On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 08:26:48PM -0500, Seth Ackerman wrote:
> >
>
> Marx said there is a secular and ultimately irreversible tendency for
> the profit rate to fall towards zero. This will bring about
> capaitalism's demise. That's a major claim, which is why the theory has
> attracted so much attention. Marx's theory did *not* say "sometimes
> accumulation will be sluggish." If that had been his theory, nobody
> would ever have given a damn.
>
> Most of the people - maybe all of the people - who work on this topic
> wouldn't care about it if it were not associated with the prediction
> that capitalism will inevitably meet its demise. So it's a bit of a
> bait-and-switch to turn around and point to temporary lulls in
> accumulation or occasional patches of disappointing profits as evidence
> that the theory has merit. It is simply not a theory about how profits
> go through temporary lulls or patches of sluggishness. It's about the
> ultimate end to capitalism. If the theory is valid we would have two
> hundred years of statistical evidence showing the vector of profit rates
> headed to zero. There is no such evidence.
>
> Capital accumulation is doing fine. The evidence that it's on its last
> legs exists nowhere.
>
> Seth
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com