ABSTRACT
Marx’s diagram of enlarged reproduction cannot explain the actual and
historical process of accumulation. And why? Because of the very
premises of the diagram. The diagram sets out to describe the accumu-
lative process on the assumption that the capitalists and workers are the
sole agents of capitalist consumption. We have seen that Marx consist-
ently and deliberately assumes the universal and exclusive domination
of the capitalist mode of production as a theoretical premise of his
analysis in all three volumes of Capital. Under these conditions, there
can admittedly be no other classes of society than capitalists and work-
ers; as the diagram has it, all ‘third persons’ of capitalist society-civil
servants, the liberal professions, the clergy, etc.—must, as consumers,
be counted in with these two classes, and preferably with the capitalist
class. This axiom, however, is a theoretical contrivance-real life has
never known a self-sufficient capitalist society under the exclusive
domination of the capitalist mode of production. This theoretical
device is perfectly admissible so long as it merely helps to demonstrate
the problem in its integrity and does not interfere with its very condi-
tions. A case in point is the analysis of simple reproduction of the
aggregate social capital, where the problem itself rests upon a fiction: in
a society producing by capitalist methods, i.e. a society which creates
surplus value, the whole of the latter is taken to be consumed by the
capitalists who appropriate it. The object is to present the forms of
social production and reproduction under these given conditions. Here
the very formulation of the problem implies that production knows no
other consumers than capitalists and workers and thus strictly con-
forms to Marx’s premise: universal and exclusive domination of the
capitalist mode of production. The implications of both fictions are the
same. Similarly, it is quite legitimate to postulate absolute dominance
of capital in an analysis of the accumulation of individual capitals, such
as is given in Capital, volume i. The reproduction of individual capitals
is an element in total social reproduction but one which follows an
independent course, contrary to the movements of the other elements.
