p The non-coincidence in the time, duration, and intensity of the different phases of the cycle, and in the depth of the crisis in the individual national economies, of Ihe 50s and 60s was not at all unique in the history of the world economy. On the contrary, the whole experience of the evolution of the capitalist mode of production indicates that such noncoincidence was frequently a regular form of the functioning of the world cycle.

p Although the inner unity of the national cycles, linked togelher by an appropriale syslem of international division of labour, is expressed in the dynamics of the movement of 192 production in the world capitalist economy, that in no way signifies that they cannot manifest themselves at different times, in different months and even years, within the context of any one world cycle. Furthermore, it inevitably remains quite probable in such a complicated, many-sided process that there will be a non-coincidence of the cyclic movement of production in separate countries, and that there will often be considerable differences in the aggregate forms of the display of this movement from the specific forms of its dynamics within the separate national economies.

p When we turn, in this connection, to indisputable historical facts, they prove that the principal capitalist countries repeatedly entered the crisis phases of the business cycle at different times in the past. Over the period from 1857 to 1933 the capitalist system experienced, we know, nine world overproduction crises. In only two of them (those of 1857 and 1907) did the crisis develop in all the main countries in the same calendar year.  [192•1 

p That, however, in no way means that the outlines of the world cycle became more and more blurred during capitalism’s conversion into an all-embracing system, or that it had already begun to disintegrate into national economies at the end of the nineteenth century. Its whole history indicates that a tendency to broaden the objective conditions of a single world cycle has predominated.  [192•2 

p It also does not follow from analysis of the postwar cycles that there was only a tendency then toward asynchronism, or that Hie world cycle had become more and more ’ disjointed’. An opposite tendency was operating simultaneously that was above all a consequence of the whole growing internationalisation of social production and led objectively to a stronger convergence of the course of the cyclic 193 development of the separate countries and principal industries. One or the other of these trends is manifested more prominently under the impact of a whole host of concrete circumstances. And there are adequate grounds, for all that, for thinking that an obvious connection between the periods of cyclic rise and fall in production growth rates predominated in the main industries of the capitalist world as well as in most of its countries.

p The figures in Table 18 can be taken as confirmation of this point. After the, world crisis of 1958, for instance, a comparatively brief period of a considerable rise in production growth rates set in in almost all capitalist countries. Then the movement began to slacken almost everywhere, and reached a low at the very beginning of the 60s.

p By Ihe middle of the 60s relative high indices of industrial development again began to be typical of the majority of capitalist and developing countries, which again declined in many of them from the beginning of the second half of the decade. That led in 1967 to a substantial fall in the world growth rates of capitalist industry, after which a brief cyclic boom began again in the overwhelming majority of capitalist countries.

p At the very beginning of the 70s the economies of almost all these countries experienced a fall in growth rates at the same time, which led to an absolute fall of production in some of them. But a little later the economy began to pick up in all the industrialised countries in 1971, and their production of industrial goods increased somewhat on an average. The peak of the upswing in this cycle was also reached almost simultaneously in the overwhelming number of capitalist and developing countries. As a result capitalist industrial production rose by 7 per cent on a world scale in 1972 and by 9 per cent in 1973.  [193•1 

p Thus, there was a definite strengthening at the beginning of the 70s of the tendency toward a synchronising of the country-by-country movement of industrial development, which showed particularly clearly in the middle of the decade when the industrially developed countries began, one after the other, to enter the longest arid deepest postwar world economic crisis. This trend was undoubtedly strengthened because the crisis developed in a period of acute aggravation 194 of the deep conIradiclions of capitalism’s whole system of world economic relations. Total industrial output consequently did not increase in its economic centres in 1974 and fell hy nearly 7 per cent in 1075. At the beginning of the 80s industrial production fell markedly in the industrial centres of capitalism compared with the preceding decade. For most countries the recovery from this crisis has the temporary character typical of recent world business cycles. In 1076 the total volume of industrial production of capitalist and developing countries was more than 8 per cent above the 1975 level; later, however, as in several preceding cycles, there was a slowing of growth rates primarily associated in the developed countries with the sluggish upswing in the leading West European countries, and in the developing countries with the comparatively slow rates of many Latin American and African countries. At the same time North America and several developing countries in Asia, especially in the Middle East, showed quite considerable growth. The growth rates of industrial production in North America, for instance, were 50 per cent higher than in Western Europe in 1976-79, and in the developing countries as a whole somewhat higher than in Latin America. There was thus a certain strengthening of the asynchronism of the development of the separate groups of countries with this phase of the world capitalist cycle. This asynchronism markedly weakened after the USA, Great Britain, Canada, France, Belgium, Sweden, and most other capitalist countries entered the next loop of economic slump at the turn of the decade to the 80s (as is from Table 18 above). In 1980, compared with the preceding year, the capitalist countries’ general volume of industrial production declined by roughly 0.5 per cent. At the same time there was a steep fall in industrial growth rates in all the main regions of the developing world.  [194•1  Annual index numbers cannot, however, be considered adequate for a comprehensive description of the capitalist economy’s cyclic movement. They only let us distinguish the general trends of this movement since they average out and smooth over the course of the cycle within shorter intervals. We therefore need more detailed index numbers in order to study problems of the simultaneous character and lack of 195 synchronisation of the cyclic fluctuations of the different parts of the world economy and of the depth of the gap between I ho highest and lowest points of each cycle. In (hat respect it is very important to analyse the quarterly figures, since that lets us get a clearer idea of the build-up of the trends of economic development during capitalism’s feverish fluctuations by separate quarters. A graphic illustration of this is given by the quarterly movement of the index numbers of industrial production in seveial of the main regions at the end of the 60s and in the early 70s (see Table 19). It is a special study to elucidate the general patterns and features of the quarterly fluctuations of industrial growth rates over the whole postwar period for the various countries and regions of the capitalist world economy that does not come within the tcope of this chapter; still the rounded-off index numbers in Table 19 indicate a marked coincidence of the quarterly fluctuations in the main areas of the capitalist world, during the three considerable economic recessions successively Differed by them. In our opinion, these indices can be take:) as an important orienter for posing several pressing problems of the current cyclic development of the capitalist economy. Above all, they indicate that there are quite sizable variations in the rates of decline and growth of production within one and the same phase of a cycle. In North America, for instance, where there was a substantial drop in industrial production in 1970-71, these rates did not decline steadily.

p In our view Table 19 can be used as an indicator of sorts for several problems of the present-day business cycle. It shows, for example, that there were quite considerable fluctuations of the rates of decline and growth of production within one and the same phase of the cycle. Even in North America where, in 1970-71, there was an absolute fall in the volume of industrial production, there was no steady decline of rates. The reduction in volume of production in some quarters alternated with growth in others.

p At, the same time analysis of the movement of quarterly indices for the \vhole capitalist world economy enables us to draw another conclusion. Even when, according to the mean annual indices, imlnMiial production increased slightly on the whole during a world slump (as happened in the early 70s), a real decline in its scale is clearly traceable in the light of quarterly indices. Hearing in mind the ratio between
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196 Table 19 Quarterly Index Numbers of Industrial Production (in percentages of the preceding quarter) 1969 1970 1971 1973 1974 Countries IV I II III IV I II III IV IV_t I II III IV Capitalist 5.5 Western Europe 13.0 North America 1.4 Developing 3.1 -2.5 2.3 -4.0 4.1 -2.3 2.8 -6.8 13.8 -2.7 0.5 -2.1 0.7 -1.2 3.7 1.8 2.3 -0.5 0.6 -2.6 6.1 6.9 -3.2 0.6 7.2 13.4 15.9 1.4 0.7 -1.4 2.2 0.8 -0.6 0.5 2.3 3.4 4.7 -3.2 1.7 -4.9 1.7 -3.6 1.3 -9.1 9.0 -2.5 2.5 -0.8 -3.3 -4.0 7.1 0.7 1.5 1975 1979 1980 1981* I II III IV IV I II III IV I II III IV Capitalist -6.8 Western Europe -6.7 North America -5.2 Developing -6.5 1.8 -2.7 7.3 7.3 0.0 -9.8 18.8 16.4 0.9 1.8 2.7 0.0 3.9 3.0 1.5 0.4 -1.2 -2.5 -5.9 7.9 -1.5 -3.5 -10.8 14.3 -0.6 -3.7 -2.0 4.1 -4.0 0.5 0.9—2.7 -1.1 0.9 -3.6 4.5 -3.0 0.7 -9.0 14.9 1.4 1.7 -0.3 -4.5 -0 5.0 0.1 1.2 * Estimated Sources: UN Monthly Bulletin ot Statistics for the appropriate years. 197
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the peak of the preceding boom (fourth quarter of 1969) and the low of this crisis (third quarter of 1970), the reduction (judging by the comparative data) was 3.3 per cent. There was correspondingly a fall in the volume of industrial production in many regions. In Western Europe, for example, it was 5.5 per cent (between the third quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1970), while the annual index numbers for the same years indicated a growth of industrial production by 5.7 per cent. There were also periods of a reduction in the scale of industrial production in developing countries (in t-ho first quarter of 1970 and the first quarter of 1971).  [197•1 

p The processes considered were displayed with special force and clarity during the world economic crisis of the mid-70s (the biggest since the war), and later again in the crisis of the early 80s. The declines in production touched bottom respectively in the third quarter of 1975 and 1980. In the first case the level of industrial production of the developed capitalist countries was nearly 11 per cent below the quarterly high of the preceding cyclic upswing, and in the second case 8.1 per cent below.  [197•2 

p The figures in the table also characterise certain current features of the quarterly fluctuations of industrial production in developing countries. Duringthelast world recessions these fluctuations have clearly become stronger, which has led to a slowing down, and in some quarters an absolute decline, in their rates of industrial growth. A link is clearly traceable, moreover, between the quarterly dynamics of their industry and the corresponding indices of the industrial centres of capitalism. This link was particularly marked in 1975 and 1980, when there was an absolute drop in the gross industrial production of all the developing countries, taken together, for the first time in the history of the postwar world capitalist cycle.  [197•3 

p Analysis of the quarterly movement of world capitalist industrial production, and of its main components, gives grounds for stating that there was certainly an absolute decline in the volume of production in the 70s and the early 80s in the overwhelming majority of countries between the 198 peak and bottom quarters of each of Ihe 18 periods of world industrial recession noted in the table.

One can say, as a result, that the quarterly changes in production, for all their dependence on seasonal and oilier current factors, make it possible to gi\e a clear picture of the length, scale, and course of the world capitalist cycle. At the same time we must not forget that the quarterly figures by themselves, out of context of the annual dynamics of the movement of production, cannot be considered the decisive instrument or the principal statistical source of information for studying the long-term trends of world cyclic fluctuations. For in periods of comparatively high business activity one repeatedly meets cases of a sharp slowing or even drop in production in separate quarters, associated with seasonal or other short-term fluctuations of the market situation.  [198•1  Study of the relations of the various sectors and spheres of world production in their cyclic development must therefore be based first of all on analysis of the annual indicators, which help us bring out the resultant trend of the long-term dynamics of the fluctuations of production and the market within a single world business cycle.