ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the issues connected with overproduction: the business cycle, unproductive capital and the prospect of indefinite growth. Thus, in Marx we find the business cycle and the final crisis of capitalism, nothing else. But the underconsumption theories implied that crises are structural, that the unbalance between production and consumption tends to become permanent unless corrected with an appropriate policy. All the economists followed Mill's approach. Most authors also accepted its connection with Say's law: they were certain that capitalist crises were fully accounted for with the business cycle theory. As was the case with the concept of unproductive consumption, J. B. Say was also the first to speak of unproductive capital. Unproductive capital has been the main tool of Marxist authors to support a new version of underconsumption. But this approach led to confusing human capital investment with parasitism.
