Marx and Engels on capitalist crises

A hundred and sixty years ago, Marx and Engels pointed out the seemingly incomprehensible situation whereby phenomenal affluence gives way to insufferable poverty.

“In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.”

Foward to socialism!