V
Grossmann,Henryk
Born April 14, 1881 in Cracow, died Nov.24,1950 in Leipzig.
Studied in Cracow, lived 1908 to 1918 in Vienna (collaboration
with Carl Grunberg ),from 1918 to 1925 in Warsaw ( Central
Statistical Office and Free University ), from 1925 to 1933
as a political refugee in Germany ( University of Frankfurt/Main)
later in France, England and U.S.A. Spent his last years in
the German Democratic Republic ( University of Leipzig ).
His main work (1929), based on Marx, deals with the inevitability
for economic reasons, of the breakdown of capitalism. The
method of Marx in his view is a stepwise approximation to
reality which starts from a simplified abstract model of the
accumulation process (based on the reproduction schemata
and assuming a closed system, two classes only, nocredit,
commodities sold at their values, constant value of money )
and proceeds by gradually adding realistic details of
secundary importance ("surface phenomena") among which he counts
monopoly, money and credit, capital exports,struggle for raw
materials . In following this method Grossmann demonstrates
first the inevitability of breakdown and deals then with the
factors which counteract and therefore delay the breakdown.
The starting point of his theory is an arithmetic
example of Otto Bauer based on the reproduction schema of
Marx which was intended by Bauer, in a polemic against Rosa
Luxemburg, to demonstrate that realisation under extended
reproduction was perfectly possible. Bauer worked out his
example only for four years, but Grossmann extended it to
35 years in order to demonstrate that the accumulation process
could not proceed without limit. Following Bauer he made the
following assumptions: 5 p.c. growth of variable