SoLiXG:Crisis
Crisis
Crisis has become a polymorphous concept – in particular since critical debates transcended an often narrowly interpreted understanding of Marxian concepts of crisis related to economic contradictions and dynamics (e.g. overproduction, underconsumption, tendency of the rate of profit to fall). The concept has been altered from singular to plural as the focus has shifted toward multiple crises or poly-crises of capitalist social formations or global capitalism. Nevertheless, some categorical considerations can be highlighted. In an early debate on social and political crises (in Late Capitalism aka Fordism) Jürgen Habermas stated:“crises arise when the structure of a social system allows fewer possibilities for problem solving than are necessary to the continued existence of the system. In this sense, crises are seen as persistent disturbances of system integration.” (1988/1973, 2) He pointed out that crises emerge from structural contradictions of (capitalist) societies and the growing inability of social institutions (e.g. – but not exclusively – state institutions) to tackle them. However, he also pointed out that there is a “discursive” element to crises as the interpretation of a certain social dynamic as “crisis” has to become widely accepted. Something which nowadays is also labelled crisis construal or crisis narratives by people like Bob Jessop and Ngai Ling Sum. This also means that it is important how crises are socially constructed as this influences the conflicts and struggles about new forms of crisis management and/or social transformation.
The shift to concepts such as multiple or poly-crises aims at a non-reductionist interpretation, where crisis is not only determined by the dynamics and contradictions of capital relations. Instead, such conceptualisations refer to the relative autonomy of social contradictions and crisis tendencies in different social spheres (state, care/social reproduction, environment etc). The challenge is to grasp their interdependencies and the way they are mutually overdetermined and maybe reinforcing each other. There are also contributions which highlight the significance and connections of crisis developments in certain social spheres such as the economy or the environment. To give an example, Klaus Dörre is talking about a “Zangenkrise” (pincer crisis), generated by the mutually reinforcing developments of global warming and the capitalist “Landnahme” (seizure/land grab) of more and more social spheres.
In the debates about the shift from Fordism (resting not only on a certain regime of accumulation and regulation but also on a specific technological paradigm) to “post-Fordism”, whose shape is still contested, an important distinction has been made concerning the scope and depth of structural or major crisis. The developments since the 1970s/80s were interpreted as a period of fundamental (multiple) crises, affecting more or less all spheres of society. As outdated forms of crisis management failed to solve these crises, farreaching structural social transformations were sparked. In mainstream social science (for example in Neo-Schumpeterian debates but also in some Marxist traditions) technological changes and disruption through “radical innovations” or the revolution of the productive forces are on the one hand understood as a crucial driver of crisis, undermining the historically specific and therefore temporary regulations, embeddings, social and spatial fixes (or whatever concept might be used) on which capitalist social formations rest. The ability of those fixes and regulations to stabilise the contradictions of societies in which the capitalist mode of production is dominant, is therefore eroded. On the other hand these approaches tend to present technological developments and transformations as rational and undisputable solutions and strategies of crisis management to secure a new period of growth or the expanded reproduction of capitalist social formations.
Against this, it has to be highlighted that technological transformations, the emergence of new technological paradigms (e.g. digitalization) are closely connected to social struggles and conflicts concerning their shape and trajectories. Thus, they cannot be separated from the power relations in actual capitalist social formations. Furthermore they are able to affect and permeate all social spheres and social interactions. The contested character of technological transformations also allows us to understand why the agents (“Träger”, Karl Marx) of these processes can act as disruptors in certain social conjunctures (e.g. the ascending tech-oligarchy and its alliance with emerging far right and neo-fascist government projects) using technology as an instrument to bring about crisis and transform societies through it.
Mauricio: This is a rich and informative post about "crisis". I like it a lot! One thing that I thought about is that it could perhaps be related to digital transformation a bit more. It is there in the last paragraph, but I think this deserves perhaps one or two more sentences. Also, in relation to “poly-crises”, perhaps it is possible to weave in the planetary crises that the twin transition supposedly solves energy crisis, food supply crisis, democracy crisis, inequality, environment crisis, dependency etc. This could perhaps fit in towards the end of the second paragraph. However, I very much like this entry’s style and focus and wouldn’t want to change much.
Kim: I agree with Mauricio, this is a very rich and informative text. Some sentences were a little bit convoluted; I’ve tried to straighten them out and clarify them here, without changing anything of the significance.