The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy by Paul M. Sweezy

Author:Paul M. Sweezy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2018-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

7. LOUIS B. BOUDIN

For a full decade after the appearance of Tugan’s book and the important review articles of Schmidt and Kautsky, no strikingly new points of view were introduced into the breakdown controversy. Writing his Theoretical Principles of Marxism in 1905, Tugan noted, with evident disapproval, that nearly all socialists, whatever their differences might be, were in general agreement that ‘there must come a time when overproduction will become chronic, and the capitalist economic order will break down because of the impossibility of finding outlets for its newly accumulated capital.’21 Tugan was certainly exaggerating the extent of agreement among socialists; his attempt to portray Schmidt as a breakdown theorist, and in this way to give the impression that the view in question enjoyed support even among the revisionists, was little more than a debating trick. Among the orthodox Marxists, however, there undoubtedly was little serious difference of opinion at this time. Out of the ferment of the Bernstein debates had come a relatively stabilized version of orthodox Marxist theory; as regards crises and capitalist breakdown it followed closely the views which Kautsky had put forward in 1902.

Louis B. Boudin was an adequate spokesman of this period of theoretical stabilization. His book, The Theoretical System of Karl Marx (1907), while containing little new or original, is none the less a substantial work which summarizes better than any other the theoretical views held by the accredited representatives of international socialism in the first decade of the century. In crisis theory, Boudin accepted a crude underconsumption explanation; he was confident that crises must grow more severe and that there were definite objective limits to the expansibility of capitalism; he even speaks of the ‘purely economico-mechanical breakdown of the capitalist system.’22 He was not inclined, however, to emphasize the breakdown problem; his general position is more adequately expressed in the following passage:

According to the Marxian philosophy a system of production can only last as long as it helps, or at least does not hinder, the unfolding and full exploitation of the productive forces of society, and must give way to another system when it becomes a hindrance, a fetter, to production. That a system has become a hindrance, and a fetter to production when it can only exist by preventing production, and by wasting what it has already produced, goes without saying. Such a system can not therefore last very long, quite irrespective of the purely mechanical possibility or impossibility of its continuance. Such a system has become historically impossible, even though mechanically it may still be possible.23

The similarity between this view and that expressed by Kautsky in his criticism of Tugan is apparent. In general, it can be said that Boudin’s analysis is distinguishable from that of Kautsky only by the more markedly primitive character of its underconsumptionism.

After Boudin the breakdown issue tended to fade into the background of theoretical controversy. Hilferding, who was much influenced by Tugan, declared that ‘economic breakdown is in no sense a rational conception,’24 but he did not elaborate on the theme.

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