Patrick writes
> Huh?! Das Kapital repeatedly shows how dialectic analysis derives the
> laws of motion - including crisis formation - that exist independ of
> contingent events.
because I said
>> When Marx talked about crises, he had in mind real world events, that
>> were
>> evident to all, not hidden laws at work under the surface of society.
>> Crisis
>> for him was that point when the law of accumulation's fundamental
>> contradictions erupted. If crisis becomes something that's existence
>> needs
>> to be demonstrated by analysis then it isn't crisis.
Patrick, sarcastically, I guess, adds
> James, that's quite original.
But what Marx says is quite clear:
"From time to time the conflict of antagonistic agencies finds vent in crises. The crises are always but momentary and forcible solutions of the existing contradictions. They are violent eruptions which for a time restore the disturbed equilibrium." Capital, Vol. III, L&W, p 249 (or http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch15.htm)
Crisis is a * momentary* (not forty-years long), violent eruption. I think the terminological difference here is that Patrick is using the concepts 'crisis' and 'law of motion' interchangeably (the coinage 'crisis formation' rather blurs the difference). But the Capitalist law of motion, or law of accumulation, is the constant, and the crisis, is a specific manifestation of the underlying law of motion, evidence of 'overaccumulation'. It is wrong, incidentally, to think that the only thing that Capitalism does is tend towards crisis. It also expands the productive base. Crisis is in fact the interruption of the law of accumulation, the point at which it meets its own limits.
Patrick also writes
> the 1994-2007 period makes no conceptual sense so shame on you for
> defending it as a logical period for analysing trends and cycles.
Well forgive me, but what I think you mean is that it makes no conceptual sense to you. But the world can't wait for you to catch up. The British economy did grow for fifty consecutive quarters over that period, so if your conceptual apparatus cannot account for that, you should fix it.
I did explain to you what had happened, you just could not hear me. The forcible resolution of the crisis in the 1980s was at the expense of the working class. The defeat of organised labour, the Stalinist and radical nationalist movements was the condition of a renewed round of accumulation in the nineties. Its focus - not surprisingly - has been precisely where the Stalinist regimes collapsed - China, more latterly Russia, and even the developing markets of Africa, where growth rates outstrip those of the developed west. The UK's relationship to that growth was largely parasitic.
The subprime crisis is indeed serious, but it is most certainly not the manifestation of a crisis of overaccumulation, for the simple reason that the Western economies have not experienced overaccumulation - on the contrary, Europe in particular continues to experience historically low rates of business investment, and has expanded largely through the incorporation of more, and cheaper labour, i.e. extensively.
The credit crunch shows the limitations of this specific arrangement, in which East Asian manufacturers supply US and European consumers, and extend credit to the West to guarantee their markets. But that is not the same thing as overaccumulation.