Jurriaan Bendien wrote: > If you think I am “trolling” about the Marxist obsession with the falling > rate of industry profit, please consult the contemporary Marxist literature > for yourself. Quite simply, most Marxists believe it is super-revolutionary > and super-radical to attribute the economic crisis to the FROP.
It would be interesting to see if such assertions can be backed by any _empirical evidence_. We could take an opinion poll. Are a majority of self-styled Marxist political economists "obsessed" with the theory of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall due to the rising technical composition of capital as Jurriaan asserts?[*] Or is it just a plurality? Or is it merely a small number of vociferous people on ope-l? I don't know. And do the people who believe in this theory describe it as being "super-revolutionary" or "super-radical"? or is this simply a matter of Jurriaan being able to read others' minds so that he can attribute emotions to them without any empirical evidence? Inquiring minds want to know. Jurriaan, could you please _name_ the people your are talking about?? Maybe they could defend themselves against your seemingly-unsupported assertions. Or at least clarify what they're saying. Or are these "people" really nothing but straw-men (and women)? I get the impression that Jurriaan sees the objects of his ire as not just _wrong_ (in theory, empirically) about their theories but somehow morally deficient. I don't see why it has to be a personal matter. Personal attacks never help promote rational discussion. > It is just that it is a bit difficult to sustain the theory of the falling > rate of profit, when average corporate profitability – as business people > now acknowledge themselves - is high. FWIW, here's my "obsession" with the falling rate of profit (ROP), all concerning the US: (1) going from the 1960s to the 1970s, the ROP did indeed fall. Part of this was due to increased mechanization (associated with the allegedly orthodox theory of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall), but there was also a profit squeeze due to wages and rising raw material costs, which likely played a larger role. The falling ROP helped cause rising stagnation during the 1970s (i.e., the combination of rising unemployment rates with rising inflation rates). (2) The stagflation and low profitability spurred a capitalist counterattack, including that of the financiers who hate inflation with a passion. So, starting with Jimmy Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker at the Fed and various moves toward "deregulation") we see the neoliberal policy revolution, cemented by Ronald Reagan's regime. This bipartisan effort has generally led to a _rise_ in the ROP since the 1980s, largely caused by the suppression of wages. (The ROP's trend is best seen if we correct it for changes in the rate of capacity utilization.) (3) This last led to what I call the "under-consumption undertow," which threatened to drag down US GDP growth. This stagnation tendency was counteracted by easier extension of credit, which was backed by the housing bubble. But this only delayed the crisis, so it popped up in 2008-09, complete with a big financial side. > What you need to explain – as business people themelves now acknowledge – > is why the real investment on which economic growth depends is low, even > although profitability is high. Unused industrial capacity and pessimistic profit expectations seem a sufficient explanation of why the abundant profits seen these days are not being put into investment in industrial capital. -- Jim Devine / "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick [*] the rising technical composition/falling profit rate theory is the self-styled "orthodox" theory, but as I've said before, there is no "Marxist orthodoxy." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
