ABSTRACT
Marx based his analysis of crises on the contrast between production of use values, common to any production system, and production of surplus value, which is proper to capitalism. Some of Marx's followers interpreted this approach in terms of underconsumption, while others saw in it the possibility for capitalist accumulation to go on indefinitely, in economic terms. In Marx, find analyses that explain the nature of economic crises it focuses on the short run that is on periodical crises. Marx did not explain how he could assert that productivity grows less than constant capital. Shibata maintained that, contrary to Marx's view, the growth of constant capital increases the rate of profit, rather than reducing it. A great number of commentators have strived and struggled around the law of the falling rate of profit. Actually, the mere tendency of the profit rate to fall along with accumulation had already been assumed by Smith, Ricardo and J. S. Mill.
