tion of the laborer as a seller of his labor-power and a purchaser of the products of his labor-power, and the creation of a surplus-product flowing therefrom which must result in an over-production of commodities quite apart from the "anarchy of production." It is to this constant factor, the constantly accumulating surplus-product, that the constancy with which crises recur is due. It is to this that the industrial cycle, the periodical recurrence of prosperity and stagnation, is due. And this recurrence of prosperity and stagnation, that is to say, the inability to continually carry on production on that plane which the productive forces of society permit and require, is the foundation of the Marxian theory of crises. The fact, therefore, pointed to by Revisionists, that, as Tugan-Baranowsky has shown in his History of Commercial Crises in England, the cycle has now assumed another form, that instead of feverish activity preparing the way for a sudden crash there is now a gradual tide and ebb of prosperity and stagnation, is not a refutation of Marx but a confirmation of the correctness of his analysis of capitalistic production. This fact, which is ascribed to the regulative influence of the modern trusts and combinations, proves conclusively that neither trusts and combinations nor any other regulative influence can abolish crises, because it cannot abolish the chief cause of crises—overproduction, which does not depend on the lack of regulation of production but is inherent in the capitalistic mode of production. Trusts and combinations, if they can do anything at all, can only affect the form which the crises may assume, whether they should be short and acute as formerly or mild and long-drawn-out as now, but no more. This is acknowledged even by Tugan-Baranowsky himself.
Some Marx-critics seem to derive some comfort from the fact that, owing to the regulative influence of modern industrial combinations, crises have ceased to be as acute as formerly. We fail to see wherein a long period of stagnation is any better than an acute crisis. That is,
