MARX THEORY AND THE HISTORIC MARXIST CONTROVERSY ON ECONOMIC-CRISIS (1900-1937)

In the work of Marx, a general theory of economic crises cannot be fou nd. This fact contributed to the formulation of different and generall y contradicting Marxist crisis theories. Critical presentation of the dispute among the three major historic Marxist approaches to economic crises - the underconsumptionist approach, the theory of capital overa ccumulation and the tendentially falling profit rate - leads us to adv ocate a version of the overaccumulation approach, which can be describ ed as capital overaccumulation under the action of ''absent causes.'' This approach conceives economic crisis as capital overaccumulation, w hich is not the result of a single, systematically acting cause; crisi s is seen instead as the (periodically outbreaking) outcome of capital ist development - of the total contradictions that characterize capita lism.