Rosa luxemburg's accumulation of capital: A centennial update with additions from long wave theory and karl polanyi's great transformation

The period of economic and political crises that began with the Wall Street crash in 2007 in many ways resembles the conditions of global capitalism at the time Rosa Luxemburg published her Accumulation of Capital. This article argues that Luxemburg's political economy entails the theoretical tools necessary to understand capitalist development since the early 20th century and that capitalism indeed faces as great a crisis as it did at that time. Amended by ideas from long wave theory and Polanyi's concept of a great transformation, the article analyzes the subsequent Keynesian and neoliberal waves of accumulation and the crises that led from on to the other. It concludes that no further capitalist expansion is readily possible at this time.