QUOTE : But the contradiction remains and the cycle repeats itself: the capital investment needed to raise productivity through innovation means constant capital grows relative to variable capital and also, therefore, the surplus value produced by variable capital. Surplus value is converted into capital faster than it is produced and so capital once again over-accumulates. And because the overall mass of capital is now even greater than before, an even greater magnitude of surplus value is required alongside an even greater devaluation of capital in order to reproduce and expand it yet further. Crisis is therefore inherent to the system, as increasing magnitudes of capital become dormant while waiting for profitable conditions to return, and cannot be put down merely to ‘greed’, hoarding or the ‘bad’ or ‘erroneous choices’ of capitalists, politicians, economists and civil servants. Private and public debt rises not because of arbitrary overspending but in order to make up for the insufficient production of surplus value.