Many economists before Marx were aware that the capitalist mode of production was merely a historical, transitional stage and therefore finite. He himself described this in particular in “Theories of Surplus Value” (cf. MEW 26.3, 51, 421/MECW, vol. 32, 248; vol. 33, 345). It is to Marx’s credit that he pointed out the special role of the productive forces in changes to economic social formations, which had hardly been discussed within the framework of classical bourgeois economics. According to Eugen Varga, however, “bourgeois political economy” has suppressed this fact “after the incipient decline of capitalism” and now claims “that the capitalist social order is definitive and eternal” (Varga, 1982, vol. 2, 6). The historical-transitory character of capitalism emphasized by Varga here was understood by him as an almost continuous process of decline, as an ever further intensification of the basic economic contradictions inherent in capitalism. In his view, this decline was unstoppable and could only be halted for a short time, but not for longer periods, not even through adjustments within capitalism. Structural changes such as the concentration and centralization of capital, technological developments, the creation of the world market and the internationalization of the capitalist regime are analysed and presented by Varga in an empirically unbiased manner, but hardly any conclusions are drawn from them in terms of the theory of capitalism: According to him, all these moments exacerbate capitalist contradictions, which, as will be shown below, express themselves in cyclical crises.