Economic Crisis and Socialist Revolution: Henryk Grossman’s Law of accumulation, Its First Critics and His Responses
Henryk Grossman was the first person to systematically explore Marx’s explanation of capitalist crises in terms of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and to place it in the context of the distinction between use and exchange value. His The law of accumulation and breakdown of the capitalist system remains an important reference point in the Marxist literature on economic crises. That literature has been plagued by distortions of Grossman’s position which derive from early hostile reviews of his book. These accused Grossman of a mechanical approach to the end of capitalism and of neglecting factors which boost profit rates. Grossman, in fact, contributed a complementary economic element to the recovery of Marxism undertaken by Lenin (particularly in the area of Marxist politics) and Lukacs (in philosophy). In both published and unpublished work, Grossman also dealt with and even anticipated criticisms of his methodology and treatment of countertendencies to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Far from being mechanical, his economic analysis can still assist the struggle for working class self-emancipation.
The Jewish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and the Bund
The Jewish Social Democratic Party of Galicia (ZPS) was established on May Day 1905. The choice of this date and the Party’s first public activities demonstrated that its inspiration was the Marxist concept of international workers’ solidarity in the cause of working-class self- emancipation, that is, socialism. The emergence of the Party was driven by the growth of the Jewish proletariat, and by its political and organizational needs. The Bund played a role in this process, but not as an initiator, driving force or determining factor. It offered, rather, a model for Jewish social-democratic policy, activity and militancy. This argument is not original. Henryk Grossmann, a ZPS leader, made it in his 1907 account Der bundizm in galitsien, a pamphlet dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the Bund. But one of his polemical concerns was to rebut assertions from the Polish Social Democratic Party (PPSD) that the ZPS was merely a pendant of the Bund (and/or Zionism). So Grossmann’s account did not include details of relations between the Bund and the ZPS. The following discussion outlines the history of the ZPS, free of the constraints imposed by argument with the nationalist section of the Polish socialist movement. The focus is on the details of the ZPS’s relationships with the Bund, as well as similarities and differences between the two organizations. Their most important relationship, in shared politics rather than formal ties, is examined in the context of the development of the Galician Party, from its prehistory through to its fusion with the Polish Bund in 1920.
Correlations for mass transfer between fluidized spheres and a liquid
Abstract Data on mass transfer between the solid particles and the liquid in a fluidized bed have been analyzed. After a convenient selection, various correlations have been derived. They show that for a given fluidized system, the Sherwood number is independent on the Reynolds number.