Product Innovation and Marxist Theory of Capital Accumulation

Product Innovation and Marxist Theory of Capital Accumulation

This article tries to introduce product innovation into Marxist theory of capital accumulation It is argued that the existing Marxist explanations of the fundamental contradictions in capital accumulation have so far prevented from conceptualizing product innovation in Marxist economics The contradiction between the production of surplus value and its realization, are reconstructed here as the fundamental contradictions in capital accumulation, with the contradiction between exchange value and use value as the driving force of its development The tendency of profit late to fall is reinterpreted as the result of the fundamental contradictions in capital accumulation It is demonstrated that product innovations and the consequent expansion of social division of labour are the major means by which the fundamental contradictions in capital accumulation could be overcome As a major form of the development of productive forces, product innovation is the most important source from which capitalist mode of production draws its legitimacy Finally, it is concluded that the so called 'long wave' should not be regarded as identical with the historical phases of economic growth, but accounted for as a purely analytical conception, i e., as the internal framework of time within which the fundamental contradictions of capital accumulation evolve on the basis of specific economic sectors and! or of specific social division of labour