MARXISM AS SCIENCE

On the one hand the rate of profit falls as the source
of profit -surplus value -becomes a steadily
diminishing proportion of the capital deployed;
and on the other hand, crises of overproduction
result as more goods are produced than can find
consumers because wages are so low. These two
crisis tendencies intensify each other as overproduction
leads small capitalists to go out of business,
further concentrating capital and bringing
down the rate of profit as well as displacing
workers into the reserve m y of the unemployed.
The intensification of crises of overproduction
and the corresponding concentration of capital
leads on the one hand to the destruction of capital,
and on the other hand to the formation of
cartels, trusts and monopolies that stifle further
economic development.
If this is how Marx understood the way capitalist
relations of production were transformed
from forms of development of the productive
forces into their fetters, how did he understand
the epoch of social revolution? We have seen
how competitive capitalism compels each individual
capitalist to pursue profit and how this has
the aggregate effect of bringing about the economic
demise of capitalism.