Tugan-Baranovsky is dealt with last here, despite the fact that he already had formulated his conception in Russian in 1894, before Struve and Bulgakov. This is in part because it was not until later that he developed his theory in a more mature form in his Studies on the Theory and History of Commercial Crises in England (1901)* and Theoretical Foundations of Marxism (1905),† which were published in German; and in part because he drew the most far-reaching consequences from the premises commonly held by the Marxist critics referred to in this study.
Like Bulgakov, Tugan-Baranovsky takes Marx’s analysis of social reproduction as his starting point. He, too, finds in this analysis the key to navigating his way through this whole labyrinthine and bewildering complex of problems. However, whereas Bulgakov, the enthusiastic adept of Marx’s doctrine, attempts to develop it in a way that is faithful to his master, to whom he simply imputes his own conclusions, Tugan-Baranovsky does the opposite, and admonishes Marx that he did not understand how to make use of his own brilliant investigation of the reproduction process. The most important general conclusion that Tugan-Baranovsky draws from Marx’s propositions, and that he makes the pivot of his whole theory, is the following: contrary to the assumptions of the skeptics, capitalist accumulation is not only possible given the capitalist forms of revenue and consumption, but it is also entirely independent of them. Rather than consumption, it is production itself that forms its own best market. Thus production and its market are identical; given, then, that the expansion of production has no intrinsic restrictions, it follows that the capacity for its products to be absorbed is similarly unconfined—i.e. the market for its products knows no restrictions. He argues as follows:
The schema quoted was to prove conclusively a postulate that, though simple enough, might easily give rise to objections, unless the process be adequately understood—the postulate, namely, that capitalist production creates a market for itself. So long as it is possible to expand social production, if the productive forces are adequate for this purpose, the proportionate division of social production must also bring about a corresponding expansion of the demand inasmuch as under such conditions all newly produced goods represent a newly created purchasing power for the acquisition of other goods. Comparing simple reproduction of the social capital with its reproduction on a rising scale, we arrive at the most important conclusion that in capitalist economy the demand for commodities is in a sense independent of the total volume of social consumption. Absurd as it may seem to “common-sense,” it is yet possible that the volume of social consumption as a whole goes down while at the same time the aggregate social demand for commodities grows.257
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*In The Accumulatiom of Capital, Luxemburg uses the German edition of Tugan-Baranovsky’s work, Theorie und Geschichte der Handelskrisen in England (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1901). The book was originally published in Russian in 1894 under the title, Promyshlennye krizisy v sovremennoy Anglii, ikh prichiny i vliianie na narodnuyu zhizn’. For an English translation of parts 1 and 7 of the book, see “Studies on the Theory and the History of Business Crises in England,” in Value, Capitalist Dynamics and Money, Vol. 18 (2000), pp. 53–80 and 81–110.
†See Tugan-Baranovsky, Theoretischen Grundlagen des Marxismus (Leipzig: Dunckler, 1905).
Likewise, Tugan-Baranovsky subsequently states the following:
Arising from the abstract analysis of the reproductive process of social capital we have formed the conclusion that nothing will be left over of the social product in view of the proportionate division of the social capital.258
On this basis, Tugan-Baranovsky revises Marx’s theory of crisis, which supposedly rests on the Sismondian theory of “underconsumption”:
The widespread view, shared to a certain extent by Marx, is that the poverty of the workers—i.e. of the great majority of the population—renders the realization of the products of an ever-expanding capitalist production impossible due to insufficient demand. This view is to be rejected as mistaken. We have seen that capitalist production creates its own market—consumption being only one of the moments of capitalist production. If social production were organized through planning, and the managers of production were thoroughly equipped with information about demand and with the power to transfer labor and capital freely from one branch of production to another, then, however low the level of social consumption, the supply of commodities would not exceed the demand.259
According to Tugan-Baranovsky, the only circumstance that periodically causes the market to be flooded is the lack of proportionality in the expansion of production. He describes the course of capitalist accumulation under this presupposition as follows:
What would the workers … produce if production were allocated proportionately? Obviously their own means of subsistence and means of production? Which purpose would these serve? To expand production in the second year. The production of which products? Again, that of means of production and subsistence for the workers—and so on ad infinitum.260
It should be noted that this game of question and answer is not intended as self-satire—it is meant to be taken seriously. The result is thus the prospect of an endless accumulation of capital:
If the expansion of production has no practical limits, then we must assume that the expansion of markets is equally unlimited, for if social production is proportionately organized, there is no limit to the expansion of the market other than the productive forces available.261
Since production generates its own demand in this way, the external trade of capitalist states is thus assigned the peculiar mechanical role with which Bulgakov has already familiarized us. For the U.K., for example, the external market is absolutely necessary:
Does not this prove that capitalist production creates a surplus product for which there is no room on the internal market? Why, come to that, does England require an external market? The answer is not difficult: because a considerable part of England’s purchasing power is expended on obtaining foreign commodities. The import of foreign commodities for the English home market also makes it essential to export English commodities abroad. Since England cannot manage without importing from abroad, exports are a vital condition for that country, since without them she would not be able to pay for her imports.262
Here, then, agricultural imports are once again characterized as the stimulus, as the decisive factor, and likewise two categories of countries are identified—“an agricultural type and an industrial type”—that depend by nature on exchange with one another, quite in accordance with the model of the German professors.
Which argument, then, does Tugan-Baranovsky offer to justify his bold solution of the accumulation problem, which is also the basis upon which he also elucidates the problem of crises and a whole series of further questions? It is hard to believe, and therefore all the more important to note: Tugan-Baranovsky’s proof consists exclusively and entirely in the Marxian schema of expanded reproduction. Ni plus ni moins.* Although Tugan-Baranovsky does expand elsewhere on Marx’s “abstract analysis of the reproductive process of social capital” and on the “compelling logic” of his analysis, the whole “analysis” reduces itself to the transcription of the Marxian schema of expanded reproduction, for which he has merely chosen a different set of figures. There is no trace to be found of any other proof anywhere in Tugan-Baranovsky’s study. Now, in Marx’s schema, accumulation, production, realization, exchange, and reproduction all run like clockwork. Furthermore, such “accumulation” can indeed be continued “ad infinitum”—for as long as paper and ink will allow, that is. This harmless exercise with arithmetic equations on paper is something that Tugan-Baranovsky passes off in all seriousness as the proof that things play out this way in reality: “The schemas we have adduced are bound to prove conclusively that …”
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*“No more, no less.”
Furthermore, on another occasion he counters [John A.] Hobson, who is convinced of the impossibility of accumulation, in the following way: “Schema No. 2 of the reproduction of social capital on an expanding scale corresponds to the case of capital accumulation observed by Hobson. But does this schema show an excess product arising? Far from it.”263
Thus, because no excess product is generated “in the schema,” Hobson, too, has already been disproved and the matter is concluded.
In actual fact, Tugan-Baranovsky knows only too well that in harsh reality things do not proceed quite so smoothly. There are continual fluctuations in exchange, and periodic crises. However, crises only occur because proportionality is not maintained in the expansion of production—i.e. the proportions of “Schema No. 2” are not adhered to ex ante.* If these proportions were adhered to, then there would be no crises, and everything would pass off as neatly in capitalist production as on paper. Now Tugan-Baranovsky is forced to concede that it is permissible to disregard crises, given that the reproduction process as a whole as an ongoing process is being considered. Although “proportionality” might be compromised at any given moment, it will always be reestablished as an average over the economic cycle as a whole through constant deviations, through day-to-day price fluctuations and, periodically, through crises. That this “proportionality” is, on the whole, actually adhered to somehow or another is proved by the circumstance that the capitalist economy persists and continues to develop—otherwise an almighty furor and an economic collapse would have long since been experienced. On average, over the long run, Tugan-Baranovsky’s proportionality is ultimately maintained, from which it can be concluded that reality conforms to “Schema No. 2.” Furthermore, since this schema can be infinitely extended, it follows that the accumulation of capital can proceed ad infinitum.
What is striking in all this is not so much the result at which Tugan-Baranovsky arrives, namely the assumption that the schema actually corresponds to the actual course of things (indeed, it has been seen above that Bulgakov also shared this belief), but rather the fact that Tugan-Baranovsky does not even deem it necessary to pose the question as to whether the “schema” is correct, and that, instead of proving the schema, he does the opposite and regards the schema itself, the arithmetic exercise on paper, as proof that things behave this way in reality, too. Bulgakov made a sincere effort to project the Marxian schema onto the actual concrete relations of the capitalist economy and capitalist exchange, and sought to struggle through the resulting difficulties—although admittedly he failed to do so, ultimately remaining bogged down in Marx’s analysis, which he himself regarded as being patently unfinished and abortive. Tugan-Baranovsky, on the other hand, requires no such proofs, and does not trouble his head too much: since the arithmetic proportions resolve satisfactorily and can be extended at will, this itself is precisely proof that capitalist accumulation can likewise proceed indefinitely, providing the said “proportionality” obtains, even if this is only achieved by a roundabout route, as Tugan-Baranovsky himself would not deny.
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*Before the event.
As a matter of fact, Tugan-Baranovsky does have an indirect proof that the schema and its strange results correspond to reality and represent its true reflection. This consists in the circumstance that, in capitalist society, quite in accordance with the schema, human consumption is subordinated to production, such that the former is the means and the latter an end in itself, just as human labor is put on an equal footing with the “labor” of machines:
Technical progress is expressed by the fact that the means of labor, the machine, increases more and more in importance as compared to living labor, to the worker himself. Means of production play an ever-growing part in the productive process and on the commodity market. Compared to the machine, the worker recedes further into the background and the demand resulting from the consumption of the workers is also put into the shade by that which results from productive consumption by the means of production. The entire workings of capitalist economy take on the character of a mechanism existing on its own, as it were, in which human consumption appears as a simple moment of the reproductive process and the circulation of capitals.264
Tugan-Baranovsky regards this discovery as the fundamental law of the capitalist economy, and one that is confirmed by a very tangible phenomenon: as capitalist development proceeds, the department producing means of production grows ever more relative to the department producing means of consumption, and at the cost of the latter. Marx himself established this law, and his schematic exposition of reproduction is based on it, although for the sake of simplicity he disregards the changes implied by it in terms of the figures he gives in the further development of the schema. Here, then, in the automatic growth of the department of means of production relative to the department of means of consumption, Tugan-Baranovsky has found the only objective, exact proof for his theory that, in capitalist society, human consumption tends to diminish in significance, while production increasingly becomes an end in itself. He makes these theses the cornerstone of his entire theoretical edifice. He proclaims,
In all the industrial states, we are confronted by the same phenomenon—the development of national economies everywhere follows the same fundamental law. The coal, iron, and steel industries that create the means of production for modern industry come more and more to the fore. The relative decrease in exports of immediately consumable manufactured goods from the U.K. is thus also an expression of the fundamental law governing capitalist development. The further technical progress advances, the more means of consumption recede relative to means of production. Human consumption plays an ever-decreasing part as against the productive consumption of the means of production.265
Even though this “fundamental law,” like all of his other “fundamental” theses, insofar as they signify anything tangible and precise, has been borrowed in toto ready-made from Marx, Tugan-Baranovsky remains unsatisfied by this, and he hastens to instruct Marx with wisdom gained from the latter himself. Scratching around like a blind hen, Marx has unearthed another nugget, but has no idea what to do with it. Before Tugan-Baranovsky, nobody had the wherewithal to know how to reap the results of this “fundamental” discovery for science, and in the latter’s hands, Marx’s law suddenly sheds light on the entire internal mechanism of the capitalist economy. Here, in this law of the expansion of the department of means of production at the cost of the department of means of consumption, is a clear, unequivocal, precise, and perceptible expression of the ever-diminishing importance of human consumption for capitalist society and of the fact that that this society accords human beings the status of means of production. Consequently, the law also expresses the fact that Marx was fundamentally mistaken in assuming that only humans create surplus value and not machines, that human consumption represents a restriction upon capitalist production, and that this circumstance will inevitably lead to periodic crises in the present and the collapse and horrific end of the capitalist economy in the near future.
In short, for Tugan-Baranovsky, this “fundamental law” of the growth of the expansion of the means of production at the cost of the means of consumption reflects the specific essence of capitalist society as a whole; according to Tugan-Baranovsky, Marx failed to grasp this, and it fell to Tugan-Baranovsky himself to finally decipher it.
The decisive role that the said capitalist “fundamental law” played in the controversy between the Russian Marxists and the skeptics has already been noted above. The position taken by Bulgakov is already familiar. Another Marxist, the already mentioned Lenin, expresses the same point of view in his polemic against the “Populists”:
It is well known that the law of capitalist production consists in the fact that the constant capital grows more rapidly than the variable capital, that is to say an ever-increasing part of the newly formed capital falls to the department of social production that creates producer goods. In consequence, this department is absolutely bound to grow more rapidly than the department creating consumer goods, that is to say, the very thing happens that Sismondi declared to be “impossible,” “dangerous,” etc. In consequence, consumer goods make up a smaller and smaller share of the total bulk of capitalist production, and this is entirely in accordance with the historical “mission” of capitalism and its specific social structure: the former in fact consists in the development of the productive forces of society (production as an end in itself), and the latter prevents that the mass of the population should turn them to use. [Emphasis by R. L.]266
Tugan-Baranovsky naturally goes further than the others in this case, too. With his penchant for paradoxes, he even indulges in the prank of offering a mathematical proof that the accumulation of capital and the expansion of production are possible even in the case of an absolute decline in consumption. Here it is Karl Kautsky who exposes the scientifically risqué maneuver carried out by Tugan-Baranovsky in performing his audacious deduction in relation to a specific moment of the process that is only conceivable as a theoretical exception and in practice never comes into consideration: the transition from simple to expanded reproduction.267
Kautsky declares Tugan-Baranovsky’s fundamental law to be a mere illusion generated by the latter himself by only considering the organization of production in the old countries with capitalist large-scale industry. Kautsky says:
It is correct, that with a progressive division of labor, there will be comparatively fewer and fewer factories, etc., for the production of goods direct for personal consumption, together with a relative increase in the number of those which supply both the former and one another with tools, machines, raw materials, transport facilities, and so on. While in original peasant economy an enterprise that cultivated the flax also made the linen with its own tools and got it ready for human consumption, nowadays hundreds of enterprises may share in the manufacture of a single shirt, by producing raw cotton, iron rails, steam engines and railway trucks that bring it to port, and so on. With international division of labor it will happen that some countries—the old industrial countries—can only slowly expand their production for personal consumption, while making large strides in their production of producer goods that is much more decisive for the heartbeat of economic life than the production of consumer goods. From the point of view of the nation concerned, we might easily form the opinion that producer goods can be turned out on a constantly rising scale with a more rapid rate of increase than in the production of consumer goods, and that their production is not bound up with that of the latter.
This point of view—i.e. that the production of means of production is independent of consumption—is of course a vulgar economic mirage of Tugan-Baranovsky’s. Not so the fact cited in support of this fallacy, namely the faster growth of the department of means of production relative to that of the department of means of consumption. This fact is incontrovertible, and more specifically it does not only hold true for the old industrial countries, but wherever technical progress dominates production. It is also the foundation of Marx’s fundamental law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. However, despite this circumstance, or even precisely because of it, a great error is made by Bulgakov, Lenin, and Tugan-Baranovsky if they imagine that in this law they have uncovered the specific essence of the capitalist economy, in which production is an end in itself and human consumption is merely incidental.
The growth in constant capital at the expense of variable capital is merely the capitalist expression of the general effects of the increasing productivity of labor. The formula c is greater than v (c > v), translated from capitalist language to that of the social labor process, means no more than this: the greater the productivity of human labor, the shorter the time needed to transform a given quantity of means of production into finished products.268
This is a universal law of human labor, one that was just as valid under all precapitalist forms of production and that will remain so in the future in the socialist social order. In terms of the material use-form of the total social product, this law must manifest itself in an ever-increasing employment of social labor time in the production of means of production relative to that of means of consumption. To be sure, this transformation would be considerably faster in a socialist economy—i.e. an organized and planned social economy—than in the present, capitalist one. Firstly, the employment on a large scale of rational scientific techniques in agriculture is only possible when the constraints posed by private ownership of the land have been removed. As a consequence of this, an enormous revolution will take place across a wide area of production, generally resulting in the comprehensive replacement of living labor by machine labor, and allowing technical projects to be undertaken on a scale impossible under present conditions. Secondly, the use of machinery in general in the process of production will be placed on a new economic foundation. At present, the machine does not enter into competition with living labor, but only with the paid component of living labor. The minimum level at which machinery can be used is given by the cost of labor-power replaced by it. This means that a machine will only be considered for use by a capitalist if its costs of production—given equal efficiency—are less than the wages of the workers replaced by it. From the standpoint of the social labor process, which is the only determining factor in socialist society, the machine is not in competition with the labor necessary for the maintenance of working people, but with the labor performed by them. The upshot of this is that, for a society in which it is not the perspective of profitability that is decisive, but rather labor savings, the use of a machine is economically appropriate if it costs less labor to produce it than the living labor that it saves. No account is taken in this instance of the fact that, in many cases, such as when the health of working people and other similar considerations of their interests are themselves at issue, the use of a machine might be contemplated even though this minimum level of economic savings has not been reached. At any rate, the contrast here is between the economic applicability of machinery in capitalist and socialist society, and the difference in this sense is at least equal to the difference between living labor and its paid component—i.e. it corresponds exactly to total capitalist surplus value. It follows from this that, with the elimination of capitalist profit interests and the introduction of the social organization of labor, the limit of the applicability of machinery will at a stroke be extended by the total magnitude of capitalist surplus value, and vast, endless areas of production will be opened up for it to conquer. It would then become patently obvious that the capitalist mode of production, which supposedly stimulates the most extreme development of technology, in fact places a restriction upon technological progress in the form of the profit motive that is its foundation, and that, when this restriction is eliminated, development will surge ahead so powerfully that all the technological miracles of capitalist production will seem like child’s play in contrast.
If this technological shift is expressed in the composition of the social product, it can only mean that, measured in labor time, the production of means of production will increase incomparably more rapidly relative to the production of means of consumption in socialist society than is the case at present. Thus the relation between both departments of social production, which the Russian Marxists took to be a specific expression of capitalist depravity, of the contempt for human consumption needs, proves instead to be the precise expression of the progressive domination of nature by social labor, an expression that will become most accentuated precisely when human needs are the only decisive factor in production. The only objective proof for Tugan-Baranovsky’s “fundamental law” thereby collapses as a “fundamental” confusion, and his entire construction, from which he derives the “new crisis theory” along with the theory of “disproportionality,” is reduced to its paper foundations: the slavishly transcribed Marxian schema of expanded reproduction.