[PEN-L:3049] Re: The trouble with long waves

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Louis,
     Of course when Mandel's book came out was just at the 
end of what most long wavers would say was the last uptick, 
just before the down phase that came in after 1973.  
Whether the new uptick began in the 1980s as Shaikh and 
some others argue or after the recession of the early 1990s 
as others would argue (and I tend to think) is a matter for 
open dispute.  
     BTW, I agree that plenty of awful stuff can go on 
during upticks.
Barkley Rosser
On Sat, 06 Feb 1999 12:14:06 -0500 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The problem with "long waves" is that it encourages us to think in terms of
> capitalism having some kind of self-regulating mechanism, namely the
> ability to foster "technological revolutions" ad infinitum, which is based
> on an extrapolation from capitalism's history into the future. Just because
> capitalism utilized certain technological breakthroughs (steam power,
> electricity, etc.) in combination with colonial plunder to fuel enormous
> economic upturns in centuries past, there is no reason to assume that this
> is intrinsic to the system.
> 
> While I have only heard Shaikh in person and have not had the dubious
> pleasure of wading through his assorted manuscripts, I am much more
> familiar with Mandel's arguments. "Late Capitalism" posits the notion that
> the computer revolution of the 1960s --a second "technological revolution"
> as he dubs it-- might set off a new long wave. Mandel insisted that the
> powerful economic expansion concomitant with this new long wave does not
> mean that capitalism "works". He states that "the worst form of waste,
> inherent in late capitalism, lies in the MISUSE of existing material and
> human forces of production; instead of being used for the development of
> free men and women, they are increasingly employed in the production of
> harmless and useless things."
> 
> While this critique might have had some descriptive power in 1972, when the
> book was published, it seems rather dated now. Not only are we facing a
> problem of "misuse", we are also facing a global economic crisis which
> seems intractable in nature. Lenin's analysis of imperialism as a stagnant
> economic system that retards development seems more relevant than ever.
> 
> I recall that when Mandel visited in the United States in the early 70s,
> the question on many people's minds was whether socialist revolution was
> possible without the sort of shocks to the system that occurred in the
> 1930s. Mandel and the American Trotskyist movement accepted the possibility
> that a new "long wave" might already be in place. We consoled ourselves
> with the knowledge that economic expansion might not necessarily guarantee
> class peace, as the relatively affluent French working-class demonstrated
> in 1968.
> 
> The belief in capitalism's ability to innovate infinitely is not based on
> evidence, but on faith. The picture that is emerging today is one of crisis
> that no "technological revolution" on the horizon can resolve. Furthermore,
> world capitalism is facing a number of impasses based on energy shortages
> and environmental blowback that would seem to block a new "long wave".
> 
> Allow me to quote from my own favorite thinker of late, who certainly will
> never be nominated for a Bad Writing contest. Harry Shutt states the
> following in the concluding pages of "The Trouble with Capitalism," (Zed
> Books, 1998):
> 
> "Confronted with the obstinate refusal of growth to revive, a significant
> number of economists and others have been inclined to flirt with
> quasi-metaphysical theories which supposedly give grounds for expecting a
> spontaneous recovery in the global economy irrespective of the revealed
> current tendency of market forces. According to such theories economic
> growth is governed by very long cycles (of fifty years or more), which
> their advocates claim can explain the ups and downs of the world economy at
> least since the Industrial Revolution, and that these unfold more or less
> independently of any 'man-made' events or influences such as world wars,
> political changes or innovations in technology. To anyone who recognises
> economics to be a social science -- and hence inherently subject to the
> unpredictable actions and reactions of ever-changing human society --such
> attempts to subject it to a series of rigid laws of motion can scarcely
> seem worthy of a moment's consideration. That some respectable academics
> have allowed themselves to take such theories seriously is thus only of
> interest as an indicator of how far some will go to avoid addressing the
> harsh realities of systemic failure."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Louis Proyect
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]