I was really looking forward to reading this book: I am a great admirer of Rosa Luxemburg and the shorter works which I have had the pleasure of reading have all been very down to earth, sensible and just what socialism needs.

This book was a BIG disappointment. It is very certain of its own rectitude and the fallacy of every other theory, it sees to me, to nit pick on miniscule details, over repeat and is incredibly dry. I'm afraid that I didn't finish it... a couple of hundred pages in, I simply felt that I was wading in treacle and, tat it hadn't sufficient pay back to continue the slog. ( )

In her theoretical work, Rosa Luxemburg was a slightly unorthodox follower of Marx. The Accumulation of Capital consists of a critical investigation into certain aspects of Marx’s theory of the capitalist process, coupled with an attempt to suggest an economic explanation of the manner in which industrial capital expands into backward areas. The twin points of her analysis--capital accumulation in a ‘closed’ system, and capital expansion into pre-industrial areas--are of importance to any theory, liberal or socialist, which seeks to explain the mechanism of economic growth. By appearing to have demonstrated that capital accumulation was impossible in a closed system, and that capitalism could maintain its rhythm—and avert automatic breakdown--only by constant expansion into backward areas, she seemed not merely to have accounted for the contemporary phenomenon of imperialism, but to have indicated a definite historical limit to the process. For the non-capitalist sector of the world economy was steadily shrinking, and thus the moment was approaching when the process of accumulation would falter. Capitalist expansion was undermining its own foundations, and the system’s breakdown had become a historical certainty.

The analytical faults of this construction did not escape her critics, among whom the Austro-Marxists took the lead immediately upon the book’s appearance in 1913. The relevant point here is that these critics fastened upon her assertion that capital accumulation was impossible in a ‘closed’ system, and then proceeded to demonstrate that she was mistaken. However, if they were right in holding that capitalist accumulation could in principle continue without limit, and that Marx’s analysis did not presage anything in the nature of automatic breakdown, it was not altogether clear on what grounds Socialists were confident of victory.

The remarkable thing about Rosa Luxemburg’s performance is that, although her central thesis was mistaken, she managed to draw attention to the peculiar mechanism of economic growth underlying the worldwide expansion of capitalism during the past two centuries. For although it is not true to say that capitalism keeps going only by expanding into non-capitalist regions, it is a fact that such a process of expansion had become characteristic of the system as it operated in the era of Western hegemony. It was also fatal to Luxemburg’s rather apocalyptic vision of economic breakdown giving rise to political catastrophes. That the ‘breakdown’ thesis is not really essential to ‘catastrophism’ became apparent a few years later in Russia when most of her former adherents went over to Lenin; Lenin did not operate with any kind of mechanical causality so far as economics was concerned. In his empirical fashion, Lenin was ready to make use of any material that came to hand. Nor was Trotsky inclined to make his prognosis for revolution dependent upon one particular theory of imperialism rather than another. Nevertheless, Luxemburg’s concern with the question of how capitalism manages to avert automatic breakdown pointed forward to the discussions of the 1930s. [1961]

RL was one of the great marxist thinkers of the 19th century, and a feminist, too, along with Clara Zetkin. Ed's daughter is named after her!