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Abstract
Considering that the rate of profit constitutes a key indicator for the analysis of the evolution of capitalist economies, this article aims to study the case of France from 1896 to 2019, i.e. 124 years in total. From a series of productive capital stocks reconstructed for the occasion, a profit rate is calculated at the macroeconomic level within a Marxian conceptual framework. In more than a century, three successive long waves can be identified, part of a secular trend towards the fall of the French profit rate. The latter, however, recovered several times during the three sub-periods, but eventually reoriented downwards, with fluctuations of ever smaller amplitude and an unfolding in a downward spiral of French capitalism. This long-term downward trend is mainly due to the increase in the organic composition of capital.
Profit rate; Long Waves; Productive Capital; Organic Composition of Capital.
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