Ian asked me: “So, do we have a model that can give us a *determinate* answer
regarding the truth aptness of the various hypotheses of what, according to the
various theorists claiming a Marxist heritage,
constitutes a crisis?
I don’t think there is much of a problem in defining what an “economic crisis”
is, and you don’t really need to persuade people that there is one, when it
occurs. A crisis occurs when output growth, investment growth and employment
levels stagnate or decrease significantly. (I suppose a currency or monetary
crisis is a special variant, but the currency crisis is also a crisis precisely
because output, investment and employment are jeopardised. Sometimes also,
crises are induced by natural disasters). The analytical challenge is to know
why these things occur, and what would solve the crisis.
The central difference between Marxian economics and neoclassical economics is
that Marxian theory proposes that the crisis results typically from endogenous
causes, i.e. the crisis is “system-immanent”. Very simply put, there are crises
because there is capitalism, and that is a good reason for doing away with
capitalism and implementing conscious coordination of economic activity. The
neoclassical or Keynesian explanation typically blames extra-economic or state
policy factors. But that of course is not an explanation.
For the explanation, we have to distinguish between a bunch of different
aspects (thumbnail sketch):
(1) the specificity of economic crises within capitalist society as
distinguished from economic crises in pre-capitalist and post-capitalist
crises.
(2) what exactly makes capitalist crises possible.
(3) the necessity and inevitability of capitalist crises.
(4) the basic causal forces involved in capitalist crises.
(5) the appearance-form of capitalist crises.
(6) the endogenous “logic” of the economic movement (sequence of events) from
boom to slump.
(7) the periodicity of capitalist crises.
(8) the objective function, or effect of crises within the capitalist economy.
(9) the "detonators" of capitalist crises.
(10) state policy in regard to crises.
(11) the distinction between types of crises: periodic small downturns versus
great systemic crises (at the end of a "long wave of economic growth")
(12) historic ("epochal") modifications in the mode of functioning and impact
of capitalist crises, as result of new technologies, international
concentration of capital, and the development of the world market.
(13) How to explain the causes of a specific capitalist crisis in a specific
place and time.
(14) the meaning of capitalist crises from the point of view of employers, and
from the point of view of workers.
(15) How to present the analysis of the problems and possible solutions
politically.
(16) Conditions for a total economic collapse.
At one end of the crises spectrum, there is (although this is rarely mentioned
by Marxists) constantly some or other sector which is experiencing a crisis,
without this generalizing to the economy as a whole, and at the other end there
is the spectre of a near-total collapse of the whole of economic life. A total
collapse is rare (people will still trade on some terms, and have to produce to
survive; in Eastern Europe for a while a lot of trade took the form of barter;
in Zimbabwe people took to plundering forests for wildlife and timber). E.g. in
Argentina around 2001 unemployment hit 25% or so, shops were empty, and a lot
of businesses went broke.
But of course the crisis is not simply an “economic” crisis, since the drop in
output, investment and employment levels impacts on every aspect of life in
bourgeois society. I think we could usefuly distinguish between five important
dimensions of the crisis in total (thumbnail sketch):
(1) The economic crisis – as said, the decline of output, investment and
employment levels.
(2) The social crisis, or the crisis of social relations – the fragmentation
and destruction of old social institutions, supports and organisations, the
loss of general social solidarity due to increased competition for resources
and jobs, increased racist and xenophobic sentiment, the increase in social
problems due to a rise in unemployment, social and class conflicts, family
breakups, health problems, marginalized people etc., and generally the increase
in social and economic inequality and poverty which the crisis brings. There is
a general rise in social anxiety, fear or even panic, and a reduction of social
trust.
(3) The political crisis – essentially a crisis of political leadership which
manifests itself in the breakup of old political alliances, shifts in political
support, political conflict, and an increased turnover of political personnel.
The old policy prescriptions no longer work, and a fight then breaks out about
how to solve the problems created by the economic and social crisis.
(4) The ideological crisis – this is primarily a crisis of the legitimacy of
the social order and beliefs about it. There is a problem of justifying the
social order, its legality and its institutions, when most things no longer
works normally, and there is typically a loss of respect for authority,
producing rebellion, nihilism etc. There is a breakdown in consensual social
norms and beliefs.
(5) The ecological crisis – typically the economic slump makes the
environmental problems worse, as fewer resources are available for good
stewardship for the built environment and the natural environment; people will
tend to look after their own interests first, and care less for the
environmental effects of their actions (“externalities”). They want jobs more
than trees. The more that society is urbanized, the more pronounced these
problems are likely to become.
Depending on the specificities of particular countries, each of these five
crises might occur more or less rapidly, be more or less pronounced, they might
develop and advance somewhat unevenly etc. Nevertheless all these crises are
present in all countries. It will depend in good part on how much savings and
resources the mass of the people have available. The five crises might impact
on each other in different ways. Some of the five crises might be partly
resolved, while others are not.
The “crisis management” game has to reckon with each of those crises,
concretely. The problem becomes essentially one of whose programme for crisis
solution will prevail, given that, to resolve the crisis, people will have to
make sacrifices and agree to things which are not in their own interest.
Somehow new alliances and coalitions have to be forged, and a new formula has
to be found to unite the people for the sake of a recovery from the crisis. The
recovery process is typically highly contradictory, since solving some problems
can create other problems elsewhere. Different social classes and groups will
try to shift the burdens of the crises on to other classes and groups, i.e.
privatise the gains and socialize the losses in the new situation.
As the “social structure of accumulation” school mentions quite rightly, the
resolution of a serious crisis typically requires an overhaul of the
institutional framework of the state, creating a new “regime” for managing the
common affairs of society.
I think that with this kind of analytical framework in mind, it would be
possible to delineate the specificity of the contemporary crisis of capitalist
society. But there is a lot of empirical research involved there.
J.
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