Abstract: Faced with the new changes of capitalism since the middle of the 20th century and increasingly popular cultural research paradigms， the left-wing scholars represented by Mandel always insist on building the crisis theory from the perspective of production mode. They believe that the inherent conflicts of productivity and production have led to an internal crisis of production， resulting in the self-deconstruction of the capitalist organism;the external conditions of the ecological and social environment constitute the disordered crisis of production mode， and the development of capitalism is subjected to structural restriction.In the context of global financial crisis，the theory of production crisis has been inherited by such scholars as Wallerstein and Michael Mann. The former measures the inherent sustainability of capitalism as a systematic economic system， and draws pessimistic conclusions. The latter starts with the external causal chains to determine whether the new wealth created by capitalism can offset its costs， and drawsrather optimistic conclusions.

Key words: capitalism, production mode, crisis theory