The Long Semi-Cycles of Ernest Mandel

We have seen that most economic historians and economists, both bourgeois and Marxist, agree that the concrete history of the capitalist mode of production shows alternating periods of rapid expansion lasting for several decades, followed by periods of much slower growth or semi-stagnation of varying lengths. There has been much dispute about whether these alternations represent cyclical forces operating from within the capitalist economy or are caused by changes of a non-cyclical nature in the “external environment.”

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