ABSTRACT
This contribution extends Marx’s concept of accumulation to include action logics of professionals. It takes the case of tax professionals in Germany and argues, with reference to the sociology of profession and empirical data on the tax consulting industry, that actors accumulate capital due to professional skills and activities, the institutional framework of the profession and political-cultural legitimation. Professionals are distinguished from workers by the right of self-government, which includes the authority to monitor quality standards and define basic principles of professional practice, and a fee structure. In return, professionals should provide high-quality services which bring social benefits. Above-average fees and salaries of professionals and various tax scandals indicate that a significant number of professionals withdraw large sums of capital from the accumulation process in a way that was not foreseen neither in ideal typical models of the profession nor in Marx’s theory of accumulation. The latter did not take sufficient account of the quality of work and the actors’ scopes of action. Nonetheless, at the macro level, capital employs services as a knowledge-based means of production and also puts pressure on politics to shape tax legislation in the interest of mobile capital. The context of professional action can thus be captured with an extended accumulation model.
