Underconsumption or overaccumulation? Theoretical and political debate for the analysis of the current crisis

Abstract

The most recent world economic crisis was one of the most deep, comprehensive and violent of the history of the capitalism. Nevertheless, there are multiple and divergent explanations on its origins, its unfolding, and the perspectives opened by it. While supporting, without any claim of originality, that this crisis is a crisis of overaccumulation of capital, with multiple determinations and inscribed in the present dynamic of the accumulation of capital, and, consequently, not merely of a crisis resulting from the disorder of the finances or of the lack of effective demand, we will point to the limits and the risk of the reformist answers that proliferated, especially concerning the strengthening of a state interventionism, under any variants of State capitalism. For that, there will be criticized the “underconsumptionist” perspective conveyed by the Monthly Review’s school.