> David Yaffe puts there is 'no final crisis' in quotes as if Marx said it but gives no reference (because he was doing it from memory?) in his articles on crisis in Science an Society and Revolutionary Communist. The quote is usually introduced in the argument where the TRPF has been set out and the author is about to move on to discuss the coutneracting tendencies that stop the falling rate of profit from being a permanent crisis. The nearest to it in Marx is a passage in the Theories of Surplus Value, except that what he says is more or less the opposite in its conclusion:
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> "These contradictions of course lead to explosions crisi in which momentary suspension of all labour and annihilation of a great part of the capital violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide. Yet these regularly occurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overthrow." Grundrisse p 750, Penguin 1973
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> Marx does say 'permanent crises do not exist'. TSV, II, p 497, fn, Lawrence and Wishart, 1969
Also: "Crises are never more than momentary, violent solutions for the existing contradictions, violent eruptions that re-establish the disturbed balance for the time being." In Capital Vol III, Ch. 15, p. 357 in the Penguin edition. Plus the whole surrounding argument.
And further in the same part of TSV you mention: "Crisis is nothing but the forcible assertion of unity of phases of the production process which have become independent of each other."
Marx's views about the apocalyptic potential of crises changed over time. After the failure of 1848 he argued that a new economic crisis would break out and lead to a successful revolution. When 1857 started to break out he was more reserved in his journalism, but still tended towards the catastrophist, e.g., arguing that the Banque du France's counter-measures would fail, though it turned out France was among the least affected. In Capital and the related works crisis usually appears as a temporary phase which restores balance.
Mike Beggs scandalum.wordpress.com