Re: [OPE-L] Marx on the 'maximum rate of profit'

From: ajit sinha (sinha_a99@YAHOO.COM)
Date: Mon Oct 09 2006 - 13:33:25 EDT


--- Francisco Paulo Cipolla <cipolla@UFPR.BR> wrote:

> Jerry, V=0 is not a hypothesis. As a hypothesis it
> wouldbe unsustainable. The
> maximum rate of profit is the rate of profit
> attaining under maximum rate of
> exploitation, in fact, infinite.
______________________
Actually, maximum rate of profits cannot be infinite
if there is positive constant capital. You must mean
rate of surplus value, but then it is not the same
thing as the rate of profits.
________________
Unfortunately the
> citation you brought is not
> related to the issue. In your citation what counts
> is the rate of profit when
> wages are squeezed down to a minimum, the
> physiological minimum. In the
> maximum rate of profit argument all new value
> created stands in the numerator
> and capital advanced in the denominator, the well
> known L/c, where L is the
> new value crested and c the constant capital. Then,
> the argument goes, if the
> value composition of production c/L (as Shaikh(?)
> calls it) presents a
> tendency to increase, the maximum rate of profit L/c
> must present a tendency
> to fall. This is the kind of argument Ajit said has
> never seen in print. It is
> already there regardless of being right or wrong.
> Paulo
___________________
When did I say anything like that? What you say above
is a sort of tautology--how can anyone deny a
tautology (if c/L is rising then L/c must be falling
is an elementary piece of mathematics and nothing
else, there is no theory here). My point was about the
relative immiseration of labor, that is, the thesis
that though real wages are rising, the wage share in
relation to profit is falling simultaneously with the
long term trend of the rate of profits to fall. Since
in your above example of c/L, V = 0, it simply cannot
have any bearing on the problem. Cheers, ajit sinha


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