Does history REALLY repeat itself?

Here is a quote that I found in a book (on GOOGLE BOOKS), that I found interesting:

"The outcome of this management of industrial affairs through pecuniary transactions, therefore, has been to dissociate the interests of those men who exercise the discretion from the interests of the community. This is true in a peculiar degree and increasingly since the fuller development of the machine industry has brought about a close- knit and wide-reaching articulation of industrial processes, and has at the same time given rise to a class of pecuniary experts whose business is the strategic management of the interstitial relations of the system. Broadly, this class of business men, in so far as they have no ulterior strategic ends to serve, have an interest in making the disturbances of the system large and frequent, since it is in the conjunctures of change that their gain emerges. Qualifications of this proposition may be needed, and it will be necessary to return to this point presently."
The Theory of Business Enterprise By Thorstein Veblen

Just as a side note, what year do you think this was published? Well if you guessed 1904 then you are correct! Isn't amazing to think that when you hear history repeats itself, that it really does. What are your comments of this excerpt.