Alternative Perspectives in Marxist Theory of Accumulation and Crisis

Abstract

Because of space limitations, some sections of the original version of this paper had to be cut. In particular, throughout the paper, discussions that mainly engaged technical issues in the labor theory of value or extended reviews of debates on particular concepts, have been cut. One section of the original paper, “the meaning of accumulation,” in which the foundations of the labor theory of value and its relation to crisis theory, has been entirely eliminated. Readers interested in this speciŽ c discussion can Ž nd a version of it in Erik Olin Wright, Class, Crisis and the State (London: Verso, 1978), pp. 113–124. There is not one Marxist theory of economic crisis, but several competing theories. While all Marxist perspectives on economic crisis tend to see crisis as growing out of the contradictions inherent in the process of capital accumulation, there is very little general consensus on which contradictions are most central to understanding crisis, or even on how the contradictions in accumulation should be conceptualized in the Ž rst place. This paper will attempt to lay bare the logical structure of each of the general Marxist perspectives on economic crisis and to provide a preliminary synthesis. I will argue that there is no intrinsic incompatibility in these diverse conceptions of the contradictions in accumulation if they are viewed as part of a historical process. SpeciŽ cally, I will make the following argument: