Capitalism’s Long Waves: Kondratiev, Schumpeter, et al

Phillip Anthony O’Hara
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Phillip Anthony O’Hara: Global Political Economy Research Unit (GPERU)

Chapter Chapter 2 in Long Waves of Growth, Hegemonic Power, and Climate Change in the World Economy, 2025, pp 51-79 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter utilizes the principles of political economy (PoPE) contingency paradigm of long waves to provide a sympathetically critical literature review of long wave theories and empirics, and to extend the inquiry to hegemony and climate change. We review the early history of long wave studies, paying special attention to Kondratiev’s contributions in association with his critics including Trotsky. From this, we agree with Garvy’s survey and critique that scholars should concentrate on establishing the pattern of long-term evolution and performance of capitalism devoid of preconceptions such as strict periodicities, amplitudes, and regularities. Then we scrutinize the work of Schumpeter and reject his assumptions of rigid links between waves and cycles, while being open-minded about periodicities of long wave upswings and downswings. We agree with the criticisms of Schumpeter’s long wave inquiry especially by Simon Kuznets and Paul Sweezy. Nonetheless, some core insights of Kondratiev and Schumpeter et al. are still useful for long wave analysis as we reconstruct the framework. A conclusion follows.

Keywords: PoPE paradigm; First long wave theory upswing; Long wave history; Nikolai Kondratiev; Joseph Schumpeter; Criticisms; Hegemony; Climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-96-4132-1_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-96-4132-1_2

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