Professional Documents
Culture Documents
11.30.06
Reflection 3 1
Can a systems theoretical approach to the crises of a capitalist economic system contribute a
our attention is presently devoted. In doing so, we might begin by offering an overview of our
subject matter.
born, and in which we must remain. Our lives represent a series of physical needs, the attainment of
which, is the collective product of our labors. The collectivity of labor among a community of men
constitutes a relation of labor; the manner in which relations of labor are performed, constitutes a
mode of production. The relations of labor coupled with the modes of production, in turn,
constitute the economic base from which the laborer’s ideological consciousness should emerge.
I hold it to be self-evident (if I may be permitted the liberty) that this model is successful in
explaining: (a.) the relationship between relations of production and products of human
consciousness and (b.) the separate, historical modes of production in which the relationships are
embodied. It is far from clear, however, how Marx’s model can explain the sustainability of any
given historical relationship solely on the basis of its perceived level of efficiency. A more
profitable enterprise (at least from the systems theoretical standpoint) is to examine how the
ideological superstructure attempts to avert the crises that the economic base advances. How, might
we ask, does a system “legitimate” itself amidst a culture of (first) economic and (then) political
crises?
relation with a network of separate, autonomous subsystems that collectively constitute the state
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proper. Each subsystem itself possesses specific capacities (production, knowledge, expertise,
wealth, power, and so on,) each of which relies on and sustains the existence of the other(s). A
systems theoretical treatment regards this network of subsystems as a unified whole, yet seeks to
In so doing, the theory attempts to realize which subsystems are unique to a specific system,
and the manner in which they collaborate with one another. With an understanding of inter-
systemic interaction, we may identify the potential crisis tendencies in each subsystem, as well as
the practical activities from which crises may arise. This, in turn, gives rise to “steering capacities”
which may be employed by the state to avert specific “legitimation crises.” Despite their form,
steering capacities attempt to rationalize the action(s) of the subsystem(s) to which the crises are
directed, and isolate their functioning(s) from the economic base from which the crises arose.
The value of systems theory, is that in exposing a vast panoply of crisis tendencies in a
functional system, it identifies the existence of an ultimate crisis of legitimation that, theoretically,
cannot be averted. I do not deny the plausibility of this approach; nor do I fail to recognize its
hesitant to accept its conclusion as valid universally, if for no other reason, than it presupposes the
Though there are indeed physical and ideological limitations to every action, there are also
gradations in the efficiency of addressing crises of legitimation. Simply because the state must
eventually orient itself completely to legitimating its existence to its economic subsystem at the
expense of legitimation over the other (far less influential) subsystems, does not, in my view,
necessarily entail its collapse; it only suggests its descent into a society to be saturated (once only