Kondratiev Waves

[subcp]

The Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev's "Economic Cycles Theory" of a long-wave 40-60 year business cycle is brought up here and there. Ernst Mandel (well-known Trotskyist leader in the FI) is given some credit for using Kondratiev/Kondratieff wave theory to analyze economic history and predict that the post-war boom would come to an end at the end of the 1960's in his work, "The Economics of Neocapitalism." (haven't gotten around to reading any of his work yet). If this is so, the new cycle that started at the end of the 1960's should be coming to an end around contemporary times. Trotsky included Kondratiev waves in his graphs in "The Curve of Capitalist Development," and some modern Marxist parties adhere to most of the theorized business cycles (from classical political economy, Marx, and more recent cycles theory like Kondratiev's).

What do people think of this business cycle theory, is it as useful for understanding capitalist development via cycles of accumulation (as say the shorter Kitchin cycles for instance)?

I found this post but did not see much else about it:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/kondratiev-wave-capitalist-t151832/index.html?t=151832&highlight=kondratiev

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Sounds a bit mystic for me. Presumably it will be used by some to justify 'the end of capitalism is coming'-type arguments from some loonies on the left.

Put simply, there's no reliable way to predict economic behaviour from the viewpoint of political economy, on a macro level. The best attempts to do so have not been predictive, but back-wards looking. Check out 'cliodynamics' - a mathematical model used to model conflict and its effect on societies in general in history. It's quite cool.

[Prof. Oblivion]

Sounds a bit mystic for me. Presumably it will be used by some to justify 'the end of capitalism is coming'-type arguments from some loonies on the left.

Put simply, there's no reliable way to predict economic behaviour from the viewpoint of political economy, on a macro level. The best attempts to do so have not been predictive, but back-wards looking. Check out 'cliodynamics' - a mathematical model used to model conflict and its effect on societies in general in history. It's quite cool.

Actually, K-waves were heavily criticized by Soviet propagandists for being "anti-Materialist" because the theory asserts a theory of cycles which continue into perpetuity and not the destruction of capitalism.

[subcp]

I just started to read Mandel's article- I'd agree with you that it would seem to be useless, except for his correct prediction of the end of the post-war boom:



From the point of view of trade cycle history, we were obviously faced with a new “Kondratieff,” or long-wave movement involving wave movements in the several normal cycles. The theory of the long history of capitalism was first developed by the Russian economist N.D. Kondratieff [1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1964/xx/neocap.html#n1) and Josef Schumpeter integrated it into his own explanation of the cyclical movement of capitalist production, set out in his magnum opus, Business Cycles. It has earned less interest in Marxist circles, though Trotsky used a similar idea in his famous report before the Third World Congress of the Communist International. [2] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1964/xx/neocap.html#n2)
Today, it appears that, contrary to what most economists – Marxists and non-Marxists alike – were thinking in the late ’thirties and the early ’forties, after a Kondratieff wave of long-term stagnation which started in 1913 and lasted till 1939, world capitalism entered in 1940 on a new long wave of accelerated growth, which will probably last till the second half of the ’sixties. All the main indicators point to that conclusion.



These contradictions of neo-capitalism are not only of theoretical importance inasmuch as they prove that the system remains fundamentally what it has always been. They also lead to the conclusion, that the present rate of growth cannot be kept up; that the Common Market countries will also witness recessions; and that the long wave of increased growth will probably come to an end sometime during the ’sixties. The fact that the economic growth of the underdeveloped countries has not kept pace at all with the growth of the industrialized countries; that trade between the industrialized countries has more and more been substituting itself for trade between the advanced and the underdeveloped world; and that therefore the underdeveloped countries can play less and less the role of a safety valve for the capitalist system as a whole, reinforce these conclusions.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1964/xx/neocap.html

That alone seems like a reasonable impetus for looking into it further; and what the implications are for the present and immediate future.