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From the Great Depression to the Great War (1873–1914)

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Abstract

Before capitalism became dominant, economic life was shaken, more or less regularly, by changes in weather conditions, good and bad harvests, demographic changes, and wars. The whole phase of capitalist industrialization was accomplished through cyclical movements having a certain regularity: periods of prosperity and euphoria checked by a recession or broken by a crisis.

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Notes

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  5. Because of their mobilization within the home country, the proportion is slightly lower for industry workers (8.8 percent) or transport workers (8.1 percent) than for farmers (10 percent) or liberal professions (10.7 percent). Alfred Sauvy, Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres, 3 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1965–72), vol. I, p. 442.

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  36. Ibid; J.-J. Carre, P. Dubois, E. Malinvaud, La croissance française (Paris: Ed. Seuil, 1972);

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  42. Cited by Nicos Poulantzas, Facism and Dictatorship (London: NLB, 1974), p. 190–91.

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  45. Cited by J. J. Chevallier, Les grandes oeuvres politiques, de Machiaviel à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949), p. 369.

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  46. Terms of exchange of industrial Europe (including nine countries: Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland) were as follows: the ratio of export to import prices, on the base 1913 = 100, rose from 96 in 1920 to 109 in 1929, 138 in 1933, and fell to 124 in 1937 (C. P. Kindleberger, “Industrial Europe’s Terms of Trade on Current Account, 1870- 1953,” The Economic Journal, March 1955).

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  47. In the United States, the percentage of employees in the active population went from 10 percent in 1910 to 14 percent in 1920 and 17 percent in 1940 (L. G. Reynolds, Labor Economics and Labor Relations [New York: Prentice Hall, 1949], p. 27).

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  48. See Michel Beaud, Socialisme a lépreuve de léhistoire (Paris: Ed. Seuil, 1980), chs. 4, 5, 6, 7.

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© 1981 Editions du Seuil

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Beaud, M. (1981). From the Great Depression to the Great War (1873–1914). In: A History of Capitalism 1500–1980. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17336-5_5

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