20Th-Century Capitalism

For most of the 20th century, capitalism has been buffeted by wars, revolution, and economic depressions. However, capitalist systems demonstrated remarkable abilities for survival and adaptability to change, including the use of government intervention to soften the impact of boom and bust cycles, periods of expansion and prosperity followed by economic depression and increased unemployment. World War I (1914-1918) brought revolution and a Marxist-based Communism to Russia. The war also spawned the Nazi system in Germany (see National Socialism), a mixture of capitalism and state socialism, brought together in a regime whose violence and expansionism eventually pushed the world into another major conflict, World War II (1939-1945). After the war, Communist economic systems took hold in China and Eastern Europe.

The Western capitalist nations enjoyed economic growth and rising standards of living, although inflation and unemployment continued to be intermittent problems. As the Cold War came to an end in the 1980s, the former Soviet-bloc nations turned to capitalism (with mixed success at first). China was the only major power to retain a Marxist regime. Many of the developing nations, strongly influenced by Marxist ideas in the early postcolonial period, turned to a modified form of capitalism in their search for answers to economic problems.

Census ['sensqs], term primarily referring to the official and periodical counting of the people of a country or section of a country; also, the printed record of such a counting. In actual usage the term is applied to the collection of information on population, housing, business enterprises, and governmental agencies.