As Time Went by - Long Waves in the Light of Evolving Evolutionary Economics

Abstract

Evoking Chris Freeman and following from the last book he co-authored, this WP asks why has the Phase B of the fourth long wave been so long, since the major turning point of the 1970s. As Chris's answer was the mismatch between the new techno-economic paradigm, available for decades, and the socio-institutional framework, which is being transformed by the neoliberal agenda, this paper investigates such contradiction. I study the new regime of accumulation, based on the boom and devaluation of fictitious capital, and the four radical conditions that are required to solve the mismatch: liberalization of financial flows, privatization of public goods, precarization of labor, and globalization of markets. The development of such agenda imposes time consuming changes in social relations, namely in the selection, education and networking of the political decision makers, imposition of aggravated inequality and changes in the international hierarchy of powers, which are discussed.