Michael Perelman wrote: > > I did not say that the devaluation of constant capital necessarily > > causes a falling > > rate of profit, only that it can. I believe that it did during the > > late 19th C.
Doug: > Which, in the U.S. was a period of strong growth (despite recurrent > panics and deflations) - over 4% on average. So does this observation > pass the "so what?" test? One thing is that if one capitalist is suffering from low profits due to technical change devaluing its fixed capital goods, some other capitalist is benefiting from introducing the new, improved goods. It's a redistribution, so that on the aggregate level it cancels out. It's usually a mistake to reduce macroeconomic phenomena to microeconomic ones. So despite rapid technical change -- or rather, because of it -- we can see a high or even rising profit rate and high and even rising growth rates for capitalism as a whole (or for one country). Why "because of it"? Faster technical change raises labor productivity growth, which raises the rate of surplus-value and the rate of profit, assuming (of course) that wages do not spurt upward too. Further, even without the wage assumption, the enforced devaluation of fixed capital goods creates an incentive for those capitalists who can do so to accumulate faster. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
