著者

小澤 光利

出版者

法政大学

雑誌

経済志林 (ISSN:00229741)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.70, no.1, pp.1-27, 2002-07-05

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"die Geschichte einer Wissenschaft die Wissenschaft selbet ist" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Although studies based on the thought of Marx have long comprised a significant aspect of Japanese social science research, the history of Marxist economic theories as such has rarely received attention from specialists in Japan, especially during the era since the collapse of the Soviet 'socialist' system. From this neglected field of the history of Marxist economic theories, we have attempted to single out and examine two opposing concepts from the 1920s. One of these is the theory of 'the general crisis of capitalism', while the other is the theory of long-waves. ln reality, each of these theories inevitably existed in plural versions. The split of the International into the Social Democratic and Communist factions after the First World War was expressed in divergent views within the Marxist camp regarding the stability and the fate of capitalism. For the Communist theorists, such as Varga and Bucharin, 'crisis' was not simply a normal cyclical economic phenomenon, for to them it indicated that capitalism was entering a long unstable final phase of breakdown. The thesis of 'the general crisis of capitalism' was given its final formulation in the theses of the Comintern (1928), whereupon it became the Comintern's view of the world. However, theconcepts of 'the general crisis' represent strategic political descriptions of the world capitalist situation of the l920s. In the mean time, yet other Marxists - de Wolff, for example - emphasized the significance of 'long-waves' of capitalist development.According to de Wolff, the notion originated with Parvus (1901) well before the First World War, and also in the same pre-war period, there were many forerunners of the theories of long-waves, including Gelderen, Tugan-Baranowsky, Aftalion, and Lenoir (1913). It is noteworthy that the significance of 'long-waves' was reassessed in the l920s in opposition to the Comintern's world-view. In addition, also in the l920s, the notion of long-waves further attracted the attention of Trotsky and Kondratiev, but from a different point of view. In either case, the theory of long-waves clearly appears as Marxist in origin; from the side of the Comintern, however, it was regarded as heresy. It is important toreconstruct these two opposing concepts as they were in the l920, as a contemporary crisis theory from the standpoint of historical stages of capitalist development and cyclical movement.