ABSTRACT
Aristotle sees the endless cycle of generation and decay as natural, on the other hand, he sees the growth into its highest form as the natural development of an organism, and phthora, as a denial of this growth, as unnatural. Aristotelian terminology is applied throughout the discussion of production in general and its nature, although it is true that Karl Marx’s use of terms such as form, substance, matter and decay are applied to middle sized material objects. Marx’s account of capitalist crisis is perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the way in which his ontological assumptions clash with those of Ricardo and Sismondi. Ricardo and his school, Marx argues ‘never understood the really modern crises’ and at root this is because he ‘conceived production as directly identical with the self realisation of capital’ and is hence heedless of the barriers thrown up to capitalism.
