Henryk Grossmann
1881-1950
“What was the year 1929 in the USA and the year 1931 in Germany and England if not a giant breakdown? The working class was not prepared for this. It did not have a Lenin, who awaited and worked towards such a moment. Rather, for decades it heard from Hilferding and Helene Bauer that a breakdown was impossible. Only such a disorientation of the working class made it possible for the ruling class to overcome the panic and to survive the breakdown.”
– Henryk Grossman
Biography
Henryk Grossman was born in Krakow, in Galicia, the Austrian-ruled section of then-partitioned Poland. Active in the socialist movement in high-school, he joined the Polish Social Democratic Party(PPSD). At University he became active in organizing Jewish workers and struggled against the opportunism and chauvinism of the PPSD. He helped lead a split of Jewish workers from the PPSD in May 1905 to form the Jewish Social Democrat Party of Galicia, and was elected party secretary, occupying leadership positions for the next 3 years. With the defeat of the 1905 revolution and the subsequent decline in the working class movement, he left active politics and worked as a statistician and economist. After the war, he joined the Communist Workers Party of Poland in 1920. Persecuted by the police and imprisoned for several terms ranging from 2 to 8 months, repression forced him into exile in Frankfurt at the end of 1925. He became associated with the Frankfurt Institute and wrote his major work on capitalist breakdown, and related articles. He was forced into exile again in 1933, first to Britain and then the USA. He returned to Germany in 1949, joining the Socialist Unity Party, as Professor of Political Economy at the University of Leipzig, where he died the following year.
Note on naming: 'Henryk Grossmann' is used by the MIA, except in biographical material, because it is the most familiar rendering. He was known in Poland as 'Henryk Grossman', and this is used in biographical material and for those works whose preparation he oversaw himself.
More information about Grossman and definitive bibliography.
Works:
The Proletariat in the Face of the Jewish Question, 1905
Bundism in Galicia, 1907
The Theory of Economic Crises, 1919
Simonde de Sismondi and his Economic Theories: A New Interpretation of his Thought, 1924
The Law of Accumulation and Collapse of the Capitalist System (Also a Theory of Crisis), 1929
Fragments on criticisms of 'Law of Accumulation', 1929-32
Marx, Classical Political Economy and the Problem of Dynamics, 1941
The Evolutionist Revolt against Classical Economics, 1943 (excerpts)