But if it was already there, then it would not be 'coming down on your head' it would be here. It is the ABC not of Marxism, but of the English language, that (as Marx writes in TSV) 'there are no permanent crises'. Crisis means eruptive event, by definition, a crisis cannot be prolonged. If it is the ordinary state of affairs, then it is not a crisis.
And surely Patrick is being pulling his punches. Isn't his theory that it is all the same 'crisis' that has been going on since 1970, which would mean that we have been in crisis for the last forty years - four fifths of my life, and I guess the entirety of many people reading the LBO list.
Patrick has turned Marx's theory of accumulation on its head. What for Marx was a theory of capitalist expansion trhough exploitation, interrupted by crises, has become a theory of permanent crisis. That's not Marx, it is Sisimondi, or Malthus.
And who is this addressed to, exactly? Is it meant to convince the workers to wake up and recognise the fact that they are not living in dull times, but in the midst of a great social crisis? If they don't think that they are living in such a state, then there is no such state, since a crisis could not be an event that was not experienced as such.
Is it addressed to the ruling class, to convince them that their system is destructive, and they should lay off? I hardly think so.
Is it addressed to the Marxist comrades whose failure to predict and influence the course of events has left them in need of some boosting - yes, I think that is probably true, but also
It is addressed to those petit bourgeois who persist in the view that the precariousness of their own social situation is synonymous with the end of the world, for whom perennial disaster is an addiction.