Editor’s Notes

THE MIDDLE AGES. FEUDALISM. DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES

¹ See the first footnote on page 301.

² A word is crossed out here in the original typescript.

³ The term given here for Erbgut, inherited property, can also be translated as ancestral estate.

⁴ The Blutbann, literally “blood spell,” refers to the power of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to impose capital punishment. Over time the power to impose the Blutbann became usurped by territorial nobles.

⁵ That is, immunity from taxation.

⁶ A Hufe (“hide” in old English) were long strips of arable land, extending roughly 500 meters long and 200 meters wide. A Hufe, originally cultivated by one family, was often split into various sizes over the passage of time. It was also a term of taxation for the amount owed to the lord for using the particular strip of land. In medieval Germany, few peasant farms were larger than two or four Hufe, each Hufe being approximately 15 to 30 acres. The size of a Hufe varied widely, depending on geographical area and historical periods; its size would even vary within the same district (in some cases it consisted of 80 to 120 acres). In modern times a Hufe was established as 41.5 acres.

⁷ This is a reference to the German Peasant wars of the early sixteenth century.

⁸ A Gau was a geographical region or district of German tribal organization that comprised two or more marks. The Gauverfassung was the constitution (i.e., the legal and administrative structure) of that region or district.

⁹ Literally, those settled in the back or down below.

¹⁰ An institution consisting of coloni; singular, colonus.

¹¹ Landereien can also refer to parcels of land on an estate.

¹² These bondsmen were also referred to as coloni, peasants tied to the land.

¹³ Wends refers to an assortment of western Slavic peoples living close to areas of German settlement. In the Middle Ages, the term was often used for Slavs living within the Holy Roman Empire.

¹⁴ The Ministerialen were people subject to the orders of the “ministers,” that is, the officials of the estate.

¹⁵ The undivided mark consisted of the lands held in common by the mark community.

¹⁶ That is, land partly cultivated by tenant farmers. Salländereien can also be translated as “manor hall lands.”

¹⁷ The Maurusmünster Abbey (also known as Marmoutier Abbey) in Alsace was founded in the sixth century AD by a community of Irish monks. In the eighth century it was reorganized as a Benedictine monastery under Maurus, from which its name derives. In the twelfth century it become extremely prosperous and controlled a large amount of surrounding territory. It began to go into decline during the late Middle Ages. Also see the first footnote on page 269.

¹⁸ In some cases Luxemburg’s typescript has Arabic numerals when enumerating something such as goods in kind (e.g., 6 loaves of bread) and in other cases it did not (e.g., three times a year). For the most part we have followed the usage in the typescript.

¹⁹ St. John’s Day was also known as Midsummer Day, the feast of St. John the Baptist. In many countries of Europe it is celebrated on June 24.

²⁰ Service people under the officials of the manorial household.

²¹ Das spanische Rohr in the typescript—that is, a cane originally from Spain.

²² This is a reference to Sigurd Syr Halfdansson (died 1018), who was a king of northern Ostlandet, in modern Norway. He was renowned for eschewing royal prerogatives, preferring instead to carefully manage his rural property. His surname “Syr” may derive from the word for “sow,” indicating that he was “rooted to the soil like a pig.”

²³ Ferdinand Lassalle, Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, der Ökonomische Julian, oder, Kapital und Arbeit.

²⁴ The short paragraph is a repetition; the point made above is also made elsewhere in the typescript.

²⁵ That is, they were granted the same powers as the Gaugraffs.

²⁶ A benefice is a reward obtained in exchange for services rendered (or to be rendered in the future) to a feudal lord. A benefice received from a king or nobleman was known as a fief. It generally took the form of a gift of land for services rendered to the lord.

²⁷ The Abbey of St. Germain de Prés, on the outskirts of medieval Paris, was founded in the sixth century. Thanks to royal patronage, it became one of the richest abbeys in France during the High Middle Ages. In the eleventh century it became an intellectual center of the Benedictine order. The philosopher René Descartes is buried in one of its chapels.

²⁸ A polyptych is a painting divided into a series of sections or panels. This appears to be a reference to a painting in one of the Romanesque cathedrals in the French town of St. Emilion.

²⁹ The passage suggests that the peasant had the right to provide proof that because of poverty he was unable to make his obligatory payments.

³⁰ The Abbey of Corvey in Westphalia, in northeast Germany, was founded in 815 as a Benedictine monastery. It was one of the most important monasteries in the Carolingian period. In the tenth century it became a major economic power when it was granted the power to obtain labor services and payments from the surrounding peasants. It also obtained the power to mint its own coins. The Abbey went into decline after the fifteenth century.

³¹ Wolff, who was from Silesia, became a close friend of Marx in 1846, to whom he dedicated Vol. 1 of Capital. During the 1848 Revolutions Wolff travelled to Silesia, where he fought for the abolition of feudal obligations that still prevailed among the peasantry. Marx published numerous articles by him on the campaign in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, including a series of eight articles entitled “The Silesian Billion,” from March 22 to April 25, 1849. In these influential and inflammatory writings Wolff calculated the amount of money, labor, and landed property that the Silesian aristocracy had robbed from the peasants through feudal dues since the beginning of the Middle Ages. The articles were reproduced as a book after Wolff’s death, to which Engels wrote the Introduction. See Die schlesische Milliarde (Hottingen-Zürich: Volksbuchhandlung, 1886).

³² Kurmade (also die kurmede), besthaupt and gewandrecht (literally, “a right to the robe”) refers to a manorial levy extracted from peasants upon the death of a lord or a change of ownership in the manor. Payment could be made in kind (through grain or cattle), money, or even by granting the lord of the manor allowance to sleep with a peasant’s wife. It essentially served as an inheritance tax.

³³ General Gottfied Henrich Graf von Pappenheim was a famous military commander and mercenary during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), in which he was employed by the armies of the Holy Roman Empire. He became imperial marshal in 1632.

³⁴ Delbrück is a town in northeast Germany, in Rhine-Westphalia. The town was founded in 1219.

³⁵ Gera is a city in southwest Germany, in the state of Thuringia. It was founded in the ninth century AD. Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt is a state in Thuringia. It is named after the Schwarzburg family, which resided in the town of Rudolstadt.

³⁶ Whitsuntide (also known as Witsunday) is the Christian festival of Pentecost that falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples.

³⁷ A Malter is literally a “corn-measure”—an ancient measurement of corn that varies in different locations. In some parts of Germany, a Malter was a basket or container that held about 150 liters.

³⁸ The reference is to Lassalle’s book, Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, der Ökonomische Julian, oder, Kapital und Arbeit, pp. 118–80. Marx was much more critical of this work by Lassalle than Luxemburg seems to have been aware. See his letter to Engels of June 3, 1864, where he accuses Lassalle of having “cribbed” much of the work from his Wage Labor and Capital. In response, Marx planned at the time to reprint Wage Labor and Capital “without any mention of Izzy [Lassalle]. He won’t enjoy it in the least.”

³⁹ The manorial estate was that part of the manor directly controlled by the lord and used for the benefit of his household and dependents. Compulsory labor was required of those belonging to it.

⁴⁰ Luxemburg is again referring to Lassalle’s Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, der Ökonomische Julian, oder, Kapital und Arbeit.

⁴¹ Guizot’s book was actually first published in French between 1828 and 1830. See François Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France depuis la chute de l’empire romain jusqu’en 1789 (History of Civilization in France from the Fall of the Roman Empire to 1789) (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1828–30).

⁴² See Augustin Thierry, Erzählungen aus den merovingishcen Zeiten: mit einleitenden Betrachtungen über die Geschichte Franksreich (Stories of Merovingian Times, Preceded by Reflections about the History of France) (Elberfeld: Friderichs, 1855). The book originally appeared in French as Récits des temps mérovingiens, précédés de considerations sur l’histoire de France (Paris: Furne et Cie, Éditeurs, 1851).

⁴³ See Augustin Thierry, Recueil des monuments inédits de l’histoire du Tiers Etate (Unpublished Collection of Documents of the History of the Third Estate) (Paris: Didot, 1850–53).

⁴⁴ See Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Geschichte des römischen Rechts (History of Roman Law), six volumes (Heidelberg: J.C.B. Mohr, 1815–31).

⁴⁵ See Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, Über den Ursprung der Städteverfassung in Deutschland (On the Origin of the Constitution of the Cities in Germany) (Berlin: Nicolai, 1815).

⁴⁶ See Ernest Theodor Gaupp, Über deutsche Städtegründung, Stadtverfassung und Weichbild im Mittelalter, besonders über die Verfassung von Freiburg im Breisgau verglichen mit den Vergassung von Cöln (On the Founding of the German Cities, The City Constitution, and the City Precincts in the Middle Ages, Especially the Constitution of Frieburg in Breisgau Compared with that of Cologne) (Jena: F. Frommann, 1824).

⁴⁷ See Heinrich Leo, Entwicklung der Verfassung der lombardischen Städte bis zu Ankunft Kaiser Friedrich I (Development of the Constitution of the Lombard Cities to the Rise of Emperor Friedrich I) (Hamburg: Perthes, 1824).

⁴⁸ These question marks are in the original manuscript. It is probable that the secretary or student recording Luxemburg’s lecture did not understand what she said at this point.

⁴⁹ Städtewesen; a term that might also be translated as “the nature and condition of the cities.”

⁵⁰ See Wilhelm Eduard Wilda, Über das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter (On the Guild System in the Middle Ages) (Halle: Rengerschen Buchhandlung, 1831).

⁵¹ See Karl Dietrich Hüllmann, Städtewesen im Mittelalter (City Structure in the Middle Ages) (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1829).

⁵² See Georg Ludwig von Maurer, Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-, Hof-. Dorf- und Stadtverfassung und der öffentlichen Gewalt.

⁵³ See Wilhelm Arnold, Das Aufkommen des Handwerks in den deutschen Städten (The Rise of Craft Production in the German Cities) (Basel: H. George, 1861).

⁵⁴ Imperial cities were free cities of the Holy Roman Empire.

⁵⁵ The counts that had their palaces on the Rhine were called Counts Palatinate.

⁵⁶ That is, a judicial authority that he could appeal to.

⁵⁷ The word element Welsch refers to Romance-speaking persons from southern Europe.

⁵⁸ According to Luxemburg’s interpretation, the Altfreie, or old free ones, were descendants of the former free members of the mark community.

⁵⁹ The term Geschlechter has a number of different meanings, depending upon the historical context. It originally referred to persons of noble lineage, or “those of well-born families.” Over time, such persons tended to engage in trade and commercial activity. In the High Middle Ages, therefore, die Geschlechter came to denote a merchant or an elite family of merchants. It often occurred, however, that subsequent to engaging in trade and commerce these families withdrew from such activities and invested their capital in farmland, banking, or urban real estate, using these to claim noble status. Patricians and Junkers (the so-called “best citizens”) could therefore also be referred to as die Geschlechter.

⁶⁰ An Innung was a professional organization of crafts at the local or regional levels in which self-employed craftsmen came together to promote their common interests. In Germany and Austria the Innungs was succeeded by the guilds, in the twelfth century.

⁶¹ The question marks are in the original typescript.

⁶² Here, and throughout much of the rest of the piece, die Geschlechter refers to merchants or merchant families that descended from people of noble lineage.

⁶³ Luxemburg here uses Hofherr as a synonym of Fronherr.

⁶⁴ This is a reference to the fact that in response to these struggles, a number of merchant families (die Geschlechter) withdrew from direct commercial activity and invested their capital in farmland, banking, or urban real estate, using these to claim noble status.

⁶⁵ At the Diet of Worms in January 1231 the ecclesiastical princes forced the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to outlaw town-leagues and other associations of the burghers.

⁶⁶ The Diet of Ravenna in January 1232 outlawed all statues made by the town burghers that were opposed by the bishops.

⁶⁷ This is a reference to Bishop Henry II of Saarbrücken, who served as Bishop of Worms from 1217 to 1234.

⁶⁸ The Altbürger, or old burghers, were members of the urban middle class in the towns of the early Middle Ages that were originally descended from serfs who had fled the manorial estates.

⁶⁹ Zorne (also spelled Zorn) was a name of a group of families that played an influential political and economic role in such cites as Strassburg and Innsbruck in the Middle Ages.

⁷⁰ This is a reference to the feud between the Montagues, who were aristocrats, and the Capulets, who were merchants, in Shakespeare’s famous play.

⁷¹ Grundzins is here rendered as land tax, but it can also be translated as ground rent.

⁷² Luxemburg is referring to Ferdinand Lassalle’s Die indirekte Steuer und die Lage der arbeitende Klassen (Indirect Taxation and the Position of the Working Classes) (Zurich: Verlag von Meyer & Zeller, 1863). Marx had a far less favorable view of this book than Luxemburg. As Marx wrote to Engels on June 12, 1863, “One or two individual bits are good, but for one thing it is, on the whole, written in an unbearably officious, chatty style, with absurd pretensions to scholarship and consequentialness. In addition, it is essentiellement the confection of a ‘pupil’ who cannot wait to make a name for himself as a ‘thoroughly learned’ man and original scholar. Hence the abundance of historical and theoretical blunders.”

⁷³ Luxemburg is here considerably exaggerating the size of medieval cities. The largest city in the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth century was Cologne, with about 40,000 inhabitants.

⁷⁴ See Ernst Theodor Gaupp, Über deutsche Städtegründung (On the Founding of German Cities).

⁷⁵ The Innung was the earlier form of the guilds when they were still subject to the manorial estate of the feudal lord.

⁷⁶ A Schreiner was a maker of fine woodwork, such as a cabinetmaker. A Zimmermann (plural, Zimmerleute) was a carpenter who constructed houses and buildings.

⁷⁷ A masterwork was a special work done to qualify as a master craftsman; it was also called “masterpiece.”

⁷⁸ Karl Bücher, Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschalt.

⁷⁹ All of these “inventions” actually arose outside of Europe, in China, and were adopted by Europeans through the impact of increased contact with Asia. Paper, for instance, first came to Europe after the eleventh century through contact with Muslims, who had earlier learned the art of papermaking from the Chinese.

⁸⁰ The name does not appear in the typescript, a blank space appearing instead.

⁸¹ Eidgenossenschaft is more literally, a fellowship of the oath.

⁸² The name is not given in the manuscript, the space here being left blank.

⁸³ While the typescript has Beute, Luxemburg probably said Gebäude (which means “buildings”). The two German words are pronounced quite similarly, and a stenographer listening to Luxemburg speaking this text could have easily heard Beute when Luxemburg said Gebäude (or even Bäude, which means the same).

⁸⁴ That is, the so-called Holy Roman Empire.

⁸⁵ This town was called Leghorn by the English.

⁸⁶ The Strozzi was the name of a noble family of Florence that played an important part in the city’s affairs in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Strozzis founded the first public library in Florence.

⁸⁷ Luxemburg mistakenly gives the date as 1503.

⁸⁸ The Langobardi is another name for Lombards, a Germanic tribe that ruled much of Italy from 567 to 774 AD.

⁸⁹ This is a reference to the Pataria (or Patarines), a religious movement in Milan in the eleventh century, led mainly by traders, that sought to reform the clergy by ending simony and clerical marriage. Patarini derives from the word for “ragpickers,” which they were called by their upper-class adversaries.

⁹⁰ The printing of books as a skilled craft was begun by Gutenberg in 1436.

⁹¹ Ulrich von Hutten’s Epistolae obscurorum vivorum (Letters About Obscurantist Men), written in 1520, was a famous attack on monkish life. He was a follower of Martin Luther.

⁹² His original name was Schwarzerd, which in German meant “black earth.”

⁹³ Zwingli actually died in 1531, not 1533.

⁹⁴ A reference to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s poem, Huttens letzte Tage (Hutten’s Last Days) (Leipzig: H. Haeffel, 1891). The poem was one of Luxemburg’s favorites.

⁹⁵ The duchy of Lorraine was originally called Lotharingia after Lotha I, one of Charlemagne’s grandsons who obtained control of Alsace, Lorraine, Burgundy, northern Italy, and parts of modern-day western Germany after the death of his father, Louis the Pious.

⁹⁶ In Dutch, the name of the town is Leeuwen. The question mark is in the original typescript.

⁹⁷ Ghent’s origin can be dated earlier, to the seventh century, when two abbeys were built there, around which the town developed. After the town was destroyed by a series of raids by Vikings in the ninth century, it was rebuilt. By 1100 it was already a thriving city. The fortified castle that Luxemburg mentions was built in 1180, replacing the wooden fortifications of an earlier castle. The fortified castle was called Gravensteen Castle (“castle of the count”). From the eleventh to the thirteenth century Ghent was the largest city in Europe after Paris, with a population of about 60,000.

⁹⁸ In 1338, Jacob von Artevelde (1290–1345) led a revolt of the weavers of Ghent against the count of Flanders and France, because of restrictions placed upon Ghent’s trade with England. The revolt expelled the count from Ghent and Artevelde took over as head of the city council. After allying Ghent with England during the Hundred Years’ War, he was killed as a result of an uprising of the artisans who came to oppose his policies.

⁹⁹ The reference is to the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia.

¹⁰⁰ A stadtholder was chief magistrate of the Dutch republic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

¹⁰¹ Friedrich Schiller’s book was first published in 1800. For an English translation, see Revolt of the Netherlands (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004). Goethe wrote his drama Egmont in 1788. For an English translation, see Egmont, translated by Anna Stanwick (New York: Bartleby, 2001). This work is perhaps best known from Beethoven’s overture of the same name.

¹⁰² These are the islands of present-day Indonesia.

¹⁰³ The Dutch held northeast Brazil from 1630 to 1654.

¹⁰⁴ The verb hänseln appears to have a different etymology from the one given by Luxemburg.

¹⁰⁵ The Cologne Confederation was a military alliance forged by the Hanseatic League in 1367 for purposes of waging war against Denmark. It led to the Second Danish-Hanseatic War of 1367–70, in which the Hanseatic League was victorious. The Cologne Confederation was disbanded in 1385.

¹⁰⁶ Wisby is in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and the Danish peninsula.

¹⁰⁷ This was also called Skane, or Scania.

¹⁰⁸ Since the time of John Cabot at end of the fifteenth century, English explorers were interested in finding a way to Asia by sailing northeast, through the Arctic. In 1552 English explorer Richard Chancellor penetrated the White Sea and arrived at the port of Archangel in Russia, the first Englishmen to do so. As a result of his voyage, a sea trading route was opened up between England and Russia.

¹⁰⁹ His last name means “wool weaver.”

¹¹⁰ That is, the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire.

¹¹¹ The Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, concluded the Thirty Years’ War and proved instrumental in the emergence of the modern nation state.

¹¹² See George Friedrich Christoph Sartorius von Waltershausen, Urkundliche Geschichte des Ursprung der deutschen Hanse (Documentary History of the Origin of the Hanseatic League) (Hamburg: J. Perthes, 1830).

¹¹³ In this incomplete sentence, Luxemburg may have intended something like: “Only after exchange has taken place is it possible to attempt regulating the number of goods to be produced.”

¹¹⁴ Luxemburg’s claim is questionable. As she here emphasizes, in capitalism labor assumes a social form only indirectly, through the medium of money in exchange relations. However, the ability of labor to assume such an indirect character is a result of specific relations of production, in which concrete labor is subsumed by abstract labor. The exchange process is therefore not the decisive issue; instead, the peculiar form of capitalist production relations is decisive. See Marx’s Capital Vol. 2, p. 196: “In the relation between capitalist and wage laborer, the money relation, the relation of buyer and seller, becomes a relation inherent in production itself. But this relation rests fundamentally on the social character of production, not on the mode of commerce; the latter rather derives from the former.” For more on this, see Peter Hudis, Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 92–182.

¹¹⁵ Pecus is Latin for cattle.

¹¹⁶ At this point in the typescript, the following typewritten note appears in the margin: “ ‘from the outset’ obviously means ‘in the beginning.’ ”

¹¹⁷ Jérome Becker was a Belgian explorer who searched for the origin of the Nile River, reaching Lake Albert in 1864. Luxemburg may have known of his book, La Vie en Afrique ou Trois Ans dans l’Afrique (Life in Africa, or Three Years in Africa) (Paris: J. Lebéque et Cie, 1887).

¹¹⁸ By “the Orient” Luxemburg seems to mean the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and other regions to the east and south of the Mediterranean.

¹¹⁹ The Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich was published yearly, beginning in 1880, by Puttkammer & Mühlbrecht (Berlin).

¹²⁰ F. W. Putzgers Historischer Schul-Atlas.

¹²¹ Justus Perthes, Taschenatlas der ganzen Welt (Pocket Atlas of the Entire World History) (Hamburg: J. Perthes, 1896). This popular atlas has appeared in many editions since the nineteenth century.

¹²² See Karl Julius Ploetz, Auszug aus der alten, mittleren und neuren Geschichte.

¹²³ Karl Bücher, Die Entsehung der Volkswirtschalt, Vorträge und Aufsätze.

¹²⁴ Engels’s Condition of the Working Class in England was first published in Leipzig in 1845. Socialism, Utopian and Scientific was first published in 1880 in the March, April and May issues of Revue Socialiste.

¹²⁵ Julius Lippert, Kulturgreschichte der Menschheit in ihrem organischen Aufbau (The Cultural History of Humanity in its Organic Structure) (Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1886).

¹²⁶ Friedrich Ratzel, Grundzüge der Völkerkunde (Fundamentals of Ethnology) (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1895).

¹²⁷ Engels first wrote this in 1876, as part of a planned work entitled Die drei Grundformen der Knechtschaft (The Three Basic Forms of Bondsmanship). It was never completed in this form, however, and Engels later included it in Dialectics of Nature, in 1896. It was originally published in Die Neue Zeit in 1895.

¹²⁸ Wilhelm Weitling, Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit (Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom) (Hamburg: Im Verlag des Verfassers, 1842). The work was referred to several times by the young Marx, who initially had a favorable impression of Weitling.

¹²⁹ Lewis Henry Morgan’s book first appeared in English in 1877, under the title Ancient Society, or: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization (London: MacMillan & Co., 1877). Luxemburg made use of the German edition, Die Urgesellshaft oder Untersuchung über den Fortschritt der Menschheit aus der Wildheit durch die Babarei zur Zivilisation (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz Verlag, 1891).

¹³⁰ Luxemburg was using the German edition of Julius Ceaser’s De bello Gallico, his commentaries on the Gallic Wars. For a modern English translation, see The Conquest of Gaul, translated by S.A. Handford (New York: Penguin, 1983).

¹³¹ Heinrich Cunow, Die Soziale Verfassung des Inkareiches: Eine Untersuchung des altperuanischen Agrarkommunismus (The Social Constitution of the Inca Empire: An Examination of Ancient Peruvian Agrarian Communism) (Stuttgart: J.H.W. Dietz Verlag, 1896).

¹³² Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “Lord Clive” was an essay written in January 1840. Clive was a British officer who established England’s control over India following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, which drove French forces from the country. “Warren Hastings,” first published as an essay in 1841, discussed British colonial policies in India. Hastings served as the first Governor-General of India, from 1773–85. A supporter of British colonialism, Macaulay helped govern India from 1834–38. See his Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2005).

¹³³ See August Freiherr von Haxthausen, Studien über die Innern Zustände, des Volksleben und Insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Rußlands (Studies on the Internal Conditions of Russia, the Life of its People and Especially its Rural Institutions) (Hannover: Hahn, 1847–52).

¹³⁴ See G.V. Plekhanov, N. G. Chernyshevsky (St. Petersburg: Shipovnik Publishing House, 1910). This book contains a series of articles on Chernyshevsky written by Plekhanov in Sotsial-Democrat in 1890 and 1892.

¹³⁵ Engels’s essay on “Russia and the Social Revolution” was first published in Volkstaat on April 21, 1875. It was reprinted in the booklet Internationales aus dem ‘Volksstaat’ (1871–75) (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz Verlag, 1894). An English translation can be found in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 24 (New York: International Publishers, 1989), pp. 39–50.

¹³⁶ See Aleksandr Alexandrovich Chuprov, Die Feldemeinscaft, eine morphologische Untersuchung (The Field of Community: A Morphological Study) (Strassburg: K.J. Trübner, 1902). The Russian last name poB is transliterated into English as Chuprov, but into German as Tschuproff.

¹³⁷ See Eduard Meyer’s article on the Russian mir (a peasant community owning and working land in common), in the Concise Dictionary of the Political Sciences.

¹³⁸ Alexander Parvus (Israel Lazarevich Helphand), Das hungernde Russland. Reiseeindrücke, Beobachtungen und Untersuchungen (Starving Russia: Travel Impressions, Observations, and Investigations) (Berlin: J.W.H. Dietz, 1900).

¹³⁹ Friedrich Engels, Herrn Eugen Dühring’s Umwalzung der Wissenschaft; Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 146–71.

¹⁴⁰ Frederick Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1964

¹⁴¹ Karl Kautsky, Der Ursprung des Christentrums: Eine historische Untersuchung. For an English translation, see Foundations of Christianity, translated by Jacob Hartmann (New York: Monthly Review, 1972). “Slave Economy” appears to be a reference to the fourth section of Part I of this book, entitled “Die technische Rückständigkeit der Sklavenwirtschaft” (The Technological Backwardness of the Slave Economy).

¹⁴² See Eduard Meyer’s Geschichte des Altertums (History of Antiquity), five volumes (Stuttgart and Berlin, J.G. Cotta, 1884–1902) and Sklaverei im Altertrum (Slavery in Antiquity) (Dresden: v. Jahn & Jaensch, 1898). Luxemburg provides a somewhat inaccurate title of the third work; it is actually Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des Altertums (Economic Development of the Ancient World) (Jena: G. Fischer, 1895).

¹⁴³ The Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (Jena: G. Fischer), edited by Johannes Conrad, Wilhem Lexis, L. Elster, and Edgar Loening, appeared in four editions between 1890 and 1928. “Population in Antiquity” was an article by Eduard Meyer. See Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, second edition, Vol. II (1899), pp. 674 ff. “Agrarian Relations in Antiquity” was an article by Max Weber. See Max Weber, “Agrargeschichte. I: Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum,” in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, second edition, Vol. 1, Jena 1898, pp. 69 ff.

¹⁴⁴ Karl Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte (Greek History), four volumes (Strassburg: Verlag von Karl J. Trubner, 1893–1904).

¹⁴⁵ This refers to a series of articles by Paul Ernst under the title “Die sozialen Zustände im römishcen Reiche vor dem Einfall der Barbaren” (Social Conditions in the Roman Empire Before the Invasion of the Barbarians), published in Vol. XI of Die Neue Zeit, in 1893.

¹⁴⁶ Karl Kautsky, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus. Erster Band: Plato (Forerunners of Modern Socialism: Vol. 1, Plato) (Stuttgart: J.H.W. Dietz, 1895).

¹⁴⁷ Willibald Alexis was the pseudonym of Georg Wilhelm Heinrich Häring, who in the mid-nineteenth published a historical novel of the Middle Ages entitled Der Roland von Berlin (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1840).

¹⁴⁸ The following note appears right before this subhead; it is not by Luxemburg, but apparently by a student who had attended her course: “This lengthy listing of references, before it can be used, must be checked for accuracy. Some information about the books listed is deficient and obviously not precise. As I recall, and as can be deduced from a hint in the ‘stenogram’ [i.e., the typescript], I received it [this listing] from another student. Both of my own listings on page 28 and page100 are, I believe, more precise, but some of the books mentioned here are lacking there. And it is possible that in my text, too, deficient information about the books listed may be scattered about even more widely, and that needs to be checked.” The page numbers “28” and “100” do not seem to refer to anything in Luxemburg’s typescript. This suggests that Luxemburg distributed copies of these typescripts to the students attending her courses (no more than 30 per year, according to her own report). That may help explain how this damaged copy of a typescript survived when so much of Luxemburg’s written material was destroyed.

¹⁴⁹ Most of the authors and titles in this list repeat what was contained in the earlier list of literature immediately above, or elsewhere in the typescript.

PRACTICAL ECONOMICS: VOLUME 2 OF MARX’S CAPITAL

¹ It is not entirely clear why the heading “Practical Economics” appears at the top of this typescript about Volume 2 of Capital, since as Luxemburg noted in the first paragraph, Volume 2 “deals with problems that do not lend themselves to immediate application in practical life, for example, in agitation.” However, since most of the manuscript is not directly on the content of Volume 2 but on the history of actual capitalist crises, Luxemburg may have intended her discussion here to be more directed towards the “practical” application of Capital to the history of political economy.

² The student or secretary who transcribed Luxemburg’s lecture on this subject, presumably Rosi Wolfstein at the SPD Party School in Berlin, refers to her here in the third person, as “Comrade Luxemburg.” This will occur several times in the transcript.

³ This is because in mining the raw materials are right there at the mining site.

⁴ Volume 2 actually has three parts: (1) “The Metamorphoses of Capital and their Circuit”; (2) “The Turnover of Capital”; and (3) “The Reproduction and Circulation of the Total Social Capital.”

⁵ This is a reference to the third part of Volume 2 of Capital.

⁶ For Marx’s discussions of crisis, see Capital Vol. 2, translated by David Fernbach (New York: Vintage, 1981), pp. 153–7, 391–3 and 486–7 especially. Marx’s theory of crisis, however, is delineated not in Volume 2 but in Volume 3 of Capital, in his discussion of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. Luxemburg tended to deny the relevance of Marx’s theory of tendential decline in profit rates, on the grounds that it contradicted empirical capitalist reality.

⁷ This is a reference to Owen’s works, Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System (London: R. & A. Taylor, 1815); Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London, Longman, Hurst, Orme & Brown, 1818); and An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which Pervades the Civilized Parts of the World (London: British Philanthropic Society, 1823).

⁸ See Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (London: Johnson, 1803) and Definitions in Political Economy; Preceded by an Inquiry into the Rules which Ought to Guide Political Economists in the Definition and Use of their Terms; With Remarks on the Deviation from these Rules in their Writings (London: John Murray, 1827).

⁹ Luxemburg is especially referring to Schippel’s articles, “War Friedrich Engels milizgläubisch?” (Did Friedrich Engels Believe in the Militia?), in Sozialistischen Monatsheften (November 1898) and “Friedrich Engels und das Milizsystem” (Friedrich Engels and the Militia System), in Die Neue Zeit, Nos. 19–20 (1898/99). Luxemburg replied to Schippel in articles in the Leipziger Volkszeitung, Nos. 42–44, 47 (February 20–22, 25, 1899), which she incorporated as an appendix to her Reform or Revolution. See Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, Band 1/1 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 2007), pp. 446–66. For an English translation of two of these four articles by Luxemburg, see “Militia and Militarism,” in Rosa Luxemburg, Selected Political Writings, edited by Dick Howard (New York: Monthly Review, 1971), pp. 135–58. See also Schippel’s Hochkonjunkture und Wirtschaftskrisis (Boom and Economic Crisis) (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1908). Schippel, a right-wing revisionist who supported German imperialism, used this argument to defend the necessity of a standing army and militarism.

¹⁰ See Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, ou De la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (New Principles of Political Economy, or Wealth in its Relationship with Population) (Paris: Delaunay, 1819).

¹¹ See Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d’économie politique, ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent ou se consomment les richesses (Treatise on Political Economy, or a Simple Exposition to Show How Wealth is Created, Distributed, and Consumed) (Paris: Horace Say, 1803). Say argued that crises of overproduction are impossible, on the grounds that production creates its own market.

¹² That is, the direct exchange of commodities.

¹³ See Heinrich Herkner, “Krisen,” in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, edited by J. Conrad et. al, second edition, Vol. 5 (Jena: G. Fischer, 1900), pp. 413–33. Herkner was initially known as a “socialist of the chair” and close enough to the Social Democratic movement to be praised by Karl Kautsky and invited for a discussion with Friedrich Engels. By 1907, however, he became a political conservative. Herkner had an eclectic explanation of crises, attributing them not to any single phenomena but to a diverse array of factors. However, he was close to Sismondi in emphasizing underconsumption as a prime determinant. As one recent study notes, “Herkner also points to increases in the productivity of labor, which are linked to technological change. As a consequence of the new, more efficient techniques, the price of commodities declines, which leads to their greater saleability. However, expansion of the market very often cannot keep abreast of an increase in production because price decreases come into force only incompletely and with delay.” See Harald Hagemann, “Heinrich Herkner: Inequality of Income Distribution, Overcapitalization and Underconsumption,” in Crises and Cycles in Economic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, edited by Daniele Besomi (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 361–73.

¹⁴ See Industrial Depressions: The First Annual Report of the Commission of Labor (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1886), especially Chapter 1, “Modern Industrial Depressions,” pp. 61–3, for its list of 180 causes of crises, which range from “planless production” and “speculation” to “lack of interest of the laborer in his work.” We wish to thank Daniele Besomi for drawing our attention to this document.

¹⁵ Sombart’s lecture was delivered in two parts, on September 14 and 16, 1903. For a fuller discussion of Sombart’s speech on Luxemburg’s part, see “Im Raten der Gelehrten,” in Gesammelte Werke, Band 1, Zweiter Haldband (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 2000), pp. 382–90. Her essay first appeared in Die Neue Zeit, Year 22, 1903/04, Band 1 (1), pp. 5–10.

¹⁶ Luxemburg is here operating on the assumption that in primitive communal society, economic activities are planned.

¹⁷ In 1906 Brazil produced 80 percent of the world’s coffee, a total of 22 million sacks. Output so much exceeded demand that the price of coffee immediately fell. World War I stimulated an increase in the demand for coffee; Brazil’s harvest of 1917 was 1.6 billion pounds, the largest on record up to that point.

¹⁸ See Marx, Das Kapital, Band 2 (Hamburg: Otto Meissner, 1885), p. 385. Marx writes in Capital Vol. 2: “Considered from the standpoint of the whole society, there must be a constant overproduction, i.e. production on a greater scale than is needed for the simple replacement and reproduction of the existing wealth” (pp. 256–7). Since “the periods in which capitalist production exerts all its forces regularly show themselves to be periods of overproduction” (p. 390), the latter cannot be construed as the principal cause of crises. At the same time, Volume Two also argues against the claim that crises are caused by underconsumption. Marx writes, “It is a pure tautology to say that crises are provoked by a lack of effective demand or effective consumption. The capitalist system does not recognize any forms of consumer other than those who can pay … If the attempt is made to give this tautology the semblance of greater profundity, by the statement that the working class receives too small a portion of its own product, and that the evil would be remedied if it received a bigger share, i.e. if wages rose, we need only note that crises are always prepared by a period in which wages generally rise, and the working class actually does receive a greater share in the part of the annual product destined for consumption” (pp. 486–7).

¹⁹ Luxemburg probably meant to say imports here.

²⁰ The figures in the table are in thousands of pounds sterling.

²¹ In the original typescript the year is given as 1834.

²² The corn laws imposed high tariffs on imported grain.

²³ The county of Lancashire is in the northwest of England, adjacent to the Irish Sea.

²⁴ This is a reference to a letter published in The Times of March 24, 1863 by Edmund Potter, a President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, that referred to the workers as “the machinery.” Marx discusses Potter’s letter at length in Capital Vol. 1, pp. 720–3.

²⁵ Overend, Gurney & Co. was a London wholesale bank, founded in 1800, which collapsed in 1866, after speculating heavily in railroad stocks. Its losses were the equivalent of about $2 billion in current prices. More than 200 companies were forced out of business as a direct result of the failure of the bank.

²⁶ In the typescript the number is given as 14 instead of 5 billion.

²⁷ A reference to the Prussian-Austrian war of 1866, in which Prussia decisively defeated Austria.

²⁸ Engel published his statistical surveys in a number of journals edited by him, such as Preuss Statistik and Zeitschrift des Statischen Bureaus.

²⁹ See Richard Vanderborght, Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der Rhein-Seeschiffahrt (The Economic Importance of the Rhine-Maritime Region) (Köln: Selbstverlag der Handelskammer, 1892).

³⁰ The Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt (Imperial Bureau of Statistics) published a series of journals and monographs of statistical information on industry, agriculture, and the overall economy from 1872 to 1918.

³¹ A baubank generally funds construction and housing projects.

³² Prior to about 1900, statistics did not show the proportion of government securities (as opposed to those of private companies) that were traded on stock exchanges.

³³ In the typescript this is erroneously given as Berlin instead of Vienna.

³⁴ The Union Générale was a French Catholic Bank founded by Paul Eugene Bontoux in 1878.

³⁵ There seems to be an error in the typescript: the phrase 28,240 million appears rather than 28,240 miles.

³⁶ This is a further indication that these notes were taken down by one of Luxemburg’s students, in this case most likely Rosi Wolfstein.

³⁷ The following passage refers to “Comrade Luxemburg” in the third person, indicating that someone present was transcribing, or taking notes on her lecture about Volume 2 of Capital. The book referred to by Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky was Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte der Handelskrisen in England (Studies in the Theory and History of Commercial Crises in England) (Jena: Fischer, 1901).

³⁸ Heinrich Dade published a series of four essays on “Agrarzolle” (Agricultural Tariffs) in Beiträge zur neuesten Handelspolitik Deutschlands herausgeben von Verein für Socialpolitik (Essays on Germany’s Most Recent Trade Policies) (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1900–01).

³⁹ Argentina’s crisis of 1890 was precipitated by a surge of inflation in its over-heated economy. In response to the crisis, the army attempted a coup against President Miguel Juárez Celman, who was replaced by Carlos Pellegrini.

⁴⁰ English capital was heavily invested in Argentina, and the crisis almost caused the collapse of Baring & Co., which had extensive holdings in that country. Baring was saved only after obtaining a significant bailout from the British government, to the tune of about $2 billion in today’s currency.

⁴¹ That is, they had been importing cotton from England but now imported less because of the crisis.

⁴² The “Whisky Ring” was a conspiracy of 1875 on the part of government bureaucrats and distillers to drive up the price of liquor and siphon off the proceeds of federal taxes on liquor. It was one of the major scandals of the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.

⁴³ It is not clear what Luxemburg is referring to here, since the Panic of 1893 was precipitated by overcapacity in the railroad industry. “Wheat ring” probably is how the person taking down these notes heard “whiskey ring,” but the latter took place two decades earlier and had nothing to do with the economic crisis of 1893.

⁴⁴ The transcript erroneously gives the name as Cozy. Coxey was not a farmer, but a businessman, politician, and social reformer. Coxey’s Army was a protest march on Washington by unemployed workers. The movement was popularly known as Coxey’s Army, but it also called itself by the name Army of the Commonweal of Christ. A number of different marches by unemployed “armies” in different parts of the US also set out for Washington to demand jobs around the same time as the one led by Coxey, who predicted he would bring 100,000 to the capitol. If all the other “armies” and marchers of that time are counted, as well as their numerous supporters, they probably numbered several hundred thousand. L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, participated in Coxey’s march on Washington and later incorporated it in his story, in which the scarecrow symbolizes the impoverished farmer and the tin woodman the industrial worker. For more on Coxey’s movement, see D. L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970 [1929]) and Carlos Schwantes, Coxey’s Army: An American Odyssey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).

⁴⁵ Coxey and other leaders were arrested, and the marchers dispersed without achieving their goals.

⁴⁶ Luxemburg is here referred to again in the third person by Wolfstein, the likely transcriber.

⁴⁷ The first Anglo-Boer war in South Africa was fought in 1880–81; the Second Boer War was fought from 1899 to 1902.

⁴⁸ Luxemburg appears to have in mind Parvus’s pamhlet, Die Gewerkschaften und die Sozialdemokratie. (The Trade Unions and Social Democracy) (Dresden: Verlag der Sächsischen Arbeiter Zeitung, 1896).

⁴⁹ See Max Schippel, Hochkonjunktur und Wirtschaftskrise (Boom and Economic Crisis). Luxemburg is probably using a later edition than the original of 1908 in order for her to cite it as a source for statistics on bankruptcies in 1909.

⁵⁰ That is, helpful statistical data for use in the practical work of the SPD.

⁵¹ That Luxemburg cites statistics covering the entire year of 1909 indicates this typescript dates from at least 1910, perhaps even from the autumn of 1911. The latter supposition is reinforced by Luxemburg’s letter of November 21, 1911, to Kostya Zetkin, which discusses economic crises and Tugan-Baranovsky’s (inadequate) analysis of them, as well as Karl Kautsky’s inadequate treatment of crises. This letter also indicates that by November 1911 Luxemburg was working on a problem she had encountered in Volume 2 of Marx’s Capital—a problem that prompted her, beginning in January 1912, to start writing her major work, The Accumulation of Capital. See The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, pp. 315–16.

HISTORY OF CRISES

¹ This typescript consists of notes or rough drafts that were developed further in the expanded version that appears in the typescript entitled “Volume 2 of Capital.” Most of that latter typescript (all but the first five pages) discusses precisely the history of crises and follows this outline version quite closely. Sometimes gaps in the later typescript can be filled in by looking at this earlier typescript, and vice versa. The later typescript, in which about 55 double-spaced pages are devoted to “the history of crises,” was probably transcribed by a secretary or student from a lecture or lectures Luxemburg gave at the SPD’s Party School in Berlin (possibly in 1911, since the typescript includes a reference to statistics from 1911).

² See Thomas Malthus, Principles of Political Economy (London: W. Pickering, 1820).

³ Therefore, according to Say, the remedy for crises is an increase of production in those branches of the economy where underproduction exists. See Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d’économie politique, ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent ou se consomment les richesses.

⁴ Luxemburg’s typescript mistakenly gives “Ursachen” (Causes) as the title of Herkner’s article, when actually it was “Krisen” (Crises). See Heinrich Herkner, “Krisen,” in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, edited by J. Conrad et. al, second edition, Vol. 5 (Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1900), pp. 413–33. For the 1886 study of the causes of economic crises in the U.S. cited by Herkner, see Industrial Depresssions: The First Annual Report of the Commission of Labor (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1886), especially Chapter 1, “Modern Industrial Depressions,” pp. 61–3. This lists 180 causes of crises, which range from “planless production” and “speculation” to “lack of interest of the laborer in his work.”

⁵ A jenny is a machine for spinning cotton.

⁶ The Annual Register: A Review of History, Politics, and Literature of the Year is a reference work that has been published in England yearly since 1758. Its first editor was Edmund Burke.

⁷ Although Luxemburg refers to “now” as 1909, she also gives statistics for 1911 near the end of this typescript. The notes in those last few pages are not expanded on in her lengthy discussion of the history of economic crises in her typescript entitled “Volume 2 of Capital.”

⁸ These workhouses were established by the Poor Law Amendment of 1834.

⁹ That is, after the crushing of the Paris Commune of 1871.

¹⁰ In the longer typescript, “Volume 2 of Capital,” the figure for “1882, Machinery” is given as 11.9 instead of 11.6 pounds sterling.

¹¹ In the longer typescript on “Volume Two of Capital,” the figures for “1886, Iron” is given as 21.8 instead of 21.7, and “1890: Machinery” is given as 16.4, instead of 10.4.

¹² The 1890 revolution in Argentina was named “the Revolution of the Park,” and took place on July 26 of that year. It was against the presidency of Miguel Juárez Celman, who was accused of corruption and abuse of power. The main impetus behind the revolt was the rising cost of living. Though Celman was forced from power as a result of the revolution, it failed to achieve its aims of transforming Argentinian government or society.

¹³ The Whiskey Trust was the nickname of the Distiller’s Security Corporation. It was founded by Julius Kessler in the 1870s and cornered the market on distilled liquor.

¹⁴ A reference to Coxey’s Army and its march on Washington in 1894.

¹⁵ Most likely a reference to Parvus’ Die Gewerkschaften und die Sozialdemokratie. Kritischer Bericht über die Lager u. die Aufgaben der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (The Trade Unions and Social-Democracy: Critical Report on the Position and Tasks of the German Workers’ Movement) (Dresden: Sächsichen Arbeiterzeitung, 1896).

¹⁶ A reference to Eduard Bernstein’s articles that sparked the revisionist controversy which were published in Die Neue Zeit in 1897–98. Luxemburg responded to them in her Reform or Revolution.

¹⁷ That is, they did no business at all.

¹⁸ The question marks within the parentheses are in the original typescript.

¹⁹ See Final Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Depression of Trade and Industry (With minutes of evidence) (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1886), p. lvii. Curiously, Luxemburg does not mention one factor that the report mentions: “The fall in the rate of profit which is the natural tendency of the accumulation of capital” (p. lxii).

²⁰ The table presented at this point by Luxemburg also appears in her longer typescript “Volume 2 of Capital.” We have used the same format as in the translation of the longer typescript, which appeared with the following statement by Luxemburg: “The statistics [in the table below] were assembled by Professor [Heinrich] Dade and published by the Association for Social Policy.”

²¹ The question marks are in the original typescript.

²² Heinrich Herkner, “Krisen,” in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, edited by J. Conrad et. al, second edition, Vol. 5 (Jena: G. Fischer, 1900), pp. 413–33.

²³ The question mark is in the original typescript. This appears to be a reference to Parvus’ Die Gewerkschaften und die Sozialdemokratie. Kritischer Bericht über die Lager u. die Aufgaben der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung.

²⁴ Luxemburg does not make clear what the numbers in the following table refer to. Perhaps she meant the number of persons employed by cartels and trusts in 1911.

²⁵ There is no number 1 listed in the typescript. It is possible that the first on the list of 8 points was intended to be the earlier sentence reading “Do cartels represent progress?”

²⁶ The question marks are in the original typescript.

²⁷ The following seem to be incomplete notes for material already written about in greater detail earlier in the manuscript.

PRACTICAL ECONOMICS: VOLUME 3 OF MARX’S CAPITAL

¹ This is a reference to Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems (Karl Marx and the Close of His System) (Berlin: von Otto von Boenigk, 1896) and Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz’s “Wertrechnung und Preisrechnung im Marxschen System: ein Übersicht über die Marx-Kritik” (Value and Price in the Marxian System: An Overview of the Critique of Marx), Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft, 23 (1906) pp. 10–50, 445–488, which argued that Marx’s discussion of the transformation of values into prices in Chapter 9 of Volume 3 of Capital is internally inconsistent with his presentation of the theory of value in Volume 1. For a recent refutation of these criticisms of Marx’s theory, see Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx’s Capital: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006). For an English translation of Böhm-Bawerk’s work, Karl Marx and the Close of his System: A Criticism (London: Unwin, 1898); for an English translation of Bortkiewicz, see “Value and Price in the Marxian System,” International Economic Papers, No. 2, 1952, pp. 5–60.

² A rolling mill is a process for producing certain forms of metal, such as sheet metal, in which stocks or ingots of molten metal are shaped as they pass through a series of rollers.

³ Luxemburg largely reproduces these tables from Volume 3 of Capital. See Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Band III (Hamburg: Otto Meisner, 1894), pp. 134–6; Capital Vol. 3, translated by David Fernbach (New York: Vintage, 1981), p. 256.

⁴ That is, the rate of profit would now be 14 , instead of 20.

⁵ Marx discusses this in Chapter 11 of Part 2 (not Part 1, as stated in the typescript) of Volume 3, entitled “The Effects of General Fluctuations in Wages on the Prices of Production.” Marx writes, “The conclusion is that a general fall in wages leads to a general rise in surplus-value, in the rate of surplus-value, and with other things remaining equal, also in the profit rate, even if in a different proportion; it leads to a fall in production prices for the commodity products of capital of lower than average composition and a rise in production prices for the commodity products of capitals of higher than average composition.” See Capital Vol. 3, p. 305.

⁶ Luxemburg’s arithmetic here is in error. 6½ percent of 120 (the original price) is 7.8, not “8 and .” The new price should therefore be 127.8. It appears that the 7 and 8 in this number was mistakenly transposed. Also, it should read , not .

⁷ The passage Luxemburg is referring to appears in Chapter 13 of Part 3 of Volume 3 of Capital, entitled “The Law Itself.” Marx writes, “The hypothetical series we constructed at the opening of this chapter therefore expresses the actual tendency of capitalist production. With the progressive decline in the variable capital in relation to the constant capital, this tendency leads to a rising organic composition of the total capital, and the direct result of this is that the rate of surplus-value, with the level of exploitation of labor remaining the same or even rising, is expressed in a steadily falling general rate of profit.” (pp. 318–19).

⁸ For Luxemburg’s repudiation of Bernstein’s rejection of Marx’s value theory (which was largely inspired by Bernstein coming under the influence of bourgeois marginal utility theory), see chapter 9 of her Reform or Revolution.

⁹ See Capital Vol. 3, p. 322: “The law of the falling rate of profit, as expressing the same or even a rising rate of surplus-value, means in other words: taking any particular quantity of average social capital, e.g. a capital of 100, an ever greater portion of this is represented by means of labor and an even lesser portion by living labor. Since the mass of living labor added to the means of production falls in relation to the value of these means of production, so too does the unpaid labor, and the portion of value in which it is represented in relation to the value of the total capital advanced.” This is discussed in Part 3 of Volume 3, not Part 1, as indicated in the typescript.

¹⁰ See Capital Volume 3, Chapter 15, “The Development of the Law’s Internal Contradictions,” p. 354: “It also leads to the centralization of this capital, i.e. the swallowing-up of small capitalists by big, and their decapitalization. This is simply the divorce of the conditions of labor from the producers raised to a higher power, these smaller capitalists still counting among the producers, since their own labor still plays a role.” For Luxemburg’s reference to “the end of the chapter,” see pp. 359–75.

¹¹ In this part of the course Luxemburg discusses Marx’s theory of credit and interest-bearing capital.

¹² Ricardo argued that ground rent and the value of land have a tendency to continuously increase, providing important (albeit unjustified, in his view) benefits to landowners. The rent obtained from land, for Ricardo, is therefore always differential instead of absolute. As Marx put it in Chapter 39 of Volume 3 of Capital, “[Ricardo] assumes that no other rent but differential rent exists” (p. 788). In contrast to Ricardo, Marx held that the value of land and ground rent is impacted by the productivity of labor as well as the fertility of the soil; on these grounds, he argued that rents appropriated by the landlords are often a burden for industrial capitalists. Rodbertus argued that since the fertility of the soil determines agricultural output, mortgage indebtedness should be replaced by a permanently fixed (or absolute) rent. Although Marx acknowledged the importance of Rodbertus’ theory of rent, he argued, in Chapter 46 of Volume 3 of Capital that he erred in viewing the growth of profit on land as necessarily correlating with a growth in the value of capital. Marx held that absolute rent cannot exist where the organic composition of capital in agriculture is at a higher level than in the economy as a whole.

¹³ Two paragraphs appear at the end of the original typescript that were not written by Luxemburg. This further confirms that the typescript was a stenographic record of a lecture by Luxemburg at the SPD’s Berlin party school, with a listener (or the stenographer) commenting at the end on some final remarks by her. It is also possible that the typescript was prepared by Luxemburg before her lecture, for use in it or as a handout to help students follow it, and that the paragraphs about Kautsky’s book might have been added or inserted into the manuscript by a listener. The two paragraphs read:

In conclusion, with regard to ground rent theory, Comrade Luxemburg recommends that we read [Karl] Kautsky’s book Die Agrarfrage (The Agrarian Question). It is going to be reprinted.

This book also explains why the general development, which nowadays has entered the stage of [capital] concentration, becomes blurred and obscured to some extent in agriculture. This is, so to speak, an optical illusion, which results from the fact that people apply to agriculture very mechanically the same methods they have for viewing industry.

HISTORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

¹ Luxemburg is referring to John Kells Ingram’s book, History of Political Economy (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1888). Some 55 editions of Ingram’s book, in eight different languages, were published between 1888 and 2008. Luxemburg was using the German edition of the work, Geschichte der Volkswirtschaftslehre, translated by E. Roschlau (Tübingen: H. Laupp, 1905). Some of Ingram’s earlier work was known to Marx, who read and made excerpts of his writings.

² In the manuscript, Luxemburg gives the name as “Scaruff.” The actual title of Scaruffi’s work is Discurso sopra le monete e della vera proporzione tra l’oro e l’argento (Discourse on Money and on the True Proportions between Gold and Silver) (Milan: Destefanis, 1804 [1582]).

³ The actual title of Davanzati’s book is Lezione delle monnete (Lessons About Coins) (Milan: Destefanis, 1804 [1588]).

⁴ The title given for Serra’s work is translated from the German wording used by Luxemburg. In the original Italian it was Breve trattato delle cause che possono far abbondare li regni d’oro e d’argento dove non sono miniere (Brief Treatise on the Causes Which Can Make Gold and Silver Abound in Kingdoms Where There Are no Mines) (Milan: Destefanis, 1803 [1613]).

⁵ Adam Smith considered Mun to be the most outstanding proponent of the mercantilist system. See Mun’s Discourse of Trade from England unto the East Indies (London: Nicholas Okes, 1621).

⁶ The actual title of Child’s book is Brief Observations concerning Trade and the Interest of Money (London: Elizabeth Calvert, 1668).

⁷ Temple’s book was actually first published in 1673. See William Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (London: J. Maxwell, 1673).

⁸ That is, reached a high point of economic development.

⁹ See “The Physiocrats,” in Economic Manuscript of 1861–1863, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 30 (New York: International Publishers, 1988), pp. 352–76. The material contained in what has became known as Theories of Surplus Value was originally part of the 1861–63 draft of Volume 1 of Capital. After 1863 Marx decided not to include the material (which he called “History of Theory”) in Volume 1, intending instead to issue it as a separate Volume Four of Capital. It was first published separately by Karl Kautsky under the title Theories of Surplus Value between 1905 and 1910.

¹⁰ Boisguilbert is widely considered to have been a precursor of the physiocrats. This was also Marx’s view. He writes in Theories of Surplus Value, “Ideas related to those of the Physiocrats are to be found in fragmentary form in older writers who preceded them, partly in France herself, for example Boisguilbert. But it is only with the Physiocrats that these ideas develop into an epoch-making system.” See Economic Manuscript of 1861–1863, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 359. The actual title of Boisguilbert’s book, first published in 1704, is Traité de la nature, culture, commerce et intéret des grains (Treatise on Nature, Culture and Interest of the Grain Trade). It can be found in Pierre de Boisguilbert ou la naissance de l’économie politique, 2 volumes (Paris: Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, 1966). For an English translation, see A Treatise of the Nature of Wealth, Money and Taxation, translated with an introduction by Peter Groenewegen (Sydney: Centre for the Study of the History of Economic Thought, 2000).

¹¹ The title of the book in French, first published in 1707, is Dissertations sur la nature des richesses, de l’argent et des tributs. It can be found in Pierre de Boisguilbert ou la naissance de l’économie politique, 2 volumes (Paris: Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, 1966).

¹² The Tableau économique (The Economic Picture) was first published in France in 1759. For an English translation, see Tableau économique, edited by Marguerite Kuczynski and Ronald Meek (London: Macmillan, 1972).

¹³ In the original French, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses. It was first published in 1769 in the journal Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliotheque Raisonnée des Science Morales et Politiques.

¹⁴ Antonio Genovesi was primarily a philosopher who wrote on logic and metaphysics. His Lezioni di commercio (Lessons on Commerce) (Naples: Appresso I Fratelli Simone, 1765) is considered the first systematic work on economics in Italian. Pietro Verri is primarily known for his Meditazioni sulla economia politica (Mediations on Political Economy) (Genoa: Livornio, 1771). Giovanni Rinaldo, Count of Carli, is author of Della Monete, e della instituzione delle zecche d’Italia dell’antico e presente sistema di esse (Of Coins, and the Establishment of Mints in Italy and the Ancient and Present System) (Pisa: G.P. Giovennelli, 1751–59) Cesare Becarria first argued against the death penalty in his treatise, Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments) (Harlem: Dal Molini, 1764). Although his economic writings are today not as well known in the English-speaking world as his contributions to political thought, Joseph Schumpeter referred to him as “the Italian Adam Smith.”

¹⁵ Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden was one of the few European monarchs to support the physiocrat’s promotion of free trade. Luxemburg is referring to a précis that he wrote on the phsyiocrats, entitled Abrégé des principes de l’économie politique (Abstract of the Principles of Political Economy) (Baden: Grossherzog, 1772).

¹⁶ Luxemburg most likely had in mind Boisguilbert.

¹⁷ Marx tended to use the term “classical political economy” to refer to the English political economists, from William Petty to David Ricardo, as well as to the French economists, from Boisguilbert to Sismondi.

¹⁸ The title of the work is not given in the manuscript. Luxemburg is referring to Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London: John Murray, 1817).

¹⁹ The reference is to Smith’s, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776.

²⁰ Storch was economics tutor to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.

²¹ Kathedersozialismus refers to “academic socialism” or “socialism of the chair”—a relatively conservative socialist tendency among German economists and sociologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that opposed laissez-faire and supported state intervention in the economy while opposing the revolutionary aims of the workers’ movements. Almost all of its adherents were professors at German universities. In Luxemburg’s era it was virtually unheard of for a revolutionary socialist or Marxist to have a position at a German university.

²² Heinrich Herkner, Krisen (Crises), in Handwörterbuch für Staatswissenschaften (Dictionary of the Social Sciences), second edition, Vol. 5 (Jena: G. Fischer, 1900).

²³ Luxemburg appears to have in mind Parvus’ book, Die Gewerkschaften und die Sozialdemokratie (The Trade Unions and Social Democracy) (Dresden: Verlag der Sächsischen Arbeiter Zeitung, 1896).

²⁴ See Max Schippel Hochkonjunktur und Wirtschaftskrise (Boom and Crisis) (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1908).

APPENDIX: THEORY OF THE WAGES FUND

¹ According to the classical theory of the wage fund, the wages of workers are determined by the proportion between the total amount of capital and the population of available workers. If the total amount of capital in a given society remains given but the population increases, wages will decline; if population decreases, wages will rise. The implication is that class struggle, trade unions, or social resistance cannot affect wage rates, since the wage fund is presumably a fixed amount dependent on the ratio between the volume of capital and the size of the laboring populace.

² In A Manual of Political Economy (1795), Bentham provided the first quantitative formulation of the theory of the wage fund. He wrote, “But the rate of wages depends upon, and is necessarily governed solely and exclusively by, the degree of opulence in the country at the time: that is by the proportion of the quantity of wealth in readiness to be employed in the shape of capital in the purchase of labor to the number of persons for whose labor there is a demand.” See Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings, Vol. 1 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1952–54), pp. 247–8.

³ J.B. Say argued in Traité de l’Economie politique ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent et se consomment les richesses that as workers’ wages increase above subsistence, family size grows and the supply of labor eventually outstrips the demand for labor, which in turn compels wages to return back to their “natural” level.

⁴ Lassalle’s theory of the “iron law of wages” held that in capitalism wages tend towards the minimum requirements necessary to sustain the laborer. According to this alleged “iron law,” wages can never drop below subsistence levels, since that would threaten the physical existence of the worker, but neither can they rise much above subsistence, given the competition among workers for employment. The logical implication of the theory is that the effort of trade unions to secure higher wages for their members is bound to prove ultimately fruitless. Although Marx is often associated with the idea, he fervently opposed Lassalle’s conception of the iron law of wages on both empirical and theoretical grounds.

⁵ In Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth (London: Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1824), William Thompson, a socialist neo-Ricardian, rejected the wages fund theory on the grounds that workers are entitled to the entire value of their labor.

⁶ Hermann was the first German economist to criticize the wages fund theory of the British economists in his Staatswirtschaftliche Untersuchungen (Inquiries into Political Economy) (München: A. Weber, 1832). He argued that the actual consumer of labor power is not the capitalist (as Smith and Ricardo contended) but the consumers who purchase the laborer’s products. Since the consumer is the buyer of labor, the capitalist, in his view, simply pays out in wages the price of the goods made by labor.

⁷ Rodbertus rejected the idea that wages are paid out of capital on the grounds that workers are bound to receive a progressively smaller proportionate amount of wages as production increases. Luxemburg took issue with him in The Accumulation of Capital: “Since the ‘laws of exchange value’ determine the wage, an advance in labor productivity must bring about an ever declining share in the product for the workers. Here we have arrived at the Archimedean fulcrum of Rodbertus’ system. This ‘declining wage rate’ is his most important ‘original’ discovery on which he harps from his first writings on social problems (probably in 1839) until his death, and which he ‘claims’ as his very own. This conception, for all that, was but a simple corollary of Ricardo’s theory of value and is contained implicitly in the wages fund theory which dominated bourgeois economics up to the publication of Marx’s Capital. Rodbertus nevertheless believed that this ‘discovery’ made him a kind of Galileo in economics, and he refers to his declining wage rate as explaining every evil and contradiction in capitalist economy.” See The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Modern Reader, 1951), p. 244. See also Rodbertus’ Die Forderungen der arbeitenden Klassen (The Claims of the Working Classes) (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1946 [1837]).

⁸ Although not as radical as Thompson in his approach, Thornton’s On Labor: Its Wrongful Claims and Rightful Dues, its Actual Present and Possible Future (London: Macmillan and co., 1869), took sharp issue with the wages fund theory, which led John Stuart Mill to abandon his earlier defence of it. Mill recanted the theory of the wage fund in a letter of April 9, 1869 to J.E. Cairnes. See Later Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1849–73, edited by Francis Mineea and Dwight Lindley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), p. 1587.

⁹ Sismondi was one of the first economists who took issue with the claim of the classical political economists that wages are advanced by the capitalist in proportion to the amount of the accumulated capital, on the grounds that the increasing productivity of labor and the divorce of workers from control over the means of production actually leads to a decline in their relative wage, and indeed to their ultimate impoverishment. See his Nouveaux Principes d’Economie politique ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population.

¹⁰ For Luxemburg’s discussion of Julius Wolff’s critique of the theory of the wage fund, see below.

¹¹ Marx discusses the wages fund theory in Capital Vol. 1, Chapter 24. He writes: “Classical political economy has always liked to conceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency … Variable capital in its material existence, i.e. the mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the worker, or the so-called labor fund, was turned by this fable into a separate part of social wealth, confined by natural chains and unable to cross the boundary to the other parts … The facts on which the dogma is based are these: on the one hand, the worker has no right to interfere in the division of social wealth into means of enjoyment for the non-worker and means of production. On the other hand, it is only in favorable and exceptional cases that he can enlarge the so-called ‘labor fund’ at the expense of the ‘revenue’ of the rich.” (pp. 758–60).

¹² In many of his writings Marx took strong exception to the theory of the “iron law of wages,” which Lassalle had attributed to him. Marx heaped scorn on the theory as representing little more than an application of Malthus’ theory of population to the determination of the value of labor power. See especially Marx’s critique of this Lassallean notion in his Critique of the Gotha Program: “The nonsense is perpetrated of speaking of the ‘abolition of the wage system’ (it should read: system of wage labor) ‘together with the iron law of wages.’ If I abolish wage labor, then naturally I abolish its laws too, whether they are of ‘iron’ or sponge. But Lassalle’s attack on wage labor turns almost solely on this co-called law … But if this theory is correct, then again I can not abolish the law even if I abolish wage labor a hundred times over, because the law then governs not only the system of wage labor but every social system.” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 91.

¹³ In the manuscript the first several lines of this paragraph were crossed out (through the phrase “industrial reserve army”), but we have preserved these lines since there is no alternative wording for the beginning of this long sentence.

¹⁴ This is especially the case with such socialist neo-Ricardians like Thompson, whose criticism of the wages fund theory pre-dates Marx’s development of the concept of the industrial reserve army.

¹⁵ See Adolph von Wenckstern, Marx (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1896).

¹⁶ Luxemburg here gives the English word “precisely,” along with its German equivalent genau. Luxemburg is apparently referring to the following passage in Chapter 8 of Volume One of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations: “In Great Britain the wages of labor seem, in the present times, to be evidently more than what is precisely necessary to enable the laborer to bring up a family. In order to satisfy ourselves upon this point it will not be necessary to enter into any tedious or doubtful calculation of what may be the lowest sum upon which it is possible to do this. There are many plain symptoms that the wages of labor are nowhere in this country regulated by this lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity.” See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: Metheun & Co, 1904), Vol. 3, p. 27.

¹⁷ This is discussed in Chapter 5 of The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, second edition (London: John Murray, 1819). Luxemburg most often refers to the second edition of the work, which originally appeared in 1817.

¹⁸ This paragraph was a marginal notation in the manuscript.

¹⁹ James Mill was one of the most important advocates of the classical theory of the wage fund. He argued that wages are advanced by the capitalist out of the funds that would otherwise be constituted as capital. See James Mill, In Defence of Commerce (London: C. and R. Baldwin, 1808). Destutt de Tracy’s Traité de la volonté et de ses effets (Treatise on the Will and its Effects) (Paris: Courcier, 1821), argued that since wages are a deduction from the value of capital, an increase in workers’ wages would lead to social impoverishment. On these grounds he declared that “in poor nations the people are comfortable, in rich nations they are generally poor.” John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy was actually first published in 1848 (London: Longmans, Green and Co.). It strongly defended the classical theory of the wage fund, a theory that Mill repudiated two decades later. For Marx’s critique of Mill, see the “Introduction” to the Grundrisse and Chapters 15, 16 and 24 of Capital Vol. 1. Henry Fawcett’s The Economic Position of the British Laborer (London: Macmillan and Co., 1865) is discussed by Marx in Capital Vol. 1, in the section on “The So-Called Labor Fund.” See Capital Vol. 1, pp. 758–61.

²⁰ Karl Heinrich Rau’s Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie (Textbook of Political Economy) (Heidelberg: Winter, 1826–37) was the first work in Germany to articulate and defend the theory of the wages fund. He argued that wages are but a special form of price—the latter in his view, being determined by the value of the commodity, the cost of exchanging the commodity, and competition. John Ramsey MacCulloch argued in his The Literature of Political Economy (London: Brown, Greens, and Longmans, 1845) that wages are necessarily dependent on the proportion between the total amount of capital and the size of the laboring population.

²¹ That is, the time necessary for a new generation of workers to be raised.

²² The economic crises of 1825 resulted from a stock market crash arising from speculative investments by English investors in Latin America. It is considered the first modern economic crisis. In referring to “1836,” Luxemburg is probably thinking of the financial crisis of 1837 in the US, which occurred after President Andrew Jackson refused to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the US. The crisis of 1847 refers to the collapse of British financial markets after the bursting of a bubble in the railway industry. The Panic of 1857, which greatly drew Marx’s attention, is considered to have been the first worldwide economic crisis in human history. It resulted, in part, from a run on stocks following the British government’s decision to withhold the release of hoards of gold and silver to back up its currency. The reference to 1867 is the crisis in England of 1866–67. In her discussion of the history of crises in her manuscript “Volume 2 of Capital” in this volume, Luxemburg noted: “By 1866 all this led to a crisis in England, and the high point of the crisis was 1867. An outbreak of panic followed, as ever, from some particular event, and indeed in this case it was a bankruptcy of Overend & Co. The consequence of this bankruptcy was a frightful panic. In two weeks the reserves of the Bank of England were almost completely emptied.”

²³ Three question marks in place of a word appear in the manuscript here. We have provided what we take to be the meaning of the missing word in brackets.

²⁴ Ricardo discusses this in Chapter 31 of the second edition of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. In the Preface (p. 3), he noted: “To determine the laws which regulate this distribution, is the principal problem in Political Economy: much as the science has been improved by the writings of Turgot, Stuart, Smith, Say, Sismondi, and others, they afford very little satisfactory information respecting the natural course of rent, profit, and wages.” Shortly thereafter the critique of the wages fund theory was carried further by such neo-Ricardian socialists as William Thompson in his Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth.

²⁵ Alfred and Friedrich Krupp were one of Germany’s most important steel and armaments manufacturers (see the second footnote on page 114 of this volume). Karl Friedrich Stumm at the time was the most important employer in mining and iron and steel industries in Saarland, in western Germany.

²⁶ Des Weltbaus Löcher verstopfen sie/Mit alten Schlafröcken und Mützen. These lines are from Heine’s famous work, Buch der Leider (1827), or Book of Songs.

²⁷ That is, greater than the quantity of accumulated capital.

²⁸ See Rodbertus’s Zur Erkenntnis unserer staatswirtschaftlichen Zustände (Contribution to the Knowledge of Our Economic Conditions) (Neubrandenburg: Friedland, 1842).

²⁹ Here Arme means the “poor,” but Luxemburg intends it also to mean Armée, that is, the reserve army of the unemployed.

³⁰ That is, for his capital to make a profit.

³¹ The common theory would be one that reflected the views of both Marx and Julius Wolf.

³² The manuscript breaks off at this point.