Capitalism is constitutive crisis, so depression and unemployment do not threaten it.

Evidence

Adorno puts his own spin on the last thesis of this passage by pointing out the hypocrisy of the claim that the existence of the capitalist order ‘depends solely on humans’. Pithily formulated, capitalism does not exist for humans; rather, under capitalism, humans only exist to serve a function. When Pollock observesthatstatecapitalismis‘quitecapableof securingtheimperativesof all moderneconomicpolicies,suchascontinuousgrowthandfullemployment’, he overlooks that it was never ‘capitalism’s purpose to deliver full employment and well-being’. This oversight stems from an unsophisticated concept of economic crisis which fails to account for the fact that depression, unemployment and poverty by no means inevitably constitute a crisis for capital. On the contrary, a critique which takes individuals as its starting point must consider ‘that capitalism in its very existence is the crisis, that it therefore cannot enter into crisis’ – an insight which seems to indicate a limit of practical critique, for a ‘permanent crisis is not a crisis, and a critique with nothing to determine remains only a pose of determination’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 580

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Adorno’s thesis that capitalism’s existence itself is the crisis — a conceptual inversion of conventional crisis theory.
• QUESTION: What exactly distinguishes ‘permanent crisis’ from a determinate crisis in Adorno’s practical critique? Worth chasing.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that a critique which takes individuals as its starting point must conclude capitalism can never enter crisis — a genuine limit-of-critique paradox worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: Economic crises cannot by themselves overthrow advanced capitalist states. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 892; Economic crises alone cannot topple advanced capitalist states because civil society resists; Unemployment is not a flaw of capitalism but essential to it — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 251 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Economic crises alone cannot topple advanced capitalist states because civil society resists #corroborates (0.82)
• Economic crises cannot by themselves overthrow advanced capitalist states. #corroborates (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 892