User:Mccapra/The Accumulation of Capital: An Anti-Critique

The Accumulation of Capital - An Anti-Critique (Die Akkumulation des Kapitals oder Was die Epigonen aus der Marxschen Theorie gemacht haben. Eine Antikritik) was a work by Rosa Luxemburg, written in 1915 while she was interned in the women’s prison, Barnimstrasse, Berlin.

Criticism
Luxemburg’s work was criticised by other Marxists, notably Nikolai Bukharin. The main objections of other Marxists to her An Anti-Critique were fourfold. Firstly, it is was argued that Luxemburg had "changed the basis of capitalist accumulation from something derived from surplus labour into a process which draws its main sustenance from an outside source". Secondly, by making "the exploitation of the 'third' market the driving force of capitalism, not the exploitation of wage labour" she suggested that surplus value is extracted from that "third" market rather than from the indigenous working class. Thirdly, that if surplus value was not in fact extracted from the working class, "the necessity of a proletariat revolution [would] no longer [be] a valid proposition in the advanced capitalist countries”. Finally if the upheavals of capitalism were related to imperialism and not to the exploitation of the domestic working class, that working class would have every interest in joining with its own bourgeoisie to defeat colonial rebellions.