The fact that we are living in the midst of a profound social crisis is so much a part of our everyday understanding (at least in the Federal Republic of Germany) that it seems hardly necessary to elaborate it further. Serious threats to human survival (nuclear war and ecological catastrophe) dangerously overshadow the economic crisis. There is mass unemployment in the First World and extreme poverty in the Third. The problems tend to be seen in terms of single issues: We have a “women's problem,” a “youth problem,” and the “problem of immigrant workers.” These are phenomena that are found elsewhere in the world. They are becoming “normal,” and their systematic nature must be understood as signaling the existence of a wider transformation in capitalist societies. The very diversity of these crises makes it difficult to understand where the solutions should be sought. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that all these crises are located at different levels, involve different actors and different arenas of action. If we are to begin with an analysis that draws its logic from the actors' possibilities for action, then we have to ask the questions that Lenin asked: What is it that the exploiters can no longer do, and what are the exploited no longer prepared to put up with?

The simple answers to these questions have always been wrong, namely, that the exploiters are no longer able to make a sufficient profit, or that the exploited are no longer prepared to work for the purposes of profit.