Emil Lederer: Review of Albert Aftalion’s La réalité des surproductions générales (1910)

Lederer’s short review first reconstructs Aftalion’s explanation of economic crises, then assesses its descriptive merits and limits. Aftalion locates the cause of crises in general overproduction on the commodity side, rejecting explanations based on changes in the quantity of money. Drawing closely on marginal utility theory, he connects the duration of capitalist production with changes in social needs.

The central mechanism is a delay between investment and the arrival of finished goods. Rising needs stimulate production, but lengthy production processes keep goods off the market and prices high for years. Continued investment thus conceals an already emerging excess of productive capacity:

Erst wenn die inaugurierten neuen Produktionsmöglichkeiten ausgenützt werden, wenn die Endprodukte auf den Markt geworfen werden, enthüllt sich die Ueberkapitalisation.

English translation: Only when the newly inaugurated possibilities of production are exploited, when the final products are thrown upon the market, does the over-capitalisation reveal itself.

The crisis reveals overcapitalization that high prices had previously encouraged. Prices then remain depressed until stalled investment, population growth, and the wearing out of capital goods restore scarcity, setting the cycle in motion again. Lederer credits Aftalion with thoroughly explaining these interacting factors and thereby deepening the account of crisis.

His concluding judgment is more reserved. Aftalion reaches results resembling Bouniatian’s without matching that author’s descriptive precision or depth of insight. More decisively, his theory leaves unexplained how cartel formation changes the conditions under which crises develop:

Aftalion supponiert überall die freie Konkurrenz. Eine Theorie der Krisen hat nur Interesse, wenn sie die Wirklichkeit deckt.

English translation: Aftalion everywhere presupposes free competition. A theory of crises is of interest only if it covers reality.

This objection establishes the review’s critical standard: a convincing crisis mechanism must address the actual organization of capitalist markets. Lederer’s appreciation of the temporal explanation therefore remains conditional on its extension beyond free competition to the altered conditions created by cartels.