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# Capitalism-and-Its-Critics-A-History-From-the

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Keynes, the Cambridge economist whose criticisms of the punitive postwar Treaty of Versailles had made him famous. In New York, he discussed the work of the Conjuncture Institute with Wesley Mitchell, a Columbia professor who was an expert on business cycles. During his time in America, Kondratiev also visited farms, agronomy institutes, and the Department of Agriculture, in Washington, DC. After returning to Russia, he wrote a report about the extensive assistance that the US government provided to its farmers, which included supporting scientific research, providing subsidized credit, and operating local education programs. He cited a study that indicated that more than 80 percent of US farms had changed the techniques they used based on these programs.15 His message was clear: Russia had a lot to learn from the United States and other Western countries.

Regardless of its economic merits, Kondratiev’s economic development plan was politically explosive because it relied on privately operated farms. By this stage, he had moved beyond the SR vision of small, village-based communities operating cooperatively. In order to raise agricultural productivity and encourage the spread of the latest scientific techniques, he argued that the peasant farmers should be allowed to hire additional labor and lease additional land. In a 1926 article, he said it was a grave error to formulate economic policy based on disdain for kulaks and commercial agriculture, an attitude that was deeply ingrained in parts of the Bolshevik Party. “If this mistaken path is followed,” he wrote, “it is necessary to see all its consequences, and to be reconciled to the dominance of the family-consumer order in peasant farms, with its low marketability, low accumulation, and slow growth of productive forces.”16

Many Bolsheviks regarded the liberalization that came with the NEP as an emergency measure that needed to be reversed as soon as possible. Lenin, while he was alive, straddled the various factions. Although he had described the NEP as a retreat from socialist ambitions, he resisted calls for a policy reversal. Lenin’s death in January 1924 left the fate of the NEP up in the air. Inside the party leadership, Bukharin, who had started out as a leftist hardliner, emerged as its most prominent defender. At a party conference in April 1925, he declared, “To the peasants, to all the peasants, we must say: Enrich yourselves, develop your farms, and do not fear that constraint will be put on you.”17 On the opposite side of the debate were

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Trotsky and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, another veteran Bolshevik, who in 1919 had cowritten with Bukharin a book entitled The ABC of Communism. Trotsky and Preobrazhensky insisted that sticking with the NEP would condemn Russia to slow growth and render it hostage to the kulaks. Preobrazhensky cited Marx’s analysis of how early capitalist accumulation had required the dispossession of the peasantry through the enclosure movement: primitive accumulation. He argued that socialist accumulation similarly “cannot do  … without the expropriation of part of the surplus product of the countryside”—i.e., dispossession of the kulaks.18

★ ★ ★

As the heated debates about the NEP were going on, Kondratiev was pursuing a second line of research, which further alienated him from the authorities. In 1922, he published, through his research institute, a lengthy study entitled The World Economy and Its Conjuncture During and After the War.19 The book addressed the acute global downturn that had impacted many industrial countries, including Germany and Britain, following the armistice. Some leftist observers had hailed this slump as the onset of a terminal decline for global capitalism. Kondratiev portrayed it as a cyclical phenomenon that the system would recover from, just as it had many times before. Drawing on examples going back to the dawn of the industrial revolution, he detailed the many economic ups and downs that had taken place in Britain and other capitalist countries.

In taking this line, Kondratiev was following Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, his onetime teacher in St. Petersburg, whose work included a history of business cycles in Britain. Tugan-Baranovsky believed that production crises were an inevitable part of capitalism, but he expressed skepticism that they heralded an overall breakdown in the system.20 Kondratiev’s study of the postwar economic crisis was squarely in this tradition. However, it also had a novel element. As well as discussing the short-term cycle, or “minor cycle,” that characterized capitalist economies, and which Kondratiev said typically lasted for about ten years, it identified a “major cycle” that lasted for about half a century.

Since the onset of the capitalist era in the late eighteenth century, there had been three major cycles, each comprising a “rising wave” and a “falling wave,” Kondratiev argued. The first major cycle had extended from 1789 to 1849, with a turning point in 1809. The second major cycle had lasted from 1849 to 1896, with a turning point in 1873. The third major cycle had begun in 1896 and had reached its peak in 1913, just before the start of the Great War. This major cycle was now entering its down wave, Kondratiev said, and he suggested that this descent would have major repercussions for economic development and social relations.21

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In the early 1920s, there were no GDP statistics, and data on the industrial output of individual industries didn’t go back very far. Kondratiev conceded that the evidence to support his theory of major cycles, which subsequently became known as “long cycles” or “long waves,” was provisional. It consisted largely of an analysis of interest rates in western European countries going back to 1800 or thereabouts. But although Kondratiev’s evidence was tentative, the larger implication of his theory was clear: while capitalism goes through extended ups and downs, it has no predetermined end date. At least in theory, the long cycles could continue indefinitely.

If Kondratiev’s study had been published in London or New York, it would have been regarded as an interesting academic contribution. In Bolshevik Russia, it was greeted in some quarters as a challenge to the party dogma that an irretrievable capitalist collapse was inevitable. One of the first Bolshevik officials to attack Kondratiev’s work was Trotsky, who had long taken an interest in economics. At a 1921 conference of the newly formed Communist International (Comintern), he had criticized the argument that global capitalism would rebound from its postwar slump as a “trait of opportunism.”22 Trotsky’s experience commanding the Red Army during the civil war hadn’t dimmed his appetite for intellectual disputation. In a long 1923 letter to the editors of a socialist academic journal, he described Kondratiev’s theory that long cycles existed and evolved with the same “rigidly lawful rhythm” as minor cycles as “an obviously false generalization from a formal analogy.”23 Whereas short cycles were generated by the internal dynamics of the capitalist economy, Trotsky wrote, the long-term evolution of the system was largely determined by “external conditions,” such as colonialist land grabs, conflicts between the imperialist nations, and political insurrections. “The acquisition by capitalism of new countries and continents,” Trotsky wrote, “the discovery of new natural resources, and, in the wake of these, such major facts of ‘superstructural’ order as wars and revolutions, determine the character and replacement of ascending, stagnating, or declining epochs of capitalist development.”24

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Any effort to supplant this broad historical approach with “the methods of formalism,” as Kondratiev had done, amounted to “splitting empty abstractions,” Trotsky’s letter went on. Rather than searching for major cycles in the data, the real intellectual challenge was to identify a single curve that traced capitalism’s long-term path, “in both its non-periodic (basic) and its periodic (secondary elements) phases.” To illustrate this idea, Trotsky presented a chart of his own that showed a single line rising slowly, then more rapidly, reaching a peak, and then gradually falling back. Trotsky said the line represented “twenty years of very gradual capitalist development (segment A-B); forty years of energetic upswing (segment B-C); and thirty years of protracted crisis and decline (segment C-D).” He acknowledged that this chart wasn’t derived from any actual data, but he went on to suggest that it could provide “invaluable starting points for historical materialist investigations.”25

Kondratiev didn’t back down. In 1925 he published a new paper, “The Long Waves in Economic Life,” in which he presented fresh data to support his theory and, without mentioning Trotsky directly, sought to refute the criticisms of his prior work. This paper, which appeared in the theoretical journal of the Business Research Institute of Moscow, received a great deal of attention from other Russian economists, and it was translated into German and English, although that process took some time. The new evidence it contained consisted of historical data on commodity prices, wages, coal production, and foreign trade from England, France, Germany, and the United States. After using a least squares regression to eliminate the long-term secular upward trend from this data, Kondratiev also converted his figures to nine-year moving averages to eliminate the effects of short cycles.26 Having filtered the data in this manner, he presented it in charts, which showed distinctive up waves and down waves, each lasting roughly a quarter of a century. Based on these patterns, Kondratiev identified the same three “major cycles” he had written about previously. The only significant change from his 1922 study was that he moved the peak of the first long cycle from 1809 to 1814.27

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One immediate criticism that Kondratiev’s paper was met with was that it didn’t contain a convincing explanation of what drove the major cycles he identified. But in his 1925 paper, and in a follow-up study he completed early in 1926, he did identify some of their recurring characteristics.28 One of these regularities was that fundamental changes in the economic structure, such as the invention of powerful new technologies, tended to take place during the down wave of the major cycle. By contrast, social upheavals, such as wars and revolutions, tended to happen during the upswing. Kondratiev also discussed the mechanics of the long cycles, stressing the role played by capital investment. “The material basis of the long cycles is the wear and tear, the replacement and the increase of the fund of basic capital goods, the production of which requires tremendous investment and is a long process,” he wrote.29 Among the basic capital goods Kondratiev pointed to were “big plants, important railways, canals, large land improvement projects, etc.”30

Based on these regularities, Kondratiev challenged the claim that capitalism’s long-term path was “conditioned by causal, extra-economic circumstance and events.” (Perhaps wisely, he didn’t mention Trotsky by name.) He argued that the causation went in the other direction—from economics to external developments. “Wars and revolutions  … influence the course of economic development very strongly,” he wrote. “But wars and revolutions do not come out of a clear sky, and they are not caused by arbitrary acts of individual personalities. They originate from real, especially economic circumstances.”31 Along the same lines, Kondratiev argued that the acquisition of new territories and the opening of new markets “does not provoke the upswing of a long wave.” Rather, “a new upswing makes the exploitation of new countries, new markets, and new sources of raw materials necessary and possible, in that it accelerates the pace of capitalist development.”32

Even major technological innovations weren’t entirely detached from the economic environment, Kondratiev insisted. Improvements in production techniques “have without a doubt a very potent influence on the course of capitalistic development,” he wrote. “But nobody has proved them to have an accidental and external origin.”33 Scientific discoveries and inventions usually emerged from previous research and the “necessities of real life.”34 However, they were deployed throughout the economy only when conditions were favorable to big investments—during the up wave, that is. Therefore, Kondratiev concluded, “the development of technique itself is part of the rhythm of the long waves.”35

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In modern terms, Kondratiev was arguing that, in a capitalist system, long-term growth is self-sustaining, or endogenous. The system alternates between lengthy periods of above-trend and below-trend growth, but the overall pattern is one of continued expansion. During the long upswing, growth is driven by capital investment on major projects, such as new factories, land improvement schemes, and transport links. During the downswing, capital investment drops back and economic growth declines. Superimposed on this long cycle are short cycles, which last about a decade. But contrary to what had become the orthodox Marxist doctrine, there is no underlying tendency for the system to head toward a permanent breakdown.

★ ★ ★

On February 6, 1926, some of the Soviet Union’s leading economists gathered at the Conjuncture Institute, where Kondratiev presented his theory and some fresh data to support it. After his presentation, a number of his colleagues from the institute, as well as some economists from other organizations, lit into his arguments. The attacks didn’t end there. A week later one of Kondratiev’s critics, Dmitry Oparin, an economist who was associated with the Institute and served as an adviser to Gosplan, presented a longer and more detailed critique.

In his engaging 2015 book, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, the English writer Paul Mason noted that the verbatim record of the February 6 meeting “contains none of the fear and irrationality that Stalin’s purges would soon inject into Soviet academic life.”36 But even though the debate was an open one, Kondratiev found few defenders. Oparin claimed the method he used to smooth over the short cycles—least squares analysis— had distorted his data on major cycles. Even if these cycles did exist, Oparin pointed out, there had been only two and a half of them since the dawn of capitalism, which wasn’t enough to identify their turning points or other key characteristics.

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V. E. Bogdanov, a professor of economics at Moscow University, criticized Kondratiev’s methodology, too, claiming his long waves were statistical artifacts.37 Bogdanov also challenged Kondratiev’s economic analysis, saying investments in capital projects, even major ones like railroads and steel factories, couldn’t determine the trajectory of the entire world economy over a period as long as fifty years. Effectively repeating Trotsky’s point, Bogdanov argued that external factors, such as the decline of the Ottoman Empire and major scientific innovations, played a bigger role in driving long-term growth. Even if long waves did exist, he said, they were the result of the “random intersection of two essentially causal series”—the paths of historical events and the progress of scientific development.38

Also echoing Trotsky, some participants at the conference voiced ideological objections to the long wave theory. “We are dealing with an essentially perpetual movement of capitalism, first upwards and then downwards, and that it is not appropriate to dream of social revolution yet,” Miron Nachimson, an agricultural economist, complained.39

Kondratiev took some of these criticisms seriously, others less so. From the beginning of his research, he had readily conceded that his limited datasets didn’t allow him to prove definitively that long waves existed. Writing in the journal Socialist Economy in 1923, he commented: “We see the long cycle of capitalist conjuncture only as probable.”40 In his responses to his critics, Kondratiev reiterated these points. But he also insisted that it was highly probable long waves did exist.

★ ★ ★

As the debates about Kondratiev’s long waves continued, the political environment was shifting. Two months before the February 1926 meeting at the Conjuncture Institute, the Fourteenth Party Congress had reaffirmed the party’s support for industrialization as the central plank of economic development. Joseph Stalin, in his role as the general secretary, issued a report criticizing the argument that the Soviet Union “must for a long time yet remain an agrarian country, must export agricultural produce and import equipment.” To adopt this stance “would mean that our country would never be able, or almost never be able, to become really industrialised,”

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Stalin’s report said.41 It amounted to an explicit repudiation of the development strategy that Kondratiev was recommending.

To Stalin, who was maneuvering to become Lenin’s undisputed successor, and many other Bolsheviks, Kondratiev’s approach was too dependent on the global capitalist trading system and too gradualist. Many party members, led by Trotsky, were staunchly committed to launching a worldwide revolution, which they saw as the only way to supplant global capitalism. Stalin was beginning to espouse a more inward-looking strategy that became known as “socialism in one country” and was based on the notion that the Soviet Union could build a self-sufficient socialist society regardless of what happened elsewhere. In April 1926, the party’s central committee called for “the reinforcement of the planning principle,” which many Bolsheviks viewed as synonymous with rapid industrialization.42 Later in the same year the regime reduced the procurement prices it paid farmers and issued a new tax on “super-profits” aimed at the NEP men.43 The change in policy was accompanied by a change in personnel. At the Fourteenth Party Congress, Grigory Sokolnikov was demoted from the Politburo, the highest body of the party. With the star of Kondratiev’s chief political sponsor in decline, he found his economic proposals subjected to public criticism. In a 1926 article, P. I. Popov, a senior Gosplan official, described the idea of allowing peasant farmers to hire labor and expand their operations by leasing more land as capitalist in spirit.44

The policy reversal gradually picked up steam. In June 1927 the Council of People’s Commissars demanded a “united all-union plan” to promote industrialization.45 Until about this point, Stalin had positioned himself as a centrist on economics, occupying the middle ground between Trotsky and Preobrazhensky on one side and Bukharin and supporters of the NEP on the other. A disappointing 1927 harvest proved to be a turning point. Stalin accused the kulaks of hoarding grain and railed against them. His political machinations gave him more flexibility. Weeks before the Fifteenth Party Congress, in December 1927, Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev, a veteran Bolshevik and former associate of Lenin, were removed from the party’s central committee. Subsequently, Trotsky was deported to Alma-Ata, a city in central Asia. Having exiled his main rival, Stalin moved ahead with an economic policy U-turn. In 1928 he presided over the launch of Gosplan’s First Five-Year Plan, which set a goal of increasing industrial production by 180 percent.46

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As Kondratiev’s political isolation increased, he continued to do research. In 1928 he published another paper on long waves, which included new data on the prices of agricultural commodities and industrial goods.47 Unlike his previous work, this study didn’t prompt much discussion inside Russia. As Stalin’s rule was becoming more dictatorial, the window for open discussions was fast closing. On May 2, 1928, the government dismissed Kondratiev from his post as head of the Conjuncture Institute “for introducing ideology alien to Soviet policy into his work.”48 For a time, he stayed on at the Institute as deputy director, but in official circles he was rapidly becoming a nonperson. Early in the following year, the Soviet Russian Encyclopedia dismissed his theory of long waves in six words: “This theory is wrong and reactionary.”49

In January 1928 Stalin personally led a group of police and party officials to the Urals–West Siberia region, where they forcefully requisitioned grain from the peasants, shut down private markets, and imprisoned anyone who resisted. This return to the methods of War Communism was a precursor to a broader attack on the peasantry. In January 1930 the party’s central committee formally approved a policy of setting up huge state-owned farms. To ensure that the peasants would join these new collectives, the regime used carrots and sticks. The sticks included punitive taxes and exile in Siberia for those who resisted.

The NEP era was over, and Kondratiev’s middle way had been definitively abandoned. With Stalin intent on eliminating all real or perceived enemies, it didn’t take the internal security apparatus long to get around to him. In June 1930 the authorities arrested him and accused him of being a member of a fictitious counterrevolutionary organization, the Labouring Peasants Party. The security apparatus detained him at the Butyrka prison in Moscow, which housed many political prisoners. According to Vincent Barnett, who examined KGB archives released in 1993, Kondratiev was interrogated at length by Yakov Agranov, a notorious henchman in the NKVD, the state security agency. Agranov extracted a fake confession from Kondratiev in which he admitted that the Labouring Peasants Party existed and was intent on reintroducing capitalist elements to the Soviet economy.50

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There is written evidence that Stalin himself was personally involved in Kondratiev’s detention and asked for harsh measures to be taken against him and other economists who weren’t sufficiently supportive of his policies. “Run Messrs Kondratiev, Yurovskii, Chayanov etc through the mill,” the Soviet leader wrote in an October 1930 note to the head of the OGPU, the Soviet secret police.51 In another letter, to his longtime acolyte and number two, V. M. Molotov, Stalin wrote: “Kondratiev, Groman and another couple of scoundrels must certainly be executed.”52

For a time, Kondratiev and Vladimir Groman, a former Menshevik who worked at Gosplan, escaped this fate. But in March 1931 Groman was convicted at the Menshevik show trial and sentenced to ten years in prison. The following January, Kondratiev, who was then thirty-nine years old, was tried and convicted of “kulak-professor” crimes.53 After being sentenced to eight years of detention, he was sent to a political prison in Suzdal, a town located about 120 miles northeast of Moscow. In captivity, Kondratiev kept working as best he could. “I read the books they let me have; I’ve taken to mathematics, and I keep writing the book on trends,” he wrote in a letter to his wife dated March 7, 1934.54 In some of his prison correspondence, Kondratiev seemed reasonably upbeat, but the awful reality of his circumstances came through clearly. “It is four years since they had set me in this atmosphere of a monotonous dull stupor impairing both physical and mental health,” he wrote on April 11, 1934. “And strictly speaking, I think I am lost for a further work in science. All those new and perhaps not disadvantageous ideas that occurred to me here are doomed to a gradual obliteration. The most devaluated value of today is human life and human thought.”55

As for so many of Stalin’s victims, there was no hope for Kondratiev. By 1938 he had served his eight-year sentence, but the dictator’s Great Purge was then at its lunatic height. Instead of being released, Kondratiev was subjected to a second trial before a military tribunal. This proceeding took place on September 17, 1938, and it ended with the issuance of a death sentence. Later the same day the forty-six-year-old was taken to the Kommunarka shooting ground southwest of Moscow, a spot that Stalin’s Interior Ministry used for many executions. A firing squad shot him to death.

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