I have read Shane Mage's article with great interest, it is well written, but I'm still not really convinced by a number of points. Among other things:
Firstly, it is not scientific credible to attribute the movement of the trade cycle purely to fluctuations in the rate of profit, caused exclusively by variations in C, V and S. There is just no good economic evidence for that. Secondly, we need to distinguish between ordinary medium-term business fluctuations and epochal business crises such as the great depression of 1929-1934 or the financial crisis of 2008-2010. As regards the first, it is not clear that the downturns in the cycle necessarily represent a "crisis". As regards the epochal business crises, it is not clear that they are in any way "cyclical". Ernest Mandel and Anwar Shaikh have suggested that the time-frame for the TPRF (if it exists) should be that of the "long wave" of capitalist development, i.e circa 20-25 years. But this long wave is not a cycle, as both of them noted. Anwar Shaikh also suggests a secular, very long-term decline in the industrial profit rate. We are dealing here with an inquiry for which Marxists (even if they are super-radical and super-revolutionary) cannot invoke purist "orthodoxy", since Marx himself - although keen to do it - did not delve into it, because he lacked the data to do it. Jurriaan
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