The mathematics of long waves of capitalism strikes me like the geometry of the stripes on a tiger's back. Very pretty, but what we need to know is a mathematics of the tiger's teeth, claws and vulnerable points. Charles Brown >>> Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/06 12:14 PM >>> 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)
