>If there is a "law of the tendency of surplus is rise" (as Foster puts
>it), there would be always be avenues for profitable investment. Why there
>is any overaccumulation of capital, if the rate of profit is not
>falling and the rate of surplus is rising?
The crucial distinction is between *gross* surplus and *net* surplus. Gross surplus must rise because the component of the social product needed to reproduce constant capital (necessary but unproductive labor in commerce, finance, and state expenditures etc. plus depreciation and obsolescence) tends to rise both absolutely and relative to the total capital stock. Net surplus also rises absolutely, but it tends to fall relative to the total capital stock-- both in "real" and (even more) in value terms. This is explicit in Marx's vol. III, and has been true for the actual capitalist economy.
Shane Mage
"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)