The power of crises over history: on the study of Great and Big economic turns from the third century to the contemporaneity, restorations in revolutions and neo-mercantilism in our time

• Main Author: Koryakovtsev A.A.
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Publishing House Discourse-P 2020-02-01
• Series: Дискурс Пи
• Subjects: economic crisis; social revolution; restoration; kondratiev waves; neoliberalism; neomercantilism
• Online Access: http://madipi.ru/images/uploads/213–224_Коряковцев.pdf

The review analyzes the content of the monograph devoted to the vital topic: world and national economic crises and their social consequences. The author explores the crises from the third century up to the present. The use of such extensive historical material is due to the fact that the author seeks to reflect the low of economic crises. Methodologically, the study adheres to the Marxist tradition. However, the novelty of the material involved forces the author to go beyond the usual Marxist grid of concepts. It complements the Marxist optics of considering social processes by microscoping - approaching the invisible from a distance and macroscoping - reducing the large, moving away from it and considering it in connection with other major events in the context of a large historical stream. As a result, he is able to convincingly show the hierarchy of crises and highlight the Great, Large, and Average (ordinary) economic crises. The economic crisis itself is an organic part of a complex social phenomenon that includes social and political revolution, as well as restoration. For the first time in Russian historiography, the economic meaning of restorations is revealed. Referring to the present, V. Koltashov formulates the concept of neomercantilism. The neoliberal model of capitalism, based on a system of global free markets, on the export of capitals and productions, which assumes the destruction or reduction of national industry and a reduction in the value of the total labor force, receives the strongest, if not the deadliest, blow. In the new historical conditions, it does not meet the needs of either the ruling classes or ordinary citizens, because it does not solve social problems, but only exacerbates them. At the same time, there is no class in society that can make an anti-capitalist revolution and create a society on fundamentally new, socialist principles. Therefore, only a different model of capitalist economy can replace neoliberalism. This is neomercantilism. It is a system of national economies that practice protectionism, development of national industry, state regulation and mobilization practices in the conditions of economic (and not only) wars. All this implies a social correction of capitalism, an increase in the role of socially oriented redistribution and state regulation.