Class struggle is the other side of accumulation in the class perspective. In this chapter we summarize several exemplary studies dealing with the sources and consequences of class struggle and the consequences for crises of capitalism.

The debate over the nature of capitalist crisis

For a summary of different class theories of crisis, we rely upon a critique from within the class perspective by Erik Olin Wright (1977). Wright's treatment underlines the fundamental debates within the perspective. Crises are seen as stemming from within the sphere of production, but political and cultural factors explain responses to crisis. As Wright puts it, “all Marxist perspectives on economic crisis tend to see crisis as growing out of the contradictions inherent in the process of capital accumulation.” But there is “very little general consensus on which contradictions are most central to understanding crisis” (p. 195). Capitalist accumulation faces “impediments” that are generated by the process of accumulation itself. Because the process as a whole is contradictory, the solutions to these impediments generate further impediments.

Wright distinguishes four types of impediments to accumulation in Marxist theory: the falling rate of profit, underconsumption, the profit squeeze, and fiscal crises of the state. All of these sources of crisis find their origins in the “contradictions in the sphere of production” (1977, p. 203).