Elements for a study of the profit rate: France, 1896-2019

Abstract

Considering that the rate of profit constitutes a key indicator for the analysis of the evolution of capitalist economies, this article proposes to study the case of France from 1896 to 2019, i.e. 124 years in total. From a series of stocks of productive capital reconstructed for the occasion, a rate of profit is calculated at the macroeconomic level within a conceptual framework faithful to Marx. Over this period of more than a century, three successive long waves are identified, part of a secular trend towards the fall in the French rate of profit. The latter, however, recovered several times during the three sub-periods, but finally reoriented downwards, with fluctuations of increasingly reduced amplitude and a deployment in a decreasing spiral of French capitalism. This long-term downward trend is mainly due to the rise in the organic composition of capital.