July 2001. The dominant interpretations of Marx's reproduction schemes differ over whether the schemes show balanced growth under capitalism to be possible or impossible in practice. Yet both interpretations regard the schemes themselves as balanced growth models. This paper argues, to the contrary, that the schemes depict a process of unbalanced growth. Under this interpretation, the reproduction schemes emerge as the first analysis of what Rostow and later development theorists have termed the “take-off” process. Marx’s analysis also emerges as a remarkably accurate one, since, in country after country, the take-off has occurred through the expansion of means of production at the expense of consumption.

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