- Record: found
- Abstract: found
- Article: found
Present and Future in the Mirror of the Past: Capitalist Dynamics, Digital Technology and Industry in the Fifth Kondratiev
Abstract
Global capitalism has entered a long downswing that started with the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008. A debate has been opened about the causes of this slowdown, the prospect of a recovery and the role played by technology. The first point to observe is the character of the preceding long upswing. We argue that Fifth Kondratiev upswing was unstable and shortens by several weaknesses in the institutional framework. Given that weakness digital technology spread unevenly across even in the US economy, and the impact on productivity was limited. A huge excess of capital was the results of that forces mainly after 2000, driving the global economy to the financial crisis and then to global recession that still persist, in spite of the lender of last resort. At this point the prospects of recovery depend on the extension of digitization to a new level often called Artificial Intelligence. However, this new level of digitization will imply a deep impact on social relations in general and specifically in labor relations. A disturbing feature of the present time is the role played by digital monopolies that control the passage to AI. The only way to counteract that power is by a new social pact at global level.
Content
Author and article information
References
Arthur, B. 2009. The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolver. New York: Free Press.
Bell, D. 2015. The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Boyer, R. 1988. “Technical Change and the Theory of Regulation.” In Technical Change and Economic Theory, edited by G. Dosi, C. Freeman, R. Nelson, G. Silverberg, and L. Soete, 67–94. New York: Columbia UniversityPress.
Brynjolfsson, E., and A. McAfee. 2016. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
Carlsson, B. 2004. “The Digital Economy: What Is New and What Is Not?” Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 15: 245–264.
Cassidy, J. 2002. Dot. Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. New York: HarperCollins.
Castells, M. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. I. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
David, P. A. 1990. “The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox.” The American Economic Review 80 (2): 355–361.
David, P. A. 2002. “Understanding Digital Technology's Evolution and the Path of Measured Productivity Growth: Present and the Future in the Mirror of the Past.” In Understanding the Digital Economy: Data, Tools and Research, edited by E. Brynjolfsson and B. Kahin, 49–94. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dertouzos, M., R. Lester, and R. Solow. 1989. Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dicken, P. 2015. Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy. 7th edition. New York: Guilford Press.
Dumas, C. 2010. Globalisation Fractures: How Major Nations' Interests Are Now in Conflict. London: Profile Books.
Duijn, J. J. 1983. The Long Wave in Economy Life. London: Allen & Unwin.
Duménil, G., and D. Lévy. 2002. “The Profit Rate: Where and How Much Did It Fall? Did It Recover? (USA 1948–2000).” Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (4): 437–461.
Freeman, A. 2012. “The Profit Rate in the Presence of Financial Markets: A Necessary Correction.” Journal of Australian Political Economy 70: 167–192.
Freeman, A. 2019. “The Sixty-Year Downward Trend of Economic Growth in the Industrialised Countries of the World.” GERG Data Group Working Paper, no. 1: 1–20. Manitoba: Geopolitical Economy Research Group. https://thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/the_sixty-year_downward_trend_of_economi-1.pdf
Freeman, C., and C. Pérez. 1988. “Structural Crises of Adjustment: Business Cycles and Investment Behavior.” In Technical Change and Economic Theory, edited by G. Dosi, C. Freeman, R. Nelson, G. Silverberg, and L. Soete, 38–66. London: Francis Pinter.
Gordon, R. 2014. “The Turtle's Progress: Secular Stagnation Meets the Headwinds.” In Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures, edited by C. Teulings and R. Baldwin, 47–70. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research Press.
Gordon, R. 2016. The Rise and the Fall of America Growth—The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hall, P., and D. Soskice 2001. Varities of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. New York: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. 2015. Tim Berners-Lee (History Heroes). London: Penguin Random House.
Hilferding F. 1959. Financial Capital: Investigation of Recent Phase in the Development of Capitalism. London: Routledge.
Khan, L. 2017. “Amazon's Antitrust Paradox.” The Yale Law Journal 126 (3): 710–805.
Kuznets, S. 1973. “Modern Economic Growth: Findings and Reflections.” The American Economic Review 63 (3): 247–258.
Lanier, J. 2013. Who Owns the Future? New York: Simon & Schuster.
Lee, Kai-Fu. 2018. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
LET. 2019. Laboratory of Studies on Transnational Corporations. [In Spanish.] Mexico: Institute of Economic Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico. http://estadisticas.let.iiec.unam.mx.
Maddison, A. 1995. Monitoring the World Economy, 1820–1992. Washington, DC: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Maddison Project. 2019. Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1–2008. www. ggdc.net/MADDISON/oriindex.htm.
Maito, E. 2014. “The Historical Transience of Capital: The Downward Trend in the Rate Profit since XIX Century.” Munich Personal RePEc Archive Paper, no. 55894.
Marglin, S., and J. Schor. 1990. The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. 1946. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. 3 vols. [In Spanish.] Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Marx, K. 1971. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse), volume II. [In Spanish.] Mexico: Siglo XXI.
Mathews, J., and D.-S. Cho. 2000. Tiger Technology: The Creation of a Semiconductor Industry in East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mazzucato, M. 2013. The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths. London: Anthem Press.
McKinsey Global Institute. 2010. Farewell to Cheap Capital? The Implications of Long-Term Shifts in Global Investment and Saving. New York: McKinsey Global Institute.
McKinsey Global Institute. 2015. Playing to Win: The New Global Competition for Corporate Profits. New York: McKinsey Global Institute.
McKinsey Global Institute. 2017a. China's Digital Economy: A Leading Global Force. New York: McKinsey Global Institute.
McKinsey Global Institute. 2017b. Making It in America. New York: McKinsey Global Institute.
Milberg, W., and D. Winkler. 2013. Outsourcing Economics Global Value Chains in Capitalist Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mokyr, J. 1992. The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mokyr, J. 2002. The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mokyr, J. 2008. “The Institutional Origins of the Industrial Revolution.” In Institutions and Economic Performance, edited by E. Helpman, 64–119. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nordhaus, W. D. 2007. “Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing.” The Journal of Economic History 67 (1): 147–152.
Ornelas, R. 1995. “Transnational Companies as Agents of Capitalist Domination.” [In Spanish.] In Strategic Production and World Hegemony, edited by A. Ceceña and A. Barreda, 400–519. Mexico: Siglo XXI.
Palley, T. 2005. “From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics.” In Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, edited by A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston, 20–30. London: Pluto Press.
Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rivera, M. A., J. B. Lujano, and J. García. 2018. “The Fifth Global Kondratiev: Low Economic Performance, Instability and Monopolization in the Digital Age.” Marketing and Management of Innovations 2: 270–291.
Roberts, M. 2016. The Long Depression: Marxism and the Global Crisis of Capitalism. London: Polity Press.
Rosenberg, N. 1976. Perspectives on Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scheidel, W. 2017. The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schumpeter, J. 1963. The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle. 3rd edition. [In Spanish.] Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Schwab, K. 2016. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum.
Sheppard, E. 2016. Limits to Globalization: Disruptive Geographies of Capitalist Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tylecote, A. 1992. The Long Wave in the World Economy: The Present Crisis in Historical Perspective. London: Routledge.
Zuboff, S. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books.