Capitalism's Fatal Flaw, and the Way Forward: Part 1.: Series on the Profit-Rate Fall. De-Abstracting Marx’s “Law”. GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Part 1.:

Series on the

Profit-Rate Fall.

De-Abstracting

Marx’s

“Law”.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Dear Reader,

We hold that the phenomenology partially captured in Marx’s “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”, as presented, still quite abstractly, in Capital, Volume III [Part III], including, psychohistorically, the ideological and policy reaction of the core capitalist ruling class to that phenomenology, in its revelation to them, especially during the circa 1870 to 1890 “Great [Techno-]Deflation” – is the fundamental causal agency driving world history since the late 1800s: driving the ‘descendence phase’ of the global capitalist system, and its humanocidal policy denouement.

However, an adequate theoretical grasp of this driving force of world history only comes into view when the role, in this phenomenology, of fixed capital, of the evolution of the capitalist credit system, and of the evolution of world market competition, as a reflection of the pattern of global capitalist development, are brought into view, and brought into the theory of the profit-rate fall.

Marx acknowledges this in a passage in Chapter VI. of Capital, volume III, the chapter entitled “The Effect of Price Fluctuations”, forming the opening of its section II., entitled “Depreciation, Release, and Tie-up of Capital” –

“The phenomena analyzed in this chapter require for their full development the credit system and competition on the world market, the latter being the basis and the vital element of capitalist production. The more definite [M.D.: i.e., more ‘thought-concrete’; more ‘determinations-rich’; more complex] forms of capitalist production can only be comprehensively presented, however, after the general nature of capitalism is understood. Furthermore, they do not come within the scope of this work and belong to its eventual continuation.” [Karl Marx, Capital, volume III, New World Paperbacks, 1967, p. 110].

We hold that it is the growth of social [re-]productive force – whose growth is incentivized by the capitalist profit motive itself, that shrinks the value of fixed capital, whose value loss in turn shrinks the net profits numerator of the profit-ratio, by the subtraction of this lost fixed-capital-value from gross profits, together with the need to incur additional debt-service expenses, also subtracting from and shrinking net profits, to purchase replacement fixed capital for the obsolete, scrapped fixed capital on which debt-service is still being paid – that explains and drives the tendency of the general rate of profit on capital to fall, in a full, ‘thought-concrete’ account of Marx’s “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”.

We note here that, in Marx’s stated plan for his “Critique of Political Economy”, per the sequence of six categories/treatises announced in the opening lines of Marx’s famous Preface* to his initial, partial publication of that, vast, critique, entitled A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, namely, the sequence – Capital, Landed Property, Wage-Labor, the State, Foreign Trade, World Market – that “…the general nature of capitalism…” was to be treated in the first treatise of that sequence, Capital, which Marx did partially complete before his death, and “…competition on the world market…” was to be treated in the sixth and last treatise, in which the fullest ‘thought-concreteness’, ‘determinations-richness’, and complexity of the global capitalist system was to be explicitly theorized, in accord with Marx’s “systematic-dialectical” method of presentation. *[Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, M. Dobb, editor, International. Publishers, N.Y.,1970, p. 19].

We also note Marx’s statement, regarding “…competition on the world market…”, in Capital III, that “… an analysis of competition…is not presented in this work.” [ibid., p. 235], and, with regard to Marx’s richer version of his profit-rate formula, to include the influence of fixed capital on the rate of profit, we also note his statement, again in Capital III, that: “The rate of profit must be calculated by measuring the mass of produced and realized surplus-value not only in relation to the consumed portion of capital reappearing in the commodities [M.D.: I.e., the production-period “wear-and-tear depreciation” consumption of fixed capital part,

c_d, of c = c_d + c_m + c_a

[i.e., constant capital consumption equals c_d, plus raw materials consumption, c_m, plus auxiliary materials consumption, c_a], but also to this plus that portion of unconsumed but applied capital which continues to operate in production [M.D.: I.e., the part of fixed capital value still remaining after the given production-period, implying that each production-period rate of profit should be measured

not as s’/(c + v),

but as s’/(f + c + v),

particularly once fixed-capital becomes the predominant capital-value component of total industrial capital].”

[ibid., p. 229, emphases added].

Now, it is true that Capital III contains extensive draft material on the capitalist credit system, but it is also true that Capital III contains minimal material on the dynamics of fixed capital, and on the impact of the world market competition of capitals on those dynamics, in relation to the trend of the general rate of profit on capital.

Thus, Capital III did not provide the cognitive milieu in which Marx could systematically and “…comprehensively…” present his most ‘thought-concrete’ theory on the historical tendency of the general rate of profit on capital, and its connection to World Market “Business Cycles” and “Great Depressions”.

That cognitive milieu was to be built, in part, yes, via the full cognitive cumulation of the five earlier treatises in Marx’s planned series, but, especially, in the final treatise, on the capitalist system’s World Market, at the farthest end of Marx’s series from its starting treatise, Capital. Marx died with even that, already voluminous, starting treatise still unfinished.

We recommend that you keep these considerations in mind while you explore the series of ‘text-images’ on this topic, posted, at bottom, below.

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, and to read and/or download, free of charge, PDFs and/or JPGs of Foundation books, other texts, and images, please see:

www.dialectics.info

and

https://independent.academia.edu/KarlSeldon

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –