THE DIALECTICAL VIEW OF REAL AND FINANCIAL CRISES IN MARX'S THOUGHT

Economic crises are a recurrent topic in Marx’s works, but nowhere does he deal with this subject in a systematic way. Nevertheless, we do find many considerations that are consistent with a systematic and complete view of crises as dialectical moments in the movement of capitalist economies. According to Marx, the ultimate cause of all actual crises is always the contradiction between subjective and objective goals in the capitalist mode of production. But in the real world there are several direct causes of economic crises, each of which can randomly prevail over the others to trigger the phenomenon. However, the different causes are random only in prevailing as prime mover, not in terms of their presence or absence. The paper deals with the reconstruction of Marx’s dialectical view of economic and financial crises, analysing many passages in Capital and Theories of Surplus-Value, but especially in Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58 (Grundrisse).