I'm not sure that there is too much of a connection to long-wave theory
(a la Kondratieff), at least from their side, if only because it seems
that the waves or cycles of desiring production are not predetermined.
It would be very interesting, however, to switch it around and try to
make sense of Deleuze or schizoanalysis with the insights of
Kontratieff, perhaps by way of Mandel and Jameson? It seems that if
there is a connection, it's to do with the idea of displaced limits and
the ways in which the business cycle has to constantly fight off
overproduction crises, but don't they say that history is an accident?
This would make a long-wave analysis more tenuous.
Tom S.
There are some major complications in D&G?s engagement in economic
theory and with their views on history.
The first place to start is their claim that history is not dependent
upon "modes of production" but upon abstract machines. Abstract machines
do not determine history but make it possible. Secondly they have a
limited respect for history for as long as it "reduces a co-existence of
becomings to a succession". It is this point I think that really
distances D&G from Kondratieff - waves are not becomings.
In A-O where they first describe capitalism as constantly approaching
its own limits, warding them off and extending them it might be
reasonable to take this in economic terms. But really I don?t think that
D&G?s formulation of capitalism has very much to do with traditional
Marxist theories which see it as a "mode of production" distinct from
say Asiatic production. It is a mistake (an old-fashioned Marxist
hangover) to talk of "over-production" crisis as this confuses supply
with demand. "over production" crisis are crisis of demand, not supply.
I?m not really sure just what these "limits" that capitalism is meant to
be approaching and then warding off are meant to be; unless it is taken
as a forshadowing (which is a concept I really dislike/don?t really
believe in) of their later discussion of the capitalist axiomatic, its
necessary incompleteness and its continual reinvention.
Jon.
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