Overproduction (n.) is an epidemic every earlier epoch would have thought absurd, a famine caused by too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry and too much commerce.
Overproduction (n.) grows more frequent the more developed capitalism becomes — machinery outrunning the plants and animals it feeds on, and dragging booms and busts behind it.
Overproduction (n.) means part of society's labour-time was wasted: the goods carry more labour than the market will count, until production comes under society's genuine prior control.
Overproduction (n.) is what happens when capital is applied by non-owners, who do not anxiously weigh the limits of their own purse.
Overproduction (n.) and the swindling that goes with it stretch the productive forces to their limit, even beyond the barriers of capitalist production itself.
Overproduction (n.) means too much of society's labour went into one branch: each piece used only the needed labour-time, yet part of the total is useless and sells as if only the right proportion had been made.
Overproduction (n.) is always the competitor's fault, as far as each individual capitalist is concerned.
Overproduction (n.) as overstock looks exactly like a healthy stock and can be mistaken for a boom — especially when credit mystifies the real movement and the producer feels his capital flowing while his goods stagnate in the merchant's warehouse.
Overproduction (n.) must be constant, seen from the standpoint of society, since only a surplus beyond simple replacement can make good the unusual destruction caused by accidents and natural forces.
Overproduction (n.) arrives exactly when capitalist production exerts all its forces, because sales are limited not by society's needs but by the needs of a society whose great majority are always poor and must always remain poor.
Overproduction (n.) kept up on purpose, more fixed capital than is directly needed and a stock of raw materials beyond the immediate annual need, is society's control over the objective means of its own reproduction, and within capitalist society it is an anarchic element.
Overproduction (n.) is admitted for capital and denied for goods by economists like Fullarton — which only proves how unable even the best bourgeois economists are to understand their own system.