One of the traits of the current defstag, and I don’t exaggerate when I use that word, means that there are too many goods chasing too few buyers, too much money chasing too few profitable investment outlays, too many workers chasing too few jobs; too many banks chasing too few impoverished savers and depositors. etc. This is true not only of capitalism’s current cyclical slump but applies to all facets of the crisis. The essence of the crisis of capitalism is overproduction. Or over-accumulation.

What is overproduction? What are its properties? At what stage in the cycle of capital-accumulation does it emerge? What is its cyclical duration? What is its role in capitalism’s business cycle? Milton Friedman , one of the major propagandists of free market fundamentalism and a vulgar apologist of capitalism , put this succinctly when he shoved aside the nostrum of social responsibility on the part of the capitalist: “ a company’s only responsibility is to increase profits for shareholders”. Capitalism defines the relationship between a possessing / exploiting class whose incomes are profits, dividends and rents, and an exploited propertyless class whose income is wages.

It defines the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Hence capitalism’s overriding objective, its alpha and omega, and the masters of capital is not the provision of goods and services to the workers it exploits. That is a surface phenomenon. That is a fetishism. The goal of capital accumulation is to expand and ensure an ever rising mass of profits for a class of propertied owners. The overriding goal is profit and profit maximization. Overproduction is thus not an aberration of the system but inherent in its operation. And this goes back to the beginnings of capitalism’s first Great Depression of 1873, as noted by the Royal Commissioners in their final report. in words that are superbly relevant to the crash of 1929 and our present slump.:

“We think that…over-production has been one of the most prominent features of the course of trade during recent years; and that the depression under which we are now suffering may be partially explained by this fact....The remarkable feature of the present situation, and that which in our opinion distinguishes it from all previous periods of depression, is the length of time during which this over-production has continued …We are satisfied that in recent years, and more particularly in the years during which the depression of trade has prevailed , the production of commodities generally, and the accumulation of capital in this country, have been proceeding at a rate more rapid than the increase of population.”