Surplus value…again

The Accumulation of Capital was first published in German in 1913. It relates Rosa Luxemburg’s quest for an answer to the very pertinent question of surplus value. How is that unpaid produce transformed into more capital? How is it accumulated?
 

Surplus value concerns the goods and services destined to be consumed as well as those destined to go back into the production process as investments. As no one has paid for them, their exchanges are mediated by credit. But surplus value seeks to accumulate as capital, so there is a strong demand for the part that can be invested and a lesser one for the consumable part, credit for investment versus credit for consumption.
 

The oldest and still current solution to the surplus value for consumption is foreign trade. The surplus consumption is exported and investments, mostly raw materials, are imported in exchange. Glass beads and guns were traded for gold, ivory and slaves, and today luxury cars and fighter jets are paid with crude oil, uranium and soy-bean cakes.
 

This is the story of colonial and post-colonial exploitation, and its premises were described by Luxemburg a hundred years ago. However, foreign trade was unable to absorb the growing surplus consumption. The economic depression of the 1930s forced governments into debt to stimulate consumption, especially armaments, and after WW2 personal consumer credit began to expand throughout the industrialised world.
 

The system broke down in the 1970s and is now facing a similar crisis on a vastly increased scale. From which there is no way out, other than cancelling debts by inflation or annulments and starting over again. Meanwhile, a review of how wealth is produced and accumulated might help avoid similar mishaps in the future, except that property and power are inseparable.