The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume I

Economic Writings 1

Rosa Luxemburg, Peter Hudis, David Fernbach, Joseph Fracchia, George Shriver

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781781687659
• eBook ISBN:
  9781781685532
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Storia europea

This first volume in Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works, entitled Economic Writings 1, contains some of Luxemburg's most important statements on the globalization of capital, wage labor, imperialism, and pre-capitalist economic formations. In addition to a new translation of her doctoral dissertation, "The Industrial Development of Poland," Volume I includes the first complete English-language publication of her "Introduction to Political Economy," which explores (among other issues) the impact of capitalist commodity production and industrialization on non- capitalist social strata in the developing world. Also appearing here are ten recently discovered manuscripts, none of which has ever before been published in English.

The Industrial Development of Poland

PREFACE

Although the subject of the following treatise is highly specialized, we are nevertheless convinced that, for a number of reasons, it can be of more than passing interest to Western European readers. Today, in all civilized countries, economic issues stand in the forefront of intellectual life. There is already a widespread recognition that they are the motive forces of all social being and becoming. The political physiognomy and historical destiny of a country are for us like a closed book, sealed with seven seals,^I if we do not know that country’s economic life and all the resulting social consequences.

It was not so long ago that Poland’s name resounded throughout the civilized world; its fortunes stirred the minds of all and brought excitement to every heart. Lately no one any longer hears much about Poland—not since it became an ordinary capitalist country. If one wants to know what has become of the old rebel, and where the destinies of history have steered it, the answer can come only from research into the economic history of Poland in recent decades.

One can view and discuss the so-called Polish question from various standpoints, but for those who see in the material development of society the key to its political development, the solution to the Polish question can be found only on the basis of Poland’s economic life and the trends within it. We have attempted in the following treatise to gather together the available material necessary for solving this problem, organizing it as much as possible to provide a clear and overall view. In the process, here and there, we have also taken the liberty of doing some direct finger pointing of a political nature. Thus, the subject that at first glance seemed so dry and specialized may prove to be interesting for political people as well.

This may also be true for other reasons. We live at a time when the mighty Empire of the North is playing an increasingly important role in European politics. All eyes are keeping a close watch on Russia, and people view with concern the alarming advances made by Russian policy in Asia. Soon it may not be a secret to anyone that the most important capitalist countries will, earlier or later, have to be prepared for serious economic competition with Russia in Asia. The economic policy of the tsarist empire can therefore no longer be a matter of complete indifference to Western Europeans. Poland constitutes, however, one of the most important and most advanced industrial regions of the Russian empire, one in whose history the economic policies of Russia have perhaps been most clearly and distinctly expressed.

The material for our study lay scattered in numerous statistical publications, which often contradicted one another, as well as polemical pamphlets, newspaper articles, and both official reports and unofficial ones. No exhaustive work about the history of Polish industry in general, and especially about its present condition, is to be found in the existing literature, neither in the Polish language nor in Russian, nor in German. We believed therefore that we needed to process and digest this ragged, disconnected raw material in order to present it in as finished form as possible, so that the reader could most easily reach significant general conclusions.

I. THE HISTORY AND PRESENT CONDITION OF POLISH INDUSTRY

1. The Period of Manufacture, 1820–50

Toward the beginning of the nineteenth century, political events placed Poland in entirely new circumstances. The partitioning of Poland^II removed it from the special feudal-anarchic conditions of natural economy that had prevailed under the republic of the gentry—conditions found in Poland for most of the eighteenth century. Poland was brought under a regime of enlightened absolutism, under the centralized, bureaucratic administrative systems of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The main part of Poland, under Russia, which is of interest to us here, indeed was very soon able, at first as the Duchy of Warsaw^III and, later, after the Congress of Vienna [as the Kingdom of Poland], to maintain its own constitution based on social estates.^IV But there was a world of difference between this Congress Poland and the Poland of former times. The entire administrative, financial, military, and judicial apparatus was adapted to that of a modern centralized state. But this apparatus proved to be in glaring contradiction to the economic relations onto which it had been superimposed. As before, Poland’s economic life centered on landed property. The development of urban craft production, which had begun in the thirteenth century, had run into the sand by the time of the seventeenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, attempts by the owners of large landed estates (the magnates) to create a manufacturing system likewise fell apart, having gone nowhere. After all, landed property was entirely unsuited to serve as the basis for a modern state organization. Because of its dependence on the world market, which dated from the fifteenth century, the Poland of old had been driven to establish a highly extensive latifundia economy, with the most extreme exactions being imposed on serf labor. These latifundia were managed more and more irrationally, and therefore constantly became less and less productive. The wars of Poland’s final epoch, and then Napoleon’s economic policies in the Duchy of Poland, especially the Continental System,^V and the accompanying drop in grain exports, plus the falling price of grain, followed by the abolition of serfdom in 1807—all these blows of different kinds fell upon landed property, one after the other, over the course of about ten years and brought it to the verge of ruin. But because landed property constituted the main source of revenue in the country, once again the full burden of the relatively large costs of the new administrative system fell on the landed proprietors. The 10 percent income tax on landed property, which Poland had already introduced in olden times, but which was now actually being collected for the first time, was suddenly supposed to be increased to 24 percent. In addition, the burden of quartering troops and supplying the military in natura^VI fell on the nobility.

The result was that landed property soon fell into the clutches of the usurers. While old Poland possessed no urban capitalist class, because of the decay of urban production and trade, such a class surfaced right after the partition of Poland. In part it consisted of immigrating officials and usurers, in part of Polish upstarts who owed their material existence to the country’s huge political and economic crisis. This new section of the population now provided the needy gentry with capital. Incidentally, to a large extent the ten-year rule of Prussia (1796–1806) had already laid the foundations for the gentry’s indebtedness. During that decade for the first time an organized system of agricultural credit was thrown wide open for the Polish gentry.

For Polish landed property this constituted a veritable revolution. What then took place had been accomplished in Western Europe during the Middle Ages by a slow and gradual process over centuries—the undermining of patrimonial land ownership as the result of usurious interest payments. In Poland this process was brought to completion in less then twenty years. Up until the end of the republic, landed property had been kept free of the usurer. But now, as early as 1821, the landowners had to be saved from destruction by an emergency regulation issued by the government of the Kingdom of Poland—a moratorium.

Under such circumstances, a deficit was a permanent part of the budget of the Kingdom of Poland from the very beginning. The creation of new sources of revenue for the exchequer and of new spheres of economic activity in the country therefore became a condition of existence for the Kingdom from the first moment. Following the example of other countries and driven by immediate needs, the government undertook the establishment of urban industry in Poland.

The decade 1820–30 is the time of origin for Polish industry, or more exactly, for Polish manufacture.

It is indicative that this came about in a way quite similar to that of the earlier origins of Polish craft production, with foreign, mostly German, craftsmen being encouraged to move to Poland. Just as the Polish princes in the thirteenth century tried to attract foreign workers by offering all sorts of privileges, so too did the government of Congress Poland. An entire series of tsarist decrees to this effect were issued in the years 1816–24. The government made houses available free of charge, as well as construction materials, waived rental payments, and established a so-called iron fund for the erection of industrial buildings and housing for industry personnel. In 1816 immigrating craftsmen were assured of freedom from all taxation and other public burdens for six years, their sons were exempted from military service, and they were permitted to bring personal property into the country duty-free. In 1820 the government granted the immigrants free use of building materials from the state forests and established special brickyards to provide them with the cheapest possible bricks.

An 1822 law freed all industrial enterprises, for a period of three to six years, from the obligation to quarter soldiers. In 1820 and 1823 it was decreed that the cities were to hand over locations to these enterprises rent-free for six years. The industrial fund established in 1822 for the encouragement of industrial colonization amounted to 45,000 rubles at the beginning; it was already twice as much in 1823, and from then on, was set at 127,500 rubles annually.¹

Such manifold attractions did not fail to have an effect. Soon German craftsmen trooped into Poland and settle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About Your eBook
• Introduction by Peter Hudis
• 1. The Industrial Development of Poland
• 2. Back to Adam Smith!
• 3. Introduction to Political Economy
• 4. Slavery
• 5. Notes About the Economic Form of Antiquity/Slavery
• 6. The Middle Ages. Feudalism. Development of Cities
• 7. Practical Economics: Volume 2 of Marx’s Capital
• 8. History of Crises
• 9. Practical Economics: Volume 3 of Marx’s Capital
• 10. History of Political Economy
• Appendix: Theory of the Wages Fund
• Notes
• A Glossary of Personal Names