Accumulazione del capitale e crisi: “vecchi” concetti in un nuovo schema teorico

Abstract

In this paper I provide a new framework for representing the genesis and evolution dynamics of a pure capitalist economy. This framework allows me to show how such an economy would in fact be able to autonomously generate the demand for goods produced under the accumulation regime, a problem raised for the first time by Rosa Luxemburg in 1913, with reference to the enlarged reproduction schemes proposed by Marx in the second volume of Capital. However, in my framework such a possibility must be considered as purely coincidental and it absolutely does not protect a pure capitalist system from recurrent imbalances and crises caused by an insufficient flow of new entrepreneurs into production, that is the only concrete possibility to generate additional demand and positive monetary profits. Imbalances and crises could be removed exclusively by means of a creation of new money by the banking system. However, it is likely that the additional money will rapidly fuel the use of money borrowed by banks on the securities and equity markets – which are considered more rapidly profitable than real economic activities in periods of high uncertainty – feeding continuously speculative bubbles, the increase in distributional inequalities, and the risk of further systemic crises. These phenomena, in particular, are perfectly consistent with the history of capitalism of the last thirty years. My approach, although inspired by Marx, is based on hypotheses which are in part very different from the Marxian ones, in order to circumscribe (as far as possible) our field of investigation to the main aspects of the second volume of Capital.

Marx’s Capital; Accumulation; Crisis; Luxemburg; New Framework