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Koselleck + Crisis
that Marx's theory of crisis, though incomplete, assumed central importance.144
In Capital (Das Kapital), Marx points out the internal contradictions
of capitalism which, leading to ever recurring cyclical crises, will
ultimately create those conditions making the collapse of the system inevitable.
His theory of crisis thus contains both system-immanent and systemexploding
elements-a duality that accounts for the increasingly divergent
reception of Marxist practice (Praxis) and his theory of history as dominated
by economic factors.
Marx continues to make ever new attempts at stating "the general possibilities
of crisis"145 in order to explain real ones. "The real crisis can only
be deduced from the real movement of capitalist production, competition,
and credit."146 The causes of specific crises are all seen as symptoms of a
capitalist crisis, as, for example, a credit shortage. Every financial crisis is
viewed as part of a circulatory process of goods-finance-goods. The liberal
theory of equilibrium between supply and demand will never be achieved.
Rather, the system of circulation is already diachronically distorted. Neither
the branches of production nor the circulation of goods and money are in
tune with one another. "Those autonomous processes confronting each
other, however, form an inner unity. Yet that inner unity is manifested in
external disunity. If the external tendencies towards autonomy proceed
against the internal interdependence of these processes, such unity will forcibly
assert itself-in the form of a crisis."147 "Crisis" is thus "nothing but
the forcible assertion of the inner unity of phases of the productive processes
that externally have become autonomous from one another."148 For
that reason, credit, which helps to expand the material development in productive
powers and to open world markets, is-long before any actual
shortage-only the occasion of an economic crisis: "It [credit] hastens ...
the forcible outbreak of this contradiction, i.e. crises, and those elements
leading to the dissolution of the old mode of production."'49
Under-consumption too is such a partial aspect. Since it was already
part of everyday existence in pre-capitalist time, modern overproduction
144 Trent Schroyer, "Marx's Theory of the Crisis," Telos 14 (1972): 106.
145 Marx Theorien iber den Mehrwert, vol. 2 (1861/63), MEW, vol. 26/2 (1967), 512;
see also his Das Kapital. Kritik der Politischen Okonomie. Vol. 1 (1867), MEW, vol. 25
(1952), 128.
146 Marx "Theorien ber den Mehrwert," vol. 2, 513.
1'47 Marx, Kapital, vol. 1, 127f.
148 Marx, "Theorien iiber den Mehrwert," vol. 2, 510.
149 Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der Politischen Okonomie, vol. 3 (1894), MEW, vol. 25
(1952), 457.
395