[OPE] webpage computing dynamic rate of profit

I cannot evaluate this research, because I lack information about what
exactly was done. In scientific research, what we require are careful,
exact, comprehensible and complete descriptions of methods, concepts, data
and sources used. Unfortunately with these input-output Marxists, they often
do not provide this, so it is anybody's guess where they get their numbers
from, or what those numbers really mean.

To relate profitability to population growth rates seems a very odd idea,
because there is no obvious historical correlation. It seems more a sperm
theory of profit. When from the mid-1960s the profit rate dropped, for
example, population growth did not decline, to the contrary.

I think problems with this type of research are:

(1) capital stock data are of dubious quality given the large number of
assumptions necessary
(2) real gross profit volumes diverge from their value-added measures
(3) the assumption that the profit-wage ratio proportion and the surplus
labour/necessary labour proportion or S/V must be similar or identical is
unproven.
(4) Measuring profitability as a profit flow against a fixed capital stock
tells us little about actual profitability, which isn't calculated this way.
(5) it is implied that production capital equals total capital, but it
isn't.
(6) the empiricist assumption is that official categories are more or less
the same as Marx's categories, but they aren't.

Jurriaan

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Received on Fri May 15 15:37:37 2009