ABSTRACT
A capitalist firm accumulates capital when it uses a portion of its received surplus value to purchase additional means of production and labor power, then using the latter to produce capitalist commodities. When Marx introduces accumulation in the last quarter of Capital volume 1, he sets in motion not only capitalist firms but also the interacting system they together form. His accumulation, unlike Adam Smith's, is "antagonistic": the accumulation of wealth is also accumulation of excess population, labor market distress and renewed entrapment of workers in an unfair and unreliable position of dependence. As Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy had it in 1966, capitalism undermines itself once accumulation generates market concentration in a wide array of industries. David Ruccio and Jack Amariglio develop a related critique in the context of their critical evaluation of modernist tendencies in modern economics. Like Stephen Cullenberg they stress parallels between Marxian accumulation arguments and neoclassical economics.
