3 
Stagnation then and now 
Morishima in recent works 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 19th century to the depression of the 
1930s in the U.S. 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. 
Econonomists in general were not much interested in my 
ideas because at the time of their publication conditions had 
moved far away from stagnation. The rate of accumulation 
and of employment was high. Later interest began to increase 
in some circles and after 1975 I was sometimes commended for 
having shown foresight. This made me smile because on the one 
hand I did not think that the experience of post-war prosperity 
necessarily disproved my ideas, on the other hand I did not 
think that these ideas were directly applicable to the new 
problems. I spoke of stagnation policy then, in contrast to 
stagnation theory. 
I shall deal in my paper with three problems: 
1) The old problem of the maturing of the American economy 
from the 19th century to the great depression. 
2) The explanation of the exceptionally high accumulation and 
employment of the prosperous post-war decades and how they 
can be reconciled with maturity of the American economy.