p The scale and periodicity of the business cycle are primarily characterised, in their most general forms, by indicators of the dynamics of gross production. These characteristics are quite justified, since the fluctuations of the cycle embrace more or less all the main spheres of the business activity of capitalist society. By no means all the sectors of social production involved in creating the gross product, however, play the same role in the shaping of the mechanism of the capitalist cycle. Most of them (agriculture, the services sphere, transport arid communications, etc.) either reflect or only indirectly affect the process, which is underlain (as MarxistLeninist political economy has established) by cyclic fluctuations of the decisive sphere of material production, i.e. industry.

p It is the successively repeating crises of industrial overproduction that ultima! cly determine the onset of the conclud-
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184 Table 18 i’-rowth Rates of Industrial Production in the World Capitalist Economy (in percentages of the preceding year) Countries Year All Western Europe Great Britain Belgium The Netherlands Italy France West Germany USA Canada Deve lopJapan in;j countries 1951 9.0 9.5 6.0 13.0 -3.5 15.0 14.5 14.0 8.5 5.5 40.0 7.0 1952 2.5 1.5 -3.5 -4.5 0 2.5 -7.6 7.5 3.0 5.5 0 4.5 1953 6.0 5.5 6.5 -1.5 9.5 7.5 1.0 9.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.5 1954 0 7.5 7.0 6.0 10.0 9.5 9.0 12.5 -5.0 -1.5 11.0 6.0 1955 10.5 10.0 5.0 9.0 11.0 9.5 9.0 14.5 13.0 15.0 6.5 7 . 5 1956 4.5 4.5 0 6.0 5.5 7.0 6.0 8.0 4.0 9.0 24.5 8.5 1957 2.5 4.5 2.0 0 2.0 6.5 9.0 5.5 0.5 -1.5 15.0 6.5 1958 -2.5 1.5 -1.5 5.5 0 4.0 3.0 3.0 -6.5 -1.5 1.0 6.0 1959 9.5 7.0 5.0 4.0 9.0 11.5 2.5 8.0 13.5 8.0 24.0 7.0 1960 6.0 9.8 7.5 8.0 12.5 15.0 7.5 11.5 2.5 3.5 20.0 13.5 1961 3.5 5.0 1.0 5.0 4. .5 9.0 3.5 5.5 1.8 0 20.0 7.5 1962 6.0 5.0 1.0 7.0 4.5 9.5 4.5 3.0 8.0 12.0 7.0 4.0 1963 6.5 5.5 4.0 7.5 5.5 8.5 5.5 3.0 6.5 6.5 11.0 5.0 1964 8.0 7.5 8.0 4.0 10.0 2.0 7.0 8.0 8.0 10.0 16.0 10.0 1965 7.0 5.5 3.0 5.0 5.5 4.0 2.8 7.5 8.5 8.0 3.5 7.5 185 1966 6.5 5.0 1.0 1.0 6.0 11.5 6.5 1.5 9.5 7.5 20.0 6.5 1967 2J5 1.0 0 2.0 4.5 9.0 4.0 -2.5 2.5 2.5 15.0 4.0 1968 8 5 7.5 5.5 6.0 11.0 6.0 3.5 9.0 5.5 7.0 15.0 9.0 1969 7.0 9.0 3.0 10.0 10.5 4.5 12.0 13.0 4.0 6.5 15.5 8.5 1970 3.0 5.5 1.0 3.0 8.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 -4.5 2.0 13.5 8.0 1971 2.5 3.0 0 3.0 6.0 0 4.0 2.0 2.0 6.0 3.0 7.5 1972 7.5 5.0 2.0 5.5 4.5 4.0 7.5 4.0 7.5 6.5 6.5 8.5 1973 9.0 7.5 9.0 7.0 7.5 9.5 7.0 7.0 8.0 9.5 15.0 10.5 1974 1.0 1.5 -4.5 3.5 5.0 5.0 3.0 -2.0 0 3.0 -3.5 3.0 1975 -6.5 -6.0 -5.0 -10.0 -3.0 -9.0 -7.5 -4.5 -9.0 -5.5 -10.5 -4.5 1976 8.5 7.0 3.0 9.0 8.0 12.0 9.0 8.0 11.0 6.0 11.0 0.3 1977 4.0 2.0 4.5 0 0 2.0 2.0 2.5 5.5 1.5 4.5 6.0 1978 3.5 2.5 2.5 2.0 1.0 1.5 1.0 1.0 6.0 3.5 6.0 2.5 1979 4.5 4.5 3.5 4.5 2.5 7.0 4.5 5.5 4.5 5.5 8.0 4.5 1980 -0.5 0.5 -7.0 -0.5 -1.0 4.5 0 0.5 -4.0 -2.5 6.5 -1.0 1981 1.0 -1.5 -4.0 -1.0 -2.0 -2.5 -2.5 0.5 2.5 1.5 3.0 2.0 Notes: A single line beneath the total indicator for the world capitalist economy indicates the peak year for the rate ol production for the period concerned and a double line, the lowest for the same period, Sources: UN The Growth of World Industry, UN Monthly Bulletin of Statistics and OECD. Main Economic Indicators for the appropriate years, 186
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ing phase of a business cycle and the beginning of the next. Each of them, possessing great peculiarities and reflecting the concrete features of the current moment, differs markedly from other crises in its duration, scale, and socioeconomic consequences. Comparison of these differences, and clarification of the common features of the postwar overproduction crises are the starting point for an analysis of the present-day specific features of the industrial cycles of world capitalist economy.

p As we have already noted the postwar course of the general development of capitalist economy, its cyclic development included, does in fact have essential features that are displayed in a marked intensification of the urievenness and spasmodic growth of its constituent parts. These features in turn have greatly complicated elucidation of the interaction of the cyclic movement of the individual national economies’ production. Still, this interaction of the national cycles within a single world cycle is clearly traceable in the postwar period. The figures in Table 18, based on UN statistics, can be taken as evidence of that.

p It follows from the table, first of all, that the capitalist conception of crisis-free, ‘harmonious’ development of tlie economy of postwar capitalism is by no means built on facts. At the same time the table confirms tbe truth and validity of the conclusion of the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties that

p state-monopoly regulation, exercised in forms and on a scale which moot the interests of monopoly capital and arc aimed at preserving its rule, is unablo to control the spontaneous forces of the capitalist market. Practically no capitalist stale has been able to avoid considerable cyclic fluctuations arid slumps in its economy; in some countries periods of rapid industrial growth alternate with periods in which there is a slowdown and often a drop in production.  [186•1 

p As is clear from Table 18 the sharpest fluctuations in industrial growth rates, with a cyclic character, have occurred in the leading capitalist countries, above all in the USA, in spite of the fact that it was there that state- monopoly counter-crisis regulation of the economy lias been very actively and broadly practised. But state intervention in economic affairs was unable to eliminate the causes of this 187 cyclicity. At best the disease was postponed. At the same time the counter-crisis measures implemented by governments began to affect the specific postwar features of the movement of the separate phases of their national cycles to one degree or another, and consequently the world industrial cycle as well. Among the other factors operating on the postwar features of the cycle the commencing process of accelerated growth of the economies of developing countries occupied a notable place. In the vast majority of the latter, as we kno\v, counter-cyclic regulation was not practised; it must bo noted, however, that their annual growth rates of industrial production have been rather higher and stabler in recent decades than in capitalism’s industrial centres.

p In the years considered a quite consistent succession of periods of a rise and fall in the aggregate growth rates of the separate countries’ industrial production is traceable through the ceaseless short-term fluctuations of their economies. Each fluctuation has its own peculiar features, but there is nothing unusual in that. There has not been a single world industrial cycle during capitalism’s whole development that fully repeated the preceding one and did not reflect specific features of the current state of the economy of some one of the main groups of countries and of the internationalising of their social production. The problem of the interaction of the world cycle and the cyclic dynamics of production in the leading capitalist countries inevitably arises when we are studying these features. Our attention is therefore eaught by the following facts at the very beginning of our analysis of the data summarised in Table 18.

p The two substantial declines in the general growth rales of industrial production in the 50s were the result of a quite significant economic crises in the periods concerned in the economic situation in almost all the developed countries. There was also a certain slowing of growth in the same periods in the whole group of developing countries. This process evolved on the background of an intensification of the asynchronous character of the cyclic movement of the economies of the various regions and countries connected with the long-term consequences of World War II. While there was an almost universal slowing of industrial growth rates in the early 50s, the most marked decline was experienced by Western Europe, where there was an absolute fall in 188 production in several countries (Great Britain, France, Belgium, etc.).  [188•1 

p Later the economies of most of Hie West European countries, Japan, and a considerable number of developing countries picked up quite rapidly and entered on an upswing. The North American countries, however, reached this upswing much later. From the middle of 1953 there were again deep crisis phenomena there that continued for the greater part of the next year, which led to a fall of industrial production by 5.2 per cent in the USA and 1.7 per cent in Canada. That ultimately conditioned the zero total growth of production in that year, since the USA was producing more than half of the total industrial product.  [188•2 

p During the futher movement of the world cycle, in the course of which the peak growth rales were reached in 1955 (10.5 per cent), the temporary upswing phase prepared the ground for the next crisis slump, signs of which began to show clearly at the end of 1957. The low point of this cycle was reached in 1958, when industrial production fell for the first time since the war in absolute terms, by 2.5 per cent. The crisis swept all the industrial countries without exception almost simultaneously, but with varying force. The epicentre was the USA where the annual volume of industrial production declined by more than 6 per cent.  [188•3  Most of the countries of Western Europe, Canada, and more dynamically developing Japan (whose annual increment of industrial output fell from almost 25 per cent in 1950 to 15 per cent in 1957 and 1 per cent in 1958), were drawn into it.

p A characteristic of the 1957-58 crisis was that many of the countries of the primary commodity periphery had begun to 189 experience serious economic difficulties even at the end of the preceding upswing, although their industrial growth rates as a whole did not substantially decline. At the same time the leading sectors of their economies, especially the raw material industries oriented on export, were in an extremely grave position. All that went hand in hand with a marked weakening of their position on the capitalist market.  [189•1  Separate countries, and groups of countries, did not experience the consequences of this crisis of the late 50s to an equal extent, and the crisis phase was not protracted. World industrial production soon again reached quite high growth rates (in 1959 growth was more than 9 per cent).

p The capitalist economy of the 60s was characterised by a further intensification of the unevenncss of the growth of its various parts, which could not help affecting the dynamics of its cyclic development. In several industrialised countries and many developing ones the tendency noted in the 50s toward a certain acceleration of industrial growth rates was maintained, which encouraged a strengthening of the asynchronous character of their movement in various countries and groupings. The amplitude of the cyclic fluctuations of world industrial development indices was less marked in the 60s, on r,n average, than in the preceding decade.

p The consequences of the major recessions in some countries were compensated one way or another on the whole by higher growth rates in others. There was a marked slowing of production rates in 1961, for instance, in the USA, Great Britain, France, West Germany, the Netherlands and certain other countries, associated with features of their cyclic movement, and bearing the character of a partial overproduction crisis. But because of the quite high growth rates in several other countries, including Japan (20 per cent), Italy (9 per cent), and the developing countries (7.5 per cent), the average annual increment of the industrial product was 3.5 per cent in 1961 for the whole non-socialist world, against 6 per cent in the preceding year.

p In the following years the industry of France (1905), Great Britain (1962, I960), Italy (196/j),’Japan (19(15), Belgium (19GB), West Germany (1967), and certain oilier counlries, allernalcly experienced crisis phenomena, and there was a marked lowering of industrial growth in 1he developing countries as a group (from 13 per cent in 19(50 lo 4 per cent in 1962). Still, the annual growth of world capitalist industry was comparatively high and stable, not falling below 5 per cent, and being (5.9 per cent on an average for the period 1902-60.

p It was in those years that views began to be very widely disseminated in capitalist economic literature that the Marxist theory of the cyclic dovelopmenl of the capitalist economy was being refuted by the real course of events, since crisis recessions in tlic economies of individual capitalist countries had now allegedly begun to be local only and had uo fundamental influence on the development of the world system.

p The period favourable for broad propagation of these views was not, however, very long. In 1967 there was a substantial lowering of industrial development rales on a world scale (lo 2.5 per cenl), which showed that there was again a strengthening of the synchronous character of their development in most of the industrial centres, although a relatively high stale of business was maintained in some developed counlries (e.g. Japan and Ilaly), and in most of the developing countries. The brief boom thai began laler, which was accompanied by an increase in the world production of 8.5 and 7.5 per cent in 1908 and 1909 respectively, was in fact the forerunner of a significant fall in growth rates at the very beginning of the 1970s. As in the preceding crisis phases the centre was in Ihe USA; at the same lime the crisis manifesled itself painfully in the economies of such major countries as West Germany, Great Britain, and Italy, and to a considerable exlenl also in Japan, Belgium, and olher counlries. The national cycles were more synchronous, though they remained far from identical, and during their evolution there was no sleep curtailment of the movement of production as a whole in the developing countries and certain individual developed counlries (France and llu; Netherlands).  [190•1 

p This intensification of the unevenness in Ihc time, scale, and frequency of the sequence of the individual phases of Ihe industrial cycle in various countries, which was averaged out and smoothed out in Ihe summary international indicators, led to the aggregate industrial production of world capitalism not falling in absolute terms between 1959 and 197/I, i.e. for a space of 10 years. True, the gap between the highest and lowest annual growth rales was very considerable. In the late GOs and early 70s, for instance, it atlained Ihe value of a faclor of more than three (the growth of industrial produclion of the whole non-socialist world was 8.5 per cenl in 1968 and 2.5 per cent in 1971).

Was this asynchronousness of the poslwar industrial growth rates of individual countries a qualitatively new thing in the world capitalist economy? This point is becoming especially acute and pressing, for another posing of the problem follows logically from it, viz., was there a single orld cycle in the first postwar decades or did the main trends of development of capitalist society’s productive power lead lo its disintegration more and more into mutually isolated national cycles?