Abstract
In the 1920s Nikolai Kondratieff proposed that Western capitalist economies had cycles lasting about half a century. Later, he was jailed and then executed during the Soviet purges of the 1930s. Since then, the notion of long-waves proposed by Kondratieff was mostly ignored or rejected by economists, both in the East and the West. However, in the 1970s and later decades K-waves—as the long waves proposed by Kondratieff were renamed—were seen by some historians and heterodox economists as representing a proper tool to analyze the long-run dynamics of capitalism. The notion of social structures of accumulation (SSA) was developed by radical economists as referring to the set of national economic and political institutions that would be the structures providing a base for the K-wave. Because an examination of the chronologies of K-waves proposed by different authors for the period between the 1920s and the present reveals major inconsistencies, and because the SSA notion also reveals major theoretical and statistical contradictions with economic data of past decades, the conclusion of the chapter is that these are notions that are not useful for a proper analysis of modern capitalism.
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Notes
- 1.
Kondratieff (1935), “The long waves in economic life”, Review of Economics & Statistics 17(6), 105–115.
- 2.
Kondratieff (1935), “The long waves in economic life”.
- 3.
Burns & Mitchell (1946), Measuring business cycles, 3.
- 4.
Schumpeter (1939), Business cycles, 210–219.
- 5.
Arrizabalo (2016), Capitalismo y economía mundial, 517–520.
- 6.
See Mandel’s “Long waves”, and Shaikh’s “Economic crises”, both entries in Bottomore et al. eds. (1983), A dictionary of Marxist thought, 324–325, and 138–143; Wallerstein (2011), Modern world-system III, xvii–xviii.
- 7.
In The Great Recession: Profit cycles, economic crises—A Marxist view, 70; Roberts (2009) provides a “Marxist” version of Schumpeter’s scheme of harmonic waves.
- 8.
Shaikh (1983), “Economic crises”.
- 9.
See for instance Shannon (1989), An introduction to the world-system perspective, 116; Wallerstein (1995), After liberalism, 15.
- 10.
Wallerstein (1995), After liberalism, 19, 40, etc.
- 11.
Wallerstein (2009), “Crisis of the capitalist system: Where do we go from here?”, MROnline, November 12.
- 12.
Shaikh (2016), Capitalism—Competition, conflict, crises, pp. 726–727 and Figure 16.1.
- 13.
Li, Xiao, & Zhu (2007), “Long waves, institutional changes, and historical trends: A study of the long-term movement of the profit rate in the capitalist world-economy”, Journal of World-Systems Research 13(1), 33–54.
- 14.
Rostow (1978), The world economy: History & prospect, 298; compare with Shannon (1989), An introduction to the world-system perspective, 176, and with Wallerstein (1995), After liberalism, 15.
- 15.
Bowles & Weisskopf (1998), “David M. Gordon: Economist and public intellectual (1944–1996)”, Economic Journal 108, 153–164.
- 16.
Lippitt (2010), “Social structure of accumulation theory”, in McDonough et al., eds., Contemporary capitalism and its crises, Ch. 2, 45–71.
- 17.
McDonough et al. (2021), “Introduction” to Handbook on social structure of accumulation theory, Ch. 1, 9.
- 18.
Kotz (1987), “Long waves and social structures of accumulation”, Review of Radical Political Economics 19(4), 16–38.
- 19.
All the ideas and quotations presented in this paragraph are from Kotz (1987), “Long waves and social structures of accumulation”.
- 20.
McDonough et al. (2021), “Introduction”, in Handbook on social structure of accumulation theory, Ch. 1, 10.
- 21.
McDonough et al. (2021), “Introduction”, in Handbook on social structure of accumulation theory, Ch. 1, 7.
- 22.
Saros (2021), “A comprehensive approach to SSA analysis: An oscillating pattern of crisis in US economic history”, in McDonough et al., eds., Handbook, Ch. 4.
- 23.
Lippitt (2006), “Social structure of accumulation theory”.
- 24.
McDonough et al. (2021), “Introduction”, in Handbook, Ch. 1.
- 25.
See for instance Kotz (1987) and the introductory chapters of Contemporary capitalism and its crises (2010) and the Handbook on social structures of accumulation (2021), both edited by McDonough et al.
- 26.
Saros (2021), “A comprehensive approach to SSA analysis” in McDonough et al., eds., Handbook on social structure of accumulation theory, 69.
- 27.
McDonough (2010), pp. 36‒38.
- 28.
Saros (2021), “A comprehensive approach to SSA analysis”, 70.
- 29.
McDonough (2010), “The state of the art of SSA theory”, in McDonough et al., Contemporary capitalism and its crises, 39, fn. 14.
- 30.
Saros (2021), “A comprehensive approach to SSA analysis”, 65.
- 31.
McDonough (2010), “The state of the art of SSA theory”, in McDonough et al., Contemporary capitalism and its crises 37–38, fn. 13.
- 32.
McDonough (2021), “Social structure of accumulation theory”, in McDonough et al., eds., Handbook on social structure of accumulation theory, Ch. 2; 24.
- 33.
Saros (2021), “A comprehensive approach to SSA analysis”, 71.
- 34.
McDonough (2021), “Social structure of accumulation theory”, in McDonough et al., eds., Handbook, Ch. 2; Lippitt (2010), “Social structure of accumulation theory”, in McDonough et al., eds., Contemporary capitalism and its crises, Ch. 2, 45–71.
- 35.
McDonough (2021), “Social structure of accumulation theory”, 23.
- 36.
Saros (2021), “A comprehensive approach to SSA analysis”.
- 37.
Goldstein (2021), “Econometric analysis of long swings: The relevance of nonperiodic methods”, in McDonough et al., eds., Handbook on social structure of accumulation theory, Ch. 3, 34–61.
- 38.
Goldstein (2021), “Econometric analysis of long swings”, 34.
- 39.
Goldstein (2021) “Econometric analysis of long swings”, 34, 54, fn. 2.
- 40.
Goldstein’s regression estimates of his Eq. 3.6 are presented in Table 3.1 of his chapter. What in the table appears in the column labeled t*D98 seems to be the estimate of β5 in Eq. 3.6. That estimate is −0.0126 with a standard error of 0.0015 (t or P values are not reported). The estimate is marked with an asterisk (*) which in the footnote of the table is explained as meaning significant at the 0.01 level. It is surprising that an estimate like this, more than 8 times bigger than its standard error, be reported as only significant at the 0.01 level of significance. This is just one of many technical issues I found. Overall, I was unable to reproduce Goldstein’s regression estimates of his Eq. 3.6, presented in his Table 3.1.
- 41.
Burns & Mitchell (1946), Measuring business cycles.
- 42.
Kuczyinsky (1978), “Kondratieff cycles—Appearance or reality?,” in Flinn, ed., Proceedings of the 7th International Economic History Congress, Vol. II.
- 43.
See the entry on “Russell’s teapot” in Wikipedia.
- 44.
Arrighi (2003), “Spatial and other ‘fixes’ of historical capitalism”, Journal of World-Systems Research 10(2), 527–539.
- 45.
Regressing the annual rate of growth of WGDP on time (year) using the available data (1961–2021) from the WDI database the slope is negative and highly significant (parameter estimate ± standard error = −0.041 ± 0.012, t = −3.49, P = 0.0009, R2 = 0.22).
- 46.
Regressing gross capital formation as percentage of WGDP on time (year) using the available data (1970–2020), the slope is negative and highly significant (parameter estimate ± standard error = −0.053 ± 0.012, t = −4.40, P < 0.0001, R2 = 0.28).
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Tapia, J.A. (2023). Long Waves and Social Structures of Accumulation. In: Six Crises of the World Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38735-7_8
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