Great Depressions as Transitional Phases within the Capitalist Mode of Production

Twenty years ago, the Polish economist, Oskar Lange, had this to say on the problem of long waves: ‘Even though historical facts cited above [the consecutive historical phases of capitalist production since 1825] are not subject to any serious reservations, they are not sufficient proof of the existence of long-range cycles. To prove this theory it would be necessary to show that there exists a causal relation between two consecutive phases of the cycle and nobody has succeeded in showing this.’ (Lange, 1969, pp. 76–7). Although, even today, there are enough researchers who doubt the historical existence of long waves (see, for example, Goldberg, 1985; Priewe, 1985; Solomou, 1987), I intend to take the view referred to by Lange and assume long waves to be an historically-verified fact. Starting out from this position, let me turn to the problem formulated by Lange, which consists in showing that there exists a causal relation between two consecutive phases of the cycle. Here we can build upon a wealth of groundwork carried out by other authors who have studied various aspects of the problem in detail: without, however, in my opinion, arriving at an integrated theory of long waves.