HISTORICAL FACT: REPETITIVE CYCLICAL SOCIOECONOMIC PATTERNS ARE DRIVEN BY SOCIOLOGY
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Written by W. Michael King, Ph.D. (www.wmichaelking.com)
This presentation exhibits and discusses the facts of human sociology and the derivatives of socioeconomic patterns. These patterns are described at the start, meaning the foundation of the United States, then move to exposing details as they have evolved through not only each cycle, but the intricate societal phases within each cycle.
These are brought forward to the significance of the current time. If Executive Coaches and their clients do not know where society and the processes of socioeconomics have been, what drives these and why, they are likely to not understand the present nor the consequences and context for the future! It seems obvious to observe that humanity is permeated by cycles. On an individual level we experience: the cycles of day & night; events and anniversaries of year to year; the structural cycles of school/education followed by work/profession routines; and cycles of social activities that are always interspersed into those routines; all expanding our life’s experience. We are also influenced by cyclical shifts of biorhythms in nature; our lives as we age; and, on a wider field of view, how these are all interspersed with, and influenced by, the seasons of the planet.
Expanding our observational time further we can recognize the phases of our own life’s experience, as our personal transitions, with contributions of those experiences as dynamics with our family, partners and friends. Those life-phases can be viewed as cycles when we recognize that the patterns we’ve experienced in our lives move forward to influence the personalities and characteristics of our children and grandchildren. As the implacable forces of time continue, our children and grandchildren, in turn, become immersed in the prevailing societal attitudes expressed during their lifetimes. It follows they experience a multiplicity of societal trends as attitudes that gradually shift as they did for us. It is easily observed that societal attitudes, based on a collective form of ambient group-think, become political attitudes for public policy. Notably societal attitudes impact economic structures including economic currency flows and movements (domestically and internationally by exchange). In fact over the processes of time there is a consistent socioeconomic (e.g. political) cycle that has been found to be quite repetitive.
The periodicity of the cycle is about one complete approximate cycle per 50 years. The socio-economic (commensurate as political attitude) cycle was originally discovered by Nikolai Kondratieff. He was commissioned by Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union for the study of the western economic system circa 1922. Kondratieff developed a conceptual proposal for a “New Economic Policy” based on a market-led industrialization strategy derived from his research. He observed that the Western Capitalization System would always self-correct for its errors and excesses. When Lenin died, Joseph Stalin took over. In the mind of Stalin, Kondratieff’s concept was heresy against what he believed: a single mentality of government control; dictatorship. Under a “system” of dictatorial control the probability is that it cannot self-correct because “belief systems” tend to be inflexible.
While market accountability and self-correction are not allowed under a communist and dictatorial system, we observe similar issues with systemic socialist systems. Why? Because bureaucrats are emplaced to manage the funds but they eventually demand control over funds, priorities and policies. This gives them institutional and personal power. It is true that even though the funds started out to be public, the public becomes subservient to any bureaucratic system: the citizens, dependent upon the system, have little (if any) control Kondratieff’s visibility became greater to the West after visiting Pitirim Sorokin in Minnesota circa 1927. Parts of academia in the United States at that time started to move toward the ideology of communism, before understanding how much damage could be wielded by central dictatorial power. According to Carle C. Zimmerman (then at University of Minnesota, later a sociologist at Harvard), a member of The University of Minnesota’s agricultural faculty reported Kondratieff to Stalin in 1927. The claim was that he was a member of the “Peasant’s Labor Party.” If truth be told, the “Peasant’s Labor Party” did not exist in the Soviet Union at the time: it was an invention of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) to punish those who had ideas not approved by “the system” of communism. Kondratieff was arrested in July 1930 and sentenced to 8 years in prison for this imaginary “crime.” The Soviet Union greatly suffered under Stalin’s “Great Purge” of political repression and opposing ideas (1936 – 1938).
Kondratieff was executed by firing squad in 1938, intensely demonstrating the power of a single-power police state determined to control by suppression. Returning to the processes of cycles, Kondratieff’s research suggested that the time cycle period he found was about 50 years. I’ve heard that anthropologists researching history in Ancient Rome, Greece and Carthage have noted a similar cycles, albeit then about 40 years in duration. This implies that the period of the cycle may be related to life expectancy. It seems obvious to mention that most individuals are not aware of the gradual cycle or even that whatever is happening at any point will be very different within 25 years (let alone 50 years after that point). Personally I find it quite ironic that the collapse of the Soviet Union in July 1991 occurred very close to the 70 year point from its founding in December of 1922, about 70 years as Kondratieff’s discovery (updated for time) would have predicted. Much has been written about Kondratieff’s research discovery as anyone searching the Internet can find. Over the years terminology used to describe the phenomena includes “the long wave” and “the super-cycle.” Personally I prefer to designate this socioeconomic cycle as the Kondratieff wave (or cycle) in honor of the researcher, since the political system that imprisoned his ideas also cost him his life. Many references seen on the Internet for this sociological/socioeconomic cycle display it as an oversimplification. We often hear “the pendulum swings” in political attitudes and accordingly, cycles. If one polarity of attitude is set at the 12 o’clock position and an opposing view at the 6 o’clock position, then swinging a pointer (like a clock second hand) that represents social attitudes around the dial, will result in a sine wave. PThis presentation exhibits and discusses the facts of human sociology and the derivatives of socioeconomic patterns.
These patterns are described at the start, meaning the foundation of the United States, then move to exposing details as they have evolved through not only each cycle, but the intricate societal phases within each cycle. These are brought forward to the significance of the current time. If Executive Coaches and their clients do not know where society and the processes of socioeconomics have been, what drives these and why, they are likely to not understand the present nor the consequences and context for the future! It seems obvious to observe that humanity is permeated by cycles. On an individual level we experience: the cycles of day & night; events and anniversaries of year to year; the structural cycles of school/education followed by work/profession routines; and cycles of social activities that are always interspersed into those routines; all expanding our life’s experience. We are also influenced by cyclical shifts of biorhythms in nature; our lives as we age; and, on a wider field of view, how these are all interspersed with, and influenced by, the seasons of the planet.
Expanding our observational time further we can recognize the phases of our own life’s experience, as our personal transitions, with contributions of those experiences as dynamics with our family, partners and friends. Those life-phases can be viewed as cycles when we recognize that the patterns we’ve experienced in our lives move forward to influence the personalities and characteristics of our children and grandchildren. As the implacable forces of time continue, our children and grandchildren, in turn, become immersed in the prevailing societal attitudes expressed during their lifetimes. It follows they experience a multiplicity of societal trends as attitudes that gradually shift as they did for us. It is easily observed that societal attitudes, based on a collective form of ambient group-think, become political attitudes for public policy. Notably societal attitudes impact economic structures including economic currency flows and movements (domestically and internationally by exchange). In fact over the processes of time there is a consistent socioeconomic (e.g. political) cycle that has been found to be quite repetitive. The periodicity of the cycle is about one complete approximate cycle per 50 years. The socio-economic (commensurate as political attitude) cycle was originally discovered by Nikolai Kondratieff. He was commissioned by Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union for the study of the western economic system circa 1922. Kondratieff developed a conceptual proposal for a “New Economic Policy” based on a market-led industrialization strategy derived from his research. He observed that the Western Capitalization System would always self-correct for its errors and excesses. When Lenin died, Joseph Stalin took over. In the mind of Stalin, Kondratieff’s concept was heresy against what he believed: a single mentality of government control; dictatorship. Under a “system” of dictatorial control the probability is that it cannot self-correct because “belief systems” tend to be inflexible.
While market accountability and self-correction are not allowed under a communist and dictatorial system, we observe similar issues with systemic socialist systems. Why? Because bureaucrats are emplaced to manage the funds but they eventually demand control over funds, priorities and policies. This gives them institutional and personal power. It is true that even though the funds started out to be public, the public becomes subservient to any bureaucratic system: the citizens, dependent upon the system, have little (if any) control Kondratieff’s visibility became greater to the West after visiting Pitirim Sorokin in Minnesota circa 1927. Parts of academia in the United States at that time started to move toward the ideology of communism, before understanding how much damage could be wielded by central dictatorial power. According to Carle C. Zimmerman (then at University of Minnesota, later a sociologist at Harvard), a member of The University of Minnesota’s agricultural faculty reported Kondratieff to Stalin in 1927. The claim was that he was a member of the “Peasant’s Labor Party.” If truth be told, the “Peasant’s Labor Party” did not exist in the Soviet Union at the time: it was an invention of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) to punish those who had ideas not approved by “the system” of communism. Kondratieff was arrested in July 1930 and sentenced to 8 years in prison for this imaginary “crime.” The Soviet Union greatly suffered under Stalin’s “Great Purge” of political repression and opposing ideas (1936 – 1938).
Kondratieff was executed by firing squad in 1938, intensely demonstrating the power of a single-power police state determined to control by suppression. Returning to the processes of cycles, Kondratieff’s research suggested that the time cycle period he found was about 50 years. I’ve heard that anthropologists researching history in Ancient Rome, Greece and Carthage have noted a similar cycles, albeit then about 40 years in duration. This implies that the period of the cycle may be related to life expectancy. It seems obvious to mention that most individuals are not aware of the gradual cycle or even that whatever is happening at any point will be very different within 25 years (let alone 50 years after that point). Personally I find it quite ironic that the collapse of the Soviet Union in July 1991 occurred very close to the 70 year point from its founding in December of 1922, about 70 years as Kondratieff’s discovery (updated for time) would have predicted. Much has been written about Kondratieff’s research discovery as anyone searching the Internet can find. Over the years terminology used to describe the phenomena includes “the long wave” and “the super-cycle.” Personally I prefer to designate this socioeconomic cycle as the Kondratieff wave (or cycle) in honor of the researcher, since the political system that imprisoned his ideas also cost him his life. Many references seen on the Internet for this sociological/socioeconomic cycle display it as an oversimplification.
We often hear “the pendulum swings” in political attitudes and accordingly, cycles. If one polarity of attitude is set at the 12 o’clock position and an opposing view at the 6 o’clock position, then swinging a pointer (like a clock second hand) that represents social attitudes around the dial, will result in a sine wave. PThis presentation exhibits and discusses the facts of human sociology and the derivatives of socioeconomic patterns. These patterns are described at the start, meaning the foundation of the United States, then move to exposing details as they have evolved through not only each cycle, but the intricate societal phases within each cycle. These are brought forward to the significance of the current time. If Executive Coaches and their clients do not know where society and the processes of socioeconomics have been, what drives these and why, they are likely to not understand the present nor the consequences and context for the future! It seems obvious to observe that humanity is permeated by cycles. On an individual level we experience: the cycles of day & night; events and anniversaries of year to year; the structural cycles of school/education followed by work/profession routines; and cycles of social activities that are always interspersed into those routines; all expanding our life’s experience. We are also influenced by cyclical shifts of biorhythms in nature; our lives as we age; and, on a wider field of view, how these are all interspersed with, and influenced by, the seasons of the planet.
Expanding our observational time further we can recognize the phases of our own life’s experience, as our personal transitions, with contributions of those experiences as dynamics with our family, partners and friends. Those life-phases can be viewed as cycles when we recognize that the patterns we’ve experienced in our lives move forward to influence the personalities and characteristics of our children and grandchildren. As the implacable forces of time continue, our children and grandchildren, in turn, become immersed in the prevailing societal attitudes expressed during their lifetimes. It follows they experience a multiplicity of societal trends as attitudes that gradually shift as they did for us. It is easily observed that societal attitudes, based on a collective form of ambient group-think, become political attitudes for public policy.
Notably societal attitudes impact economic structures including economic currency flows and movements (domestically and internationally by exchange). In fact over the processes of time there is a consistent socioeconomic (e.g. political) cycle that has been found to be quite repetitive. The periodicity of the cycle is about one complete approximate cycle per 50 years. The socio-economic (commensurate as political attitude) cycle was originally discovered by Nikolai Kondratieff. He was commissioned by Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union for the study of the western economic system circa 1922. Kondratieff developed a conceptual proposal for a “New Economic Policy” based on a market-led industrialization strategy derived from his research. He observed that the Western Capitalization System would always self-correct for its errors and excesses.
When Lenin died, Joseph Stalin took over. In the mind of Stalin, Kondratieff’s concept was heresy against what he believed: a single mentality of government control; dictatorship. Under a “system” of dictatorial control the probability is that it cannot self-correct because “belief systems” tend to be inflexible. While market accountability and self-correction are not allowed under a communist and dictatorial system, we observe similar issues with systemic socialist systems. Why? Because bureaucrats are emplaced to manage the funds but they eventually demand control over funds, priorities and policies. This gives them institutional and personal power. It is true that even though the funds started out to be public, the public becomes subservient to any bureaucratic system: the citizens, dependent upon the system, have little (if any) control Kondratieff’s visibility became greater to the West after visiting Pitirim Sorokin in Minnesota circa 1927.
Parts of academia in the United States at that time started to move toward the ideology of communism, before understanding how much damage could be wielded by central dictatorial power. According to Carle C. Zimmerman (then at University of Minnesota, later a sociologist at Harvard), a member of The University of Minnesota’s agricultural faculty reported Kondratieff to Stalin in 1927. The claim was that he was a member of the “Peasant’s Labor Party.” If truth be told, the “Peasant’s Labor Party” did not exist in the Soviet Union at the time: it was an invention of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) to punish those who had ideas not approved by “the system” of communism. Kondratieff was arrested in July 1930 and sentenced to 8 years in prison for this imaginary “crime.” The Soviet Union greatly suffered under Stalin’s “Great Purge” of political repression and opposing ideas (1936 – 1938). Kondratieff was executed by firing squad in 1938, intensely demonstrating the power of a single-power police state determined to control by suppression. Returning to the processes of cycles, Kondratieff’s research suggested that the time cycle period he found was about 50 years. I’ve heard that anthropologists researching history in Ancient Rome, Greece and Carthage have noted a similar cycles, albeit then about 40 years in duration. This implies that the period of the cycle may be related to life expectancy. It seems obvious to mention that most individuals are not aware of the gradual cycle or even that whatever is happening at any point will be very different within 25 years (let alone 50 years after that point). Personally I find it quite ironic that the collapse of the Soviet Union in July 1991 occurred very close to the 70 year point from its founding in December of 1922, about 70 years as Kondratieff’s discovery (updated for time) would have predicted.
Much has been written about Kondratieff’s research discovery as anyone searching the Internet can find. Over the years terminology used to describe the phenomena includes “the long wave” and “the super-cycle.” Personally I prefer to designate this socioeconomic cycle as the Kondratieff wave (or cycle) in honor of the researcher, since the political system that imprisoned his ideas also cost him his life. Many references seen on the Internet for this sociological/socioeconomic cycle display it as an oversimplification. We often hear “the pendulum swings” in political attitudes and accordingly, cycles. If one polarity of attitude is set at the 12 o’clock position and an opposing view at the 6 o’clock position, then swinging a pointer (like a clock second hand) that represents social attitudes around the dial, will result in a sine wave. ….. Read More click above