On Sat, 13 Dec 2003, Doug Henwood wrote: > Fred B. Moseley wrote: > > >5. The most popular "radical-Marxian" explanation of these profit rate > >trends has been the "reserve army profit squeeze" theory - that low > >unemployment rates in the late 1960s and early 1970s increased workers > >power, and enable them to gain substantial wage increases and to squeeze > >profits. This theory then explains the increase in the rate of profit on > >the higher rates of unemployment and the loss of workers' power in recent > >decades. This seems to be Doug's explanation of these trends. > > > >However, this profit squeeze theory does not provide a very good > >explanation of the only-partial recovery of the rate of profit, and > >especially the share of profit, in recent decades. One would think that, > >if greater worker power leading to wage increases in the 1960s and 70s > >caused the profit share to decline, then surely the last three decades of > >wage-cuts, speed-up on the job, and the general attack on workers and > >unions should have fully restored the profit share by now. > > Why fully restored? The 1950s and 1960s were a Golden Age with few if > any historical precedents that followed the worst depression in > history. The corporate sector had net losses in 1932 and 1933, > something it's never come close to replicating since. But the > corporate profit share of GDP rose from the low of 5.2% in 1982 to > 8.7% in 1997, a 67% increase. Sure it's below the 10-11% levels of > the mid-1960s, but it's a major recovery. And though I haven't gotten > a chance to analyze the latest benchmark revision of the NIPAs, they > show a very substantial rise in profits in 2001 and 2002 - an amazing > performance in a recession and weak recovery.
You are comparing a cyclical low (1982) with a cyclical high (1997). And do your estimates include interest? The estimates of the (profit + interest) share show cyclical ups and downs, but very little overall increase since the 1970s. > > The 1982-97 and 2001-2002 profit recoveries happened despite an > increase in what you call "unproductive" labor. Why? In part because of the cyclical effects of higher capacity utilization rates, but also over the long-term because of a very significant increase in the rate of surplus-value, the ratio of the surplus-value produced by productive workers to the wages of productive workers (S/V in the following equation for the Marxian determination of the conventional rate of profit, included in a prior post): RP = P / K = S - U / C + Ku = [ S/V - U/V ] / [ C/V + Ku/V ] Comradely, Fred