> Maybe this is just nitpicking, but when something is ubiquitous and
> long-lived it seems wrong to call it a crisis. Crisis suggests a real
> problem with a system's reproduction, and capitalism has managed to
> reproduce itself - and expand - for centuries. Trotsky didn't mean it
> that way, did he? Wasn't crisis another word for death agony?
Isn't it pretty orthodox to say that capitalism requires its crises _in order to_ reproduce itself? Liquidating some capitals so that the remaining ones may again begin the expansionary part of the cycle, and so on. It's being argued that in this cycle there have not been _enough_ bankruptcies; Brenner's argued that less efficient plant being kept in production underlies current economic problems. A crisis of insufficient crisis.
But yes, the "turning point" sense of "crisis" (its medical usage for instance) makes the notion of managing a permanent crisis an oxymoron. Yet there is something about how capitalism shatters stability and security that makes that notion appropriate. For instance, at root the acute fear of job loss is essential to profitability and therefore to the system, certainly a crisis in the life of the person losing her job. What's unique about capitalism is just this linkage of dynamism with crisis.
I know I was too irritable with Larkin. But the claim that MR has been predicting capitalism's demise from its internal contradictions is like 180 degrees from the Sweezy tradition. Grossmann yes, but Sweezy and MR have always critiqued Volume 3 & falling rate of profit or Luxemburgian versions. I'm personally more agnostic, but knowing something about this (certainly reasonable not to - lots of better ways to spend time) should be a precondition to making pronouncements about it.
If what he really meant was that anyone who used MR over the last 54 years to devise an investment strategy would have lost her shirt, of course he's right.
john mage