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330 Economics
Let us revert to the relationship between economics and history. Especially
when viewed in the wider context of secular growth (i.e. long-term changes in
social structures and institutional factors), problems of dynamics provide a
common background for at least some generalizations on economics and his-
tory. It is significant that the more ambitious attempts at outlining regularities
in economic development have recently come from economic historians. De-
spite fundamental methodological shortcomings, W.W. Rostow’s book Stages
of Economic Growth has attracted so much attention precisely because it meets
the need for a synthesis of which economists are so acutely aware. Theoretical
generalizations regarding the process of economic development have been at-
tempted in the United States by A. Gerschenkorn; the revealing studies of the
Polish economic historian W. Kula have been mentioned in Part I.
Abramovits’ study, mentioned above, makes the important observation that
‘long-term growth presumably consitutes a process of cumulative rather than
repetitive change, to a greater degree than other economic phenomena’. The
study of economic growth, he continues, ‘therefore stands closer to history than
do other economic subjects. Not only will study of the past, even the distant past,
furnish us with the bulk of necessary data, but it seems unlikely that, for the
foreseeable future, the economics of growth can be much more than economic
history rationalized here and there to a limited degree as uniformities in the
economic processes are established. The sweeping visions of Marx, Sombart,
Weber and others will, no doubt, colour and direct our thoughts and work, but
the generalizations we trust will be less profound and of narrower application’.
The pessimism of the second part of this quotation appears to be justified only
if it is assumed that history in the wider sense is an idiographic science, without
any nomothetic ambitions. The close association of the study of economic growth
with history as thus defined does indeed amount to a renunciation of all attempts
to establish the laws of social (and hence economic) development, and to rele-
gating the study of secular (long-term) growth to the status of a discipline chiefly
concerned with the systematic description of past processes and the formula-
tion of timid statements as to the applicability (above all by analogy) of past
experience to contemporary and future situations.
As already pointed out, the economic laws of the theory of static equilibrium
have been invalidated so far as long-term dynamic processes are concerned.
Dynamic economics must therefore either give up searching for economic laws,
or seek them in the actual process of economic development. The present authors
believe that the second is a real alternative, and that both repetitive and cumu-
lative processes are characterized by certain regularities; this does not obviate
the need to keep their specific character in mind in studying specific develop-
ment processes. To use Kalecki’s terminology, it could be said that economic
laws should be sought not only within the econometric model but perhaps even
more so in the reciprocal relations between the mechanism of economic devel-
opment as described in the model, and the broad changes which take place in
the factors of development outside the model (cf. Kalecki’s article ‘Economet-
ric Model and Historical Materialism’).
Marxist historical materialism is based on the recognition of the development