>But in the real economy, technical change is continuous, prices are
not stationary, and there is disruption to the system before any one
innovation works its way through along the way to a new stationary
state in which input and output prices are stationary. And if one
allows for this much reality, the rate of profit can indeed fall from
on going technical change.
I'm not sure on why you say technical change is continuous. It seems actually fairly discontinuous, relying mostly upon business cycles. The effects of it seem more continuous, if by that you mean less prone to big qualitative changes. Why do you say continuous?
To say that the rate of profit _can_ fall from technical change isn't the same thing as saying it will fall as the result of rising organic composition. It doesn't seem to affirm Marx's theory at all, do you think? I'm just becoming familiar with these debates and it seems to me the preponderance of historical evidence weighs against that part of Marx's theory. (Thanks for the refs also; and I'll have to go back and re-look at Gilpin.)
Christian