A brief comment on Andrew K's [OPE-L:4849]: > In OPE-L 4846, Rieu, following up on Jerry's point, > wrote: > What analytical difference TSS interpretation can bring > in examining more concrete issues on capitalist > economy, more concrete level than moral > depreciation or TRPF?" > <snip, JL> > But first I need to object to the implication that Marx's > law of the tendential fall in the profit rate and moral > depreciation are not concrete. Rieu didn't imply that the TRPF and MD are "not concrete". Rather, he asked for a discussion from a TSS perspective of "MORE concrete issues" (emphasis added, JL). In asserting that there *are* "more concrete issues" than the TRPF and MD, I believe that Rieu is only following Marx. E.g. in Volume 3, Ch. 14 (where Marx only mentions the "most general" [!] ( what are the *other* factors?, JL) of the counteracting factors to what we have been calling in shorthand the TRPF he makes it clear that the TRPF and the counteracting factors suggested in this section concern the "general analysis of capital" (thus he writes that the reduction of wages below their value ... "has its place in an account of competition, which is not dealt with in this work. It is none the less one of the most important factors in stemming the tendency for the rate of profit to fall"). Since you mention, in responding to Rieu, the economic crisis in Korea let me not some additional factors that have to be considered: * recent class conflict in Korea; * industrial structure and competition in Korea; * the role of transnational corporations in Korea; * the role of the state (and conflict within the state over policy); *foreign trade and foreign trade policy; * the role of bank and financial capital, including the role of international lending agencies like the IMF and the WB; * economic crisis in other countries, e.g. Japan. Etc. Etc. Etc. These are all factors that would have to be considered when addressing such a MORE concrete question. What, if anything, does TSS suggest about those factors? In solidarity, Jerry
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