Table Of ContentLong Waves of
Capitalist Development
Long Waves of
Capitalist Development
A Marxist Interpretation
•
Based on the Marshall Lectures given
at the University of Cambridge
Second revised edition
ERNEST MANDEL
VERSO
London • New York
This edition published by Verso 1995
© Ernest Mandel1995
First edition published by
Cambridge University Press 1980
All rights reserved
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1 V 3HR
USA: 180 Varick Street, New York NY 10014-4606
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN 978-1-85984-037-5
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mandel, Ernest.
Long waves of capitalist development : a Marxist interpretation :
based on the Marshalllectures given at the University of Cambridge
I Ernest Mandel. - 2nd rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-85984-037-X.
1. Business cycles. 2. Capitalism. 3. Marxian economics.
4. Long Waves (Economics). I. Title.
HB3711.M353 1995
338.5'42'01-dclO 95-3101
CIP
Typeset by M Rules
Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn
Contents
Preface vu
1 Long Waves: empirical evidence and their
explanation through fluctuations in the average
rate of profit 1
2 Long Waves, Technological Revolutions, and
Class-struggle Cycles 28
3 Long Waves, Inflation, and the End of the
Postwar Boom 49
4 Long Waves as Specific Historical Periods 76
5 Old Problems and New Data: an inventory of
the international debate 97
6 New Issues, New Clarifications 116
Notes 139
Index 165
Preface
This book is an extension and revision of an Alfred Marshall
lecture that I was invited to give to the Faculty of Politics and
Economics of Cambridge. The subject itself has been fasci
nating me increasingly since the mid-1960s, when the first
signs began to make it obvious that the postwar boom was
coming to an end. I have dealt with it already in a chapter in
my book Late Capitalism (London, 1975). Whereas the con
cept of long waves in the development of capitalist economy
had definitely been out of grace with most Marxists for many
decades, it had also received little attention in academic cir
cles. A turn in the real economic situation was necessary
before economists again started to pay attention to the long
waves, which had been under much closer scrutiny, needless
to say, in the period between wars.
By trying to offer a Marxist explanation of the long waves,
essentially based on long-term movements in the rate of profit
determining, in the last analysis, quicker and slower long
term paces in capital accumulation (of economic growth and
of expansion in the world market), I have, I believe, also made
a contribution to the debates now increasingly going on
among academic economists on the basic reasons why these
long waves occur. It will be interesting to see if subsequent
attempts to "marginalize" the roles of profits and of capital
accumulation, in favor of monetary, psychological, or purely
inventive factors, will continue to be the rule among those
economists who increasingly turn toward study of long-term
movements of economic growth under capitalism. The least
one can say is that "practical" capitalists will probably be
quicker to agree with Marxist "theoreticians" on that essen
tial point than will many academic economists.
PREFACE
I wish to thank Andre Gunder Frank, David M. Gordon,
and Anwar Shaikh for many fruitful and critical remarks
made concerning the original manuscript, some of which have
had an influence on the final version. But I continue to dis
agree strongly with the opinions of the first two of these
friends, who believe that the long waves can be explained by
purely endogenous mechanisms of the capitalist economy.
The first edition of this book was published in 1980. For
this edition I have added two chapters which cover both the
developing debate on long waves and the further accumula
tion of evidence concerning their dynamic implications for
the present.
EM, April1994
Vlll
================1================
Long Waves: empirical evidence and
their explanation through fluctuations
in the average rate of profit
Paradoxically, although the theory of long waves in the his
tory of capitalist economy is clearly of Marxist origin (its
initiators were Parvus, Kautsky, van Gelderen, and Trotsky1 ),
ever since its adoption by academic economists like
Kondratieff, Schumpeter, Simiand, and Dupriez, Marxists
have resolutely turned their backs on the concept. This has
proved to be doubly self-defeating. First, it has made Marxist
economists increasingly blind to what now clearly appears to
be a key aspect of the industrial cycle: its articulation with
long waves and therefore its varying amplitude. Second, it
has prevented most Marxists from foreseeing important turn
ing points in recent economic history: that of the late 1940s,
which involved a strong upsurge in economic growth in cap
italist countries, and the no less striking turning point of the
late 1960s and early 1970s, which produced a sharp decline in
the average rate of growth of the international capitalist
economy.
The existence of these long waves in capitalist development
can hardly be denied in the light of overwhelming evidence. 2
All statistical data available clearly indicate that if we take as
key indicators the growth of industrial output and the growth
of world exports (of the world market), the periods 1826-47,
1848-73, 1874-93, 1894-1913, 1914-39, 1940(48)-1967,
and 1968-? are marked by striking fluctuations in these aver
age rates of growth, with ups and downs between successive
long waves ranging from 50 to 100 percent.
1
Description:In this revised and expanded edition of Long Waves of Capitalist Development, Ernest Mandel seeks to explain the underlying determinants of the booms and slumps of the trade cycle. Mandel first establishes that there have indeed been twenty- to twenty-five-year-long waves of capitalist expansion and
