Capital accumulation

Capital accumulation is the reinvestment of resources or profits to expand productive capacity and wealth. It can occur through investment in equipment, infrastructure, skills, or financial assets.

Surplus value: In Marxian economics, value created by workers beyond the value represented by their wages. Marx treats its appropriation as a source of funds for expanding capital.
Capital (economics): Produced assets used to generate goods and services or income. Accumulation concerns the growth of this stock of productive assets.
Adam Smith: An eighteenth-century Scottish political economist and philosopher, author of The Wealth of Nations. Smith connected saving and investment with expanding productive capacity and division of labor.
Economic growth: An increase over time in an economy’s production of goods and services. Investment-driven accumulation can expand an economy’s productive capacity.
Simple reproduction: The repeated renewal of production at an unchanged scale. It contrasts with expanded reproduction, in which part of the surplus enlarges production.
Reinvestment: The use of earnings or resources to support further production or investment. Reinvested profits enlarge productive capacity rather than being consumed.
Investment: The use of resources to acquire or create assets expected to yield future benefits. Investment is the flow that can increase the stock of capital.
Karl Marx: A nineteenth-century German philosopher and political economist who analyzed capitalism and class relations. Marx made accumulation central to his account of capitalist reproduction and expansion.
Wealth inequality: The unequal distribution of assets and net worth among people or groups. Unequal ownership of accumulated assets can widen differences in wealth.
Steady-state economy: An economy designed to maintain stable stocks of population and physical capital within ecological limits. Its aim challenges the expectation of indefinite material expansion through accumulation.

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