ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses historical Marxist controversy over economic crises. Economic crises of capitalism constitute an immediately conceivable reality, with typical characteristics. Overproduction of capital has counterparts in the retardation of capable to pay demand relative to production and the fall in the profit rate. All these concepts aided Marx in describing the interrelated forms of manifestation of economic crisis. The crucial task is to distinguish which of these concepts constitutes the main, decisive, structural relation of capitalist economic crisis. The Narodniks formulated their theoretical arguments exclusively as an interpretation of Marxist analyses; they drew no conclusions from other theories. After the deaths of Marx and Engels the "orthodox Marxists" of the German-speaking lands had formulated a similar theory of crisis to that of the Russian Marxists of the Narodnik current. Tugan-Baranowsky' theoretical intervention set the parameters for Marxist literature on the problem of economic crises right up to World War II.
