> empirically there's no long-term tendency of the rate of profit to
> fall (if there were, it'd be negative by now)
Doug, I think you're wrong on this - though your conclusion that FRAP isn't explanatory seems sound. Venerable eldest brother's thesis showed a declining rate of profit (both gross and net of taxes) in the US economy 1900-1960 and there is no possible question but that the rate of profit fell 1850-1900. So at least 1850-1960 there was a decidedly "long-term" tendency of the rate of profit to fall. I have no basis on which to make a call 1960-2000, but whatever may be the case, a tendency to fall cannot be disproved because profit still exists. An asymptotic rate of fall can exist indefinitely without becoming negative. The problem (to my mind) is what explanatory force is there in a tendency that is omnipresent.
> and the exploitation of the so-called Third World isn't the
> system-saving profit gusher it's supposed to be.
This too leaves the question open, since one cannot take relative prices as givens. If there's any tendential trend that is beyond dispute, the terms of trade between the capitalist center and the periphery have been steadily and violently shifting against the periphery. This is hearsay, but I have been told that if one were to do the exercise of returning the relative prices of types of goods exported by the periphery and by the center to those existing in 1950 (and even more strongly to those of 1920 or 1890) all profit would disappear save for those corporations holding peripheral assets.
For example, to account for mineral fuel prices over the period 1850-present in abstraction from political international factors is absurd (yeah, I know there are folks out who do so). Even the most establishment sources (I'm looking at the annual report of the Boston based Petroleum and Resources - closed-end fund) account for ALL the very substantial fluctuations of the last year in mineral fuel prices by political events in Iraq, Venezuela and Russia. The central importance of the control of mineral fuel resources in the periphery is central to any sensible explanation of much of recent history, the more recent the more central.
john mage