Theories of Crisis: An Explanation of the 1974–82 Cycle

Abstract

The Marxist theory of the industrial cycle, like the academic theory, has suffered from the penchant of influential authors to advance monocausal explanations for periodic over-production crises. Two great ‘schools’ have arisen. One claims that the crises are caused by the under-consumption of the masses (that is, over-production of consumer goods), the other that they are caused by over-accumulation (meaning the insufficiency of profit to continue expansion in the production of producer goods). This debate is but a variant of the old debate between those who explained the crises by ‘insufficient aggregate demand’, and those who explained them by ‘disproportionality’.

A revised version and translation of chapters 25 and 26 of La Crise (Paris: Flammarion, 1982).