Rosa
Luxemburg and the Global Violence of Capitalism
by
Paul Le Blanc
Rosa
Luxemburg sought to keep her balance — as any serious revolutionary must —
with a pungent honesty and a lively sense of humor.
By
the time she was in her mid-forties, she confessed to an intimate friend that
“in theoretical work as in art, I value only the simple, the tranquil and the
bold. This is why, for example, the famous first volume of Marx’s Capital, with its profuse rococo
ornamentation in the Hegelian style, now seems an abomination to me (for which,
from the Party standpoint, [Luxemburg joked] I must get 5 years’ hard labor and
10 years’ loss of civil rights….).” She hastened to add that Marx’s economic
theories were the bedrock of her own theoretical work, but also emphasized that
her “more mature” work was in “its form…extremely simple, without any
accessories, without coquetry or optical illusions, straightforward and reduced
to the barest essentials; I would even say ‘naked,’ like a block of marble.”
Delving
into theoretical questions — explaining the economic expansionism of
imperialism that arose out of the
accumulation of capital, which became the title of her 1913 classic — was a
creative labor through which “day and night I neither saw nor heard anything as
that one problem developed beautifully before my eyes.” The process of thinking
— as she slowly paced back and forth, “closely observed by [her cat] Mimi, who
lay on the red plush tablecloth, her little paws crossed, her intelligent head
following me” — and the actual process of writing combined as an experience of
trance-like and profound pleasure.[1]
Yet
this was someone for whom — despite her banter about Hegel — dialectical
thinking came most naturally. Applying the dialectical approach to her economic
studies, Luxemburg understood capitalism as an expansive system driven by the
dynamic of accumulation. Capital in the form of money is invested in capital in the form of raw materials and
tools and labor-power, which is transformed — by the squeezing of actual labor
out of the labor-power of the workers — into capital in the form of the commodities thereby produced, whose
increased value is realized through the sale of the commodities for more money
than was originally invested, which is the increased
capital out of which the capitalist extracts his profits, only to be driven
to invest more capital for the purpose of achieving ever greater capital
accumulation.
Luxemburg’s analysis of the capital accumulation process involves
a complex (and for an economic novice like myself, an overly-complex) critique
of the second volume of Marx’s Capital.
As part of her resolution of what she considers to be an under-developed and
incomplete aspect of Marx’s analysis of how surplus value is realized, she
focuses on the global dynamics of the capitalist system and argues that
imperialism is at the heart of capitalist development. As Harry Magdoff once
put it, “imperialism is not a matter of choice for a capitalist society; it is
the way of life of such a society.”[2]
In
her classic The Accumulation of Capital
(1913) she offers an incisive economic analysis of imperialism. There are
several distinctive features of Luxemburg’s theory of imperialism that sets it
off from that of other leading Marxist theorists — Rudolph Hilferding, Nikolai
Bukharin, and V.I. Lenin. She makes a great deal of the co-existence in the
world of different cultures, different types of society, and different modes of production (or forms of economy — different
economic systems). Historically the dominant form of economy worldwide was the
communal hunting and gathering mode of production, which was succeeded in many
areas by a more or less communistic agricultural form of economy which she
characterized as a primitive “peasant economy.”
This was succeeded in some areas by non-egalitarian societies dominated
by militarily powerful elites, constituting modes of production that she
labeled “slave economy” and “feudalism.” Sometimes co-existing with, sometimes
superceding, these was a “simple commodity production” in which artisans and
farmers, for example, would produce commodities for the market in order to
trade or sell for the purpose of acquiring other commodities that they might
need or want. This simple commodity mode of production is different from the
capitalist mode of production, which is driven by the already-described capital
accumulation process, overseen by an increasingly wealthy and powerful
capitalist minority.[3]
Three
features especially differentiate the analysis in The Accumulation of Capital from the perspectives of other
prominent Marxists.
1.
Luxemburg advances a controversial conceptualization of imperialism’s
relationship to the exploitation of the working class in the advanced
capitalist countries. Because workers receive less value than what they create,
they are unable to purchase and consume all that is produced. This
under-consumption means that capitalists must expand into non-capitalist areas,
seeking markets as well as raw materials and investment opportunities
(particularly new sources of labor) outside of the capitalist economic sphere.
“Non-capitalist organizations provide a fertile soil for
capitalism,” she noted, which means that “capital feeds on the ruins of such
organizations, and, although this non-capitalist milieu is indispensable for
accumulation, the latter proceeds, at the cost of this medium nevertheless, by
eating it up.” Penetration into non-capitalist economies facilitate the capital
accumulate process, but capitalist accumulation “corrodes and assimilates”
these economies. This constituted a new contradiction: “capital cannot
accumulate without the aid of non-capitalist organizations, nor, on the other
hand, can it tolerate their continued existence side by side with itself. Only
the continuous and progressive disintegration of non-capitalist organizations
makes accumulation of capital possible.” The inevitable tendency this leads to
will be “the standstill of accumulation,” which “means that the development of
the productive forces is arrested,” leading to capitalist collapse.[4]
(We will see that Luxemburg did not conceive of this leading to a
painless transition to socialism, but rather to the desperate escalation of
militarism and war.)
2.
Another distinctive quality of her conceptualization of imperialism is that it
is not restricted to “the highest stage” or “latest stage” of capitalism. Rather,
imperialism is something that one finds at the earliest beginnings of
capitalism — in the period of what Marx calls “primitive capitalist
accumulation” — and which continues non-stop, with increasing and overwhelming
reach and velocity, down to the present. Or as she puts it,
“capitalism in its full maturity also depends in all respects on
non-capitalist strata and social organizations existing side by side with it,”
and “since the accumulation of capital becomes impossible in all points without
non-capitalist surroundings, we cannot gain a true picture of it by assuming
the exclusive and absolute domination of the capitalist mode of production.” Quoting
Marx, she concluded: “The historical career of capitalism can only be
appreciated by taking them together. ‘Sweating blood and filth with every pore
from head to toe’ characterizes not only the birth of capital but also its
progress in the world at every step, arid thus capitalism prepares its own
downfall under ever more violent contortions and convulsions.” This meant, on
the international arena, “colonial policy, an international loan system — a
policy of spheres of interest — and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are
openly displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort
to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the
stern laws of the economic process.”[5]
3. Another
special feature of Luxemburg’s contribution is her anthropological sensitivity
to the impact of capitalist expansion on the rich variety of the world’s
peoples and cultures that one cannot find in the key works of Hilferding,
Lenin, and Bukharin.
The
survey of capitalist expansionism’s impact in her Accumulation of Capital includes such examples as:
- the
destruction of the English peasants and artisans;
- the
destruction of the native-American peoples (the so-called Indians);
- the
enslavement of African peoples by the European powers;
- the
ruination of small farmers in the mid-western and western regions of the
- the
onslaught of French colonialism in
- the
onslaught of British colonialism in
- British
incursions into
- the
onslaught of British colonialism in South Africa (with lengthy reference
to the three-way struggle of black African peoples, the Dutch Boers, and
the British).
“Each new colonial expansion is accompanied, as a matter of
course, by a relentless battle of capital against the social and economic ties
of the natives,” she wrote, “who are also forcibly robbed of their means of
production and labor power.” Observing that “from the point of view of the
primitive societies involved, it is a matter of life or death,” she noted that
the invariable consequence involved “permanent occupation of the colonies by
the military, native risings and punitive expeditions are the order of the day
for any colonial regime.” The economic underpinnings of such realities was
always emphasized: “Their means of production and their labor power no less
than their demand for surplus products is necessary to capitalism,” Luxemburg
wrote. “Yet the latter is fully determined to undermine their independence as
social units, in order to gain possession of their means of production and
labor power and to convert them into commodity buyers.” But the destructive impact of all this on the
cultures of the world’s peoples was emphasized by Luxemburg as by no other
Marxist theorist of her time: “The unbridled greed, the acquisitive instinct of
accumulation must by its very nature take every advantage of the conditions of
the market and can have no thought for the morrow. It is incapable of seeing
far enough to recognize the value of the economic monuments of an older civilization.”[6]
These
strengths in Luxemburg’s analysis were drawn together, two years later, in the
eloquent anti-war polemic composed from a prison cell:
Capitalist desire for imperialist expansion, as the expression of
its highest maturity in the last period of its life, has the economic tendency
to change the whole world into capitalistically producing nations, to sweep
away all superannuated, pre-capitalistic methods of production and society, to
subjugate all the riches of the earth and all means of production to capital,
to turn the laboring masses of all zones into wage slaves. In Africa and in
Asia, from the most northern regions to the southernmost point of South America
and the South Seas, the remnants of old communistic social groups, of feudal
society, of patriarchal systems, and of ancient handicraft production are
destroyed and stamped out by capitalism. Whole peoples are destroyed, ancient
civilizations are leveled to the ground, and in their place profiteering in its
most modern forms is being established.
This brutal triumphant procession of capitalism through the world,
accompanied by all the means of force, of robbery, and of infamy, has one
bright phase: it has created the premises for its own final overthrow, it has
established the capitalist world rule which, alone, the socialist world
revolution can follow. This is the only cultural and progressive aspect of the
great so-called works of culture that were brought to the primitive countries. To
capitalist economists and politicians, railroads, matches, sewerage systems,
and warehouses are progress and culture. Of themselves such works, grafted upon
primitive conditions are neither culture nor progress, for they too dearly paid
for with the sudden economic and cultural ruin of the peoples who must drink
down the bitter cup of misery and horror of two social orders, of traditional
agricultural landlordism, of super-modern, super-refined capitalist
exploitation, at one and the same time.[7]
It
can be argued that capitalism is more complex, more dynamic than Luxmburg’s
allows.[8]
There is more truth than she seems aware in her assertion that “the
accumulation of capital, as an historical process, depends upon non-capitalist
social strata and forms of social organization.” Non-capitalist regions of the
globe are certainly the target of capitalist penetration and degradation for
the sake of maximizing profits — but such penetration is also relentlessly
taking place in the multifaceted non-capitalist aspects of our lives and
environment, within highly developed capitalist countries. The destructive
profiteering expansion not only into the cultures and lives of people in
economically “underdeveloped” economies but also into the cultures of lives of
people who live highly developed economies. “Capital
needs the means of production and the labor power of the whole globe for
untrammeled accumulation,” Luxemburg wrote. “It cannot manage without the
natural resources and the labor power of all territories.”[9] This is true of all territories indeed, including the
territories of our bodies, our family life, our friendships, our creative
drives, our sexuality, our dreams, and multiple community and social and
cultural activities — all of which are permeated by pre-capitalist and
non-capitalist dimensions and energies even in expanding global regions where
an advanced capitalist economy predominates.
Paul Sweezy shrewdly cites Luxemburg’s comment that a conception
of “limitless of capital accumulation” will mean that “the sold soil of
objective historical necessity is cut from under the feet of socialism.”[10] Her analytical preference tilted her toward
the notion that not only were non-capitalist portions of the globe necessary
for the accumulation process, but that once these were inevitably incorporated
into the global capitalist economy, the accumulation process would break down —
propelling the laboring masses to socialist revolution. It cannot be denied —
the tendency of “limitless capital accumulation,” although rejected by
Luxemburg, has asserted itself in ways that dramatically undermined the
revolutionary socialist outcomes that she anticipated.
Regardless
of powerful criticisms leveled at Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital, her discussion of the workings and impacts
of imperialism clearly retain considerable validity. Modern economist Joan
Robinson once commented, after an extremely critical survey of The Accumulation of Capital, that “for
all of its confusions and exaggerations, this book shows more prescience than
any orthodox contemporary could claim.”[11]
The importance of foreign investment and foreign aid, the
process of “modernization,” the role of the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund, are all anticipated in her discussion of “international loans.” Noting
the dramatic increase in “the world-wide movement of capital, especially in
Asia and neighboring Europe: in Russia, Turkey, Persia, India, Japan, China,
and also in North Africa,” she observed that economically developing areas —
particularly newly independent countries — become targets for foreign loans
that while “indispensable for the emancipation of the rising capitalist states
… are yet the surest ties by which the old capitalist states maintain their
influence, exercise financial control and exert pressure on the customs,
foreign and commercial policy of the young capitalist states.” Luxemburg
observed that modernization schemes, such as railroad construction, irrigation
projects, etc., “almost exclusively served the purposes of an imperialist
policy, of economic monopolization and economic subjugation of the backward
communities,” devastating the original economic and cultural patterns and
relationships, drawing increasing numbers of people into the embrace of the
capitalist market. She also observed that “there was an element of usury in
every loan, anything between one-fifth and one-third of the money ostensibly
lent sticking to the fingers of the European bankers.” Asking “how-where were
the means to come from” that would pay off the mounting debts, she pointed to
the intensifying exertions and rising tax burdens of the peasant masses and
laboring poor. “Although it became evident at every
step that there were technical limits to the employment of forced labor for the
purposes of modern capital, yet this was amply compensated by capital's
unrestricted power of command over the pool of labor power, how long and under
what conditions men were to work, live and be exploited.”[12]
No
less dramatic is her perception of the economic role of militarism in the
globalization of the market economy:
Militarism fulfils a quite definite function in the history of
capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase of accumulation. It
plays a decisive part in the first stages of European capitalism, in the period
of the so-called 'primitive accumulation', as a means of conquering the New
World and the spice-producing countries of
But more than this, military spending “is in itself a province of
accumulation,” making the modern state a primary “buyer for the mass of
products containing the capitalized surplus value,” although in fact — in the
form of taxes — “the workers foot the bill.”[14]
In fact, the workers “foot the bill” of militarism in more ways
than one — which Luxemburg emphasized in her 1915 Junius Pamphlet, noting that “the world war is a turning point in
the course of imperialism,” when “for the first time, the destructive beasts that have been
loosed by capitalist Europe over all other parts of the world have sprung, with
one awful leap, into the midst of the European nations.” Integral to this was “the mass destruction of
the European proletariat.…Millions of human lives were destroyed in the Vosges,
in the Ardennes, in
Much
has happened since Luxemburg wrote these lines. But what she had to say so many
years ago has resonated in the subsequent history of the 20th
century, and in the realities of globalization that we have touched on earlier
in this volume.