ABSTRACT
What immediately distinguishes Marxist from non-Marxist theories of crises is the fact that they take constant capital into account both as an element explaining the fall in the rate of profit (rise in the organic composition of capital) and as a potential source of overproduction crisis (over-accumulation of capital). But Marx insists also a lot on constant capital not only as a component of capital, but as an element of reproduction of capital, as part of gross product. Given that political economy has never been able to correctly examine the mode of capital constant reproduction on account of its not recognising the specifically living nature of labour, it never conceives constant capital as a distinct component of gross product and in the best case identifies fixed capital depreciation with a part of gross profits (1). Thus within this framework crises are almost invariably seen as the result of unbalanced distribution of output between the different kinds of income (2). On their side stagnation theories correctly base their analysis on excess productive capacities and thus on constant capital, but the latter disappears from the sphere of circulation, so that the crisis resulting from over-accumulation necessarily takes the form of underconsumption crises (3).
