>>Presumably, then, those who've intervened to come up with an alternative
>>model have been interested in showing how Leninist thought went wrong--why
>>the predictions did not come to fruition. Yes? No?
>It's wrong in at least two major ways: empirically there's no
>long-term tendency of the rate of profit to fall (if there were, it'd
>be negative by now), and the exploitation of the so-called Third
>World isn't the system-saving profit gusher it's supposed to be.
I am not sure if Lenin derived the need for export of capital from any long term tendency of the rate of profit to fall. He says in the chapter on Export of Capital in his Imperialism that profits in backward countries are usually high, while capital can not find (_owing to the backward state of agriculture and the poverty of the masses in the developed world_) profitable investment in the developed world. But he doesn't derive imperialism from the theory of falling rate of profit. He also says that the modest return of _5% _on the capital employed provides a sound basis for the imperialist oppression and exploitation of the most of the countries of the world ! 5% return on capital ! When has the average rate of profit in the developed world fallen below 5%?
Lenin also states in the same chapter that "the export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported. While, therefore, the export of capital may tend to a certain extent to arrest development in the capital exporting countries, it only does so by expanding and deepening the further development of capitalism throughout the world."
Ulhas