The Accumulation of Capital” – Economic Underpinnings of Rosa Luxemburg’s Democratic Socialism

Abstract

Left critics of the statist policies pursued by social democrats and Soviet communists often drew inspiration from Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of union and party bureaucracies and her uncompromised commitment to the self-emancipation of the working class. But usually they neglected, or even rejected, her economic theory. Contrary to such a separation between Luxemburg’s political and economic ideas, this paper argues that the latter are an indispensible part of any strategy that aims at a democratic alternative to the statist socialisms represented by social democrats and Soviet communists.

In ‘Accumulation of Capital’, Luxemburg shows that accumulation relies on the capitalist penetration, or colonization, of non-capitalist economies. Politically, this points at the necessity of building strategic rather than just tactical coalitions between workers struggles and anti-colonial struggles, whereby the latter also include significant parts of the women’s and environmental movements. Luxemburg also explains that the limits to capital accumulation lead to prolonged periods of struggles. These periods also include the moments of decision that can ultimately lead to socialism or barbarism. The paper concludes that the War on Terror and the Great Recession opened such a period similar to that beginning with the outbreak of WWI in 1914, a year after the publication of ‘Accumulation of Capital’