The notion of overaccumulation is a part of this general contradiction. Overaccumulation appears as an excess of capital relative to opportunities for investing that capital, so that it further accumulates, that is, so that it generates new surplus value and profits. Overaccumulation can be displaced though time - that is, postponed (e.g., through credit), which only - literally - buys time. It can be resolved through a change in the conditions of exploitation or through the devalorization of some portion of the total social capital. "Devalorization" here is understood as a reduction in the total social capital, variable as well as constant. This resolution can involve, in the short term, an increasing rate or intensity of exploitation (that is, a devalorization of variable capital through either a decrease in wages or an increase in productivity without an increase in wages; this includes an increase in the rate and intensity of exploitation via geographic relocation to lower wage zones, or spatial displacement). This resolution can also involve the reorganization of capital and devaluation of some portion of it (e.g., through cyclical recessions). But these resolutions only postpone or displace the contradiction. The tendency toward overaccumulation continues and in the modern history of world capitalism has generally culminated in structural crises that threaten permanent stagnation unless there is a much more fundamental reorganization of the system. The rise of a Fordist-Keynesian social structure of accumulation in the aftermath of the 1930s depression and the Second World War involved such a restructuring, as did the initial decades of neo-liberal globalization in the 1980s and 1990s. Crisis theory suggests that overaccumulation may be manifested in different ways. How is it manifested in the current crisis? In the last major crisis, that of the 1970s, it took the form of a falling rate of profit, as "profit squeeze " theorists writing in that decade demonstrated. But a "profit squeeze" does not explain the current situation as profits soared in the period leading up to 2008, and we should recall that savings is not equivalent to investment, either financial or productive. In the 1970s overaccumulation also took the form of stagflation, or inflation together with stagnation. In the early and mid-1970s working and popular classes fiercely resisted a transfer of the costs of the crisis to themselves.9 Neither these classes nor capital were willing to shoulder the costs of crisis; this standoff is what, in my view, generated stagflation. But working and popular classes were able to put up resistance precisely because they faced capital within the confines of the nation-state. The gains these classes had made within nation-state capitalism and their ability to resist capital's impositions is precisely what led capital to go global in the first place, that is, to undertake a restructuring of the system through globalization.
Overproduction vs. Underconsumption: Paradoxes of Capitalism
