> Ken, on Grossmann, can you provide some citations
perhaps? Did the FS and HM in particular have a serious
economic critique of their colleague Grossmann?
Grossmann's most significant contribution was Das Akkumulations-und Zusammenbruchsgesetz des kapitalistischen Systems (The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalism System). This text combines evolutionary and revolutionary elements (I haven't read it nor has it been translated, as far as I know). The most overt response, I believe, comes in the form of Pollock's engagement with economic analysis (in the early days of the Institute's journal) - and an indirect response, i guess, could be seen in Horkheimer's 1937 essay 'Critical Theory.'
My ref. for the passage below is a interview with Marcuse by Bryan Magee in the video series 'Men of Ideas' - entitled "Marcuse and the Frankfurt School."
Can't help you with the rest.
ken, don't know much about history...
> I've been most interested in Grossmann's debate with the
then SPD finance minister Hilferding, in the late 1920s, which
takes on great force in the 1929 book predicting the great
depression. I understood this debate to be one between a
fascination with rising financial power/concentration
(Hilferding) versus financial vulnerability due to K's
underlying overaccumulation tendency (Grossmann) -- and
neither really getting to the point made a moment ago (by
Tom?, can't remember) about the ability of global economic
managers to *move the crisis around* through space and
time (and psychological bluster).
> The latter phenomenon -- space-time displacement of
capitalist crisis, only to find overaccumulation/financial
speculation bubbling up somewhere else -- is, for me, at
least, the late 20th century innovation that both H and G
should have been capable of reading out of deep Marxist
theory, but didn't. Both had monocentric understandings of
the accumulation process, in rather different ways. No?
> > Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 22:44:13 PST
> > From: ken <kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca>
> > I usually don't say this but I don't believe what is written
> > below - particularly about Grossmann. ...
> > As for 'spiking' the career of Grossmann - Marcuse *liked*
> > Grossmann as a friend - Grossmann was, after all, one
> > of the founders of the FS. Marcuse disagree with his
> > orthodoxy. Remember - Grossmann predicted to the day
when the revolution would take place - not unlike the
medieval church fathers predictions about the second coming.
How well would most people work with this kind of dogmatism today?
> > Horkheimer and Marcuse's critique of Grossmann is
> > consistent throughout the work of the FS.
> Patrick Bond
> email: pbond at wn.apc.org * phone: 2711-614-8088
> 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
> work: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of
Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050,
South Africa email: bondp at zeus.mgmt.wits.ac.za
> phone: 2711-488-5917 * fax: 2711-484-2729