Crisis of Theory?

[ANTIFA GATE-9]

This may be an elementary question but I have searched for the Crisis of Theory and have not found many explanations that fully explained it except Wikipedia but the language was to advanced for me.
I don't know if its anything important since I have not understood it yet.
I'm 13 so could someone explain the Crisis of Theory to me fully but not like Wikipedia?

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Crisis of theory or crisis theory?
The things aren't quite the same.

[ANTIFA GATE-9]

Oh I see. It must be crisis theory then.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Crisis of theory would mean the lack of theoretical advancement in marxism.

I am not well versed enough in Marxian economics to explain it in great detail, however I believe it means that in capitalism crisis is inevitable and becomes more and more severe, and if other factors are "right" this would lead to the collapse of capitalism.

[Polaris]

You probably won't find a complete collection of the entirety of crisis theory anywhere, as elements of it are strewn throughout Marx's works. Crisis theory basically reveals the intrinsic contradictions in capitalism-- these cause cycles of crisis (which we know as depressions and recessions) which result in a “forcible adjustment of all the contradictions," whether that means a temporary solution to a permanent problem (the problem being that capitalism is inherently flawed) or the installment of a new mode of production (socialism) through a revolution.*

There are several different contradictions he pointed out throughout his works, and to be honest I'm not familiar with all of them. One I understand well enough to explain in simple english is outlined in the Grundrisse, and it goes like this (but in more confusing words):

Using machines to produce goods instead of human labor increases the amount of profit that capitalists can make on a good. Because of this, they have a tendency to industrialize as much as possible. This results in many workers becoming unemployed, replaced by machines which are more efficient and less costly than they. But as more and more jobs become automated, more and more people lose their jobs. With no jobs, they have no money, and with no money, they cannot purchase the goods that the capitalists are selling. So although the capitalists had hoped to make a greater profit by industrializing, they are soon in debt as no one can buy their goods except themselves; the workers are living in very bad conditions since they have no money to buy the goods they need for survival.

This and other contradictions (usually in combination) result in a crisis in which either a new mode of production is introduced (ie socialism/communism) or the bourgeoisie, realizing how much shit they're in, give up some of their wealth either directly or indirectly, which could mean a welfare state, bail-outs, etc.** or a more specific solution. In the contradiction explained above that would be the de-industrialization of their factories.

*If neither of these happened (which would be possible if there was no class consciousness and thus no knowledge that another way is possible) then many/most workers would die off and society would collapse, messily. Also, another end result could be fascism, where the economy would be completely controlled by the state and prevented from falling into a collapse again.

**Temporary solutions to a permanent problem, as I mentioned earlier could happen.

[Lokomotive293]

Watch this guy's videos, especially the Law of value series. They are pretty good for beginners.

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/

[ckaihatsu]

I'm picking up this thread to go off on a tangent, for anyone who may want to indulge this....

It seems to me that, as correct and necessary the theory of class struggle is, there are some *inadequacies* within it -- if you will -- namely the question of how the world's self-liberated workers *could* (re-)organize the material world.

Some revolutionaries defer on this issue, saying there's no point in trying to make predictions or prescriptions from the present-day, to the realm of the then-autonomous-proletariat future, but I happen to be of the mind that we should be as prepared as possible *right now*, with a tentative sketch of theoretical logistics for such a potential society.

Comments are welcome.





I'll respectfully point out that the 'higher stage' of communism, while desirable, sounds increasingly to me like a *religious* concept -- of heaven, the hereafter, etc. It doesn't help either us as revolutionaries or the cause of communism to adopt an abstract concept that also sounds "post-materialist" and makes us shut off our thinking about such a society *in* a realistic, materialist context.

The matter of material accounting -- with labor credits or whatever -- will remain a pressing question, along with the issue of luxury goods, and it would be better to be as decisive as possible on these, earlier rather than later.

We shouldn't be satisfied to pretend that there could be a point of historical *stasis* sometime in the future, post-revolution. With a fully liberated technological drive we would undoubtedly see a *faster* pace of developments, which would only *beg* the question of who-gets-what-and-when.





[H]owever abundant any good or service may be (consider the ease of sending out electronic messages today), there will always be a 'horizon' of to-be-developed technologies that, then, necessarily require human attention and labor of some kind.

Not-fully-developed technologies, then, would be *limited*, or "scarce", resources, and could not just summarily be 'evenly distributed' to 'everyone', per the approach of the resource based economy. Such a formulaic / algorithmic treatment of limited resources *would* beg the labor question, and liberated-labor's own consciousness and self-determination.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'd recommend Shaik's piece on the history of crisis theories: http://www.contra-versus.net/uploads/6/7/3/6/6736569/crisis_theories.pdf

But do keep in mind that this aspect is central to understanding capital and its historical manifestations, and is definitely hard to get into for a beginner. Even more so since, as Shaik argues, it is impossible to separate the understanding of how capital healthily accumulates from the way it gets into crises.