An economic crisis, characterized by negative economic growth, high unemployment, and reduced production, has significant global repercussions. Scholars have variously attributed crises to insufficient financial regulation and to fundamental contradictions of capitalism, particularly the tension between socialized production and private ownership of the means of production. While enhanced financial regulation has been proposed as a solution, recurrent crises since the Great Depression of 1929 suggest otherwise. This paper argues that the intrinsic contradictions of capitalism make economic crises unavoidable. Through case studies of the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 global financial crisis, it demonstrates how profit-driven motives, speculative bubbles, excessive credit expansion, and insufficient financial regulation stem from the core contradiction between production socialization and private ownership. Even interventions like Keynesian economic policies have only temporarily mitigated these crises, failing to address the underlying issues. The conclusion posits that unless the fundamental contradictions of capitalism are resolved, cyclical economic crises will remain inevitable.

Man Zhou. Study on economic crises under capitalism. International Journal of Frontiers in Sociology (2024), Vol. 6, Issue 9: 104-108. https://doi.org/10.25236/IJFS.2024.060916.

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