Jürgen Habermas's concept of the legitimation crisis — the situation in which a political system can no longer produce the loyalty it requires — is one of the most important contributions to critical theory. Living Value Theory extends it in a specific direction.
A legitimation crisis, in LVT terms, is a form of value collapse: the moment at which the symbolic resources that have sustained a system of power asymmetry are exhausted. The system can no longer produce convincing accounts of why its asymmetries are justified, fair, or necessary. The result is not necessarily revolution — value collapses can be managed, deferred, or displaced — but it is always a crisis of the value order.