Permanent Revolution Group don't accept it.
Results 1 to 5 of 5
Is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall still accepted?
I'd just like to start with that one question. I might ask more later in this thread.
Yes it certainly is. Amongst others, Marxist economist Andrew Kliman has written quite extensively defending the theory. This paper is informative: http://akliman.squarespace.com/stora...2010.17.09.pdf. A decent understanding of the theory is quite important to understand other Marxian theories of crisis in general, but especially the current crisis.
Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew
As far as I'm aware, only by those who accept the Temporal Single-System Interpretation of Marx's value theory (Kliman, Freeman etc). Most Marxist economists 'correct' Marx in some way and try to find a different source of crises.
"From the relationship of estranged labor to private property it follows further that the emancipation of society from private property, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the political form of the emancipation of the workers; not that their emancipation alone is at stake, but because the emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation – and it contains this because the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all relations of servitude are but modifications and consequences of this relation."
- Karl Marx -
accepted by who? not by me. anyway, there are several different Marxist theories of economic crisis. the falling rate of profit theory is only one. I find it problematic to propose a perpetual always acting tendency to explain structural crises that only happen infrequently.
other Marxist theories of crisis look to depressing of wages which undermines the market (under-consumptionism), or moments of aggressive shift in balance of class forces to side of labor or capital. for example, according to one group of Marxists, the structural crisis (falling profits) of the '70s was caused by periods of upsurge in worker and mass self-activity. this roots the cause of crisis ultimately in the class struggle.
The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves.
