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Fifty Years of Struggle over Marxism 1883-1932
109 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1932
About the author
Henryk Grossman
9 books6 followersalternative spelling: Henryk Grossmann
Polish economist, historian, and Marxist revolutionary active in both Poland and Germany.
Grossman's key contribution to political-economic theory was his book, The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System, a study in Marxian crisis theory. It was published in Leipzig months before the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
Polish economist, historian, and Marxist revolutionary active in both Poland and Germany.
Grossman's key contribution to political-economic theory was his book, The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System, a study in Marxian crisis theory. It was published in Leipzig months before the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
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November 14, 2024
quotes:
WHY MARXISM STRUGGLED TO GROW
Until the end of the seventies of the last century, circumstances for the understanding of Marx’s ideas were not particularly favourable, even within the socialist camp. A particular difficulty was that initially Capital was only available as a torso, as only one of several volumes. Almost another three decades passed before the volumes completing the system appeared (volume 2 in 1885, volume 3 in 1895). And a further fifteen years passed before Karl Kautsky brought out the last volume of Theories of surplus value (1910)
During the first decade after the founding of the German Empire it was hardly possible to speak of ‘Marxism’ in Germany (and still less in other countries). There was only a very loose connection between the workers’ movement and the theories of scientific socialism. Many years after Lassalle’s death the German workers’ movement was still under the influence of Lassalle’s theories and work
Lassalle’s pamphlets and demands, his ambiguous concept of the state, his complete lack of clarity about the goal of the party evidently expressed much more the labour movement’s lack of maturity at that time than the cohesive and magnificent edifice of Marx’s theory. Even the leading figures in the labour movement were, for a long time, unable to grasp key aspects of Marx’s theory.
Only gradually and in constant struggle against other views that were widespread in the labour movement (the struggle against Proudhonism and Bakuninism in the First International, Engels’s polemic against Dühring in 1878, etc.) did Marxist ideas permeate the workers’ movement. From 1883 Karl Kautsky sought to spread Marxist ideas as the editor of the party’s theoretical organ, “Neue Zeit”. However, the period of the Anti‐Socialist Law (1878‐90) was quite unfavourable for the theoretical consolidation of Marxism.
The great popularity that Marx’s lifework [Capital] achieved is due initially to those sections of volume 1 that describe the immediate process of production within the factory and thus make the situation of the working class, its exploitation by capital and everyday class struggles taking place before everyone’s eyes intelligible. So this volume became the ‘bible’ of the working class for decades. The fate of those parts of the work which present the historical tendencies of capitalist accumulation and the tendency towards the breakdown of capitalism that follow in their wake was quite different. Here Marx was so far in advance of his epoch intellectually that these parts of his work, at first, necessarily remained incomprehensible. Capitalism had not yet achieved the maturity that would have made its breakdown and the realisation of socialism an immediate reality.
WHY MARXISM WAS REVISED
after the end of the Anti‐Socialist Law (1890), when political socialism started to develop rapidly from a small, persecuted group into the largest party in Germany and its appeal encompassed broad layers of intellectuals and the petty bourgeoisie, far beyond the working class. The strength of Marxism apparently increased in this period. In the Erfurt Program (1891) it achieved a victorious expression. But, precisely at the time when the appearance of volume 3 of Capital (1895) publicly concluded Marx’s theoretical system, with the rapid blossoming of international capitalism and the strengthening of an opportunist labour aristocracy within the working class, a change occurred that was to be of the greatest significance for the further development of Marxist theory.
The victory of opportunism… is necessarily connected with the structural transformation of world capitalism, which exhibited extremely powerful development and increasingly showed its imperialist face during the last decade of the last century. Its fundamental economic traits are the replacement of free competition by monopoly and colonial expansion combined with bellicose entanglements.
Through capital exports, monopolistic domination and exploitation of huge regions that supply raw materials and provide outlets for capital investment in Central and South America, Asia and Africa, the bourgeoisie and the financial oligarchy of the capitalist great powers acquire billions in superprofits. These make it possible for them to win over an upper layer of the working class and the petty bourgeois following of the socialist parties with higher wages and various other advantages, so that these take an interest in colonial exploitation, are politically bound to them and enter a community of interests against the broad masses and the other countries. These upper layers were the bourgeoisie’s channels of influence into the proletariat.
The emergence of the labour aristocracy, which found expression politically in the formation of ‘bourgeois workers’ parties’ on the model of the Labour Party in England, is typical of all the imperialist countries. These layers, which found the revolutionary tenets of Marxist theory inconvenient and a hindrance to their practical efforts to cooperate with the bourgeoisie and state organs, soon went onto the offensive against Marxist theory with the argument that it was contradicted by capitalism’s real tendencies.
The rising strength of the trade union movement was, no doubt, the most effective lever for the enforcement of antiradical attitudes. For the leaders of the trade unions—the typical representatives of the labour aristocracy—reformism was tailor‐made. For these men, conducting the small‐scale war for entirely gradual improvements in the situation of the workers that were again and again threatened by setbacks, all radicalism represented a threat to the positions they had conquered.
WHAT REVISIONISTS CHANGED
(Revisionists’) main difference with Marxism was that the latter denied the possibility of a lasting improvement in the conditions of the working class under the current economic order (apart from temporary improvements for shorter periods) and advocated the opposite point of view: that, with its full development, the immanent powers of capitalism would necessarily lead to a worsening of workers’ conditions. In contrast, the representatives of reformism pointed out that, even under the existing economic order, a lasting improvement in the situation of the workers—whether by means of state legislation (pensions, accident and unemployment insurance) or by means of self‐help (by founding and expanding trade unions and consumer cooperatives)—was possible and already occurring.
In the hands of the trade union leaders the concept of ‘class struggle’ experienced a gradual transformation, so that little of its original content remained. Under the same influences, the attitude of the trade union leaders to the state also changed. They pointed out the benefits they saw for the working class in the state institutions of social insurance, a system they hoped to be able to expand further. Thus these circles felt compelled to revise the ideas previously inherited from Marx (‘revisionism’).
EDUARD BERNSTEIN
Revisionism is inseparably linked with the name Eduard Bernstein. He was the first to systematically demand a revision of Marx’s theory, arguing that it did not correspond with the actual development of capitalism, even though the former radical Georg von Vollmar had earlier developed similar ideas
The considerable influence Bernstein exercised on intellectuals can be explained by the fact that the boldness of his approach was initially captivating because, in contrast to the fear that Marxism was being petrified, it seemed to pave the way for the further development. At the same time, he won over those who, for opportunist reasons, did not wish to ‘commit’ themselves
Bernstein, who seemed to be a true disciple of the theory while Engels was still alive, emerged as a critic only after the death of the master, in his “Neue Zeit” articles of 1896‐7, on “Problems of socialism” (published in book form as “The preconditions of socialism”) Other writings by Bernstein are relevant: “How is scientific socialism possible?”; “Guiding principles for a social democratic”; “On the theory and history of socialism”.
Bernstein never openly described Marxist theory as a whole as false. It is an essential feature of revisionism that it neither had the intention of nor succeeded in constructing a complete theoretical edifice to replace Marx’s
Bernstein does not treat breakdown from the perspective of whether it was the necessary result of the immanent development of capitalism; whether with the existing level of economic development and the degree of maturity of the working class a sudden catastrophe might be to the advantage of social democracy. Bernstein answers these questions in the negative because there is a greater guarantee of enduring successes in steady forwards march than in the possibilities offered by a catastrophe. It is precisely in the theory of breakdown that Bernstein sees the quintessence of ‘utopianism’ in Marxism, because this makes the victory of socialism dependent on its ‘immanent economic necessity’... The victory of socialism does not depend on economic necessity but on the moral maturity of the working class, i.e. its realisation that socialism is desirable.
Ultimately Bernstein conjures away the final goal of socialism. (‘[T]he final goal … whatever it may be, is nothing to me, the movement everything.’) The final objective is subordinate; instead, the attention and energy of the working class should be concentrated on ‘immediate goals’, on ‘daily, detailed work’ which will lead to advance in cultural development, higher morality and legal conceptions.
when Bernstein gave up the final goal he simultaneously abandoned the revolutionary tactics necessary to achieve it. In contrast to Marx’s theory of class struggle and his conception that force is the midwife of every society that is coming into being, Bernstein emphasises parliamentary activity as the means for emancipating the working class. The idea of conquering political power through revolutionary action is supposedly a foreign body in Marxism, a remnant of Blanquism from which Engels parted towards the end of his life.
From his critique, Bernstein drew the conclusion that it was false and disastrous to count on great social catastrophes and to focus the party’s tactics on them. The utopia of a coming revolution had to be given up. Development blunts class antagonisms and democratises society. It is appropriate to promote this development.
If Bernstein was expecting the transition to socialism [to result] from the progressive development of the bourgeois legal system, from statutory social reform, Rosa Luxemburg explains, then he was committing a fundamental error with regard to the essence of capitalist class rule. This rests, in contrast to earlier class societies, not on legally anchored ‘acquired rights’ but on real economic forces. ‘In our juridical system there is not a single legal formula for the class domination of today.’ ‘No law obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism. Poverty, the lack of means of production’, which are taken from it not by law but by economic development, ‘obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism’. The exploitation of the working class as an economic process cannot, therefore, be abolished or moderated by legal provisions within the framework of bourgeois society.
REFORMISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
As already shown, reformism was the result of the relatively peaceful period of capitalist
development between 1872 and 1894. Revolutionary Marxist theory, itself the product of the revolutionary period of 1848, no longer seemed to suit this peaceful period. The reformist attempt to divest Marxism of its revolutionary character, in order to adapt it to the reformist practice of the peaceful work of construction, was ultimately doomed to theoretical failure.
The policy of imperialist expansion, which in the most advanced countries was temporarily able to secure advantages for the upper layer of the working class, at the turn of the century, led to a sharpening of all antagonisms in both domestic and foreign policy… A sharpening of domestic class antagonisms in all capitalist countries went in parallel with the growing tensions in foreign policy. The great advances of the socialist workers’ movement accelerated the process of combination of employers into powerful associations for struggle, which forced workers onto the defensive in all economic struggles. Kautsky demonstrated in 1908 “that the factors which had resulted in increased real wages over previous decades were all already going into reverse”. The period of rising real wages was replaced by falling wages and certainly not simply during periods of transient depression “but even in periods of prosperity”.
This entire development was strengthened and accelerated even more by the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The development, predicted by the reformists, of progressive improvement in the condition of the working class and the weakening of class struggles did not occur. There was, rather, a sharpening of class struggles. As it was apparent that the old trade union and parliamentary methods were no longer capable of achieving further gains, the working class was forced to consider new methods of struggle
If such theories were strongly utopian during the period before the War they completely lost
any connection with reality after the outbreak of the World War. In order to avoid shipwreck
on this contrast with reality, reformist theory was forced to adapt to it.
KARL RENNER AND THE STATE
Karl Renner already drew this conclusion… Marx’s entire period of activity was, according to Renner, during the liberal social era, with its individualistic‐anarchistic economic mode, for which the power of the state was a bogyman…This “capitalist society, which Marx experienced and described, does not exist any more”, something that Marxists have so far overlooked. The essential feature of the fundamental changes in the structure of society, which were completed from 1878 to 1914 consists of the ‘statification’ of the
previously stateless economy.
“the economy more and more exclusively serves the capitalist class, the state more and more predominantly the proletariat”. Consequently, the state is the tool, with the help of which the historical overthrow from capitalism to socialism will be carried out. But it is a “crazy conception” to think that the conquest of political power by the proletariat can be carried out through a sudden overthrow of the system, through a political surprise attack… The state will, rather, be conquered step by step in daily struggles. Its transformation is carried out through the gradual socialisation of all economic functions.
The purpose of Renner’s arbitrary construction, which cannot be full itemised here, is the justifications produced by the conclusions to which he comes: the working class has to affirm the contemporary state and, though the “policy of changing alliances” with individual bourgeois classes, painstakingly, step by step work its way up and “take power over bourgeois society
intellectually”… . As the proletariat affirms the state it must also affirm state policy.
there is also no “world proletariat”, which is only a “mystical unit”; in reality only national proletariats within state territories exist. The world economy is only coming into being, promoted by the tendency of individual states to extend their economic territories.
So long as capitalism persists in the economy and the anarchistic antagonism of states
in politics, wars are unavoidable, because competitive struggles among economic territories take place in two ways: peacefully through states’ trade agreements and aggressively through conquest. The imperialist war should not be judged ethically but should be assessed as a fact, just like trade policy. It is nothing other than the turning of “price competition into arms
competition”. At most, there should be efforts to “civilise war” and the extension of the
organisation of the world into a “peaceful association of nations”, through international law. So long, however, as such a “future, supranational organisation of the world” has not been achieved, “war remains possible and, in certain circumstances, necessary” because it concerns the existence of a state and its economy. As trade union work’s methods of struggle rest “on the basis of this capitalist order”, it must act positively in the struggle. No trade union desires the destruction of industry…. From the moment of the outbreak of war, (the proletariat) has no other possible attitude than “affiliation with its own state”.
WHY MARXISM STRUGGLED TO GROW
Until the end of the seventies of the last century, circumstances for the understanding of Marx’s ideas were not particularly favourable, even within the socialist camp. A particular difficulty was that initially Capital was only available as a torso, as only one of several volumes. Almost another three decades passed before the volumes completing the system appeared (volume 2 in 1885, volume 3 in 1895). And a further fifteen years passed before Karl Kautsky brought out the last volume of Theories of surplus value (1910)
During the first decade after the founding of the German Empire it was hardly possible to speak of ‘Marxism’ in Germany (and still less in other countries). There was only a very loose connection between the workers’ movement and the theories of scientific socialism. Many years after Lassalle’s death the German workers’ movement was still under the influence of Lassalle’s theories and work
Lassalle’s pamphlets and demands, his ambiguous concept of the state, his complete lack of clarity about the goal of the party evidently expressed much more the labour movement’s lack of maturity at that time than the cohesive and magnificent edifice of Marx’s theory. Even the leading figures in the labour movement were, for a long time, unable to grasp key aspects of Marx’s theory.
Only gradually and in constant struggle against other views that were widespread in the labour movement (the struggle against Proudhonism and Bakuninism in the First International, Engels’s polemic against Dühring in 1878, etc.) did Marxist ideas permeate the workers’ movement. From 1883 Karl Kautsky sought to spread Marxist ideas as the editor of the party’s theoretical organ, “Neue Zeit”. However, the period of the Anti‐Socialist Law (1878‐90) was quite unfavourable for the theoretical consolidation of Marxism.
The great popularity that Marx’s lifework [Capital] achieved is due initially to those sections of volume 1 that describe the immediate process of production within the factory and thus make the situation of the working class, its exploitation by capital and everyday class struggles taking place before everyone’s eyes intelligible. So this volume became the ‘bible’ of the working class for decades. The fate of those parts of the work which present the historical tendencies of capitalist accumulation and the tendency towards the breakdown of capitalism that follow in their wake was quite different. Here Marx was so far in advance of his epoch intellectually that these parts of his work, at first, necessarily remained incomprehensible. Capitalism had not yet achieved the maturity that would have made its breakdown and the realisation of socialism an immediate reality.
WHY MARXISM WAS REVISED
after the end of the Anti‐Socialist Law (1890), when political socialism started to develop rapidly from a small, persecuted group into the largest party in Germany and its appeal encompassed broad layers of intellectuals and the petty bourgeoisie, far beyond the working class. The strength of Marxism apparently increased in this period. In the Erfurt Program (1891) it achieved a victorious expression. But, precisely at the time when the appearance of volume 3 of Capital (1895) publicly concluded Marx’s theoretical system, with the rapid blossoming of international capitalism and the strengthening of an opportunist labour aristocracy within the working class, a change occurred that was to be of the greatest significance for the further development of Marxist theory.
The victory of opportunism… is necessarily connected with the structural transformation of world capitalism, which exhibited extremely powerful development and increasingly showed its imperialist face during the last decade of the last century. Its fundamental economic traits are the replacement of free competition by monopoly and colonial expansion combined with bellicose entanglements.
Through capital exports, monopolistic domination and exploitation of huge regions that supply raw materials and provide outlets for capital investment in Central and South America, Asia and Africa, the bourgeoisie and the financial oligarchy of the capitalist great powers acquire billions in superprofits. These make it possible for them to win over an upper layer of the working class and the petty bourgeois following of the socialist parties with higher wages and various other advantages, so that these take an interest in colonial exploitation, are politically bound to them and enter a community of interests against the broad masses and the other countries. These upper layers were the bourgeoisie’s channels of influence into the proletariat.
The emergence of the labour aristocracy, which found expression politically in the formation of ‘bourgeois workers’ parties’ on the model of the Labour Party in England, is typical of all the imperialist countries. These layers, which found the revolutionary tenets of Marxist theory inconvenient and a hindrance to their practical efforts to cooperate with the bourgeoisie and state organs, soon went onto the offensive against Marxist theory with the argument that it was contradicted by capitalism’s real tendencies.
The rising strength of the trade union movement was, no doubt, the most effective lever for the enforcement of antiradical attitudes. For the leaders of the trade unions—the typical representatives of the labour aristocracy—reformism was tailor‐made. For these men, conducting the small‐scale war for entirely gradual improvements in the situation of the workers that were again and again threatened by setbacks, all radicalism represented a threat to the positions they had conquered.
WHAT REVISIONISTS CHANGED
(Revisionists’) main difference with Marxism was that the latter denied the possibility of a lasting improvement in the conditions of the working class under the current economic order (apart from temporary improvements for shorter periods) and advocated the opposite point of view: that, with its full development, the immanent powers of capitalism would necessarily lead to a worsening of workers’ conditions. In contrast, the representatives of reformism pointed out that, even under the existing economic order, a lasting improvement in the situation of the workers—whether by means of state legislation (pensions, accident and unemployment insurance) or by means of self‐help (by founding and expanding trade unions and consumer cooperatives)—was possible and already occurring.
In the hands of the trade union leaders the concept of ‘class struggle’ experienced a gradual transformation, so that little of its original content remained. Under the same influences, the attitude of the trade union leaders to the state also changed. They pointed out the benefits they saw for the working class in the state institutions of social insurance, a system they hoped to be able to expand further. Thus these circles felt compelled to revise the ideas previously inherited from Marx (‘revisionism’).
EDUARD BERNSTEIN
Revisionism is inseparably linked with the name Eduard Bernstein. He was the first to systematically demand a revision of Marx’s theory, arguing that it did not correspond with the actual development of capitalism, even though the former radical Georg von Vollmar had earlier developed similar ideas
The considerable influence Bernstein exercised on intellectuals can be explained by the fact that the boldness of his approach was initially captivating because, in contrast to the fear that Marxism was being petrified, it seemed to pave the way for the further development. At the same time, he won over those who, for opportunist reasons, did not wish to ‘commit’ themselves
Bernstein, who seemed to be a true disciple of the theory while Engels was still alive, emerged as a critic only after the death of the master, in his “Neue Zeit” articles of 1896‐7, on “Problems of socialism” (published in book form as “The preconditions of socialism”) Other writings by Bernstein are relevant: “How is scientific socialism possible?”; “Guiding principles for a social democratic”; “On the theory and history of socialism”.
Bernstein never openly described Marxist theory as a whole as false. It is an essential feature of revisionism that it neither had the intention of nor succeeded in constructing a complete theoretical edifice to replace Marx’s
Bernstein does not treat breakdown from the perspective of whether it was the necessary result of the immanent development of capitalism; whether with the existing level of economic development and the degree of maturity of the working class a sudden catastrophe might be to the advantage of social democracy. Bernstein answers these questions in the negative because there is a greater guarantee of enduring successes in steady forwards march than in the possibilities offered by a catastrophe. It is precisely in the theory of breakdown that Bernstein sees the quintessence of ‘utopianism’ in Marxism, because this makes the victory of socialism dependent on its ‘immanent economic necessity’... The victory of socialism does not depend on economic necessity but on the moral maturity of the working class, i.e. its realisation that socialism is desirable.
Ultimately Bernstein conjures away the final goal of socialism. (‘[T]he final goal … whatever it may be, is nothing to me, the movement everything.’) The final objective is subordinate; instead, the attention and energy of the working class should be concentrated on ‘immediate goals’, on ‘daily, detailed work’ which will lead to advance in cultural development, higher morality and legal conceptions.
when Bernstein gave up the final goal he simultaneously abandoned the revolutionary tactics necessary to achieve it. In contrast to Marx’s theory of class struggle and his conception that force is the midwife of every society that is coming into being, Bernstein emphasises parliamentary activity as the means for emancipating the working class. The idea of conquering political power through revolutionary action is supposedly a foreign body in Marxism, a remnant of Blanquism from which Engels parted towards the end of his life.
From his critique, Bernstein drew the conclusion that it was false and disastrous to count on great social catastrophes and to focus the party’s tactics on them. The utopia of a coming revolution had to be given up. Development blunts class antagonisms and democratises society. It is appropriate to promote this development.
If Bernstein was expecting the transition to socialism [to result] from the progressive development of the bourgeois legal system, from statutory social reform, Rosa Luxemburg explains, then he was committing a fundamental error with regard to the essence of capitalist class rule. This rests, in contrast to earlier class societies, not on legally anchored ‘acquired rights’ but on real economic forces. ‘In our juridical system there is not a single legal formula for the class domination of today.’ ‘No law obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism. Poverty, the lack of means of production’, which are taken from it not by law but by economic development, ‘obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism’. The exploitation of the working class as an economic process cannot, therefore, be abolished or moderated by legal provisions within the framework of bourgeois society.
REFORMISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
As already shown, reformism was the result of the relatively peaceful period of capitalist
development between 1872 and 1894. Revolutionary Marxist theory, itself the product of the revolutionary period of 1848, no longer seemed to suit this peaceful period. The reformist attempt to divest Marxism of its revolutionary character, in order to adapt it to the reformist practice of the peaceful work of construction, was ultimately doomed to theoretical failure.
The policy of imperialist expansion, which in the most advanced countries was temporarily able to secure advantages for the upper layer of the working class, at the turn of the century, led to a sharpening of all antagonisms in both domestic and foreign policy… A sharpening of domestic class antagonisms in all capitalist countries went in parallel with the growing tensions in foreign policy. The great advances of the socialist workers’ movement accelerated the process of combination of employers into powerful associations for struggle, which forced workers onto the defensive in all economic struggles. Kautsky demonstrated in 1908 “that the factors which had resulted in increased real wages over previous decades were all already going into reverse”. The period of rising real wages was replaced by falling wages and certainly not simply during periods of transient depression “but even in periods of prosperity”.
This entire development was strengthened and accelerated even more by the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The development, predicted by the reformists, of progressive improvement in the condition of the working class and the weakening of class struggles did not occur. There was, rather, a sharpening of class struggles. As it was apparent that the old trade union and parliamentary methods were no longer capable of achieving further gains, the working class was forced to consider new methods of struggle
If such theories were strongly utopian during the period before the War they completely lost
any connection with reality after the outbreak of the World War. In order to avoid shipwreck
on this contrast with reality, reformist theory was forced to adapt to it.
KARL RENNER AND THE STATE
Karl Renner already drew this conclusion… Marx’s entire period of activity was, according to Renner, during the liberal social era, with its individualistic‐anarchistic economic mode, for which the power of the state was a bogyman…This “capitalist society, which Marx experienced and described, does not exist any more”, something that Marxists have so far overlooked. The essential feature of the fundamental changes in the structure of society, which were completed from 1878 to 1914 consists of the ‘statification’ of the
previously stateless economy.
“the economy more and more exclusively serves the capitalist class, the state more and more predominantly the proletariat”. Consequently, the state is the tool, with the help of which the historical overthrow from capitalism to socialism will be carried out. But it is a “crazy conception” to think that the conquest of political power by the proletariat can be carried out through a sudden overthrow of the system, through a political surprise attack… The state will, rather, be conquered step by step in daily struggles. Its transformation is carried out through the gradual socialisation of all economic functions.
The purpose of Renner’s arbitrary construction, which cannot be full itemised here, is the justifications produced by the conclusions to which he comes: the working class has to affirm the contemporary state and, though the “policy of changing alliances” with individual bourgeois classes, painstakingly, step by step work its way up and “take power over bourgeois society
intellectually”… . As the proletariat affirms the state it must also affirm state policy.
there is also no “world proletariat”, which is only a “mystical unit”; in reality only national proletariats within state territories exist. The world economy is only coming into being, promoted by the tendency of individual states to extend their economic territories.
So long as capitalism persists in the economy and the anarchistic antagonism of states
in politics, wars are unavoidable, because competitive struggles among economic territories take place in two ways: peacefully through states’ trade agreements and aggressively through conquest. The imperialist war should not be judged ethically but should be assessed as a fact, just like trade policy. It is nothing other than the turning of “price competition into arms
competition”. At most, there should be efforts to “civilise war” and the extension of the
organisation of the world into a “peaceful association of nations”, through international law. So long, however, as such a “future, supranational organisation of the world” has not been achieved, “war remains possible and, in certain circumstances, necessary” because it concerns the existence of a state and its economy. As trade union work’s methods of struggle rest “on the basis of this capitalist order”, it must act positively in the struggle. No trade union desires the destruction of industry…. From the moment of the outbreak of war, (the proletariat) has no other possible attitude than “affiliation with its own state”.
March 22, 2023
Besides a few quibbles, a wonderful survey; elaborating and summarising key debates and perspectives in partisan though mostly fair-minded fashion, from a revolutionary Marxist perspective.
June 2, 2023
The text goes over the various debates within Marxism from the 1880s to the 1930s. Starting from the period of the collapse of the Second International, it examines the theories that were in trend.
It begins by elaborating on Lassalle's state socialist approach, and explaining its internal incoherence. Grossman places Marx's Capital in proper historical context, and explains its reception in the German social democratic labour movement. The text goes on to address Bernstein who is usually associated with revisionism.
Indeed, the text also places the very process of dilution and revising of Marxist theory, in the context of historical development. We see that as capitalism goes through periods of boom and relative stability, the short-sighted leaders in the labour movement begin to propose theories about gradual transformation of capitalism.
Tugan-Baranovsky and Bukharin have a conception of unlimited growth of capitalism, and disregards what Grossman calls 'theory of breakdown' (which basically refers to the theory of crisis of overproduction, leading to breakdown. Today, crisis theory automatically implies a theory of breakdown, however that wasn't the case for Tugan-Baranovsky and Bukharin.) Indeed, Grossman is known as a founding figure of what we know today as the Marxist theory of crisis. He does a great job at debunking these incoherent theories that were in vogue.
Grossman goes over the debates between Bernstein and Kautsky, while exposing the limitations of both sides in the debate. It was Rosa Luxemburg who was able to identify that both Bernstein and Kautsky had given up on the very premises of Marxism that led to revolutionary conclusions. As Grossman mentions, Lenin was arguably one of the first leaders who were able to restore Marx's theory of crisis in its unadulterated and accurate form. Later in the book, Rosa's underconsumptionism is also put to critique.
Another material basis for reformism, seems to be what is called the 'labour aristocracy', those tiny layers of the working class that benefit from periods of boom. It is among these sections of society, that reformist ideas find takers. Perhaps, one could also take a look at Ernest Mandel's work on the levels of bureaucratization (written much later than this book), to make further sense of the problem and link it with bureaucratization.
Rick Kuhn from Socialist Alternative, who translated this book to English, must be applauded for his work. His introduction to the book is a result of meticulous research, and helps put this very book in context, and also explain some of the limitations of Grossman's work itself.
It begins by elaborating on Lassalle's state socialist approach, and explaining its internal incoherence. Grossman places Marx's Capital in proper historical context, and explains its reception in the German social democratic labour movement. The text goes on to address Bernstein who is usually associated with revisionism.
Indeed, the text also places the very process of dilution and revising of Marxist theory, in the context of historical development. We see that as capitalism goes through periods of boom and relative stability, the short-sighted leaders in the labour movement begin to propose theories about gradual transformation of capitalism.
Tugan-Baranovsky and Bukharin have a conception of unlimited growth of capitalism, and disregards what Grossman calls 'theory of breakdown' (which basically refers to the theory of crisis of overproduction, leading to breakdown. Today, crisis theory automatically implies a theory of breakdown, however that wasn't the case for Tugan-Baranovsky and Bukharin.) Indeed, Grossman is known as a founding figure of what we know today as the Marxist theory of crisis. He does a great job at debunking these incoherent theories that were in vogue.
Grossman goes over the debates between Bernstein and Kautsky, while exposing the limitations of both sides in the debate. It was Rosa Luxemburg who was able to identify that both Bernstein and Kautsky had given up on the very premises of Marxism that led to revolutionary conclusions. As Grossman mentions, Lenin was arguably one of the first leaders who were able to restore Marx's theory of crisis in its unadulterated and accurate form. Later in the book, Rosa's underconsumptionism is also put to critique.
Another material basis for reformism, seems to be what is called the 'labour aristocracy', those tiny layers of the working class that benefit from periods of boom. It is among these sections of society, that reformist ideas find takers. Perhaps, one could also take a look at Ernest Mandel's work on the levels of bureaucratization (written much later than this book), to make further sense of the problem and link it with bureaucratization.
Rick Kuhn from Socialist Alternative, who translated this book to English, must be applauded for his work. His introduction to the book is a result of meticulous research, and helps put this very book in context, and also explain some of the limitations of Grossman's work itself.
September 4, 2019
Clear and enlightening book covering the changing nature of the Marxist movement with regards to the crisis in Marxism( 1914) and its revival(1917). Book makes a major contribution towards not just the political machinations of reformism but highlighting the Eclectic economic theories which accompanied it.
October 12, 2014
Congratulations and thanks to Rick Kuhn et al for making available this classic survey by Grossman - I wholeheartedly recommend it to all friends of Marx's Theory of Crisis and stalwart flag carriers for independent politics for the proletariat ... this was and remains an important achievement and much can be gained by return to, and intelligent discussion of its implications - if we had had this in the 1980's it would have stood well alongside the leading documents of the time ... as we began to discover in english translation Grossman's writings for the first time.
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