> >You still don't get it. Even if there is enough demand takes up 100% >of the production, the profitability drops because the stuff can be >produced cheaper, but the firms who invested in the >oldertechnmologies have these huge sunk costs taht they cannot nake >back.
Still don't understand how we move from the difficulties these backward firms face to a fall in the average rate of profit for capital-as-a-whole. > A degenerating research program often doesn't have a single fatal flaw. It >just runs out of steam, spends all of its time trying to fix up internal >problem, doesn't geberate new hypotheses and predictions and theories. I >think that is a pretty good description of what has happened in Marxian >value theory over the last century. You must realize that this is not an argument but an evaluation that comes across as an insult and fighting words. I do think there has been progress in reworking official data from a value perspective (criticism of wage led profit squeeze thesis carried out by Shaikh and Moseley), value theoretic analysis of the role of the interventionist state (Mattick, deBrunhoff), analyses of the world market and unequal exchange (Amin, Bettleheim, Sau, Dussel, Carchedi), value based investigations of the labor process (Tony Smith), attempts to undertand non commodity, fiat and near money (Foley, Gansmann), attempts to understand share capital (Hilferding, Henwood),value based phenomenlogical studies of time (Lukacs, Postone), clarification in differences of underconsumption, disproportionality and frop crisis theories, development of a theory of oil rent and rentier states (Bina). I think Justin is making a strong evaluation without having carefully evaluated above work. Rakesh