Why ? A crisis is a potential qualitative change after a long standing quantitative change. Evolution is long and gradual change Revolution ( a qualitative change marked by crisis) is a sudden short lasting change, definitionally not permanet or continual. If a crisis becomes permanent , it is quantitative change on a higher level or new scale; and is no longer a crisis.
So, I agree , it would be illogical to say capitalism is in crisis all of the time. Marxists do not maintain that the capitalist business cycle is always in its bust phase. And you are correct, that some Marxists overuse "crisis" in violation of this dialectical sense. But not all of us do. And, of course, the bourgeoisie understate the occurrence of crises. For example, the recent/current crisis in Asia, Russia, etc. is denied as part of "the capitalist system as a whole" in the way bourgeois propaganda presents it. Also, the bourgeois deny the systemic origin of business cycle crises, falsely portraying them as accidents and mistakes and deviations from the norm that do not necessarily have to occur. For example, attributing the Asian crisis to "cronyism" and the Russian crisis to a "kleptocracy".
I agree with the "crisis for whom" comment too. Capitalism always has crisis for some members of the working class, the reserve army of unemployed and the poor. This "crisis" must be comprehended as in a different context than the business cycle crises for the capitalists. Of course, in this regard, even the Great Depression was not a crisis for some capitalists. And most business cycle crises are not personal consumption crises for capitalists. The corporation takes the fall. That's the purpose of the limited liability corporation and the corporate veil.
The Chinese symbol for "crisis" means danger and opportunity, a unity and struggle of opposites. The ultimate, system changing crisis of capitalism (not the periodic, business cycle crisis within capitalism) presents the danger and opportunity of barbarism or socialism. Economic disaster is not something to jump up and down about, necessarily, if we are not ready to take the opportunity of establishing socialism.
As I wrote back when this list first began in 1998:
>>> "Charles Brown" <charlesb at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> 05/04/98 1:53 PM >>>
Lets say the U.S. stock market crashes.
The result could be fascism in the U.S
(Gingrich and Buchannan say). without
organization of millions of people for an alternative to
capitalism, I dare say now.
Are pensioners the most likely working class victims of such a crash ? Whatever strata will feel the impact most, how do we reach them now with a proposal that the answer to the crash is a radical new way of thinking about their government and "business" ? Left,not right.
Is the unprecedented U.S. stockmarket
bull based in part on U.S. based corporations'
domination of the leadership of the new transnational dictatorship of the bourgeoisie allowing especially the U,S, stockmarket and economy to somehow forestall longer than in the past the classic Marxist crisis of overproduction?
Somehow the U.S. has shifted the crisis to other regions, in the newly more fully integrated world market, and avoided its own inevitable hit. Pox (that's with an "o") Americana.
Will the crisis, when it comes, be as unprecedented in size as the boom has been ? If yes, Uhhhooohhh. We better be ready with a theory, program (including constitutionl amendments ) and song; and
e-mail - talkshow -record and videotape
NETWORK to catch all those upset people. The revolution will not occur automatically. How about
"We , the People, hereby forgive ourselves the national debt " as one slogan ? We the People owe the banks $ 4 trillion ? I don't think so.
Charles Brown
Detroit
Charles Brown
>>> "christian a. gregory" <pearl862 at earthlink.net> 09/07/99 10:26PM >>>
I think the point here is to note how frequently "crisis" gets invoked
without any specificity, with the implicit or explicit hope that disaster
will also bring historical redemption for the left. It does matter what kind
of a crisis you're talking about (a currency crisis, a profitability crisis,
a banking crisis, solvency crisis, etc.), when and where such things
originate, and how capital responds. To be wary of the term isn't to believe
that capital has never been in crisis. It is to believe that we should be a
little less ready to jump up and down at the first signs of economic
disaster. You gotta ask, "crisis for whom?"
Christian