What was Marxs special theory about crisis?
In his longest discussion of the question (he never completed a systematic account of capitalist crises for publication) Marx concluded: “Over-production is specifically conditioned by the general law of the production of capital: to produce to the limit set by the productive forces… constant reconversion of revenue into capital, while on the other hand, the mass of the producers remain tied to the average level of needs, and must remain tied to it according to the nature of capitalist production”. In other words, capitalist booms necessarily, inherently tend to overshoot, as the capitalists scramble competitively to be the first to grab the apparently continuing and expanding profit openings. Engels put it more crisply in Anti-Duhring: “The ever increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force…
