Capitalistic organization and national response: Social dynamics in the age of Schumpeter

In retrospect from the present, the period 1920–1940, bracketed between two catastrophic wars, appears also as one of unusual economic disturbance in the advanced countries and in the world economy. This paper seeks to go behind the incidents, personalities and flimsy policy structures of these decades, and to root both the economic and the political catastrophes in the growing nationalism of Western countries after 1870. That cultural and political development in turn is seen to be derived from a misfit between expanding international and large-scale capitalist production organization and the basic economic interests and social identity of many groups and classes in the European nations. Conditions in European and world economic organization since World War II are considered briefly in this light.