Overproduction...

This is more than just a concept, as has been pointed out, but moreover a long
observed empirical phenomenon.  The question dividing Marxian economics and
bourgeois economics is   whether it is endemic and inherent to capitalism.
(In my view, much of the last 300 or so years of governmental policy in the US,
Europe, etc. in terms of economic matters has been oriented towards dealing
with this problem, Keynesianism being the best example).  However, I would
like to address it conceptually from a couple of different vantage points,
demonstrating the arguments that it is inherent to capitalist production.


FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF THE WAGE:

  As should be well known, Marx's theory of capitalism states that workers
  must receive in wages that amount that pays for their subsitance, and some
  additional amount for the reproduction of the working class as a whole.
  If wages paid matched the amount of value produced by the worker, there
  would be no exchange values left, and thus nothing left to sell for profit,
  then the process,   from the capitalist vantage point, could not be set in
  motion again.  Thus, there must be more goods on the market than can be
  purchased directly by the working class.  That is, the working class produces
  more exchange values than they can purchase with their wages.  This is
  over production.

FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF THE INDIVIDUAL CAPITALISTS

  Like workers seeking wages, capitalists must compete against each other, at
  least to a certain extent barring monopoly, for shares of the "market" or
  buyers of their products.  Given that supply and demand set the upper and
  lower limits on prices acceptable to capitalist and buyer(s) alike, to win
  or survive the competition, one must, not theoretically but actually, sell
  as much of one's product to not just gain back initial investment, and not
  just enough to re-set the production process in motion anew, but to accrue
  enough profit to take future inflation, competition, innovation into
  account.  This means that one must produce, not at least enough to cover
  expected demand, but just a little bit more.  If there is more demand than
  one expects, they risk losing that share of the market to a competitor.
  Thus, there is a motivation and tendency towards overproduction from this
  vantage point as well.


FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF PRICES

  There exist many "tendencies" in capitalism.  Two of the most prominant
  are "inflation" and "polarization of the classes."  While each of these
  experience slowdowns or even momentary reversals, the tendency over the
  long period of time is that prices increase and classes divide.  Both, in
  fact, are part of the same process: you can't have one without the other.
  They entail and infer each other.  Each time prices increase and/or classes
  divide futher, there are that many more commodities that cannot be bought
  by a growing number of people.  The result, over production, but this time
  from an unpredicted decline in, not so much as demand, but the ability to
  pay for more and more people.  This continues today and is overproduction.

FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF CLASS POLARIZATION

  Another term for class polarization is "the concentration of wealth."
  Because of the appropriation process in production (referred to above as
  paying workers less than the value they produce), wealth thus created but
  not circulated through commodity exchange becomes "stagnant" and because
  of inflation begins to lose its value.  This is the ultimate tragedy for
  the capitalist class:  huge amounts of wealth created, no  markets to sell
  them in.  Even their class begins to get gorged on its wealth, and loses its
  value: stockmarkets crash, or in the 1980's, junk bond trading frenzies and
  overseas investment.  When overproduction continues, a "crisis" stage sets
  in, and those on the margins (lower middle class, upper middle class)
  tend to lose a bit, while those at the top gain.  Check out the increases
  in millionaires and billionaires in the last 15 years with the decline of
  of the middle class in the US, and the incorporation of the remainder of
  the third and communist worlds into global markets.

And these are not the only vantage points one could deploy in analyzing the
problem of overproduction.  Others could be: the production process, the system
of circulation of monies and commodities, the labor market, or the world-system
as whole.  Further, these are not "theoretical extrapolations" but conceptual
explanations for observed phenomena: overproduction, recession, economic
expansions, depressions.  The value of the approach is that is allows one to
enter into the question from a variety of conpceptually interrelated points
of departure while remaining all the while in empirical explanation.


And, it is these reasons that a critique of capitalism more strongly stands
on analytical grounds than moral laments about injustice to the poor, because
moral arguments are often perceived as *unreasonably* "subjective", relative,
soap boxing, argumentative, and simply moralistic.  And, nobody likes to be
preached at, right?  The great advance we get from the main body of Marx's
work, especially Capital, is 1) how to study society in general and capitalism
in particular, in a conceptually rigorous and logically consistent way, and
further, 2) the findings of this study, which explain the relations and process
es that account for the observed phenomena prevalent in this type of society.

Or something like that.

paul