Overproduction - Inevitability

Inevitability

Karl Marx outlined the inherent tendency of capitalism towards overproduction in his seminal work, Das Kapital.

According to Marx, in capitalism, improvements in technology and rising levels of productivity increase the amount of material wealth (or use values) in society while simultaneously diminishing the economic value of this wealth, thereby lowering the rate of profit—a tendency that leads to the paradox, characteristic of crises in capitalism, of “poverty in the midst of plenty,” or more precisely, crises of overproduction in the midst of underconsumption.