The underlying crisis tendency of monopoly capitalism, as we saw in Chapters Six and Seven, is over-accumulation. In those chapters, we examined the rise of corporate liberalism as a response to the twin crises of over-accumulation and under-consumption. The inability to dispose of the full product of overbuilt industry, at market prices, is inherent in the system. The primary function of the state, under monopoly capitalism, is to dispose of this surplus product and enable industry to operate at full capacity.

There are, however, secondary crisis tendencies resulting from the state's attempted solutions to the primary crisis tendency of over-accumulation. The state's policies of underwriting the operating costs of the corporate economy and pacifying the underclass lead to increasing expenditures, revenue shortfalls, and a chronic fiscal crisis. But even more fundamental than this fiscal crisis is the accumulation crisis resulting from corporate liberal policies. Keynesian and welfare-state policies, and the social contract with business unions, increase the level of consumption at the expense of accumulation; thus, paradoxically, the state's response to over-accumulation leads directly to a crisis of under-accumulation.