“A crisis thus follows on a period of expansion, extension of production and prosperity. However, an economic crisis is one of those sicknesses which carry within themselves the elements of a cure. During its course a part of production is put out of operation through financial failure. The crisis thus creates new productive levels and new price-levels, making new expansion possible. In ‘The Manifesto of the Communist Party’, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in 1848: “How does the bourgeoisie overcome crises? On the one hand by the compulsory destruction of a section of the productive forces, and on the other hand by the conquest of new markets, and by the still more thorough exploitation of the old”. So far we have noted certain factors which explain why crisis take place in capitalist society, and why progress is not steady, but constantly interrupted by crises. But we have not yet answered the question with which we began: Why was the crisis of 1929 so severe, and what will be the nature of the crisis which will break out in the not too distant future? In order to explain thoroughly in what essential respects the present epoch of capitalism differs from the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth up to the First World War, we must analyse another part of the problem: the historical environment in which capitalist development, and with it the process of crisis, took place and take place” [Fritz Sternberg, ‘The Coming Crisis’, London, 1947]
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- Articolo pubblicato:24 Gennaio 2016