Marx and Ricardo on machinery: a critical note

This article critically discusses the important and relevant—not to mention controversial— views of Ricardo and Marx on the impact of machinery on labor productivity, the organization of production and the wages and employment prospects of the working class during the capitalism of their day. First, the article turns to Ricardo’s assessment of the introduction of machinery and its likely effects on the laborer and the rate of profit and accumulation—one which went through a substantial revision (and reversal) between the first and third editions of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Then, we discuss Marx’s own critical analysis of the historical development of machinery and its impact on the labor process, the so-called “compensation principle,” and how the rising organic composition of capital ostensibly generates a “redundant or surplus-population” during the course of capitalist development. We highlight Marx’s intellectual debt to Ricardo, John Barton (and George Ramsay) insofar as his theory of technological unemployment is concerned. Lastly, the article summarizes the views of Ricardo and Marx and offers some concluding remarks.     

Devaluation and Marx's Law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit

Marx's law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit predicts that the rate of profit will decline over the long term as the forces of production develop, and move cyclically in a way that explains crises and economic recoveries. This interpretation is substantiated with textual evidence, and with a method for measuring the dynamic of devaluation and revaluation which Marx uses to explain the profit rate cycle. This method is shown to be consistent with temporalism, meaning it avoids the transformation problem created by dual system interpretations, and the problem of the Okishio Theorem created by simultaneist interpretations. The article also includes a temporalist way to estimate the Monetary Expression of Labour Time, and empirical results for the effect of devaluation on the stock of fixed assets in the United States since 1930.     

Marx's analysis of the falling rate of profit in the first version of Volume III of capital

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the Hodgskin section of Theories of Surplus Value and the general law section of the first version of Volume III of Capital. It then considers Part III of Volume III, the evolution of Marx's thought and various interpretations of his theory in the light of this analysis. It is suggested that, as late as the 1870s, Marx had hoped to be able to provide a demonstration that the rate of profit must fall. The main conclusions are that (1) Marx's major attempt to show that the rate of profit must fall occurred in the general law section, (2) Part III does not contain a demonstration that the rate of profit must fall and (3) Marx was never able to demonstrate that the rate of profit must fall and he was aware of this.     

Considerations on Inequality,Corporate Governance,and Financialization

Abstract

Disjunctures between corporate governance, increasingly dominated by financial considerations, and social inequality have been among the motor forces of current world-wide “populist” voter revolts. This article looks for clues for the relation between economic inequality, corporate governance, and financialization by re-examining the work of Karl Marx and of Adolphe Berle and Gardiner Means. Marx is widely considered, in Japan, to have pointed out that the division of profit into the wages of management and the profit of enterprise is considered as a path to the association. However, this general interpretation in Japan may not be sufficient for capturing capitalism’s contemporary reality. This presentation develops an alternative interpretation of this chapter by combining Marx’s explanation with the theory of the separation of ownership and management proposed by Berle and Means. We then explore causal relations among income inequality, corporate governance, and financialization.     

Will the MEGA2 edition be a watershed in interpreting Marx?

Abstract

The MEGA² edition is a watershed in interpreting important aspects of Marx’s oeuvre, but not all of them. It provides hints as to why Marx failed to complete his magnum opus, Capital, and informs about his doubts regarding the “law of motion” of capitalism centred on the “law of the falling tendency of the rate of profit” he was keen to establish.     

利润率的决定机制及其变动趋势研究——基于劳动价值论的新解释

主流经济学一直把利润率看作是一个外生变量而未深入研究,因此,利润率的决定及其变动趋势的研究必须向"古典剩余传统"回归.马克思曾把利润率趋于下降规律看作是政治经济学中最为重要的规律.但是,利润率趋于下降是要满足一定条件的.资本有机构成和剩余价值率与实际工资、技术进步和非经济因素等高度相关.文章从动态的角度,结合模型分析和实证检验,试图为利润率的决定机制及其变动趋势研究建立起一般分析框架.     

Say’s Law,Marxian Crisis Theory and the Interconnectedness of the Capitalist Economy

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated exactly why Marx felt that general gluts were not just possible, but inevitable. This article argues that Theories of Surplus Value anchored that necessity in the complex interconnectedness that characterizes capitalist production. There, Marx’s criticism of Say’s Law builds on a version of crisis theory that begins with raw material shortages in a leading sector. The disturbance is then transmitted through the many inter-industry linkages in the capitalist economy. What starts as a supply-side shock in a leading sector is transformed into a broad crisis of aggregate demand as workers are laid off and businesses fall into insolvency. This article argues that Marx’s later discussion of other types of crises in Capital can be read as consistent with this approach. A severe profit squeeze in a leading sector (whether originating in intermediate good prices, market demand, rising wages or rising use of fixed capital) necessarily turns into a general glut. In this context, Say’s Law becomes an irrelevant theorem concerning an imaginary economy. What Marx sees as fundamentally new under capitalism is not the use of money and the separation of sale and purchase, but massive interconnectedness.     

The profit rate: where and how much did it fall? Did it recover? (USA 1948–2000)

This study is devoted to the empirical investigation of the gravitation of profit rates among industries around a single value in the United States since World War II. The framework of analysis is that developed by classical economists and Marx, and used in many contemporary studies. The gravitation of profit rates around a single value results from the mobility of capital seeking a maximum profit rate. A preliminary concern is to determine the field in which this mobility of capital is likely to occur. A segment of the economy is excluded because of its deficient capitalist nature. After this exclusion, it appears that the profit rates of industries do tend to gravitate around a common value. An important finding of this study is that this gravitation is not observable within a subset of industries, such as Transportation or Public Utilities, which utilize very large amounts of fixed capital in comparison to employment or output.     

Notes on Contributors

In recent political-economic theories of ‘nature’, Mill and Marx/Engels form important reference points. Ecological economists see Mill's ‘stationary state’ as seminal, while Marxists have ‘brought capitalism back in’ to debates on growth and climate change, sparking a Marxological renaissance that has overturned our understanding of Marx/Engels' opus. This article explores aspects of Mill's and Marx/Engels' work and contemporary reception. It identifies a resemblance between their historical dialectics. Marx's communism is driven by logics of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ (including the ‘tendency of profit rates to fall’). In Mill's dialectic a ‘thesis’, material progress, calls forth its ‘antithesis’, diminishing returns. The inevitable ‘Aufhebung’ is a stationary state of wealth and population; Mill mentions countervailing tendencies but fails to consider their capacity to postpone utopia's arrival. Today, Mill's schema lives on in ecological economics, shorn of determinism but with its market advocacy intact. It appears to contrast with the ‘productive forces expansion’ espoused by Marx/Engels. They stand accused of ‘Promethean arrogance’, ignoring ‘natural limits’ and ‘gambling on abundance’. But I find these criticisms to be ill-judged, and propose an alternative reading, arguing that their work contains a critique of the ‘growth paradigm’, and that their ‘cornucopian’ ends do not sanction ‘Promethean’ means.     

On re-reading Joan Robinson's ‘On re-reading Marx’

This paper offers some reflections inspired by a re-reading of Joan Robinson's On Re-reading Marx on the 50th anniversary of its initial publication. Robinson wrote the pamphlet in the light of Sraffa's Introduction to Ricardo's Works and Correspondence, which suggested to her that the concept of the rate of profit was essentially the same in Ricardo, Marx, Marshall and Keynes. In addition to the connections among Ricardo, Marx, Marshall and Keynes, Robinson also addresses the issues of equilibrium and time, and the dogmatism of Marxism.     

Marx,Sraffa, and Surplus: Observations Prompted by Garegnani (2018)

ABSTRACT

In a posthumously published article, Pierangelo Garegnani (2018. ‘On the Labour Theory of Value in Marx and in the Marxist Tradition.’) depicts Marx’s project in Capital as that of ‘developing systematically the theory of Ricardo and [the] implications of social conflict’ implied by Ricardo’s ‘surplus approach to value and distribution’. This paper argues to the contrary that Marx’s theory of surplus value and exploitation differs from (neo-)Ricardian surplus theory in fundamental ways, and modifies Garegnani’s simple Sraffian model to illustrate the distinctive implications of Marx’s theory.     

Marx 200: The Abiding Relevance of the Labour Theory of Value

ABSTRACT

Marxist political economy is alive and well, and not just because of the habitual turn to Marx in response to any crisis of capitalism. Both through Capital and through the continuing evolution of Marxism, Marxist political economy offers valuable insights that can illuminate the modalities of social and economic reproduction and the relationships between (different aspects of) the economic and the non-economic. Marxism’s presence has been felt through its own internal debates and debates with other approaches to political economy, and even through its influence on those reacting against Marxism. The key to the continuing relevance and analytical strengths of Marxist political economy lies in its capacity to provide a framework of analysis for unifying disparate insights into and critiques of the contradictions of capitalism across the social sciences. The instrument for forging that unity is Marx’s theory of value, the potential of which is examined and illustrated with reference to the Sraffian critique and two key concepts in Marxian political economy: the value of labour power and financialisation. They are explored in the light of the processes of commodification, commodity form and commodity calculation.     

Marx and Sraffa: A Comment on Gehrke and Kurz

This comment focuses on the assertion by Gehrke and Kurz (2018) that the origin of the equations which formed the backbone of Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities is not related in any way to Marx, and particularly Marx’s reproduction schemes, as argued by the late Giorgio Gilibert and myself. This comment argues that the 2018 article by Gehrke and Kurz makes significant—but unacknowledged—retreats from positions previously presented by the authors, and that the relevance of Marx and his reproduction schemes for the origin of Sraffa’s (1960) work for Production of Commodities is beyond reasonable doubt.     

Depreciated Depreciation Methods? Alternatives to Sraffa’s Take on Fixed Capital

This article discusses the treatment of fixed capital in the classical theory of price. Sraffa uses non-linear depreciation of ‘physical’ capital that equalizes all annual profit rates individually, but violates the proportionality of monetary machine value reduction and physical use-up on an annual basis. One alternative is to apply simple linear depreciation that has equal annual fixed capital costs. The key for consistency is that the internal rate of return on fixed capital investments throughout the fixed asset lifetime must be equated with the normal profit rate. A second alternative is to use ‘monetary’ capital, where the ‘correct’ amortization charges depend on the ability of the accumulated depreciation fund to earn interest. Among these valid alternative methods are the original proposals of Marx and Torrens, which were dismissed falsely and prematurely by Neo-Ricardian economists. These alternatives are shown here to imply fundamentally different prices of production. For all methods, the formulas for deriving amortization charges and fixed capital prices of all vintages are derived. The article also illustrates how the system of Sraffian price equations can be modified to incorporate these methods.     

Marx and Kalecki on aggregate instability and class struggle

Abstract

Michal Kalecki developed his original model of the business cycle in the early 1930s. Several versions referred as versions I, II and III have been developed until the late 1960s from which Kalecki draw three central propositions on instability and class struggle: (1) the capitalist system “cannot break the impasse of fluctuations around a static position” unless it is shocked by “semi-exogenous factors”, (2) the dynamics of the profit rate and investment – as in version I and II – may be disconnected from “class struggle” and (3) when class struggle impacts the dynamics of the economy – as in version III – this is happening in a context in which expected profitability of new investment projects is negatively related to the profit share. In this article, we want to show that each of these three proposals represents key differences with Marx.     

Class struggle and economic fluctuations: VAR analysis of the post-war US economy

Building on Marx’s insights in Chapter 25, Volume I of Capital, an augmented version of the cyclical profit squeeze (CPS) theory offers a plausible explanation of macroeconomic fluctuations under capitalism. The pattern of dynamic interactions that emerges from a 3-variable (profit share, unemployment rate and nonresidential fixed investment) vector autoregression estimated with quarterly data for the postwar U.S. economy is consistent with the CPS theory for the regulated (1949Q4--1975Q1) as well as for the neoliberal periods (starting in 1980 or in 1985). Hence, the CPS mechanism seems to be in operation even under neoliberalism.     

Marx,Lenin and the Cooperative Movement

Drawing upon the writings of Marx and Lenin, this article refutes the widely shared but incorrect assumption that Marx and Lenin rejected cooperation even as a mode of production for the transitional period. It reviews Marx's belief that cooperatives would gradually supplant capitalistic firms, and that the generalised growth of cooperation would give rise to a new mode of production; the article also analyses Lenin's 1923 article on cooperation in which not only is cooperation described as a major step in the transition to socialism, but even equated with socialism at large. The hypotheses of this article are supported through a close reading of these works and also shed light on numerous implications arising from this reading.     

Income Distribution,Econophysics and Piketty

Piketty, Atkinson and Saez have put the analysis of income distribution back on center stage. The distinction between property income and labor income plays a central role in this framework. Property income derives from the rate of return on stocks of income-earning wealth and is more unequally distributed than labor income. Piketty argues that, because the rate of return (r) is generally greater than the rate of growth of the economy (g), property income tends to grow more rapidly than labor income, so that rising income inequality is an intrinsic tendency of capitalism despite interruptions due to world wars and great depressions. This article argues the exact opposite. The rise of unions and the welfare state were the fruits of long-term historical gains made by labor, and the postwar constraints on real and financial capital arose in sensible reaction to the Great Depression. The ‘neoliberal’ era beginning in the 1980s significantly rolled back all of these. The article uses the econophysics two-class argument of Yakovenko to show that we can explain the empirical degree of inequality using two factors alone: the profit share and the degree of financialization of income. The rise of inequality in the neoliberal era then derives from a reduction in the wage share (rise in the profit share) in the face of assaults on labor and the welfare state, and a sharp increase in the financialization of incomes as financial controls are weakened. These are inherently socio-political outcomes, and what was lost can be regained. Hence, there is no inevitable return to Piketty’s ‘patrimonial capitalism’.     

Profit persistence and stock returns

This article attempts to assemble further empirical evidence on the relationship between the product and the financial market. Drawing back on work in industrial organization, we analyse the relationship between profit persistence and factor-adjusted stock returns looking at about 2000 listed US firms over the last 34 years. While the relationship between (current, lagged and unexpected) profits/earnings and returns has been extensively analysed before, to our knowledge this is the first study to look at the relationship between stock returns and profit persistence. We interpret profit persistence as a result of market competition and innovation of the firm. It is shown that firm-specific long-run profit persistence after correction for other additional economic fundamentals of the firm has a positive impact on four-factor adjusted returns and a negative impact on their volatility.