ARE ECONOMIC CRISES INHERENT TO CAPITALIST EVOLUTION?

Alexandru Pătruți ()
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Alexandru Pătruți: Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alexandru Patruti

Review of Social and Economic Issues, 2017, vol. 1, issue 4, 63-73

Abstract: The Marxist thesis that capitalism is an inherently unstable system, which naturally generates crisis, is once more gaining momentum due to the slowdown in economic growth around the world. But instead of arguing theoretically about the mechanisms of economic fluctuations, we aim to show that the developed world (especially Western Europe and the US) are not even close to pure capitalist systems. By studying the evolution of government spending as percentage of GDP, one can show that in numerous countries which claim to be capitalist systems, the government allocates more resources than the market. Moreover, there seems to be no statistical data to suggest that there ever was a movement towards more market economy in the last decades in the US and Europe. If any systematic tendency occurred in these counties before the crisis of 2008-2009, it was toward more state intervention.

Keywords: capitalism; socialism; government spending; economic cycles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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