{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":152,"pdf_page":152,"physical_index":152,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"1af12914766fe0e41f54af512ed3e1c3a6d89098dd651f4589be3328d67ff9de"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"The blind self-expansion of capital had led to an ever greater accumulation of constant capital compared with living labour. This expressed itself on the one side by a rate of profit considerably lower than a quarter of a century before and on the other by employers holding back wages and so diminishing the share of output that could be absorbed by workers' buying power. \"Overproduction\" and the low rate of profit were aspects of the same process that would eventually lead to the slump. An upsurge of unproductive expenditures and credit could postpone this, but do no more. The stage was set for a deep crisis-and it only required scares in the stock exchange and the financial sectors for it to occur.\n\nThe crisis in these respects was very similar to those described by Marx in passages where he analysed the crises of 1 846 and 1 857 in Britain.44 It also fits with Grossman's interpretation of Marx's account, with its stress on the way in which firms are pushed to undertake new investments that threaten to make the already low rate of profit drop to such an extent that much of the new investment becomes unprofitable so as to cause all investment to freeze up.45\n\nBut there remains something else that has to be explainedwhy the automatic market mechanisms which had always in the past been capable, ultimately, of lifting the economy out of crisis no longer seemed to be working. Three years after the crisis started, industrial production in the US, Germany, Britain and France was still declining. To explain this it is not enough just to look at the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The other long-term trend in Marx's account-the concentration and centralisation of capital as the system aged-also played a role, as was suggested in Chapter Three.\n\n152\n\nCapitalism in the 20th Century","previous_page":151,"next_page":153}