From Stagnation in the 30s to Slow Growth in the 70s

Morishima in a recent work (1984) has stressed that economic theory cannot be the same for every country nor for different periods in one and the same country. This applies also to stagnation theory. My stagnation theory was to explain the secular decline of growth from the nineteenth century to the depression of the 1930s in the US. This country was chosen because it seemed to me an easier subject for study than European countries — more of a closed and private economy than they were and less complicated by feudal past and imperialism. I was, however, inspired by a belief that behind the differences of individual countries a common pattern of development of accumulation in capitalism existed, and that a study of a comparatively simple case might reveal something of it.