[lbo-talk] offlist

[Seth Ackerman]

Charles Brown wrote:

>Seth,
>
>I'm offlist because of overposting.
>
>I don't think the FROP says the profit rate will necessarily drop in
>the long run.  The countervailing tendencies Marx notes and other
>factors, including growing bourgeois economists' scientific
>sophistication way beyond that of Marx's day, can fully counter the
>tendency of profit to fall.  By now the bourgeoisie ,their economists ,
>government officials and bankers are past masters at making
>countervailing tendencies to predominate.
>
>Nor that Marx indicates that it is a FROP crisis that is the big thing
>in initiating "the final conflict". As you say, a business cycle crisis
>can result in fascism as well as socialism.
>
>  
>

If the FROP can be permanently counterbalanced by countervaling 
tendencies, then it changes into a mere Tendency of the Rate of Profit 
to Fall During Recessions and Then Rise Again During Recoveries (or Law 
of TRPFDRTRADR). No bourgeois economist would disagree with that. It's 
called the business cycle.

And Marx did indicate that the FROP would lead to a final crisis, in the 
Grundrisse. He may have softened or blurred that conclusion in his 
published writings, but his private thoughts somehow shone through 
clearly enough that millions of people managed to get the impression 
that a FROP would end capitalism.

Seth