On Belaboring the Theory of Economic Crisis: A Reply to Laska

Abstract

Laska's reply to Jiirgen Habermas' discussion of Marx's theory of economic crisis and labor theory of value I reflects two major developments in current Marxist thought: growing European and North American interest in whole corpus of 20th-century critical theory, especially that of Habermas; and secondly, amid a period of international economic uncertainty, a concern over validity of classical Marxist theory of economic crisis. Laska's argument indicates that this dialogue is not without its misunderstandings. His two central claims--that Habermas is a Keynesian revisionist and, conversely, that true Marxism, as both scientific and revolutionary, must continue to base itself on a revolution-inducing, economic crisis-ridden capitalism both miss significance of developments within capitalist societies since Marx's time and Habermas' attempt to update, and therefore increase, theoretical potency of Marx's own categories. Habermas aims neither at merely rejecting Marxist labor theory of value nor at espousing a version of what Laska calls the containment thesis (p. 154), according to which there is no long-run tendency towards economic crisis in capitalist society, with corollary that objective antagonism between proletariat and capitalist has dissolved. Rather, Habermas aims at strengthening Marx's original insights against backdrop of historical developments in capitalist mode of production since period in which Marx wrote. This is not a turn towards undialectical revisionism or Keynesianism, as Laska claims (pp. 154, 158), but an attempt to avoid that turn, to make Marxism critical, dialectical and alive. Marxism for Habermas is not, as it seems to be for Laska, a treasure chest filled with aging catechisms but a theory subject to alterations in its method and content, sensitive to historical alterations of capitalist society and endowed with task of critically apprehending, revolutionizing and transforming capitalist world. Laska continues to believe that tendency towards economic crisis outlined by Marx still haunts late capitalism (p. 158). The greatest hindrance to production in capitalist society continues to be capital itself, a contradiction which, for Marx, manifests itself in at least three forms of crisis. To be sure, Marx's theory contains a subtle blend of deterministic and volitional elements: tendency (e.g., as expressed in the tendency of rate of profit to fall ) towards economic crisis was