The inner mechanism of the accumulation of capital: the acceleration triple - A methodological appraisal of Part Seven of Marx's Capital I

It is argued that for an appraisal of Marx’s ‘general law of capitalist accumulation’ in Volume I of Capital, it is crucial to take account of its level of abstraction. Here Marx considers accumulation merely as moment of the ‘immedi­ate process of production’ and so restricts to what he calls ‘the inner mechanism’ of capital accumula­tion (‘inner’ determina­tions” are not more important than ‘outer determi­na­tions’; the former have no existence without the latter; and the outer determina­tions may modify the actualiz­ation of the inner). Marx’s warnings about this got de-empha­sized in the English translations of the work. The terrain of ‘the general law’ is the impact of capital accumulation on the working class. Its core is an accel­eration triple of growing capital accumulation, increasing produc­tive forces of labour and an increasing technical compo­sition of capital – presented in three phases of complica­tion. In unfolding the dynamic interaction of this triple, Marx intro­duces the cyclical develop­ment of accumulation, though merely as an empiri­cal reference. It is shown that, in this Volume, Marx does not – and methodologi­cally could not – develop a theory of the cycle, and a fortiori no labour-short­age theory of the cycle. ‘Centralisation’ of capital is equally intro­duced by way of empirical reference.