Tuesday, 05 November, 2024

NGO

First, we can – and this is what Kondratieff himself emphasised – see such development simply in empirical terms: major inventions meaning major shifts in production and consumption. Second, he neglected, however, to note that this cannot be seen as a simple linear global development. Although we can surely see major developments of horizontal and vertical dispersion, such outreach is a matter of time and as such also causes major disruptions, with such disruptions sometimes taking the form of power shifts or consolidation of power.

 

Third, the relationship between the different shifts can take different forms – in any case, a crucially important point is that the thus-described development of productive forces has important implications and consequences. The first is that we see, hand in hand with this development, a shift in patterns of consumption – as a matter of changing supply and also as a matter of changing demand. The second is that, as much as the change in the productive forces is a matter of interaction with the organic environment, i.e., with nature, we see also a potential change at the centre in terms of space: depending on the resources that are linked to a specific stage of the development of the productive forces, we see a push-and-pull process – the centres of production move towards profitability, and profitability is given.

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