Capitalism’s Great Leap Forward (1945–80)

Abstract

Whatever those who see in each war, in each crisis and hint of crisis, a new aggravation of the “general crisis of capitalism” may think, what has been accomplished in the present period is in fact capitalism’s new “leap forward.” Of course, in a considerable part of the world capitalism reigns no longer; a new mode of accumulation and industrialization, another class society, and a tremendous concentration of state power have brought to these regions new means for production and resource appropriation. But World War II, the reconstruction and the period of prosperity which followed, decolonization, the internationalization of capital, and new industrialization in the third world all testify to a new thrust by capitalism on a world scale. And the crisis of the 1970s was in some ways the means by which this new expansion of capitalism and its accompanying mutations were carried out.