But planned obsolescence is possible only if the rate of technological change is contained.

Money could not be converted into capital if wage labour did not exist.

Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.

If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?

The net effect of increasing scale, centralization of capital, vertical integration and diversification within the corporate form of enterprise has been to replace the 'invisible hand' of the market by the 'visible hand' of the managers.

Individual capitalists, in short, necessarily act in such a way as to de-stabilize capitalism.

The onset of a crisis is usually triggered by a spectacular failure which shakes confidence in fictitious forms of capital.