Charles Brown wrote:
>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.
>
>
>
Seth:
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.
^^^^ CB: That's correct. In Vol. III he terms it "the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall". It is part of Marx's explanation of the business cycle. He also says ultimately, crises are caused by the total demand of society is not sufficient to buy all that is produced. This follows directly from the fact that workers are not paid enough to buy all that they produce. Bourgeois economists would disagree that surplus value and profit are exploited from the wage-laborers , however.
^^^^^^^
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
^^^^ CB: If only there were and are millions who even know about FROP. (smile). Even most Party members probably don't read Vol. III.
Anyway, I agree that millions have the impression that Marx wrote that it is a business cycle crisis that will precipitate the insurrections that lead to the end of capitalism. And I think Marx may purposely give something of that impression, but I don't think that is his thesis when one examines all he, Engels and Lenin say. It's not so much the cyclical downturns, but the permanent mass impoverishment, wars , etc. The downturns are particularly aggravated points that might be sort of a last straw in a mass state of mind that is fed up in the long run, over whole lifetimes of masses of workers and poor.