Lenin says,
“In deducing crises from this contradiction we are bound to think that the further it develops the more difficult will be the way out of the contradiction. And we have seen how Sismondi, with the utmost naïveté, expressed exactly this opinion when he said that if capital accumulated slowly it was tolerable; but if it accumulated rapidly, it would become unbearable.” (p 172)
In fact, this is also what Marx and Engels say. The more productive capital becomes, the larger the scale of production, the greater any overproduction of commodities becomes, the larger the number of workers laid off, etc. But, that, of course, depends upon this larger, state-monopoly capital continuing to operate on the same free market, all-out competition basis as capital in its infancy. In fact, it does not. It increasingly produces according to a plan, and develops its plans according to projections of demand. It becomes regulated and utilises the state to regulate and plan the economy itself, so as to avoid these crises arising from production being at odds with consumption. As Engels says, in his Critique of the Erfurt Programme,
“Capitalist production by joint-stock companies is no longer private production but production on behalf of many associated people. And when we pass on from joint-stock companies to trusts, which dominate and monopolise whole branches of industry, this puts an end not only to private production but also to planlessness.”
In Anti-Duhring, he and Marx say,
“In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the Capitalists.
But, the exploitation becomes so palpable here that it must break down. No nation would put up with production directed by trusts, with such a barefaced exploitation of the community by a small band of coupon-clippers.”
(Anti-Duhring p 358)
“Many of these means of production and of communication are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic exploitation. At a certain stage of development this form, too, no longer suffices: [the large-scale producers in one and the same branch of industry in a country unite in a “trust”, an association for the purpose of regulating production.”
(ibid)
“All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist no longer has any social activity save the pocketing of revenues, the clipping of coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists fleece each other of their capital. Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it is displacing the capitalists, relegating them, just as it did the workers, to the superfluous population, although not immediately to the industrial reserve army.”
(ibid, p 359-60)
In fact, Lenin himself was to later recognise this reality, writing in Left-Wing Childishness,
“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly.
“. . . State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs ” (pages 27 and 28)”
Crises continue to occur, because a) not all capital is comprised of such mammoth capitals, numerically the small capitalists predominate, even though they do not dominate the economy itself, and b) competition between capitals within the nation state is replaced by competition of mammoth capitals in different nation states. It is why, it requires capital to burst through the fetters now represented by the nation state, to create large multinational states, and to extend the planning and regulation on an international basis, again representing a huge progressive step towards Socialism.
Contrary to Sismondi's argument, the recognition of the contradiction between production and consumption does not at all mean a belief that capitalism is not real or progressive, and that some other path must be sought. It simply means that the reality of capitalism is built upon this actual contradiction, and that it proceeds on the basis of repeated crises.
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