The Limits to Capital

Abstract

This chapter lays the theoretical groundwork for the analysis that follows in the next four chapters. In it, our overriding concern is to explain the necessity of crisis in capitalism, the periodic appearance of crisis in the form of the overaccumulation of capital, and the relation between crises of overaccumulation and the transformations in production and patterns of social reproduction witnessed across much of the world since the 1970s — culminating in the current crisis. The chapter is organised as follows: First, we elaborate upon Marx’s analysis of capital as a process — one of self-expanding value — and the importance of inter-capitalist competition as a ‘coercive law’ that results from the formation of the general rate of profit across different branches of production. Competition impels individual capitalists to play their part in the continuous, ‘leapfrogging’ technological and organisational revolutions characteristic of capitalist production, a process marked by the uneven development of the forces of production. We explain why there is a general tendency toward overproduction in capitalism, and the relation between money, the credit system, and crises of overaccumulation. We then introduce our understanding of the social constitution of national states that together mediate the global unity of capitalist production. Here, we develop the notion that the national state itself should be understood in processual terms, and as an active ‘moment’ in the global accumulation of capital and in crisis formation and management.