Money, Reproduction on an Enlarged Scale and Effective Demand in Economic Marxist Thought

The theoretical interpretations of economic crises as moments of an endogenous cycle have necessarily to be confronted, on the one hand, with the dynamics of capital accumulation, and on the other, with the determinants and the trends of aggregate demand. However, a theory that, as in most Marxist approaches, should explain crises as recurrent and systematic times of the development of capitalist economies, has also necessarily to find the link which periodically connects the lack of effective demand to the dynamics of the capital accumulation process. In the paper we analyze the attempts that have been made in this direction by some Marxist authors, such as Tugan-Baranowski and Rosa Luxemburg, utilising Marxian schemes of reproduction on an enlarged scale and connecting them, respectively, or to a theory of investment or to a theory of the lack of effective demand. We also consider the influence exercised by these theoretical approaches on the genesis of Kalecki’s theories. Finally, we focus on the role attributed by Marx, in his schemes of reproduction, to the money capital and how this can draw attention to a theory of the role of credit in the genesis of the cyclical fluctuations of the process of capital accumulation.