In [OPE-L:4450], Rakesh Narpat Bhandari <rakeshb@Stanford.EDU> said, on 11/05/00: Major point: >>... Grossman was part of an effective >>machine to break Luxemburg's sword drawn against the bourgeoies order and >>both Stalinism (an accomplice to her theoretical murder) and socialism >>democracy (an accomplice to her personal murder) had good reasons for >>doing so.... [PZ] >Grossman defended her vision of breakdown on a different theoretical >basis. Grossman was a fierce critic of the Austro Marxists; this theory >is diametrically opposed to the disproportionality argument of >Preobrazhensky and the underconsumptionism of Varga (his ideas seem to >have had little influence on the debates in Stalinist Russia by Richard >B Day's excellent account The Crisis and the Crash). [RNB] There is NO reference to "breakdown" in her entire *Accumulation of Capital* until one gets to the very last paragraph. There is even an explicit statement from her that she does NOT offer foundation for a "vision of breakdown" ["in order to demonstrate the pure implications of capitalist reproduction we must rather consider it quite apart from the periodical cycles and crises" (first chapter, p. 35)]. So, right off, we see the caliber of this reading of Luxemburg. And Grossman is supposed to used as a new "foundation" for Marxian theory? This lack of care regarding Luxemburg's theoretical work became so common that I've become quite accustomed to checking for accuracy. >If it's theoretical independence from Stalinism and Social Democracy you >want, then Grossman will do you fine and Mattick is both theoretically \ >and politically opposed. [RNB] If you think Grossman was independent of Stalinism, try Martin Jay *The Dialectical Imagionation*, p. 17: "Grossmann's politics were grounded in a relatively unreflective enthusiasm for the Soviet Union". Rick Kuhn has wording more nuanced but quite similar in substance and with more research behind him. In my judgement, you could be on more solid ground accepting this observation and either saying it doesn't matter for his economic theory, or reconsidering your statement "I am still seeking to put Marxian theory on the foundations of Grossmann, Blake and Mattick Sr." Paul Z. *********************************************************************** Paul Zarembka, editor, RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY at ******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka P.S. Two minor points: >Well there is this criticism that she did not allow for how the >averaging of the profit rate may eliminate the surpluses. I asked what >you made of this important criticism. I replied in 4434: "I don't own a copy of Mattick's *Anti-Bolshesik Communism* and what I used is back in the library. In any case, I don't understand the passage above which you cite." >>Luxemburg's *Accumulation of Capital* is almost 450 pages of dense theory >>plus she wrote a long *Anti-critique*. >I have read the latter, plus Reform and revolution, and the Junius >Pamphlet, a couple of biographies, her critique of Bolshevism and other >writings. It's not like I have been pursuing a serious bourgeois >education. I have only been focusing on her economic theory.
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