Theories of Economic Cycles, bourgeois theories studying the character of the development of the capitalist economy, the reasons for booms and crises and accompanying economic processes and phenomena, as well as the ways of influencing them by certain methods of regulation. Although there are frankly apologetic conceptions which maintain that crises are accidental and may not happen at all, many bourgeois theorists did say they were inevitable under capitalism. However, they explained them by reasons lying outside the sphere of capitalist production. The 19th-century petty-bourgeois economist Sismondi linked the reason for crises with insufficient popular consumption. Lenin refuted this theory in his work "A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism" (Collected Works, Vol. 2). The Russian bourgeois economist M. TuganBaranovsky saw the cause of crises in credit-monetary phenomena. In the 1920s, Albert Hahn (Germany) held that crises and the cyclic nature of the economy were caused by the incorrect policy of the banks. All these theories deny the antagonistic contradictions of capitalist reproduction. Keynesianism and neo- Keynesianism of different shades are especially prominent in bourgeois theories of economic cycles. Keynes saw a crisis as the result of people’s inclination to save money, and in the growing non-consumed part of profits, which leads to insufficient consumer goods demand. At the same time, 357 since capital investment becomes less profitable, the capitalists’ interest in using their capital wanes. This leads to a drop in demand for producer goods. Insufficient demand obstructs the crisis-free development of the capitalist economy. According to Keynes, crises can be overcome by a purposeful state economic policy, specifically by the state influencing aggregate demand, first of all by creating conditions for increasing investment. These include: lowering real wages, providing government credits and subsidies to owners, regulating loan interest rates, and expanding nonproductive consumption, including the militarisation of the economy. Keynesians try to dampen cyclic vacillations, and to preserve and strengthen the capitalist system. Before World War II several capitalist countries, particularly the United States under Franklin Roosevelt, did take anti-crisis measures based on Keynesianism as well as evolve principles of anticyclic policy for the postwar period. The dynamic models of neo-Keynesianism, constructed on the basis of Keynes’ general methodological and theoretical conceptions, concentrated on the problems of growth of the capitalist economy. His followers, in particular Alvin Hansen, say that among the causes of the cyclic nature is the misinterpreted dependence of accumulation on increased consumption, and evolve formulas of state regulation which would counter the shortcomings of spontaneous reproduction under capitalism. The left wing of modern Keynesianism link the insufficient solvent demand of the working people, which influences the dynamics of effective demand, with inequality in the distribution of profits and with monopoly control of the economy. But representatives of this wing as well, such as the British economist Joan Robinson, think that crises can be overcome within the capitalist framework by state measures of regulation. Today, Keynesian conceptions are in a state of bankruptcy. The 1974-75 world economic crisis and the aggravation of the energy, raw materials, monetary and economic problems have revealed the inconsistency of Keynesian theoretical constructions. The measures proposed to overcome crisis cycles turned out to be ineffective. So is the modern version of neoclassical theory represented by monetarism (Milton Friedman and others), which allows only one sphere of state regulation—maintenance of the stable rate of growth of the monetary supply. Marxism-Leninism proceeds from the fact that abolition of capitalist ownership and its replacement by socialist ownership corresponding to the modern character of social production can only end crises and cyclic vacillations and create the possibility for continuous expanded reproduction.