James Heartfield wrote (and I rewrote):
> Doug, to Patrick: 'I really think we should mention, amongst all our other critiques, that capitalism regularly blows a gasket - and if done properly we should not just mention but repeatedly predict it, rejoicing when we're right, while expressing sympathetic regret not only for victims, for whom organizing resistance will be easier if the crisis is understood as a structural not personal failure, but also for a few stodgy leftists who can't expand their repertoire to include crisis theory - so as to contribute to forward vision.'
>
Albeit clumsy, that formulation works better.
By the way, James, what's the relevance of the quote below? Mattick was a superb crisis theorist, in Henryk Grossman's tradition. No one in that tradition (which I aspire to join, as well) would predict the 'assure[d]... breakdown of capitalism' or 'the inevitability of socialism' - although it would be quite reasonable to predict, following the law of value, that there will be repeated crises of capitalism and, ideologically speaking, the inevitability of genuinely socialist critiques of capital that include crisis theory. Have you read any Grossman, James? :-) http://www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/
> Or as Paul Mattick mocked:
>
> 'For some of his disciples the "law of value" . seems to assure the breakdown of capitalism ...Marx's critique of political economy became the ideology of the inevitability of socialism.'