“But now the further development of the potential crisis has to be traced—the real crisis can only be educed from the real movement of capitalist production, competition and credit—in so far as crisis arises out of the special aspects of capital which are peculiar to it as capital, and not merely comprised in its existence as commodity and money.” (p 512-3)
In this context, Marx says, the actual production process of capital, as set out in Volume I, of Capital, can add nothing new. That production of capital assumes that the labour-power required for production exists, and that all of the commodities required as means of production and means of consumption exist. The only other factor required here, for the production of capital, is that this process should result in the production of surplus value. In other words, that the new value produced by the employed labour, should be greater than the value of that labour-power.
Provided those conditions exist, then it is assumed that the surplus value is produced, so that, under simple reproduction, the capital itself is reproduced, whilst the surplus value is consumed unproductively. With expanded reproduction, a portion of the surplus value is itself converted into capital. But, this indicates why the source of the crisis cannot reside here, in the production of capital. If we assume that a situation arises whereby surplus value is not produced, then we would also assume that the capitalist would not have engaged in this production to begin with, because the capitalist only advances capital on the understanding that a surplus value will be produced. A crisis of overproduction does not arise because capitalists refrain from producing unprofitably, but arises from them continuing to produce, even though that production is unprofitable!
“But this cannot be shown when dealing with the production process itself, for the latter is not concerned with the realisation either of the reproduced value or of the surplus-value.
This can only emerge in the circulation process which is in itself also a process of reproduction.” (p 513)
It is precisely because the process of purchase and sale of commodities, and thereby also the production and circulation of capital, production and realisation of value and surplus value involves a unity of two opposites that are independent that the possibility of crisis exists. As Marx says in Capital III, Chapter 15,
“The conditions of direct exploitation, and those of realising it, are not identical. They diverge not only in place and time, but also logically.”
“The economists who deny crises consequently assert only the unity of these two phases. If they were only separate, without being a unity, then their unity could not be established by force and there could be no crisis. If they were only a unity without being separate, then no violent separation would be possible implying a crisis. Crisis is the forcible establishment of unity between elements that have become independent and the enforced separation from one another of elements which are essentially one.” (p 513)
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