalism] intolerable. If so, then Grossman is proposing nothing new. In any case, Grossman's suggestion that a zero profit rate would lead in and by itself to the breakdown of capitalism is non-sense. In practical life, without a rebellious, organized working class, any zero profit-rate scenario would be temporary. The capitalists would manage to reestablish conditions for further reproduction with positive profit rates by increasing exploitation rates. On the other hand, Grossman's discussion of Otto Bauer's schema [extensions of Marx's vol. 2 reproduction schemes], suggest that his [Grossman's] real claim is that it is impossible to find any abstract path of capitalist reproduction such that capital accumulation continues indefinitely. This is wrong! Krasnov and Fridman [and Oskar Lange and others] show that, in the abstract, expanded reproduction with a growing organic composition can go on *forever* as long as the surplus value rate is also allowed to increase. And why is it "unrealistic" to assume that the surplus value rate will increase when a growing organic capital composition is deemed as realistic? Only if the workers oppose its increase successfully, the rate of surplus value will be fixed. Yet, under normal times (without the insurrection of the working class), the class struggle barely catches up with the rather continuous development of the productive force of labor. So Grossman's is another version of the same error Rosa Luxemburg made. Grossman (as Luxemburg) seems to think that if indefinite expanded reproduction is possible, then Tugan-Baranowski must be right. It doesn't follow. As Lenin believed [here I'm referring to young Lenin's views in contrast with those of the Russian Sismondists or populists, and mature Lenin's remarks against Luxemburg's work], in the abstract, under rather general conditions (including a growing organic capital composition), expanded reproduction can go on indefinitely... for as long as a workers' rebellion is not factored in. Grossman could argue, perhaps, that those "rather general" conditions under which expanded reproduction can go on "forever" (in theory) are not realistic. Indeed. It's not realistic to imagine workers who, over generations, remain human and non-rebellious. Temporarily, the workers' spirit can be debilitated, but over generations workers will recover. That said, this lack of realism would have nothing to do with relaxing the assumption of a constant organic composition of capital (Bauer) and everything to do with working class political readiness. This confusion is Grossman's main flaw. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
