The falling rate of profit in the postwar United States economy
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Bibliographic Information
The falling rate of profit in the postwar United States economy
Macmillan, 1991
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Note
Bibliography: p. 197-204
Includes indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The most important conclusion of Marx's theory of capitalism is that the rate of profit would tend to decline as a result of technological change. This book presents a rigorous empirical test of this all-important conclusion by deriving estimates of the Marxian rate of profit and its determinants (the composition of capital and the rate of surplus-value) for the post-World War II US economy in order to determine whether the trends in these variables were in the direction predicted by Marx's theory. Given the long and continuing controversy over this conclusion of Marx's theory, this rigorous empirical test should be of the considerable interest. This book also extends Marx's theory to provide an original explanation of the significant decline in the conventionally-defined rate of profit in the postwar US economy: that this decline was due primarily to a very significant increase in the relative proportion of unproductive labour during this period. This explanation has important implications for the likely future trend of the rate of profit and thus for the likelihood of a full and lasting recovery from the economic crisis of the 1970s-80s.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 Marx's theory of the falling rate of profit: increase in the composition of capital? - definition of the composition of capital
- theory of the tendency to increase
- composition of capital increase faster than the rate of surplus-value? - Marx's argument
- formal model with a constant real wage
- formal model with an increasing real wage
- Okishio's theorem - the theorem, criticisms, evaluation. Part 2 Conceptual issues in the estimation of the Marxian variables: money or labour units
- non-capitalist production
- non-production capital (productive labour/unproductive labour)
- residential housing
- taxes on wages
- recent criticisms of Marx's concepts of productive labour and unproductive labour. Part 3 Estimates of the Marxian variables for the postwar US economy: rate of surplus-value - composition of capital
- technical composition of capital
- value composition of capital
- organic composition of capital
- distribution of capital across industries
- turnover time of capital
- multiple shifts
- rate of profit
- comparison with Weisskopf's estimates
- comparison with Wolff's estimates
- estimates of the Marxian variables, 1977-87. Part 4 The decline of the conventional rate of profit: "profit squeeze" explanations
- Weisskopf - "rising strength of labour"
- Wolff - "slower productivity growth"
- summary
- Marxian explanation - Marxian theory of the conventional rate of profit
- estimates of the Marxian determinants
- share of profit
- empirical test. Part 5 The causes of the increase of unproductive labour: detailed estimates of unproductive labour
- commercial labour
- financial labour
- finance
- insurance and real estate
- supervision labour - causes of increases
- effects of increase
- conclusions. Part 6 Conclusion: main conclusions
- further research
- future trends
- limits of government policies. Appendices: detailed estimates
- sources and methods
- assessment of bias.
by "Nielsen BookData"