The heterodox notion of structural crisis
Résumé
Long waves of economic activity, also known as ‘Kondratiev cycles,’ have been known to exist for nearly a century without having ever been given a proper theoretical context. In this paper we try to identify various contributions to shed light on this phenomenon, notably Schumpeter's notion of technological bursts and Minsky's notion of a super-cycle where ‘stability breeds instability’ to the point of systemic crisis. A more comprehensive and methodologically innovative approach to the periodization of capitalism is the French Régulation School. This heterodox approach has reframed the story of long waves in terms of period-specific ‘accumulation regimes’ and ‘modes of (self-)regulation.’ Here systemic crises, like the ones we experienced in 1873–1879, 1929–1939, 1973–1982 or 2007–2011, play the role of regime-transforming adjustments in the institutional make-up of the wage relation, forms of competition, state intervention, and money and banking, as well as international context. We apply the Regulationist approach to finance-led capitalism, the latest long-wave accumulation regime emerging around 1982 to find itself confronted with its own systemic crisis starting in 2007. How will that crisis, one of the most profound structural crises to date, change our economic system?