The study is addressing the ever deepening structural crisis of world capitalism that needs profound structural change if a sustainable solution is searched. This structural crisis has not begun in 2007, when the subprime mortgage crisis in the US burst but four decades earlier (what was already announced by the author in his analyses at the end of the 1960s). Clear distinction should be made between the different types of the crises of the capital system, whether it belongs to the class of temporary-business cycle crises of a given social sphere or it is of a more fundamental one. The main difference is that a temporary crisis passes by and can be solved within the given structure but a fundamental crisis undermines it. "Naturally, historical dialectic in the abstract cannot offer any guarantee for a positive outcome. To expect that would mean renouncing our role in developing social consciousness, which is integral to the historical dialectic. Radicalizing social consciousness in an emancipatory spirit is what we need for the future, and we need it more than ever before."
The article István Meszáros: Structural Crisis Needs Structural Change is published also in Monthly Review 2012, Volume 63, Issue 10 (March).