A Marxist Guide to Capitalist Crises
“A Marxist Guide to Capitalist Crises,” an eBook created from the key posts on the Critique of Crisis Theory blog, is currently in production. We’ll be sharing the completed chapters between our regular postings.
Chapter 4
Production and Reproduction
The capitalist mode of production and, indeed, all economic systems involve not only production but reproduction. What is the difference between production and reproduction? Let’s take any factory — for example, a garment shop that specializes in belt production. In order to produce the belts, the boss — industrial capitalist — needs workers, a building, raw materials in the form of leather, electricity to run the shop’s machines and provide lighting, and so on. The industrial capitalist then must combine these forces of production to produce the belts. This is an example of production.
What would happen, however, if the machines and tools used by our belt manufacturer were not replaced when they wore out, the building crumbled and was not repaired or replaced, additional leather was not available when the existing supply was exhausted, the electricity failed, and the workers’ labor power was not renewed when their ability to work was exhausted?
Belt production would cease. Of course, some of these inputs would last longer than others. Generally, the human organism cannot work much longer than a 24-hour shift before it fails. In the long run, the maximum workday allowed by human biology seems to be around 16 to 18 hours.
On the other extreme, a building will continue to function even without repairs for many months and can last virtually indefinitely if it is periodically repaired. If repaired, the building is replaced little by little rather than all at once. Both methods are used in the real reproduction process. The factory building must be continually repaired, and eventually, it is torn down and replaced by a new factory building, perhaps one much better suited to the new level of technology.
The same is true of machinery, though machines rarely last as long as buildings. In the course of their lifetimes, a machine must occasionally be repaired, but eventually, it has to be scrapped and completely replaced. For production to cease, however, we don’t have to wait for all the inputs to be exhausted. Production will cease as soon as the first necessary input fails — for example, human labor power.
Suppose the boss was to keep the workers working around the clock. Within a day or so, human physiology would cause the workers to collapse at their workstations, and production would cease.
A failure of electricity would also bring the factory to a grinding halt.
Suppose that, for some reason, the machines necessary to produce the belts could not be replaced. Production might continue for many years — especially if we allow for repairs — but eventually, the machines will fail. At this point, production would also cease.
Three cases of reproduction
So any system’s economic production must also, of necessity, be a process of reproduction. There are three possible cases of reproduction:
First, the forces of production might be in decline. As the workers’ labor power, the raw and auxiliary materials, and the stock of fixed assets are used up, they are only partially replaced.
Second, the economy might be just reproducing itself — it is neither expanding nor contracting. As labor power, raw and auxiliary materials, and fixed capital are used up; they are exactly replaced but not expanded. This Marx described as simple reproduction.
Third, there is the case of expanded reproduction—the number of workers, the amount of raw and auxiliary materials, and the stock of fixed capital are expanding.
According to Marx, capitalism is a system of expanded reproduction and can only exist as expanded reproduction. However, in Volume II of Capital, where he dealt with the question of reproduction, Marx began with simple reproduction.
Why simple reproduction when, according to him, capitalism can only exist as a system of expanded reproduction? Marx pointed out that any system of expanded reproduction of necessity contains simple reproduction within it. It is not possible to understand expanded reproduction without first grasping the laws of simple reproduction.
Marx’s assumptions in dealing with reproduction
Marx treated the whole question of reproduction, both simple and expanded, in Volume II of Capital before he developed the concept of prices of production 1 or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall due to a rising organic composition of capital. These he dealt with in Volume III. Therefore, just as he had throughout Volume I, Marx assumed that commodities sell at prices that are directly proportional to their labor values. Bringing in prices of production at this point would only complicate things without changing anything of essence, so Marx only dealt with them after he had dealt with the problem of capitalist reproduction.
Marx also left out any qualitative changes in the forces of production. In Marx’s models of simple and expanded reproduction, there are no changes in the organic composition of capital and, therefore, no tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
The abstraction might seem strange since Marx and Engels emphasized how competition among the industrial capitalists and between the industrial capitalists and the working class forces the industrial capitalists to increase the power of their productive forces. Why did Marx leave out such an important feature of capitalism in his analysis of reproduction?
Again, this is an example of Marx’s method. Marx was abstracting — leaving out — some of the most important features of capitalist production in order to isolate and reveal the essence of the process of reproduction, both simple and expanded.
Later on, other Marxists worked into their reproduction models a rising organic composition of capital and, thus, a falling rate of profit. These models became a subject of much controversy during the first part of the 20th century and played a crucial role in the “breakdown” debate. We will examine this question in a later chapter.
In this chapter, we will start by examining simple reproduction with Marx’s assumptions. Under these assumptions, there is only simple reproduction: commodities sell at prices directly proportional to their labor values, and there is no change in the methods of production and the organic composition of capital or the rate of surplus value. The rate of profit, therefore, remains unchanged. There is no accumulation of capital. The size of the total capital remains unchanged, neither expanding nor contracting.
Marx also assumed that there are only two classes: industrial capitalists on one side — non-industrial capitalists are abstracted — and productive workers on the other side — workers who don’t produce surplus value are also abstracted. The model assumes pure capitalism — there are no non-capitalist modes of production.
Marx reduced this pure capitalist economy to the following two equations. 2
- 4,000c + 1,000v + 1,000s = 6,000 means of production
- 2,000c + 500v + 500s = 3,000 articles of consumption
The first equation represents the production of the means of production, consisting of all fixed capital and raw and auxiliary materials used up.
The second equation represents items that are produced for personal consumption, both luxury goods consumed only by the capitalists and necessary goods consumed both by the workers and the capitalists. Since there is only simple reproduction, all the profits of the capitalists are spent on consumer goods, both necessities and luxuries. The workers spend all their incomes — wages — on necessities.
The equations assume one period of reproduction; the exact length is arbitrary; let’s assume it is a year. We assume that the constant capital (4,000c + 2,000c = 6,000) is consumed in the course of a year and must be replaced — reproduced — within the same year. Therefore, if the economy is to be reproduced, the output of Department I must equal cI + cII, which yields the equation cI + cII = cI + vI + sI. That is, the total output of Department I in a year must exactly equal the constant capital used up in that year.
Also, the total value of consumer goods produced in a year, 3,000 according to Marx’s figures, must equal the total consumption of the workers employed in both departments of production plus the total consumption of the capitalists of both departments. Therefore 1,000vI + 1,000sI + 500vII + 500sII = 2,000cII + 500vII + 500sII = 3,000, the total production of consumer goods in a year.
According to Marx’s example, half of the consumer goods are consumed by the workers and the other half by the capitalists. The rate of surplus value is exactly 100 percent. The workers work half the time for themselves and half the time for the capitalists. The production and consumption of consumer commodities adds up to 3,000. The 3,000 represents some unit of abstract human labor measured in terms of time. Whether the unit of labor time is hours, days or months doesn’t matter.
The same is true of all the arithmetic values used in the formula. They represent quantities of abstract labor measured in terms of some unit of time. Abstract labor — value — is always measured in terms of time. Indeed, if we wished, we could dispense with the arithmetic examples and use algebraic values instead. Here, notice that 6,000, to use Marx’s arithmetic example, does not represent the total value of means of production in Department I but rather the total value of the means of production that are actually used up or consumed productively in the course of a year.
A source of crisis
Here, we already see a possibility of a crisis in the process of simple reproduction. Suppose a machine that represents a value of 100 of some time unit of abstract human labor lasts 10 years. Assuming it loses its value at a steady rate across its lifetime, it will lose a value of 10 every year. However, because of the nature of its material use value, it can only be replaced all at once. Assume that of the 6,000 in the annual output of Department I, half represents machines. Assume that these machines last 10 years and lose value at a steady rate. This will mean that machines used throughout the economy will lose a value of 3,000 every year.
What would happen if all the machines had to be replaced at the same time? For nine out of 10 years, the machine-producing industry would lie idle, its workers unemployed. But in the 10th year, the machine-building industry would have 30,000 in orders. Now, that’s a boom and bust cycle for you!
To avoid cyclical swings in the machine-building industry, exactly 10 percent of all the machines in terms of value must be replaced on an annual basis, no more and no less. In the real world, this is, of course, extremely unlikely, and indeed, the machine-building industries are extremely prone to sharp cyclical fluctuations in the course of the industrial cycle. One thing that might come to the rescue of the machine-building industry during the nine out of 10 years that there are no orders to replace the existing machines would be expanded reproduction. But here, we are assuming that there is no expanded reproduction.
Many economists, including Marx himself and John Maynard Keynes, saw in the periodic replacement of fixed capital a material basis for the length of the industrial cycle, which runs about ten years. So already, on the basis of simple reproduction, we have discovered a source of potential crisis.
How is cII realized?
During the late 19th century, Russian populists argued that capitalist industry could never develop in Russia because the world market was already used up and it would be impossible for Russian industrial capitalists to actually realize their surplus value.
The early Russian Marxists strongly disagreed with this analysis and used Marx’s reproduction formulas to prove that Russian industrial capitalists could fully realize the value and the surplus value embodied in their commodities as long as certain proportions between the two departments of capitalist production were maintained. They drew the conclusion that the question of markets pointed to by the populists would be no barrier to the development of capitalism in Russia.
The young Lenin, one of the Marxist participants in this debate, observed that the real problem in simple reproduction is not the realization of the surplus value but of the constant capital in Department II — the branch of production that produces items of personal consumption — or cII. Under conditions of simple reproduction, the capitalists of Department II, consume their surplus value unproductively in the form of means of personal consumption. In order to do this, of course, they must trade among themselves — the producers of fine wines, for example, with the producers of luxury automobiles. But all this represents trade within Department II.
Similarly, the capitalists of Department I consume — productively — within their department, cI. Again, they have to trade among themselves, exchanging a drill press for screwdrivers, for example. This is trade within Department I. However, this is of no concern as far as Marx’s diagram is concerned since it is really concerned only with the exchange between the two departments of production, not the exchanges within them.
The production of cII, remember, like the entire output of Department II consists of consumer goods, both necessaries and luxuries as far as their use values are concerned. Using Marx’s example, having sold the commodities represented by 500vII and 500sII within Department II, Department II is stuck with an excess of 2,000cII, which cannot be sold within Department II. Notice that this surplus is not surplus value but rather the portion of the commodity capital of Department II that contains the value of the constant capital used up in the annual production of Department II. Who will buy this surplus production that cannot be bought by either the workers or capitalists of Department II?
Department I had no problem consuming cI, but how does it consume vI and sI? Remember, the material use values represented by the symbols vI and sI, like all production of Department I, consists only of means of production. These commodities are completely unsuited for personal consumption. The industrial capitalists of Department I cannot pay their workers in drill presses and lathes, nor can they consume steel mills and oil refineries.
Fortunately for them, Department II is stuck with a surplus of consumer goods, both necessities as well luxuries fit only for the consumption of the “beautiful people.” If all is to go well within the limits of simple reproduction, the value of the surplus of consumer articles in the hands of the capitalists in Department II will exactly match the surplus of commodities — both in terms of use values and values — that cannot be consumed by the capitalists and workers of Department I.
So the two departments make a trade. The Department II capitalists send the consumer goods that neither they nor their workers can consume, within the limits of simple reproduction, to the capitalists and workers of Department I. In return, Department I provides the capitalists of Department II with the means of production that replace the means of production used up by Department II during its annual production.
Translated into the concise language of algebra, we get the most important equation:
cII = vI + sI.
Many possible crises in the process of simple reproduction
This is the equation that unlocks the secret of simple reproduction. Of course, many things could go wrong and could become elements of crisis. First, the value cII — measured in terms of hours of labor — on the left side of the equation must precisely equal the value on the right side, vI + sI. If it does not, we actually have an inequality in terms of algebra and, in the real world, unequal exchange and disequilibrium.
Suppose, for the sake of illustration, cII in value terms was greater than vI + sI. Department II would then not fully realize the value of its commodities in terms of the use values of the commodities of Department I. There would be a crisis of overproduction in Department II coinciding with an under-production of commodities in Department I. The industrial capitalists in Department I would tend to realize super-profits, but the industrial capitalists in Department II would realize less than the average rate of profit.
The same would be true in the converse situation, cII < vI + sI. We would have under-production of consumer goods and overproduction of producer goods. Then, it would be the turn of the industrial capitalists in Department I to make less than the average rate of profit and for the capitalists of Department II to make super-profits.
Proportionality must be in terms of both value and use value
Above, I assumed disproportionalities in terms of values but not in terms of use values. Suppose there was perfect proportionality between cII and vI + sI in terms of value, but there were disproportionalities in use values. For example, if Department I failed to produce the necessary raw materials or machinery to continue production of consumer goods at the prevailing level, we would see a physical decline in consumer goods production.
Similarly, if there was a shortfall in production of use values in Department II — for example, not enough food is produced because a harvest failure such as occurred in 1816, “the year without a summer” — there would be widespread hunger among the workers in Department I as well as Department II, and a rise in money wages combined with falling real wages, leading to lower profits for the capitalists of both departments. Therefore, if the process of reproduction is to proceed smoothly, there must be perfect proportionality in terms of both values and use values between the two departments of production as well as within them.
Money and reproduction
Most Marxists, when analyzing simple as well as expanded reproduction, leave out money. However, especially when it comes to crisis theory, this is a grave error. How can money be integrated into the diagram of simple reproduction?
In Chapter 3 of Volume I of Capital, Marx explained that the existence of a special money commodity makes a generalized overproduction of commodities possible. In the first three chapters of Capital, Marx explained that the commodity-value relationship of production requires a value form. This value form is exchange value.
The essence of exchange value is that the value of one commodity — the relative form — is measured in terms of the use value of another commodity — the equivalent form. Once commodity production reaches a certain stage of development — long before labor power becomes a commodity giving birth to capitalist production — a universal equivalent emerges. This universal equivalent is the independent form of exchange value. That is, the money commodity measures the values of all other commodities in terms of its own use value.
All forms of wealth under the capitalist system are measured in terms of the use value of the commodity that serves as the universal equivalent. The existence of a universal equivalent — money — is the reason why Say’s law of markets is invalid. While it is true that, strictly speaking, it is impossible to have generalized overproduction of all commodities, it is perfectly possible to have a generalized overproduction of commodities other than the money commodity relative to the universal equivalent — the money commodity.
Many Marxists — especially those of the Second International era through the middle of the last century — as well as some bourgeois economists have attempted to explain crises in terms of a disproportionate production between Department I and Department II. These Marxists tended to ignore the question of money or even, in some cases — for example, Rudolf Hilferding (1877-1941) developed a theory of money that was actually incompatible with Marx’s theory of value and money. 3
In his classic work, “Finance Capital,” Hilferding imagined that money merely reflects the value of the commodities that it circulates. Not surprisingly, Marxists such as Hilferding had difficulty seeing the periodic economic crises that capitalism experiences as crises of the generalized overproduction of commodities. Instead, they tended to see crises as arising from the overproduction of some commodities backed up by a shortage of other commodities, as allowed for by Say’s law.
The bourgeois economists of the Austrian School 4, who openly flaunt their support of Say’s law, attribute crises to an overproduction in Department I backed up by an underproduction in Department II. The Austrians specifically deny that crises are crises of generalized overproduction. So, according to the Austrians, capitalist crises do not violate Say’s Law.
Marxists who support the underconsumption theory of crises — for example, Paul Sweezy, in his 1942 book “Theory of Capitalist Development” — attribute crises to an overproduction of commodities in Department II. However, if crises arise from a generalized overproduction of commodities relative to the money commodity, shouldn’t such a crisis involve an overproduction in both Department I and Department II?
Money as a means of accumulation
According to Marx, one of the functions of money is that it is a medium of accumulation. Marx saw a definite connection between the miser of old, with his unlimited drive to accumulate gold coins in his money chests, and his successor, the industrial capitalist, with his unlimited drive to increase industrial production without limit. In both cases, we have the accumulation of wealth in the form of exchange value — measured in terms of the use value of the money commodity — without limit.
Money and simple reproduction
However, in this chapter, we are not examining expanded reproduction, which involves the expanded reproduction of capital and thus the accumulation of capital, but rather simple reproduction, which precludes the accumulation of capital. If we are to be consistent — as Marx was — we must abstract not only the accumulation of real capital — productive capital plus commodity capital — but the accumulation of money capital as well. How, then, can we work in money within simple reproduction?
To do this, Marx made an assumption that seems very strange to us today. He assumed that money as currency consists only of circulating full-weight gold coins.
In Marx’s day, Britain was on the gold coin standard. Under this system, the Bank of England was required by law to exchange for every banknote equal to or larger than five pounds that were presented by a bearer for payment an equivalent quantity of full-weight gold sovereigns. However, even then, gold coins represented a relatively small portion of the circulating media. In addition to circulating gold coins, which were used largely in retail trade, there were lower denomination token coins made of silver or cheaper base metals, banknotes, and checks drawn on checkable bank deposits. Today, gold coins circulate only in the shadowy world of illegal transactions.
However, there were good reasons why Marx made the assumption that currency consists only of full-weight gold coins in building his model of simple reproduction.
Marx assumed that a portion of the circulating gold coins would fall below their standard weight in the course of a year or whatever the reproduction period was. In the days when gold (and silver) coins formed at least a portion of the currency, the coins had to be withdrawn from circulation when, due to wear and tear or clipping, they fell below a certain standard weight. If governments did not withdraw these “light” coins from circulation, the currency would depreciate against gold (or silver) bullion—uncoined money metal. The resulting currency devaluation would lead to inflationary price rises in terms of the light or depreciated coinage.
Indeed, from the invention of coined money about 2,500 years ago until the World I-Depression era, when gold coins were finally withdrawn from large-scale circulation, the circulation of underweight coins was a frequent source of currency crises and inflation, much like the inflationary over-issuance — “quantitative easing” — of paper money is today.
What department of production produces money material?
Marx used the term “money material” to describe the physical substance of the commodity that functions as money — assumed to be gold bullion that plays no non-monetary role. This raised the question of what department of production should the production of money material be assigned to in Marx’s two-department scheme.
Gold, in its monetary role, functions as the commodity that, in its own use value — weights of gold, also known as prices — measures the values of all other commodities. When gold also functions as a circulating medium, it acts as a monetary token representing itself in circulation, neither in its role as a measure of value nor as a circulating medium does gold function as either a means of personal consumption or a means of production.
However, when gold does not function as money — for example, in objects of art, dentistry, or electronics — it is a raw material. Gold bullion also functions as a raw material for the production of gold coins, gold coins being a form of monetary token. Therefore, Marx placed the production of gold bullion that is used for monetary purposes along with the gold to be used for non-monetary purposes in Department I, the department that produces the means of production.
Marx further assumed that all the monetary gold produced above and beyond the gold that would be used to replace the light coins in circulation would be used for non-monetary purposes.
Rosa Luxemburg, who was one of the few Marxists after Marx who did not ignore money when dealing with reproduction, argued that monetary gold, since it is strictly neither a means of production nor a means of personal consumption, should be placed in a separate Department III — the department of production that produces money material. Marx chose instead to stick to the simplicity of his two-department reproduction scheme.
But why did Marx assume that all the newly produced gold, less the gold that would function as raw material for non-monetary purposes, would be produced in exactly the amount that would replace the coins grown light in circulation? This was the only assumption Marx could make if he was to stay within the limits of simple reproduction. If the gold mining industry were to produce an insufficient amount of gold to replace the coins in circulation, there would be a shortage of currency that would disrupt circulation and, therefore, (simple) reproduction.
If, on the other hand, the gold mining industry were to produce an additional quantity of monetary gold above and beyond that necessary to replace the coins grown light in circulation, we would no longer have simple reproduction. Why is this so?
Remember, in simple reproduction, there is no accumulation of capital. But if the gold industry were to produce a quantity of monetary gold that exceeds the gold that is necessary to replace the coins grown light in circulation, we would have the accumulation of one form of capital: money capital. And to the extent we have an accumulation of capital, we are passing from simple reproduction to expanded reproduction. In simple reproduction, an increase in the means of production or the means of consumption is not allowed. Neither is an increase in the quantity of money.
(1) Competition has a tendency to equalize the rates of profit among equal quantities of capital in equal periods of time. This means that what the classical economists called natural price and what Marx called the price of production — the price that society has to pay the capitalists for a given commodity of a given use value and quality — will not reflect its labor value but will be modified by the length of the relative turnover period of the variable capital involved relative to other branches of production as well as its relative organic composition of capital.
Since only variable capital creates surplus value — profit — if the prices of commodities sold at their value — or direct price — the rate of profit would be lower in sectors of production where either the turnover of variable capital was below the average — for example, the case of fine wines aged in old chests — or the organic composition of capital was above the average. In the case where the turnover of variable capital was higher than average or the organic composition of capital was lower than average, the rate of profit would be above average.
Since capital under the pressure of competition flows from sectors of industry where profits are below the average level to sectors where they are above average, competition transforms the direct prices into price of production. Market prices that reflect the ever-changing relationships between supply and demand, therefore, fluctuate around prices of production — or production price for short — rather than direct prices. (back)
(2) Capital Volume II, Chapter 20: Simple Reproduction. Part 1, The Formulation of the Question https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch20_01.htm (back)
(3) Rudolf Hilferding was one of the leading Marxist economists of the pre-1914 Second International. Born in Austria and trained as a medical doctor, he eventually moved to Germany. His work “Finance Capital,” https://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1910/finkap/, first published in 1910, is considered a Marxist classic and greatly influenced Lenin’s 1916 pamphlet Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capital.
Within the pre-war Second International, Hilferding adhered to the Marxist center, whose chief representative was Karl Kautsky (1854-1938). In the split within the international movement that grew out of World War I and the Russian Revolution within the international workers’ movement, Hilferding supported the Social Democratic tendency in opposition to the Communist International. He later served as Minister of Finance in the Weimar Republic and was murdered by the Nazi government in 1941.
It was in “Finance Capital” that Hilferding first put forward a non-Marxist theory of money, though in a qualified way. He claimed that a pure paper money system was possible where the state-issued paper monetary tokens would directly reflect the value of commodities rather than a quantity of the use value of a money commodity, in practice, a definite quantity of gold, measured in terms of some unit of weight.
He qualified this by saying that such a pure paper money system could not last for any period of time because gold continued to function as the main means of payment in the world market. This implies that under the post-Bretton-Woods dollar system, which Hilferding did not live to see, that paper money directly reflects the value of commodities rather than representing gold. Many of today’s Marxists stubbornly defend this view, which, as we will see later in this work, leads to the view that cyclical crises are something other than the crises of the generalized overproduction of commodities.
Kautsky highly praised Hilferding’s book and only gently criticized Hilferding’s mistakes on monetary theory in Finance Capital. However, in 1912, Hilferding published in the German socialist publication Die Neue Zeit an article, “Geld und Ware (Money and Commodities),” which, far from correcting the errors made in monetary theory in Finance Capital, deepened them.
Hilferding claimed that under the then prevailing international gold standard, where the central bank stands ready to buy and sell gold at a fixed mint price — that is, gold bullion minted into coins of a given weight or exchange for a fixed quantity of banknotes — that the central bank was fixing the value of gold itself. Therefore, according to Hilferding, the value of gold, instead of being determined by the quantity of socially necessary labor to produce it as is the case with all other commodities, the value of gold is instead determined by the “monetary authority.”
This strikes at the very foundation of Marxist value theory.
Kautsky, therefore, felt compelled to answer Hilferding in an article “Gold, Paper Money and Commodity,” https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1912/xx/gpcc.htm , which even today — perhaps we should say especially today — should be read and studied very carefully by all people who are interested in the Marxist critique of political economy.
Lenin, though he largely based his own pamphlet on imperialism on Finance Capital, still made note of Hilferding’s errors, pointing out that “In spite of the mistake the author makes on the theory of money, and in spite of a certain inclination on his part to reconcile Marxism with opportunism, this work gives a very valuable theoretical analysis of ‘the latest phase of capitalist development,’ as the subtitle runs.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/pref02.htm (back)
(4) The Austrian school of marginalism developed in direct opposition to the Austrian Social Democracy. It differs from other marginalist schools in its preference for verbal arguments as opposed to mathematical ones. While the more mathematical marginalists speak in mathematical language to their fellow economists, the Austrians seek to reach a larger audience.
These economists like to express sympathy for socialists and then go on to explain even mild social reforms will actually hurt the workers and the poor at best and, at worst, will lead to “serfdom.” Well-known Austrian economists include Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), who tried to prove a socialist economy is impossible because it could solve “the calculation problem,” Frederick Von Hayeck (1926-1995) whose “The Road to Serfdom” (1944) claimed that social reforms would inevitably lead to “serfdom” and the U.S. economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) who wrote a book on the Depression claiming it was caused by government intervention. (back)
A Critique of Crisis Theory 