The early reception of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of imperialism

Abstract

This article deals with the reception of Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital: A Contribution to the Economic Explanation of Imperialism in the Second International before the start of the First World War. Our analysis shows that, if the condemnation of The Accumulation of Capital by the political right and centre was almost unanimous, its acceptance by the left was far from universal. In fact, both Lenin and Pannekoek rejected Luxemburg’s theory, adopting instead the economic analysis of an important spokesman of the centre, the Austro-Marxist Rudolf Hilferding. Our work concludes by analysing the reasons for those theoretical differences.

The Dialectic of the Spatial Determination of Capital: Rosa Luxemburg'sAccumulation of CapitalReconsidered

“…The exceptions to this were Lenin and Anton Pannekoek, who sharply differed from her approach while affirming the integral connection between capitalism and imperialism. For more on this, see Gaido and Quiroga (2013). 14 It should be noted that it was not only her reformist opponents who suffered from such Eurocentric defects.…”

A forgotten economic work by Rosa Luxemburg

“… 5. For more details on the early reception of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of imperialism see Gaido and Quiroga (2013). …”