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KONDRATIEFF CYCLES AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS
Fernando Alcoforado *
The Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff Dimitrievic presented in his book Les
grands cycles of La conjoncture (Economica, 1992) called superciclos, big waves, long
waves or long cycles of the modern capitalist world economy. The thesis is that
Kondratieff cycles consist of alternating periods of high growth and periods of
relatively slow growth ranging from 40 to 60 years. Kondratieff identified three phases
in the cycle: expansion, stagnation, recession In his research on the nineteenth century,
Kondratieff found in 1920 the existence of two cycles (from 1790 to 1849 with a
duration of 54 years and the other from 1850 to 1896 with a duration of 46 years).
In the 1790-1849 cycle, the expansion of the world economy occurred until its collapse
or stagnation in 1815 with the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, when the political and
economic structures of the Old Regime were shaken, then the recession until 1849.
From September 1814 to June 1815, the great powers of the big four (England, Prussia,
Russia and Austria) met in Vienna Congress seeking to rebuild the old European order
and redraw the political map of Europe. In the 1850-1896 cycle, the expansion of the
world economy to collapse happened until the Depression of 1873, 58 years after the
crisis of 1815, then the recession until 1896.
It should be noted that the 1873 depression contributed to intensify the competition
between the European imperialist powers that culminated in World War I (1914-1918).
In the 1896-1945 cycle, the expansion of the world economy occurred from 1896 until
its collapse in the Great Depression of 1929, 56 years after the 1873 crisis, then the
recession until 1945. The depression of 1929 contributed decisively to the outbreak of
the Second World War (1939-1945). In an effort to expand the Kondratieff cycle to the
twentieth century, can be considered the third cycle starting in 1896 and ending in 1945
(end of WWII) with a duration of 49 years, the fourth cycle beginning in 1945 and
ending in 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), with a duration of 44 years, and the fifth cycle
starting in 1989 and ending in 2029 or 2049 probably lasting 40 or 60 years.
In the 1945-1989 cycle, the expansion of the world economy happened to the Oil Crisis
in 1973 that shook the world economy, 44 years after the Great Depression of 1929,
when there was a sharp drop in profitability of capital, economic and political struggles
in all major countries of the world, highlighting the popular uprising of May 1968 in
France and the escalation of the Vietnam war, then recession until 1989. The end of this
cycle coincides with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The next cycle began in 1989
with its expansion to the recent global crisis 2008, 35 years after the 1973 crisis, then
recession is expected ending in 2029, after 40 years, or in 2049 after 60 years.
In other words, the end of the current general crisis of the world capitalist system will
only have an end in the next 16 or 36 years. Eric Hobsbawm (great British historian
who died in 2012) states that again, we are facing a fundamental crisis of capitalism as
occurred in 1873 and 1929. The ideology of neoliberal economists believed that the free
market would have a maximum economic growth, but also provide a welfare maximum
for the whole population and that always rationally solve the problems it creates. It
seems unbelievable today, but it is a fact that neoliberal economists believed this for
over 30 years (HOBSBAWM, Eric. En la tercera crisis. Interview Eric J. Hobsbawm.
Magazine "El Viejo Topo", Available on the website <www.elviejotopo. com>, 2009).

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With the outbreak of the crisis in 2008, the governments of capitalist countries had to
intervene as the 1930s of the twentieth century, which at the time did not have
immediate success, but do not know how to save the system of generalized economic
debacle is ongoing. According to Hobsbawm, to be a shift towards a new world
economy, it will take much time. Macabre, in the 1930s of the twentieth century, there
was already a program for the solution of the crisis: the preparation of war. The global
economic crisis which was installed in 1929 only ended with the outbreak of the 2nd
World War. Today, humanity will have to face a new world conflagration to save the
world capitalist system? This conflagration could begin in the Middle East with the
military intervention of the Western powers in Syria or Iran?
Nouriel Roubini says global growth is at risk after 2013. A "perfect storm" of budget
woes in the U.S. economic slowdown in China, European debt restructuring and
stagnation in Japan may combine to affect the world economy from 2013. As for China,
Roubini believes that the country may face a "hard landing" in two years because the
Chinese investment now accounts for almost 50 percent of gross domestic product and
sixty years of data show that overinvestment panoramas have always led the landings
sudden the economy, as happened in the former Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s
and in East Asia in the 1990s [BLOG PEDLOWSKI. Mundo poderá viver em 2013
“tempestade global” pior que 2008, afirma Roubini (World could live in 2013 "global
storm" worse than in 2008, says Roubini) posted on the website <http :/ /
pedlowski.blogspot.com.br/2012/07/nouriel-roubini-o-unico-que-previu.html>].
With the exception of China, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the rest of the world
has economic stagnation or decline. The world economy moves swiftly to depression
because the United States, European Union, Japan and China are today economic
performance that puts into question the global economic recovery. Besides the profound
crisis affecting the European Union and Japan, the United States did not show signs of
recovery with high unemployment that is occurring there and China shows signs of
slowing.
The current crisis is worse than that of 1929-1933, because it is absolutely global. The
international financial system no longer works. One indisputable fact is that the
Washington Consensus neoliberal model that introduced the world died and depression
that will last for many years. There is no turning back for the absolute market that ruled
the world economy in the last 40 years, since the 1970s, according to Hobsbawm. The
global crisis that began in 2008 is for the market economy, which was equivalent to the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Furthermore, this depression can lead, according to
Hobsbawm, a new world system. We have to redesign everything into the future.
Everything suggests that the fall in consumption in the United States and the European
Union, Japan since the depression of the 1990s and the inability of China to sustain
growth of the world economy will lead the global capitalist system depression. Was
building on the Kondratieff cycles that Immanuel Wallerstein explained his work in
Unthinking Social Science (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995) that the systemic crisis we
experience today in the world economy will 2050 or 2075 when we should be living in
some new order or new orders, new system or new historical systems.
* Alcoforado, Fernando, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the
University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic planning, business planning,
regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo,

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1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do
desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel,
São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era
Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora,
Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global
(Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) and Os Fatores Condicionantes do
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), among others.