>>> Sam Pawlett <rsp at uniserve.com> 07/13/99 02:55PM >>>
It might be useful in discussing crisis to try and nail down a precise meaning or even necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the concept or else people end up talking past one another. As I understand it, crisis in Marxism means system imminent['capitalism creates the conditions for its own destruction] and irreversible in the sense that no amount of tinkering with the system can prevent a crisis. Lexigraphical definitions usually say that a crisis means on the threshold of changing into something else. A crisis in capitalism would mean the system is on the threshold of changing into something else e.g socialism or fascism.
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Charles: I agree with your general definition of "crisis". However, in Marxism "crisis" is used to refer to a number of different qualitative changes. Marx discusses periodic "crises of overproduction" but most of these are not the crisis of the whole system, the end of capitalism. Most of the periodic crises in capitalism , far from being system ending, are "creative destructions", that is they are the capitalist method for raising the rate of profit back up by destroying capital. In dialectics, any qualitative change takes the form of a "crisis". I agree that a periodic crisis might suggest revolution, but even during the boom phase of the cycle, many workers are in personal economic crisis, as you mention below. By some theories, revolutionary upsurge is more likely in periods of rising expectations, or the up phase of the periodic business cycle.
Anyway, I also agree that we must specify "a crisis for whom ?" The crisis for the capitalist is merely a drop in the rate of profit ( not even necessarily a loss of profit). This is not a crisis in personal consumption, but in accumulation of wealth.
Lenin defined a revolutionary situation as one where the people can no longer live in the old way, and where the ruling class can no longer rule in the old way. This is a system ending crisis.
In sum, I would differentiate between the business cycle crisis and the system ending crisis.
CB
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Using macroneconomic stats to determine what is a crisis and what isn't is a bit one-sided. From the point of view of macroeconomic stats and the investor class it looks like the worst of the Asian crisis is over. But from the point of view of the millions who lost jobs the crisis is really only beginning. Crisis is where there is enough disruption in the process of capital accumulation to destabilize the system such that it is possible for a class to change the system. Because of the strength of the capitalist class and the weakness of the working class, the former has been able to use crisis to restructure the system to its own advantage at the expense of the latter. In traditional Marxist theory, crisis is supposed to motivate the victims of the crisis to change it to their own advantage.
Sam Pawlett