Part 1.:
Series on
the
Profit-Rate Fall.
De-Abstracting
Marx’s
“Law”.
GLOBAL STRATEGIC
HYPOTHESES.
Dear Reader,
We hold that the phenomenology partially captured in Marx’s “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”, as presented, still quite abstractly, in Capital, Volume III [Part III], including, psychohistorically, the ideological and policy reaction of the core capitalist ruling class to that phenomenology, in its revelation to them, especially during the circa 1870 to 1890 “Great [Techno-]Deflation” – is the fundamental causal agency driving world history since the late 1800s: driving the ‘descendence phase’ of the global capitalist system, and its humanocidal policy denouement.
However, an adequate
theoretical grasp of this driving force of world history only comes into view
when the role, in this phenomenology, of fixed capital, of the evolution of the
capitalist credit system, and of the evolution of world market competition, as
a reflection of the pattern of global capitalist development, are brought into
view, and brought into the theory of the profit-rate fall.
Marx acknowledges this in a passage in Chapter VI. of Capital, volume III, the chapter entitled “The Effect of Price Fluctuations”, forming the opening of its section II., entitled “Depreciation, Release, and Tie-up of Capital” –
“The phenomena analyzed in this chapter require for
their full development the credit system and competition on the world market,
the latter being the basis and the vital element of capitalist production. The more definite [M.D.: i.e., more ‘thought-concrete’; more
‘determinations-rich’; more complex] forms
of capitalist production can only be comprehensively presented, however, after
the general nature of capitalism is understood.
Furthermore, they do not come within the scope of this work and belong
to its eventual continuation.” [Karl Marx, Capital, volume
III, New World Paperbacks, 1967, p. 110, emphases added].
We hold that it
is the growth of social [re-]productive force – whose growth is incentivized by the
capitalist profit motive itself, that shrinks the value of fixed capital, whose
value loss in turn shrinks the net profits numerator of the profit-ratio, by
the subtraction of this lost fixed-capital-value from gross profits – that explains
and drives the tendency of the general rate of profit on capital to fall, in a
full, ‘thought-concrete’ account of Marx’s “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of
Profit to Fall”.
We note here
that, in Marx’s stated plan for his “Critique of Political Economy”, per the
sequence of six categories/treatises announced in the opening lines of the famous
Preface* to Marx’s initial, partial publication of that, vast,
critique, entitled A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,
namely, the sequence – Capital, Landed Property,
Wage-Labor, the State, Foreign
Trade, World Market – that “…the general nature of capitalism…” was to be treated in the first
treatise of that sequence, Capital, which Marx did
partially complete before his death, and “…competition
on the world market…” was to be
treated in the sixth and last treatise, in which the fullest
‘thought-concreteness’, ‘determinations-richness’, and complexity of the global
capitalist system was to be explicitly theorized, in accord with Marx’s
“systematic-dialectical” method of presentation.
*[Karl Marx, A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, M. Dobb, editor,
Internat’l. Publishers, N.Y.,1970, p. 19].
We also note Marx’s statement, regarding the topic of “…competition on the world market…”, in Capital III, that “… an analysis of competition…is not presented in this work.” [ibid., p. 235], and, with regard to Marx’s richer version of his profit-rate formula, to include the influence of fixed capital on the rate of profit, we also note his statement, again in Capital III, that: “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.: I.e., the production-period “wear-and-tear depreciation” consumption of fixed capital part, cd, of
c = cd + cm + ca
[i.e., constant capital consumed equals cd plus raw materials consumed, cm, plus auxiliary materials consumed, ca], but also to this plus that portion of unconsumed but applied capital which continues to operate in production [M.D.: I.e., the part of fixed capital value still remaining after the given production-period, implying that the rate of profit should be measured not as
s’/(c + v),
but as
s’/(f + c + v) ].” [ibid., p. 229, emphases added].
Now, it is true that Capital
III contains extensive draft material on the capitalist credit
system, but it is also true that Capital III contains
minimal material on the dynamics of fixed capital and the impact of the
world market competition of capitals on those dynamics, in relation to the
trend of the general rate of profit on capital.
Thus, Capital III did not provide the
cognitive milieu in which Marx could systematically and “…comprehensively…” present his most ‘thought-concrete’
theory on the historical tendency of the general rate of profit on capital, and
its connection to World Market “Business Cycles” and “Great
Depressions”.
That cognitive milieu was to
be built, in part, yes, via the full cognitive cumulation of the five earlier
treatises in Marx’s planned series, but especially in the final treatise, on
the capitalist system’s World Market, at the farthest end
of Marx’s series from its starting treatise, Capital. Marx died with even that, voluminous,
starting treatise still unfinished.
We recommend that you keep
these considerations in mind while you explore the series of ‘text-images’ on
this topic, posted, at bottom, below.
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:
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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