The “first version” of Marx’s theory of crisis: the fall of the social mass of surplus value and the absolute internal limit of capital

Abstract

Marx’s theory of crisis is usually associated with the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit presented in volume three of Capital. According to Marx, the rising organic composition of capital – the fact that variable capital grows in absolute terms, but falls relatively because of the faster growth of constant capital – results in the fall of the general rate of profit, which undermines the reproduction of capital. In this article I will argue that: i) there is a “first version” of Marx’s theory of crisis, outlined especially in the Grundrisse, which ascribes the secular crisis of the capitalist economy to the absolute decline of living labour and, therefore, to the falling mass of socially produced surplus-value; ii) only this “first version” of the theory of crisis allows the absolute internal limit of capital to be deduced consistently.