Crisis and Recomposition

Abstract

‘No social order is ever destroyed’, wrote Marx in 1859, ‘before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replaced older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.’¹ By these criteria no social order can enter a general crisis until it has realised its full historical potential and is no longer able to contain the social and material developments which it sets in motion. Thus capitalism survives so long as it can revolutionise and socialise production. Its development has been punctuated by periods of crisis when a particular line of advance has been blocked, but so far capital has been able to turn these crises to its own advantage. It has restricted their impact and succeeded in turning them into crises of recomposition, whereby the forces that appear to threaten the very existence of the capitalist mode of production become the basis for a new phase of development.