ABSTRACT
Ever since capitalism entered the stage of collapse, ever since a number of capitalist countries experienced years of declining reproduction, ever since it became possible that one or another sector of the world capitalist economy might at any given moment embark upon a rapid economic decline, an analysis of the conditions of declining reproduction and its consequences has taken on tremendous practical interest. In the interests of simplifying the investigation, examining the equilibrium, in value terms, of reproduction under conditions where nonproductive consumption grows so quickly that it eats up the entire surplus value of society and necessitates a systematic erosion of its fixed and circulating capital. One of the most characteristic features of the postwar European economy is chronic unemployment, which represents the result not of an ordinary protracted capitalist crisis but of a crisis of European capitalism as a whole.
