Talk:Tendency of the rate of profit to fall

Bias.

The tendency for the rate of profit to fall was not held to be extremely important by Marx, since his Capital volume 1 did not include any mention of it. Moreover, in volume 3, there is mention as to when it is counteracted, namely by increased exploitation of workers or through decreased raw material costs via technological advances. Though it was mentioned in his unwritten work Grundrisse, to say that this unfinished thought constitutes Marx' finished and refined ideas is misleading. This article is somewhat disorienting in its bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:7171:2D00:DE33:47E0:DBB1:A32B (talk) 19:18, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Capital Vol. 1 wasn't meant to be his complete exposition of capitalism, so I'm not sure why non-inclusion in Vol. 1 means it wasn't important. In my opinion, counteracting influences don't signify its nonimportance - Engels thought it was central to Marxism as well. Regardless, if a scholar or some other source attacks the idea that it was central to Marx's thought (as I believe is a position held by some Marxists), feel free to include it as an addition to the sentence you have an issue with (something like "although this has been contested by some scholars"). Acalycine (talk) 08:29, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Reference 82 is incorrectly claimed to contradict TRPF

Reference 82 (the paper attributed to Òscar Jordà) doesn’t contradict TRPF.

The returns in this research are measured for someone investing in financial assets plus housing; they are not measuring industrial profit as a share of capital outlay, nor are they distinguishing productive versus “non-productive” capital in the sense that Marxian analyses would.

Because the paper is measuring a different concept of ‘rate of return’ than the one in Marx’s TRPF. If 50% of the “capital” here is housing, that alone is a red flag to a strict TRPF reading: in Marx’s framework, housing rents are typically considered a transfer of surplus value (rather than new surplus value produced in industrial production).

If large chunks of total household wealth are in forms that yield stable or rising rents and do not require employing more workers, that can mask any underlying “profit squeeze” in productive manufacturing or industry.

For these reasons this paper doesn’t contradict TRPF nor does it claim to contradict TRPF. OnodOfTheNorth (talk) 19:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Relationship Between e and OCC.

Lets suppose a two sector model between a labor-intensive industry $l$, and a capital-intensive industry $k$.

The corresponding Marxian system of equations are:

$p_{l}^{\prime }={\frac {s_{l}}{v_{l}+c_{l}}}={\frac {e_{l}}{1+OCC_{l}}}\;,\;p_{k}^{\prime }={\frac {s_{k}}{v_{k}+c_{k}}}={\frac {e_{k}}{1+OCC_{k}}}$

$e_{l}={\frac {s_{l}}{v_{l}}}\;,\;e_{k}={\frac {s_{k}}{v_{k}}}$

$OCC_{l}={\frac {c_{l}}{v_{l}}}<OCC_{k}={\frac {c_{k}}{v_{k}}}$

The final condition is the equalization of the rates of profit between industries $p_{l}^{\prime }=p_{k}^{\prime }$.

Since $OCC_{l}<OCC_{k}$:

$\therefore e_{l}<e_{k}$

This shows that, to Marx's assumptions, the rate of exploitation $e$ depends positively on the organic composition of capital $OCC$.

But whether a rising $OCC$ ultimately has a neutral or positive effect on the rate of profit is still an open question.

Viespe0 (talk) 02:48, 22 February 2025 (UTC)