ABSTRACT
The conditional analytical vision of the capitalist economic sysem, presented by Marx as the schema of expanded reproduction necessarily embraced the capital accumulation process. This process reflected what he saw as the most essential rationale of capitalist behaviour directed towards the continuing maximisation of the valorisation of capital. Capital accumulation had ramifications for the operations of the production process and its participants as well as for the circulation process. In the former, the quantitative and qualitative dimensions were directly affected by capitalists’ decisions about expansion and the choice of technology to be embodied in such expansion. Here Marx was highly sensitive to the social and economic implications of any technological change for workers. The requirements for an unimpeded circulation process in expanded reproduction were stringent. Capital accumulation required quantitative and qualitative changes to the inputs available to production as well as the appropriate pattern of growth of demand in concert with decisions to produce more and/or different commodities.
