Crisis

Crisis is ultimately an important part of any Marxist take on capital's tendency to down-fall. Crisis is in general terms when the contradictions of capital are clearly displayed. The artificial, inverted processes of the economy - with its organisation of the production process - run counter to the actual social process which it super-imposes itself on and attempts to hijack. These contradictions are also central to Marxist accounts of capital's down-fall, on the one hand due to elementary considerations (capitalism does not evolve into communism by a harmonious movement, as if communism were just a form of capitalism), and on the other hand based on the Hegelian dictum that transience is also a property of the object itself. Other views, however, which do not take into account this transience, tend to attribute crisis to merely particular factors. There is hence a certain gulf between these views of crises. Nonetheless, crisis is important to Marxism not only in helping to preserve a sense of its uniqueness and difference from other viewpoints, but also in terms of its close, inherent relation to the mechanism of capitalism's self-undermining.

Firstly, crisis is the manifestation of the contradictions of capital in such a way as to prevent it from going on. Secondly, crisis cannot be an impediment to this down-fall, as any notable resistance to capital which causes obstruction will lead into crisis. This especially if it could form a problem for profits.

Finally, any voluntaristic rendering of capital's problems falls under several problems. For one thing, all laws of capital militate and have always militated against it: the working class and others have a distinct disadvantage to the capitalist class in the field of negotiation, and are further harmed by the limitations associated with the falling rate of profit and the weakening of their negotiating position by the change in the organic composition of capital. Labour's position, and such, weakens as time goes on due to its expulsion from capital. For another, it attempts to portray communism as a result not of capital's contradictions but rather as a positive growth from it, and hence merely an out-growth of capitalism's own dynamic. Communism ends up positively identified with capitalism. With this 'communism,' Obama's proposals might well qualify as dogmatic and left-communist.

However, crisis theory has a different portrayal of events. Communism is identified with the abolition of capitalism via the contradictions of capital which manifest capital's problems. These reveal capital to be a distortion of the process of production and social organisation, and not its inherent form. Of course, despite this capital is nonetheless the basis of the social production process' organisation, and hence when it experiences difficulties most of society is caught up in this. They have generally relied on capital, but now they might find themselves cast out and hence unable to rely on capital. This creates a general strata who are somewhat distanced from capital, and hence the overall society. While capital might not wish to incorporate them explicitly, it still has to attempt to establish uniformity by as it were scolding or disciplining them into the fold. As with 'austerity,' their political action now takes on a 'moral' garb. Students and so on can easily also form a part of this strata, but it has to be noted that the point of their courses and so on is their integration into capitalist society and the attempt to form a harmonious part of it - hence, in concrete terms students still generally tend to have their directions and aims mapped out by capital and hence in practical terms act by active derivation from capital. Only students who are somewhat distanced from these studies and capitalist directions will earn a real association with the system's displaced strata. The rest will merely go forth and attempt to evangelise the merits of this system to all and sundry. In any case, crisis is a time when people are brought to consider the overall configuration of society, and not merely specific and particularised forms this displays them. It also expresses a decisive limitation in all attempts to merely transform capitalist society generally to a 'more favourable' form contrary to its nature - hence, these attempts may lose some steam from their hollowness being revealed by crisis, as their distinction from revolutionary politics is their taking capital being society's form for granted or taking it as an inherent form and this precisely is undermined by the advent of the crisis.

Hence, communism is not identified with capital positively, but rather relates to it negatively - it is a negation of capital which is also posited in the form of capitalism's inherent contradictions undermining its own functioning. It is hence both immanent, and a negation.


Nonetheless, crisis theory often wants to posit in the form of a 'law' what is not a law. For instance, positing that crisis will inevitably lead to an uprising faces several problems - people's forbearance is after all not an exact economic quantity. The precise circumstances which might lead to this are not something which can be specified in an exact form. Judging by the early Christians, and even the martyrs of the modern age (Islamists are associated with suicide bombings, Western Christians with getting in the way), things could go quite a long way with no revolution arising out of necessity. Crises are, after all, destructive - if people accept this destruction, then they will merely lead to destruction and not to 'communism.' The limits of this destruction might be unclear - if a person will give up their life and possibly those of others nearby in martyrdom, what will they not sacrifice to circumstances? In any case, this might lead only to a 'general dissolution' and not to communism. All of this depends on the spirit of the age, and indeed as Marxists tend to note earlier ages could not be stirred to communist revolution no matter how fervent their struggle.

Can we then posit an 'inevitable' revolution on this basis, in any practical sense? Partially, but this is categorical and not readily apparent. If capitalism's sublation is already displayed in crisis - its contradictions leading to its demise - then a social transformation is already posited. The forces which comprehend this are also the forces which lead beyond capitalism. Crises are a symptom of a disease, and the maleficent bacteria is 'communism.' Still, in terms of the direct effects of crisis, there are limitations at pausing there and assuming that as if by formula it will lead to the over-throw of capital. There is no such law to the human. One may only set one's hope on possibilities, although this approach can still reveal by one means or another a point close to necessity.

Capital attempts to assert a harmonic society on the basis of private property or isolated, separate demesnes. In this process, the gaps increasingly undermine capital's bloated castle of glass.

As a result, crisis theory goes in the right direction, but it does not go far enough in the direction it generally wants to. While it deals with the economy, it takes for granted some spirit or other in whatever quantity of people. It does not truly determine as a law that as things proceed communism must exist, as opposed to other alternative responses. In lieu of people, it substitutes abstractions behaving by 'laws' that need not apply to people. As such, we merely find that communism is a possibility that might occur given the appropriate response to circumstances, or the appropriate formation of a resistant approach to social relations - and even then requires further buttressing against other threats. Communism hence need not appear as immanent to capitalist society here. In feudal society, the promulgation of exchange-relations and compensation was indeed a harmful force tending to dissolution; communists merely took this form and hypostatised it upon capitalism, which would be erroneously to attribute to capitalism the same frailties as actually were its raison d'être. In general, however, the crisis-centric view, if developed, might at least seem to evidence some form of 'faith' in the cause in a concrete sense, if not a concrete view of the factors leading to its necessity. It implies a view of communism which is substantively posited as a system beyond capital and resulting from its collapse and over-throw, rather than one which is merely an extension of capitalist production. Hence, the view of communism is substantiated to some extent by the identification of it with the phenomenon of the crisis, it already takes on a concrete significance vis-à-vis the current system.

In general, then, crisis theory is an important moment in the portrayal of communism, but does not by its effects substantiate communism's necessity and validity as the next form of society. This may be exceeded by a categorical view of the significance of the crisis and its place in relation to capitalist society, which points to a further understanding of the place of communism. Nonetheless, much of humanity is commonly held to live in suffering and need, and nonetheless this has often led to similar placidity and social apathy rather than otherwise. What seems aimed for is a status between such impoverishment and dependence on the one hand, and on the other hand without much personal achievement of place within capitalism so far as it lasted. This will rarely occur, however, except in the form of people who rather than being a part of capitalism's general process do not adjust to the system or wish to do so, and hence are cast out - communists, in brief. Outside of this, realistically there are usually many hypotheticals still in play. Nonetheless, at the least a calmer view of the overall historical scene and the place of communism keeps communism a clear focus and gives a hint of its inevitability.