The fact that this separation of purchase and sale creates the possibility of crisis, however, of itself does not mean that a crisis must occur. There must be some compelling reason why having become independent, the acts of purchase and sale completely fall apart. And, on a wider scale, of exchange that may not be the case. The bible producer, having sold the bible, may not want to buy wine, but will use the money to buy paper, ink, etc. to produce more bibles, whilst the sellers of paper and ink may use the money they receive to buy wine. On the other hand, the wider the range of commodities produced that must find buyers, the greater the possibility that some will not.
“Sale and purchase may fall apart. They thus represent potential crisis and their coincidence always remains a critical factor for the commodity. The transition from one to the other may, however, proceed smoothly, The most abstract form of crisis (and therefore the formal possibility of crisis) is thus the metamorphosis of the commodity itself; the contradiction of exchange-value and use-value, and furthermore of money and commodity, comprised within the unity of the commodity, exists in metamorphosis only as an involved movement. The factors which turn this possibility of crisis into [an actual] crisis are not contained in this form itself; it only implies that the framework for a crisis exists.” (p 509) Once the economy is conceived as a global economy, this is even more the case. On the one hand, if commodity A is overproduced, as far as the home market is concerned, salvation can be found in the export of this commodity to foreign markets. This has been discussed in a number of contexts, in Capital II, and III. For example, if we take the production of fixed capital, the consumers of this fixed capital take value out of circulation equivalent to its wear and tear, but do not throw that value back into circulation, in the purchase of fixed capital, until it is worn out. So, the consumers of fixed capital have sold without buying. But, they may use the money they have taken from circulation in a number of ways. They may throw it into the money market, so that others who wish to accumulate, borrow it, and then buy additional fixed and circulating capital. Or, they may use it themselves to accumulate, and part of that process may involve buying materials from foreign markets. Similarly, the producers of fixed capital may sell some of their output to those seeking to accumulate, but they may also dispose of some of their surplus production in to foreign markets.
Another situation would be, for example, where say a large civil engineering project is being undertaken that takes several years to complete. Those engaged in the project must lay out money-capital to buy steel and other material, and in wages, which workers spend to buy consumption goods. All of this money is fed to the suppliers of these commodities, but it cannot flow back to the capital involved in the civil engineering project, until it is completed. The latter have been buyers without being sellers, during all this period, whereas their suppliers have been sellers without being buyers. But, all of this money will tend to want to go somewhere. The producers of steel will want iron ore, and so on. Consequently, the value stored up as money, at one point, will find its outlet by buying commodities from outside the domestic market. But, ultimately, although this provides a number of safety valves for individual instances of overproduction and underproduction, it only results in the underlying contradictions being extended on to a global scale, so that crises erupt as crises of world trade, and global crises of overproduction.
“The world trade crises must be regarded as the real concentration and forcible adjustment of all the contradictions of bourgeois economy. The individual factors, which are condensed in these crises, must therefore emerge and must be described in each sphere of the bourgeois economy and the further we advance in our examination of the latter, the more aspects of this conflict must be traced on the one hand, and on the other hand it must be shown that its more abstract forms are recurring and are contained in the more concrete forms.” (p 510)
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