A long-lasting crisis signals incurable contradictions within a social structure.

Evidence

A crisis occurs, sometimes lasting for decades. This exceptional duration means that incurable structural contradictions have revealed themselves (reached maturity), and that, despite this, the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself are making every effort to cure them, within certain limits, and to overcome them. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 748

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does one distinguish a genuine organic crisis from a merely durable conjunctural turbulence in practice? Gramsci gestures at exceptional duration as the marker, but the diagnostic boundary is fuzzy.
• XREF: connects to: Anything can be two contradictory things at once, including social systems — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 56