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MARX ARGUED THAT THE RECURRENT ECONOMIC CRISES OF CAPITALISM WERE THE FORCIBLE ASSERTIONS OF THE UNITY OF THE PHASES OF THE PRODUCTION PROCESS (PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, EXCHANGE, & CONSUMPTION) THAT WERE MADE INDEPENDENT OF EACH OTHER. MARX'S CENTRAL POINT IS THAT CAPITALISM IS A TRANSITIONAL PHASE OF HUMAN HISTORY BECAUSE ITS PERIODIC CRISES MAKE IT AN ANTITHETICAL SOCIETAL FORM FOR FURTHER RATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. THE CRISIS IS NOT A BREAKDOWN, IT IS THE MECHANISM BY WHICH THE SYSTEM REACTIVATES ITSELF THROUGH A FEEDBACK LOOP WHICH PERMITS READJUSTMENT TO CHANGED REPRODUCTION CONDITIONS, & GRADUALLY RESTORES RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE FAVORABLE TO PROFIT REALIZATION & INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION. THE ECONOMIC CRISIS IS A RATIONAL MEANS TO RENEW THE SYSTEM & AN IRRATIONAL CONTRADICTION WITHIN THE SYSTEM; IT REPRESENTS ECONOMIC RATIONALIZATION WITHIN SOCIAL IRRATIONALITY. MARX'S THEORY OF THE CRISIS RESTS ON HIS ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURAL TENDENCIES, OR LAWS OF MOTION, OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT. THE PROFIT MAXIMIZATION MOTIVE CREATES A TENDENCY FOR THE ORGANIC COMPOSITION OF CAPITAL & THE AMOUNT OF SURPLUS TO RISE BUT THE RATE OF PROFIT TO FALL (THE RATIO OF SURPLUS-VALUE TO TOTALNCAPITAL INVESTED). THE DOWNWARD PRESSURE ON WAGE COSTS LEADS TO THE LAW OF INCREASING MISERY IN WHICH THE WC SINKS TO HISTORICALLY DEFINED SUBSISTENCE LIVING STANDARDS. THE COMPETITION BETWEEN CAPITALIST ENTERPRISES DURING THE CRISIS RESULTS IN THE RUIN OF SMALL FIRMS & THE PROGRESSIVE CONCENTRATION & CENTRALIZATION OF CAPITAL AMONG THE SURVIVORS. THE LAW OF THE INCREASING SEVERITY OF CYCLICAL CRISES ALSO INDICATES THE DEEPENING DOMINATION OF CAPITAL OVER ALL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. MARX'S LAWS ARE NOT PREDICTIONS & CANNOT BE REFUTED OR FALSIFIED BY SHORT RUN EMPIRICAL PERFORMANCES. MARX'S THEORY OF THE CRISIS ATTEMPTS TO ACHIEVE COMPREHENSIVENESS BUT IS INCOMPLETE WHEN APPLIED TO THE DYNAMICS OF LATE CAPITALISM TODAY. A. KARMEN.

Jurgen Habermas is a Marxist who recognizes that Marxism has lost its capacity to defend its truth claims & to release liberation movements in the advanced industrial world. In general, Habermas' work is a major rethinking of the meaning of the unity between theory & practice. He formulates a theory of the dialectical relatedness of 3 action dialogics in which the unity of knowledge & action is grounded in a radically sociological conception of intersubjectivity, which is a nonobjectivistic & nonscientistic metatheory. Whereas Marx elucidated the exploitative character of capitalist production, Habermas seeks to develop critical theory to analyze the systematically distorted communication of all industrial organization. Habermas' sociology conceives of the "subject" as always constituted by the societal systems of instrumental action & the universal pragmatics of ordinary language usage. Ideologies are belief systems that can maintain legitimacy despite the fact that they cannot be verified. The ideological structures of contemporary industrial society are no longer explanatory narratives, but are now appeals to the "neutral" authority of science itself, to mask domination. Scientism has provided a model of rationality that has become institutionalized & which facilitates the acceptance of the existing order as legitimate. Habermas argues that emancipatory struggle must increasingly involve the self-liberation of persons from the character structures that are emergent from a scientized civilization. Habermas may be the only Marxist theorist in the 20th century to have understood & incorporated into critical theory the power of the contemporary revolution in linguistic philosophy, but his contribution so far remains a half-actualized critique. A. Karmen.

A number of issues concerning the concept of class in Marxist theory are subjected to panel discussion. Traditional Marxist class theory (the theory of the period of entrepreneurial capitalism) & critical theory (the theory of the transition to monopoly capitalism) have both become obsolete. Without a crisis theory, Marxism does not have revolutionary implications; American culture never went through a crisis of the traditional kind, & the crisis now emerging will not be of the classic kind. Orthodox Marxism held that a contradiction in the economy led to a contradiction in culture, which led to revolution; after the moment when this was true passed, critique did not directly relate to action. The problem is whether a critical or crisis theory is possible without the notion of class. The neo-Marxist issue is to explain why class consciousness has not emerged. An alternative possible approach is to recognize Marxism as a secularization of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This leads to a need for different approaches, & to a mistrust of theory as an approach to life; the problem is to go beyond reified abstractions. W. H. Stoddard.