It is purely a tautology to say that crises are caused by the scarcity of solvent consumers, or of a paying consumption. The capitalist system does not know any other modes of consumption but a paying one, except that of the pauper or of the "thief." If any commodities are unsaleable, it means that no solvent purchasers have been found for them, in other words, consumers (whether commodities are bought in the last instance for productive or individual consumption). But if one were to attempt to clothe this tautology with a semblance of a profounder justification by saying that the working class receive too small a portion of their own product, and the evil would be remedied by giving them a larger share of it, or raising their wages, we should reply that crises are precisely always preceded by a period in which wages-rise generally and the working class actually get a larger share of the annual product intended for consumption. From the point of view of the advocates of "simple" (!) common sense, such a period should rather remove a crisis. It seems, then, that capitalist production comprises certain conditions which are independent of good or bad will and permit the working class to enjoy that relative prosperity only momentarily, and at that always as a harbinger of a coming crisis.

In that case the money advanced by them for the circulation of their surplus-product flows back under normal conditions to the different «B's» in the same proportion in which they advanced it for the circulation of their respective commodities. If the money circulates as a medium of payment, then only balances are to be paid so far as the alternate purchases and sales do not cover one another. But it is important to assume here, as everywhere, metallic circulation in its simplest form, because then the flux and reflux, the balancing of accounts, in short all elements appearing as consciously directed processes under the credit system, appear as forms independent of the credit system, show themselves in their primitive form instead of their later, reflected, one.

[What we are talking about here is that money always returns to where it was thrown into the circulation (production) of goods. Accordingly, if the lender of last resort throws money into circulation, then under all other conditions, how many hands they would not have visited, with the normal course of business, the money will return to it... and the fact that in order to ensure the turnover of a new mass of goods produced, with metal (gold) money, it was necessary to extract additional gold and use it as money for a stable exchange of goods and continued production, but already on an expanded scale. In developed relations, metal money, and then paper, and later on it, is replaced simply by a loan from a lender of last resort. A credit that exactly corresponds to the new mass of goods produced, for sales that require new money.]

The direct reflux of the money-capital advanced in vari- "able capital, which takes place only in the case of the capitalist class of IIa who produce necessities of life, is but an expression, modified by special conditions, of the previously mentioned general-law, that money advanced to the circulation by producers of commodities returns to them in the normal circulation of commodities. Consequently, if amoney capitalist stands behind the producer of commodities and advances ¢o the industrial capitalist money-capital (using this term in its strictest meaning, that is to say, capital-value in the form of money), the final point of reflux for this money is the pocket of this money-capitalist. In this way the mass of the circulating money belongs to that department of money-capital which is concentrated and organized in the form of banks, etc., although the money circulates more or less through all hands. The way in which this department advances its capital necessitates continually the final reflux to it in the form of money, although this takes place by way of the reconversion of the industrial capital into money-capital.

The causes of the overproduction crisis are on the one hand in the structure of the organic structure of capital, on the other hand, in the uneven disposal of means of production producing individual goods, and in modern conditions, goods for final personal and public consumption.

The modern structure of the organic structure of capital, starting in 1825, seeks to displace human physical labor from material production, while increasing human productivity by an order of magnitude with each new development cycle. This simultaneously increases the cost of long-term goods and reduces the cost of consumer goods. In this contradictory development of capitalist turnover, a person, even receiving income more than the previous one relative to the past technological cycle, cannot purchase long-term goods on his wages without resorting to a loan. Each time, long-term goods turn out to be "expensive." The same structure of the organic structure of capital requires an increase in the initial capital for the start of the business (turnover), which makes it impossible for small capital to compete with large capital, increasing the already gigantic concentration of production and monopolization of the entire process. [...]

The uneven disposal of part of the cash capital from turnover, due to the need to amortize the funds of production in Division II, establishes the conditions for the inevitability of the next overproduction crisis.

«Once that the capitalist mode of production is abolished, the problem resolves itself into the simple proposition that

the magnitude of the expiring portion of fixed capital, which must be reproduced in its natural form every year (which served in our illustration for the production of articles of consumption), varies in successive years. If it is very large in a certain year (in excess of the average mortality, the same as among men), then it is so much smaller in the next year.

The quantity of raw materials, half wrought articles, and auxiliary materials required for the annual production of

the articles of consumption--other circumstances remaining •the same--does not decrease in consequence. Hence the aggregate production of means of production would have to increase in the one case and decrease in the other. This can be remedied only by a continuous relative overproduction.

There must be on the one hand a certain quantity of fixed capital in excess of that which is immediately required; on the other hand there must be above all a supply of raw materials, etc., in excess of the actual requirements of annual production (this applies particularly to articles of consumption). This sort of reproduction may take place when society controls the material requirements of its own reproduction. But in capitalist society it is an element of anarchy.

This illustration of fixed capital, on the basis of an unchanged scale of reproduction, is convincing. A disproportion of the production of fixed and circulating capital is one of the favorite arguments of political economists in explaining productive crises. That such a disproportion can and midst arise even when the fixed capital is merely preserved by renewal is new to them. And yet, it can and must arise even on the assumption of an ideal and normal production on the basis of a simple reproduction of the already existing capital of society». 1)

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1.Маркс К., Энгельс Ф. Сочинения. Второе издание. Т. 24. / К. Маркс. Капитал. - М.: ГИПЛ, 1961 - С.532-533.