“Marxist economics made little progress after Karl Marx’s death. Marxists rightly considered the popularisation of Marx’s doctrines and their defence against the attacks of opponents as their most important task. Little time remained to us for the upgrading and continuation of Karl Marx’s economic teachings. Ultimately, the work of popularisation also began to suffer from this situation. The capitalism described in most of our propaganda-literature is that of the 1860s and 1870s, not the capitalism of our own day. The newest phenomena in economic life were certainly dealt with in many valuable articles and brochures, but we lacked a systematic theoretical presentation. Even in the most significant and independent economic work hitherto produced by the Marxist school, apart from those of Marx and Engels themselves, even in Kautsky’s ‘Agrarian Question’, the immediate political purpose and the needs of popularisation thrust the historic-descriptive exposition into the foreground and the theoretical part into the background. Meanwhile, a new world has arisen in the developmental tendencies of capitalism no longer suffice. The gaps resulting from this situation have now finally been filled at least in part. Rudolf Hilferding’s ‘Finance Capital’ gives us what we have long needed. (1)” “(1) Hilferding 1910a (English version Hilferding 1981). The work appeared simultaneously in the third volume of ‘Marx-Studien, Blätter zur Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus’ edited by Max Adler and Rudolf Hilferding. The volume also includes the beautiful work of the comrade Tatiana Grigorovici, ‘Die Wertlehre von Marx und Lassalle’. We already reviewed this work in ‘Der Kampf’ when it appeared as the author’s doctoral dissertation. (See Bauer 1908a and Grigorovici 1910)” [Otto Bauer, ‘Finance Capital’ (June 1910)] [in Richard B. Day Daniel Gaido a cura, ‘Discovering Imperialism. Social Democracy to World War I’, 2012]
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- Articolo pubblicato:4 Settembre 2012