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Capitalism is dying from having... been too successful in accumulating capital

dimanche 14 septembre 2025, par Robert Paris

Capitalism is dying from having... been too successful in accumulating capital

Can capitalism encounter insurmountable limits ? Marx’s answer and the current situation.

The World Bank says so ! Capitalism is dying from accumulating too much capital !

https://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/news/press-release/2021/10/27/global-wealth-has-grown-but-at-the-expense-of-future-prosperity-world-bank

But if global capital reaches record levels, it is at the cost of a global debt that is also a historic record ! This is what must be explained and the only explanation is the relative fall in productive investments as the rest of the article shows.

Until the 2000s, capitalism only experienced phases of overaccumulation (periods of recession followed by periods of economic recovery) but never permanent overaccumulation, that is to say, a lasting inability to provide profits to existing capital, which it could only circumvent through massive public financial aid serving to prolong the situation without managing to revive offers of profitable productive investments to existing capital, due to an excessive mass of capital already acquired. However, the mass of global capital has reached such improbable heights that it has no hope of finding real means of investment to face up to it. It is therefore a crisis of the foundations of the system which is taking place. Not because of a weakness of the system or errors of the governors and financial leaders, but because of the excessive success of the system in relation to its absorption capacities.

The goal of capitalism is not to produce goods, nor to develop industrial or commercial activities, nor is it in itself to expand into more activities, to employ more workers, more countries, to take more power, to rule everything. No, the goal of capital is capital itself...

The main mechanism of capitalism, since its inception, has been the accumulation of capital from human labor, also called surplus value, that is to say the mechanism by which capital grows and is reinvested in productive activities so as to grow again and again...

The current situation of capitalism, that of the 2000s, is characterized by an overaccumulation of capital. Overaccumulation means that there has been relatively too much accumulation. Accumulation means that capital is invested and produces more capital. Capitalism can distribute more capital to lenders, but it is not in this sphere that capital really increases. It is only in the sphere of commodity transformation that the surplus value extracted from human labor can be integrated into value and profit produced, which will then be distributed throughout all spheres of the economy. In short, if capital withdraws from production on a massive scale, it also withdraws from the sphere that produces an increase in capital, from the sphere where accumulation is produced. It is therefore indeed a question of an excess of capital.

Because it is at the highest level of labor productivity that big capital is blocking. It is also at the highest level of global trade. It is still at the highest level of new technological capabilities. Finally, it is at the highest level of growth : GDP growth, which took 140 years, is currently taking six years... No, it is this success that capitalism is incapable of assuming, that is, of considering as sufficiently profitable in the short term for it because it is much more profitable in the short term to speculate than to invest. There is far too much capital, it has accumulated far too much, for there to be enough growth in profitable productive investments to absorb it. As a result, this excess capital becomes harmful capital that creates a massive pole of attraction for all capital outside the productive sphere. Capitalism has reached its limits.

There is no point in telling us that financial capital has always existed, that it is not even different in terms of ownership from productive capital, all of this is certainly true but it does not change a very important fact : financial capital took on an importance in the 1990s that it had never known throughout the entire history of capitalism, becoming much more attractive than productive investment... This trend, far from being fought, was favored by world governments because it made it possible to temporarily exceed the limits of investment capacities by creating new unproductive investments. Dividends increased further, capital too, and at the beginning of the 2000s we had already exceeded the level of overaccumulation that we then tried to force through means of exaggerated financial accumulation (such as debt securitization) such as subprimes or LBOs... The "crisis" of 2007 is not one because it is not the beginning of the difficulties but the end of the system’s possibilities. Since then, we have lived only on subterfuge. Without the masses of billions of capital provided by States and central banks, we would no longer speak of capitalism !

This also shows that the method currently chosen by states—introducing masses of public capital into the financial markets—cannot at all resolve the crisis, even if it does help to offset the withdrawal of private capital from investments. This can neither be a solution nor be sustainable. This means that the capitalists are currently only using palliative measures and not crisis treatment, which they therefore have no hope of curing. This means that they only intend to prolong the situation a little, on the brink of the abyss, to ensure that the catastrophe does not turn into a general offensive of the exploited against the exploiters.

By buying time, the capitalists and their states are preparing possible political responses to save the ruling classes : the development of fascism, dictatorships, and wars leading to world war. The situation is not one of limited sacrifices for the working classes while waiting for a recovery, but one of socialism or barbarism. What is posed to the workers is the question of social revolution and not just defensive struggles on the economic terrain alone. What is necessary is the organization of the masses on the political terrain. This is not just the trade union struggle. It is the workers’ committees.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2730

Big capital is unable to accumulate beyond the limit it reached in the early 2000s. It continues to enrich the owners of large capital only by betting on the financial sphere, and the latter only enriches itself by betting on the fall of values, on the decline of capitalism.

There is a constantly growing gap between the profit curve and the capital accumulation curve because capital is no longer reinvested in production, a sector that is nevertheless the only producer of surplus value. Capitalist enrichment is therefore dried up at the source. This is why the functioning of capitalism is dead. It is not speculation that kills capitalism : it is on the death of capitalism that speculation continues to flourish. It is not financial capital that kills productive capital, but it is the end of productive capital that continues to enrich financial capital.

It is not state debt that is weighing down capitalism, but private debt, that of the capitalists, which causes state debt and becomes the perforated Swiss cheese of capitalism. The rich are richer than ever, but they have become destroyers of the system itself.

The capitalist class destroys its own system every day through its necrophilic investments, even though it calls on working people to sacrifice themselves to save it.

The broken spring of capitalism cannot be revived. We can only build a new world, no longer based on private ownership of capital and businesses, or perish on the ruins of the old one…
Overaccumulation is the price of success for capitalism, which has succeeded beyond its capacity to absorb surplus values and reinvest them…

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3979

What is capital accumulation ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5811
What Karl Marx teaches us in the current unprecedented situation

Karl Marx in "Capital" : "We have seen that an accumulation, an overabundance of loanable capital can occur and that its characteristic is that it is in inverse ratio to the accumulation of productive capital... The abundance of loanable capital is an indication of a stagnation of industrial capital."

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-III/kmcap3_30.htm

The law of capital accumulation according to Karl Marx : how surplus value extracted from human productive labor can be transformed into additional capital.

Did Marx and Engels say that capitalism could not destroy itself ? No, they said that it would self-destruct as soon as it reached its peak. So it is its very success (success in its fundamental objective means in the accumulation of capital) that indicates that capitalism has reached its limits.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3413

What does Karl Marx say about it in “Capital” ?

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-24-1.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-24-2.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-24-3.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-24-4.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-24-5.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-25-1.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-25-2.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-25-3.htm

What does K. Marx mean when he states, in a well-known quote, that "The real barrier to capitalist production is capital itself" ?

“The real barrier to capitalist production is capital itself : capital and its self-valorization appear as the starting point and the final point, the driving force and the end of production ; production is only production for capital and not the other way around : the means of production are not simply means of giving form, by constantly expanding it, to the process of life for the benefit of the society of producers. The limits which serve as an insurmountable framework for the conservation and valorization of capital-value rest on the expropriation and impoverishment of the great mass of producers ; they therefore constantly come into conflict with the methods of production which capital must necessarily employ for its own end, and which tend to promote an unlimited increase in production, an unconditional development of the social productive forces of labor, to make production an end in itself. The unconditional means of development of social productivity is perpetually in conflict with the limited end : valorization of existing capital. If, therefore, the capitalist mode of production is a historical means of developing material productive force and creating the corresponding world market, it represents at the same time a permanent contradiction between this historical task and the social relations of production which correspond to it.

Karl Marx, Capital, Book Three

The relevant passage from Marx’s text from which the quotation is taken is as follows :
"The periodic depreciation of existing capital [for in each cycle capital expands, hence the share of the preceding capital in the total decreases], which is a means inherent in the capitalist mode of production of arresting the fall in the rate of profit and of accelerating the accumulation of capital-value by the formation of new capital, disturbs the given conditions in which the processes of circulation and reproduction of capital take place, and, consequently, are accompanied by sudden interruptions and crises in the production process. The relative decline of variable capital in relation to constant capital, which goes hand in hand with the development of the productive forces, stimulates the increase of the working population, while constantly creating an artificial surplus population [that is, unemployment is caused here by the lowering of the share of workers in production, at the expense of machines]. The accumulation of capital, from the point of view of its value, is slowed down by the fall in the rate of profit, which further accelerates the accumulation of use-value [of useful, used commodities], while this, in turn, accelerates the course of accumulation as regards its value [because more things are produced and sold, thus valorizing capital]. Capitalist production constantly tends to overcome these limits which are immanent to it, but it only succeeds in this by employing means which, once again, and on a more imposing scale, raise before it the same barriers. The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. »
Karl Marx writes, still in Capital, Volume III :
“Capitalist production constantly strives to transcend the limits inherent in it, but it triumphs over them only by means which oppose these limits again and on an even more gigantic scale. The real limit of capitalist production is capital itself, that is, the fact that capital and the realization of its value appear as the starting point and the end, as the model and the goal of production ; that production is such only for capital, whereas the means of production are simply means for an ever-increasing intensification of the life process of the society of producers. The limits outside which the preservation and realization of the value of capital cannot take place, which rest on the expropriation and impoverishment of the broad masses of producers, these limits constantly come into conflict with the methods of production which capital must employ to achieve its aims, methods which aim at the unlimited increase of production, that is, production for production’s sake, the absolute development of the social productivity of labor. The means – the absolute development of the forces of social productivity – is in permanent conflict with the narrow goal : the exploitation of existing capital. If the capitalist mode of production is a historical means for developing material productive force and for creating the world market that corresponds to it, it is at the same time the permanent contradiction between this historical task that is its own and the social conditions of production that correspond to it.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5914

The disaffection with industrial investment, the only source of accumulation of surplus value extracted from human labor, is increasing. The main activity of capitalism is ensured by the financial sphere through speculation on the stock exchanges. Investors have completely turned away from the productive sphere. Proof of the irrationality of capitalism.
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5848

Is there a global overaccumulation of capital ?

http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/chesnais_francois/crise_suraccumulation_mondiale/crise_suraccumulation_mondiale_texte.html

If in the 2000s, the deep crisis had reached capitalism in the USA and was only pushed back by the artificial means of debts and their securitization, this remedy would prove to be as dangerous as the disease. However, the real disease that strikes capitalism is... its success, it is having accumulated far more capital than it is capable of investing in a productive and profitable manner. This is what the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 revealed, and the response of the world’s capitalists also revealed to us that they considered this crisis alone to be "systemic," calling into question, for the first time in history, the sustainability of the global capitalist system. And since then, their interventions have only increased the scale of the catastrophe : not only have debts multiplied by two and a half, but the mass of capital, already too large compared to the capacity of absorption by productive investments, has grown considerably due to all the state and central aid.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5207

The years of largely artificial profits during the period of globalization and financialization have only increased the mass of private capital in proportions previously unknown. But the counterpart of this success of the 2000s is precisely this mass of capital that does not correspond to possible productive investments. To the point that in 2007 we reached a level of capitalization such that it is no longer possible to turn back. This is not a crisis of overproduction of goods (or underconsumption) but a crisis of overproduction... of capital ! The overaccumulation of capital has taken on such proportions that the only way found by States to avoid a total and immediate collapse of capitalism in 2008 was to continue to increase private capital by injecting hundreds of billions from central banks and international financial institutions... Which is taking a step back to better jump ! They have thus increased the size of the problem while extending to States the catastrophic indebtedness that affected the private sphere... There is no possibility for capitalism to get out of it by conventional means, by economic policies. The collapse of the system has been delayed but it is only postponed.
The crisis is therefore not even a reproduction of the crisis of 1929. Capitalism has reached a much higher level, of means, of wealth, of globalization and, at the same time, the impasse into which the system reaches is much more blocked than in 1929.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1138

"The system’s real accumulation possibilities have reached their limits."

http://lejardindenono.free.fr/articles/un%20autre%20monde%20est%20plus%20que%20jamais%20possible.pdf

Why might big capital perish from having reached its highest level of capital accumulation ? The crux of the problem is this : big capital is bigger than ever, but it has become too... big, compared to the absorption capacity of productive investments, and is therefore making the latter less and less profitable, at least relatively. Speculation is not the only thing that diverts capital. There are also non-productive investments, for example, IT activities, such as internet applications that produce nothing and divert capital and profits... The latter do not own the companies, the raw materials, the machines, do not pay the workers, and they are reaping a growing share of the profits !

Why has big capital become so necrophiliac, producing so many means of destroying its own system ? It is not because it has changed its rules : on the contrary, its law is still individual profit, still the return on investments, still the accumulation of the highest possible surplus profit in relation to the capital invested, and even more so than ever ! So, what is wrong ? Well, this search for maximum profits now irremediably diverts it from productive investments which have become not only cyclical but permanently less profitable than speculative and generally unproductive investments.

Why, if this were not true, would governments and capitalists be shouting in 2007-2008 about the risks of the end of the system ? They had never done so in past crises ! What interest would they have in scaring themselves and warning everyone ? Why did they continue to talk about "systemic risks" in all the crises that followed ? Why does the economic press (that of the bourgeoisie) continue to write that there are risks of the collapse of the system and speak of threats of the "end of the world," which means the end of capitalism ?

And, more fundamentally, if a real economic recovery had marked the current period as has been claimed, why would we not see a revival of private productive investments if they were not definitively less interesting than speculation and other unproductive investments, to the point that the formation of surplus value extracted from human labor is permanently threatened ? Why has mass unemployment become a permanent and global situation ? Why is poverty increasing without interruption ? Why do we see revolts of oppressed peoples rising everywhere, if not because the so-called revival of capitalism is nothing more than smoke and mirrors organized by those in power ? Why do organizations that claim to be working class systematically refuse to take into account that the days of capitalism are numbered, if not because the fate of the bureaucracies that run them is tied to the system as much as the other institutions of the bourgeoisie and because the union apparatuses absolutely do not want a social revolution that overthrows the wage system, the private ownership of capital and the means of production, the system from which they draw their social role as buffers and negotiators and their financial means ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5162

Why the dynamics of capitalism are running up against their own limits : its very success is suffocating within the confines of private ownership of the means of production.

What is overaccumulation ? It is the inability of the ruling classes to transform surplus value into capital, that is, to find a sufficiently profitable reinvestment for it to be worthwhile, given the profits they can make from using this surplus value in other ways or the personal profit the ruling classes prefer to make by spending this money alone. This results in the majority of surplus value being spent on distributions to shareholders, capital buybacks, the purchase of private and public debt, and various speculations. Production is maintained only through the financial interventions of states and central banks. The fundamental reason for this overaccumulation is the success of capitalism, which has produced so much surplus value extracted from the proletariat that it exceeds the absorption capacity of the capitalist economy.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3250

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article105

https://www.marxists.org/francais/varga/works/1930/00/critique_grossmann.pdf

https://www.marxists.org/francais/chesnais/limites_infranchissables.pdf

https://journals.openedition.org/interventionseconomiques/1821

https://www.cairn.info/culture-ecologique--978724638301-page-133.htm

https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00806223/document

https://www.marxists.org/english/pannekoek/works/1934/00/pannekoek_19340001.htm

https://www.sudouest.fr/redaction/journal-des-lecteurs/les-limites-du-capitalisme-2052599.php

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6336

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article527

https://ec56229aec51f1baff1d-185c3068e22352c56024573e929788ff.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/attachments/original/9/2/0/002600920.pdf