Rosa Luxemburg’s ‘Accumulation of Capital’:
 New Perspectives on Capitalist Development and US Hegemony

Ingo Schmidt

 (published in: Socialist Studies / Études socialistes 6(2) Fall 2010: 92‐117 http://socialiststudies.com/index.php/sss/issue/view/16

 Key Words: Capital accumulation, non‐capitalist environments, US hegemony, welfare state, developmental state, accumulation by dispossession

 Abstract
 The article begins with a critique of a variety of Marxist theories on capitalist development and US hegemony. These theories either see capitalism in stagnation and US hegemony in decline since the 1970s or understand neoliberalism as the American way to permanent hegemony. The former fail to explain accumulation during the era of neoliberalism, the latter can’t explain the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism. As an alternative a Luxemburgian approach is suggested, which proceeds in two steps. One, core concepts of Rosa Luxemburgs’ ‘Accumulation of Capital’ will be introduced and the Marxist debate about her work reviewed. This is necessary because of the absence of any tradition of Luxemburgian political economy. Second, from a Luxemburgian perspective post‐war capitalism developed in two phases, each of which was possible because class‐struggles and international conflicts had opened non‐capitalist environments for capitalist penetration. The first phase gave rise to consumer capitalism and neo‐colonialism; the second was characterized by accumulation by dispossession that rolled back welfare states in the North and developmental states in the South, it also integrated formerly state‐ socialist countries, notably China, into the capitalist world‐system.