Re: Schumpeter and the Capitalist Process.

 Bruce,
       You must admit that all this is very
hypothetical. And why try to find such a complicated
explanation of business cycles? When the link to the
various debt cycles gives such a strait forward model.
But, has anyone even tried to do this? If so, I would
greatly appreciate the link. I've been looking for
just that, for over three years. This is the first
time I have had such knowledgeable feedback from my
posts. But still no up side down giants.
           Kenneth


 --- Bruce McFarling
<Bruce.McFarling@newcastle.edu.au> a écrit : > The
cycles exist because the system has enough
> positive feedbacks to propagate upturns and
> downturns, and enough negative feedbacks (thus far)
> to avoid catastrophe.
> 
> There are different period cycles because different
> economic decisions play out over different time
> periods.
> 
> The cycles are synchronised to each other because
> the longer period cycles tend to involve decisions
> that are more easily postponable and with more
> leeway as to upturns and downturns, so looming
> longer period cycles tend to find their trigger
> during a short cycle downturn, and long period
> upturns tend to be deferred to shorter period
> upturns.  That is not entirely a one way street, so
> the whole system synchronises itself.
> 
> Those are all systemic, and if there was a massively
> different system, it would still cycle with a nested
> collection of cycles if it was complex enough and
> had enough positive and negative feedbacks, but the
> periods could be substantially different.
> 
> The triggers for each upturn and downturns, the
> precise dates, the core locations for engines of
> growth in booms, the characteristics of the
> technologies driving the longest cycle, all of those
> are historical specifics.  Whether the system will
> change "enough" to go chaotic and then settle into a
> new pattern of cycles ... that is a crucial
> experiment, every time.
> 
> 
> --
> Dr. Bruce R. McFarling
> Lecturer in Economics & International Business
> Newcastle Graduate School of Business
> University of Newcastle
> Callaghan NSW 2308
> (02) 4921 7962 (W, voicemail)
> (02) 4921 7398 (FAX)
> 
> 
> >>> kenneth couesbouc <kencouesbouc@yahoo.fr>
> 04/23/03 03:49 AM >>>
>  Ganesh,
>        Schumpeter considers business cycles to be
> historic individuals. Can one then suppose that the
> Kondratieff cycle is due to the use of fossil
> fuels(1887-1943 for coal and 1944-2000 for crude
> oil);
> the Kuznets cycle to construction, naturally; the
> Juglar cycle to machines and the Kitchin cycle
> to...what? And, if production determins development,
> why does it speed up and slow down at regular
> intervals? Why did the dotcom development suddenly
> fail in 2000? Why didn't all that 3rd generation
> stuff
> keep development going? Whereas the curve was right
> on
> cue. So how can this predictability of historic
> individuals be explained?
>  Writing about Hegel in a letter to Engels, Marx
> said
> he had climbed on the shoulders of a giant and stood
> him on his head. Or words to that effect. (I seem to
> remember reading this in the introduction to the
> Penguin edition of Capital, vol.2) Dare we do this
> to
> Schumpeter??
>       Regards, Kenneth
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  --- Trichur Ganesh <tganesh@stlawu.edu> a écrit : >
> Kenneth:
> > A few responses come to my mind:
> > (1)  Despite what you write, for Schumpeter, each
> > cycle is a "historic
> > individual" with its own historical specificity. 
> On
> > this Schumpeter is
> > unambiguous and this is what I read too in his
> work.
> >  Cf. Business
> > Cycles vol.1, Part 1; cf. also Theory of Economic
> > Development, chapter
> > on business cycles.  I point this out to argue
> that
> > Schumpeter's attempt
> > was precisely to explain each cycle individually
> > even as he utilised a
> > general theory of innovations for that purpose. 
> (On
> > Kuznets I am on
> > relatively unfamiliar terrain: I do recall that
> his
> > focus was on
> > construction cycles).
> > (2)  Schumpeter was less concerned with growth and
> > more with the
> > dynamics of "development" or Entwicklung,
> historical
> > processes by which
> > the contours of the capitalist system as a system,
> > unfolds over time and
> > space.
> > (3) Consumer Demand for Schumpeter, was a
> > derivative.  Production was of
> > determining importance.  I am inclined to think
> that
> > it is still true
> > today, though it is a much more contested terrain
> > than in earlier
> > periods (cf. N.Klein's No Logo).   Keynes' (i.e.
> > Marx's) theory of
> > inadequate "effective demand" is a pointer to the
> > incapacity of the
> > masses who have made possible the great mass
> > production, to buy what
> > they have produced .  But the production process
> > itself, i.e., what is
> > to be produced, has little to do with consumer
> > demand.  'Consumer
> > sovereignty' is more a longing than a 'reality',
> > though one could also
> > say that 'you only get what you ask for'.  But
> what
> > is it that "you" ask
> > for?  Mass assembly line production?  Sweatshop
> > labor production?  Is
> > there really consumer sovereignty regarding demand
> > for the products of
> > transnational enterprises of today or the
> vertically
> > integrated
> > multinational corporations of the 1890s-1960s?
> > (4)  Debt is endogenous to the functioning of the
> > economic system.  Who
> > is the one who goes into debt and when do problems
> > of debt arise?
> > Capitalist entrepreneurs go into debt to finance
> the
> > new plant and new
> > machinery with which to plunge into production,
> and
> > to unleash processes
> > of 'creative destruction', which when complete
> > provide rewards
> > ('profits') that are adequate to re-pay the
> interest
> > and loans from
> > banks taken to finance the investment.  States
> also
> > go into debt, often
> > catastrophically.  Spanish bankruptcy in the 16th
> > and 17th centuries,
> > French bankruptcies in the 17th and 18th
> centuries,
> > these are
> > historically documented (cf. Braudel).  There are
> > limits to the
> > Schumpeterian construct.  What explains the debt
> > crises of the 1980s and
> > of the late 1990s?  On the one hand you may say
> > demand for debt, but the
> > demand is forthcoming precisely because there is
> an
> > overabundance of
> > liquidity, as there was in the 1980s when third
> > world states began to
> > borrow avidly from transnational and private banks
> > and then found that
> > they could not repay the loans.  Such debt crises
> > are common to all
> > financial expansions.  So it is not as though
> there
> > is no space in the
> > Marx/Schumpeterian process of creative destruction
> > to accomodate debt
> > crises.  And it is not as though no one has taken
> > them into account
> > either.    Ganesh Trichur.
> > 
>   
> 
>
___________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et
> en français !
> Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com
>  

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com