F.E.D. Dialectics: 2026

Sunday, November 01, 2026

A KEY, NEGLECTED PASSAGE by Marx on the, critical, Profit-Rate Formula.

KEY,

NEGLECTED

PASSAGE

by Marx

on the,

critical,

Profit-Rate

Formula.

Dear Reader,

In volume three of Marx’s treatise Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, in its part three, “The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”, in its Chapter XIII, “THE LAW AS SUCH”, near the end of that chapter [p. 229 in the 1967 New World edition], resides a key paragraph whose opening sentence marks a major ‘de-abstraction’ – a major advance in the realism and ‘thought-concreteness’ – of Marx’s model of the rate of profit return on industrial capital invested. To our knowledge, this crucial passage has been completely neglected in the Marxian literature on Marx’s “The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall” to-date.

That opening sentence – which opens up, for us, a new, trans-algebraic understanding of the mechanism of the “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall” – is as follows:

“The rate of profit must be calculated by measuring the mass of produced and realized surplus-value not only in relation to the consumed portion of capital, reappearing in the commodities [M.D.: (c + v)], but also to this part plus that portion of unconsumed but applied capital which continues to operate in production [M.D.: i.e., “fixed capital” machinery, plant and equipment, not yet depreciated by “wear and tear”; f].”

[Italics emphasis per source; underscored bold italics emphasis added by M.D.].

Thus, Marx’s profit-rate formula, in this latest step towards “the surface of society”, in its deepening of the ‘thought-concreteness’ and realism; in its further ‘de-abstraction’/‘de-simplification’, in the flow of Marx’s subtle systematic-dialectical method of presentation, becomes –

s’_t / (f_t + c_t + v_t)

– wherein, for annual production “cycle”/whorl number t –

s’_t = net surplus-value, net of interest payments, rent payments, etc.;

f_t = fixed capital value applied in annual production period t;

c_t = constant capital value invested in annual production period t;

= (c_d_,_t + c_r_,_t + c_a_,_t);

v_t = variable capital value [wages] invested in year t;

c_d_,_t = depreciation by “wear-and-tear” consumption of fixed capital,

during annual production year period t;

c_r_,_t = raw materials capital-value invested during period t;

c_a_,_t = auxiliary materials capital-value invested during period t.

Note: Putting this profit-rate formula on the annual production period “cycle”/whorl [“whorl” because capitalist production is a non-repeating iteration; not a circle or cycle, in detail, but a ‘qualo-quantitative’, helical spiral, with both quantitative changes/-expansions and qualitative/ontic changes/expansions encompassed within each annual production period] basis averts problems of combining value-“stocks” with value-“flows”.

All value components invested/applied in each year’s “productive capital” must count equally as portions of the capital invested to produce the year’s commodity-capital-value output.

Marx’s profit-rate ratio is a kind of “input-output ratio” or ‘capital-value amplification factor”.

It is, as s/(c + v), a gross Output over [‘/’] Input ratio: O/I.

As s’/(c + v), it is a net output over input ratio:

(O – I)/I.

It is based upon the causal relation between the input and the output. That is, the capital-value invested, now (f + c + v), measures, in value-terms, the cause of the net-profit effect, s’, measuring the effect relative to its cause – measuring the profits-producing power of that input/cause; its ‘profits-productivity’.

This value-cause includes the value of the fixed-capital machinery/plant and equipment “applied” [Marx] in, to and during the time-period, t, of the value-effect’s production, i.e., including all of the not-yet-consumed, not-yet-“wear-and-tear”-depreciated portion of the value of that, applied, fixed-capital machinery/plant and equipment, because it too, f_t, is part of the cause of the s’_t effect.

Implicitly, the ‘de-abstractive’, ‘de-over-simplifying’ progression from –

s’_t / (c_t + v_t)

s’_t / (f_t + c_t + v_t)

– opens the way to consider the effect of what Marx called the ongoing “moral depreciation” of fixed capital – technological obsolescence depreciation of fixed capital, or ‘techno-depreciation’ for short – which is caused, not by the, “wear-and-tear”, partial consumption of that fixed capital in each production period, but by the growth of the social forces of production, enforced when that growth is embodied in productivity-improved plant and equipment/-machinery, and applied, in their production, by other, competing individual capitals.

To remain competitive/viable, the individual capitals still employing the ‘obsoleted’ fixed capital must partially or wholly scrap that obsoleted fixed capital – the loans by which that ‘obsoleted’ fixed capital was originally purchased usually not yet being fully paid-off at the time of their enforced obsolescence/-scrapping – and take out new loans to purchase the more technologically-advanced, fixed capital to replace the scrapped fixed capital, so as to render their individual industrial capitals once again competent/competitive.

This means that the capital-value loss on the ‘obsoleted’ fixed capital must be subtracted from both the numerator and the denominator of the, now further enhanced, profit-rate ratio, and the old annual sum of debt service [interest + principal] payments on the old and the new fixed-capital loans subtracted from the numerator of this, enhanced, net-profit-rate ratio.

That more-realistic, even-more ‘thought-concrete’ profit-rate ratio thus becomes –

(s’_t - f_o_,_t - L_f_,_t - DL_f_,_t)/ (f_t + c_t + v_t - f_o_,_t)

– wherein –

f_o_,_t = remaining, undepreciated value of period t obsoleted fixed capital;

L_f_,_t = period t Loan debt-service still due on obsoleted fixed capital;

DL_f_,_t = period t new Loan-service due on replacement fixed capital.

But Marx himself did not fully take this next step, leaving the explanation for the profit-rate fall, “algebraically”, to the relative fall of v – relative to c, albeit both increasing in absolute terms – resulting in a relative fall of s, without locating where the resulting relative dearth of s registers and manifests empirically. It manifests – the growth of the social forces of production, the growth of ‘use-value productivity’ manifests – in losses and write-offs to the capital-value of productivity-growth-‘obsoleted’ fixed capital.

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, and to read and/or download, free of charge, PDFs and/or JPGs of Foundation books, other texts, and images, please see:

www.dialectics.info

and

https://independent.academia.edu/KarlSeldon

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH

¡ENJOY!

Regards,

Miguel Detonacciones,

Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];

Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

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MARX’S MISSING BLUEPRINTS

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Wednesday, October 28, 2026

DEEPENING DEMOCRACY. GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

DEEPENING

DEMOCRACY.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Dear Reader,

The winning electoral adoption, by majority vote of a given national majority class, of the constitutional provisions for a national political-economic democracy, such as the Equitist constitutional provisions which we have documented in this blog, would constitute a collective assertion, by that majority class, of its intension, as a matter of democratically-adopted public policy, too deepen their national democracy, and the practices of a local, residential and workplace, municipal, provincial and regional as well as national democratic culture in the daily lives of the majority class of Citizens.

This decision – to deepen their national democracy – would be made as a far better alternative to continuing to stand by, passively and helplessly watching the accelerating hollowing-out of their political-only democracy at the hands of an ever-shrinking, but ever-more dictatorial, hyper-wealth-hogging oligarchic ruling faction, ruling by the power of Big Money, Blackmail, Bribery, and Assassination, not at all by “mere” voting; an oligarchic faction inevitably driving a de-industrialization, anti-[productive-forces-]growth, humanocidal, “people are pollution” ideology and agenda, whose causes we have documented throughout this blog [see, for example, Capitalism's Fatal Flaw, and the Way Forward: 'Rocke-Nazi' Plutocracy Publicly Proclaims Planned Planetary Population Plummeting. GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.].

This “hollowed-out” version of “democracy” occurs in the context of a culture of authoritarian dictatorship, with a plurality of the majority class living a daily life ruled by corporate commissars, corporate-bureaucrat-dictators, who destroy the lives and communities of the majority class by de-industrializing America and other First World nations, by ordering their factories and jobs moved to Third World dictatorships, where union protections are criminalized, and wages are kept low; seeking, thereby, higher profit rates for themselves, and, on behalf of the oligarchic ruling faction, which rules over them as well, delivering de-industrialization, shrinking real wages, and depopulation to the First World, converging it rapidly toward becoming a ‘Second Third World’.

The majority class wants no more “democracy” meaning just voting once or twice a year, for candidates all chosen by that oligarchic ruling faction, and promoted by that faction’s “wholly-owned subsidiary”, the Fake News Media.

The majority class wants no more “legislatures” like the “European Parliament”, a “legislature” that is not allowed to introduce its own legislation; only to vote Yea or Nay on “legislation” imposed by the European Commission.

That is a “parliament”, a “legislature”IN NAME ONLY.

That “Commission” is a “crimes-against-humanity” committing, de-industrializing body of unelected, appointed bureaucrats, wholly beholden to that same oligarchic ruling faction, e.g., via blackmail [e.g., threats to publicly release the Epstein videotapes of their sexual crimes], bribery, or threats of assassination against they themselves or against their families, or both!

This oligarchic faction loves to push [pseudo-]socialism on you and your family, i.e., Lenino-Stalinoid state-CAPITALIST, police-state dictatorship – a very handy ploy for them to try and dupe you into sustaining and deepening their wished-for totalitarian, Soylent-“Green”, humanocidal rule.

But real, Marxian socialism involves the very opposite. A vast expansion of wealth, of “individual property” rights [quoting Marx], and of individual human rights for the majority class.

Real socialism means the grassroots power of the majority class, prevailing over Big-Capital-power and Big-Money-power.

Real socialism means – quoting Marx, during the Paris Commune – making all key public officials, at every level of social governance, electoral in competitive elections, self- mandated in written promises to voters, and recallable by their voters, and paid compensation no greater than the median compensation earned by their constituents, a median income that – with real socialism, via the productivity UPSURGE, no longer fettered and suppressed by the techno-depreciation-terrified, anti-growth oligarchic ruling faction, that real socialism will bring – will be much higher than it is today, e.g., in the United States.

Real socialism means moving beyond the core social relation of [societal self-re]production that defines [state-]capitalism:

beyond the wage-labor/[state-]capital relation.

The constitutional provisions of our Equitist proposal for constitutional political-economic democracy, those that would most empower the majority class, via the deepening of democratic culture and democratic practices, in daily life, and in local, residential, close-to-home life, as well as in daily work-life, are: ‘Citizen Externality Equity’ and ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’.

The new, ‘Citizen Externality Equity’ property-right and human-right gives local residents the electoral right to restrict life-threatening and/or life-degrading pollution and other externalities that, under present laws and relations, they helplessly suffer and die from – unless they can muster the “capital” to sue deep-pocketed corporations in civil court cases, ruled-over by judges ever-more prone to corporate bribery, blackmail, threats of assassination, etc.

The new, ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’ property-right and human-right grants statutorily-qualifying collectives of Citizens the stewardship, not the local ownership, of the means of production required, per their statutorily-qualifying business plans, to launch market-competing, democratically managed producers’ cooperatives.

They must pay a monthly ‘Social Rent’ to the Office of the [nationally-elected, mandated, recallable] National Custodian of Social Property, in return for the use of those means of production, which remain social property – those ‘social rents’ going to fund other such cooperatives’ launches, and to finance the, all-citizens’, ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’ social trust funds.

Each associate of such associations of producers receives market-rate compensation for their time worked, and also a worked-time-proportionate share of the net operating surplus of their cooperative – no longer paid away as profit-dividends to absentee holders of capital equity stock, which no longer exist for these ‘Citizen Stewardship’ cooperatives.

Those monthly ‘Social Rents’ are to be constitutionally required to be used to fund the statutorily-qualifying means of production required by qualifying new or competitively-successful, expanding ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’, as well as to fund the, gradually expanding, ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’ social trust funds assigned, like the Trump accounts today, to each new Citizen born.

We hold that, in the present, ‘descendence-phase’ of the global [state-]capitalist system, political democracy, and its crucial checks-and-balances on state political power against citizens, and the, vital, rule-of-law, can only be restored, and sustained, by the constitutional addition of these new, economic checks-and-balances; these new, inclusive, All-Citizens Equities, to balance the otherwise democracy-destroying effects of hyper-concentrated capital ownership; of exclusive equities, i.e., of hyper-concentrated Capital Equities – all of which are the inevitable, toxic products of late, descendence-phase [state-]capitalism.