Capitalism in Chaos

May 5, 2023 5:47 AM

Capitalism in Chaos explores an often-overlooked consequence and paradox of the First World War—the prosperity of business elites and bankers in service of the war effort during the destruction of capital and wealth by belligerent armies. This study of business life amid war and massive geopolitical changes follows industrialists and policymakers in Central Europe as the region became crucially important for German and subsequently French plans of economic and geopolitical expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Capitalism in Chaos changes the static historical perspective by presenting Europe's East as the economic engine of the continent. Rigó accomplishes this paradigm shift by focusing on both supranational regions—including East-Central and Western Europe—as well as the eastern and western peripheries of Central Europe, Alsace-Lorraine and Transylvania, from the 1870s until the 1920s. As a result, Capitalism in Chaos offers a concrete, lively history of economics during major world crises, with a contemporary consciousness toward inequality and disparity during a time of collapse.

- Podcast interview with Máté Rigó by Roland Clark on the book, the research project and the history of both regions.
- Podcast interview about the research process and mostly topics relevant to Hungarians and Romanians, such as why Romania was so important to France, how the French investments in Russia were more important to their economy than their colonies and why the Romanian looting of Hungary after 1918 was the direct consequence of German looting of Romania between 1916 and 1918. (Only in Hungarian, sorry about that.)

posted by kmt (6 comments total)

Don’t forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death’s a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try ’n’ grab a piece of that Pie while they’re still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. [Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow]
posted by chavenet at 5:56 AM on May 5, 2023 [12 favorites]

War is a racket.
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:46 AM on May 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

War is the health of the state.
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:47 AM on May 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Looks like a good book. Thank you, kmt.
posted by doctornemo at 11:32 AM on May 5, 2023

Transylvania was an economic powerhouse of Europe?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 10:14 PM on May 5, 2023

Transylvania was an economic powerhouse of Europe?

I've heard they cornered the market in blood money
posted by Rumple at 11:18 PM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]