ABSTRACT
A sporadic crisis concept is at best suitable for the analysis of well-demarcated subsystems: for instance, a business enterprise goes bankrupt because it is confronted by its environment with data and events incompatible with its continued existence. Crises endanger the identity of a system. If the dominant organizational principle of the social processes of every capitalist society is that of exchange, a theory of the crises of capitalist society can identify those processes which challenge the dominance of this central principle. A society based on market exchange cannot function without the family system and the legal system. The monopoly sector is characterized by a high degree of organization of the retail and capital markets. In state sector, in short, the mode of allocating material resources is only indirectly determined by the exchange relation. The three resources include: the fiscal means of the political-administrative system, administrative rationality, and mass loyalty.
