Archivo
«Acumulación, composición de capital y tasa de ganancia: algunas notas de investigación»: Alejandro Ramos
Resumen
Este trabajo discute los conceptos de acumulación, composición de capital y tasa de ganancia en la obra de Marx. La discusión se ilustra, de forma muy austera, con el ejemplo de una economía de una mercancía y sin capital fijo en la cual hay un aumento continuo de la productividad del trabajo. Se muestra como este proceso induce una caída de la tasa de ganancia (asumiendo una tasa constante de plusvalor) y por tanto describe de forma simplificada un posible mecanismo de crisis en la economía capitalista.
Palabras clave: Teoría del valor, Marx, acumulación, cambio técnico, tasa de ganancia, crisis.
Estas notas de investigación se inscriben dentro de un trabajo más extenso cuyo propósito es la revisión de literatura acerca de las diversas formas que puede revestir una crisis capitalista. La preocupación más específica concierne a la naturaleza de las crisis de sobreacumulación, y una de sus motivaciones más concretas es cierta evidencia reciente en el sentido de que los dos polos más dinámicos de la economía mundial, Estados Unidos y China, han experimentado procesos de esta naturaleza en años recientes. Sin embargo, el material que aquí se presenta es muchísimo más acotado y ni siquiera aborda la temática de las crisis de sobreacumulación como tales, sino que se concentra en aspectos interpretativos de la obra de Marx relacionados con la relación entre tres conceptos clave de su teorización del capitalismo: acumulación, composición del capital y tasa de ganancia. El énfasis es por tanto exegético y ello requiere, quizás, cierta justificación adicional. Dos razones nos motivan a abordar esta tarea. En primer lugar, existe una importante discusión acerca de estos conceptos, y en particular sobre el significado de la “composición de capital” a la que han contribuido autores como Fine y Harris (1979), Weeks (1981) y Saad-Filho (1993).
«Los problemas de la sobreacumulación en China» Mylène Gaulard
Resumen
La tasa de inversión de China alcanzó en 2009 un récord mundial, superando el 45% del PIB. Sin embargo, este proceso de acumulación puede ser peligroso para el mantenimiento de la inversión. El acento se pone a menudo en la importancia de los fenómenos de sobreproducción y de las capacidades de producción ociosas: la industria china funciona con sólo el 50 % de sus capacidades de producción. Ello tiene consecuencias sobre la productividad. Sin embargo, la evolución de la productividad puede ser también analizada a través de la teoría de de la tendencia decreciente de la tasa de ganancia, teoría presentada por Karl Marx en el tercer libro de El Capital.
Palabras clave: china, inversión, sobreproducción, productividad, tasa de ganancia.
«Neoliberalism, the Rate of Profit and the Rate of Accumulation»: Erdogan Bakir and Al Campbell
ABSTRACT
It is almost universally accepted by economists of all persuasions that capitalism’s current neoliberal economic structure has yielded slower growth than capitalism’s previous post WWII economic structure. Related to this but very seldom discussed is the increase under neoliberalism in the divergence between the rate of profit and the rate of accumulation. Increases involved in the partial recovery of the rate of profit have not been paralleled by increased accumulation, thus contributing to the weak growth. This paper first documents this increased divergence.
Next it argues that an important contribution to the slowed accumulation is the increased transfer to finance of profits created in production. It then turns to discuss the behavior of factors contributing to this increased transfer: the interest rate, the non financial corporate debt and the reduced retained earnings. It resolves the riddle of why despite becoming net creditors after 2000, the productive sector continues to lose potential profits to the financial sector. It documents the increased growth of the financial sector in the economy under neoliberalism, but also the little discussed result that this growth has stopped since at least 2000. The paper ends by reviewing the structural change in capitalism represented by this change under neoliberalism in the relation of the rate of profit to capitalism’s central process of capital accumulation.
Video “The Failure of Capitalist Production”: Andrew Kliman
Andrew Kliman gave the first public talk in New York City on his new book, The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession, at Bluestockings Bookstore on Feb. 6, 2012. The activist bookstore was packed, and many in the audience engaged in the discussion.
Fuente: http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/
Ver también: New Book: “The Failure of Capitalist Production ” by Andrew Kliman + Audio
«Behind and beyond the crisis»: Guglielmo Carchedi
The 2007 financial crisis has reignited the discussion on crises, their origin and possible remedies. At present the most influential thesis on the left sees the crisis as caused by underconsumption and recommends Keynesian policies as a solution. This paper argues that we should understand the crisis from the perspective of Karl Marx‟s “law of the tendential fall in the average rate of profit” (ARP), for short “the law”. Its characteristic feature is that technological progress decreases the rate of profit, rather than increasing it as is usually assumed. Let us see why.
«The Global Economic Crisis and its Implications»: Anwar Shaikh
Anwar Shaikh (Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research) lectures on the first great depression of the 21st century, providing an analysis of the origins and implications of the current crisis.
«Is there a tendency for the rate of profit to fall? Econometric evidence for the U.S. economy, 1948-2007»: Deepankar Basu and Panayiotis T. Manolakos
Abstract
The law of the tendential fall in the rate of pro t has been at the center of theoretical and empirical debates within Marxian political economy ever since the publication of Volume III of Capital. An important limitation of this literature is the absence of a comprehensive econometric analysis of the behaviour of the rate of pro t. In this paper, we attempt to ll this lacuna in two ways. First, we investigate the time series properties of the pro t rate series. The evidence suggests that the rate of pro t behaves like a random walk and exhibits \long waves» interestingly correlated with major epochs of U.S. economic history. In the second part, we test Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of pro t with a novel econometric model that explicitly accounts for the counter-tendencies. We nd evidence of a long-run downward trend in the general pro t rate for the US economy for the period 1948-2007.
Keywords: falling rate of pro t, Marxian political economy, time series analysis, unit roots.
«Economic crisis and socialist revolution: Henryk Grossman’s Law of accumulation, its first critics and his responses»: Rick Kuhn
Abstract
Henryk Grossman was the first person to systematically explore Marx’s explanation of capitalist crises in terms of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and to place it in the context of the distinction between use and exchange value. His The law of accumulation and breakdown of the capitalist system remains an important reference point in the Marxist literature on economic crises. That literature has been plagued by distortions of Grossman’s position which derive from early hostile reviews of his book. These accused Grossman of a mechanical approach to the end of capitalism and of neglecting factors which boost profit
rates. Grossman, in fact, contributed a complementary economic element to the recovery of Marxism undertaken by Lenin (particularly in the area of Marxist politics) and Lukács (in philosophy). In both published and unpublished work, Grossman also dealt with and even anticipated criticisms of his methodology and treatment of countertendencies to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Far from being mechanical, his economic analysis can still assist the struggle for working class self-emancipation.
«The Economic Crisis & Left Responses Video»
The Economic Crisis & Left Responses was convened by Marxist-Humanist Initiative on November 6, 2010 at Pace University in lower Manhattan. Panel 1 features Brendan Cooney, Roslyn Bologh, Richard Wolff, Andrew Kliman, and Ray McKay (chair). Panel 2 features Paul Mattick, Walter Daum, Mac Intosh, and Brendan Cooney (chair). Panel 3 features Barry Finger, Anne Jaclard, Fred Moseley, Mike Dola (closing remarks), and Walter Daum (chair). Click here for the conference program, which includes links to speakers’ biographies, abstracts, and draft papers posted prior to the conference. Many of the papers prepared for the conference are now available online. Click here to view conference papers.
«Technology, Distribution and the Rate of Profit in the US Economy: Understanding the Current Crisis»: Deepankar Basu and Ramaa Vasudevan
Abstract: This paper offers a synoptic account of the state of the debate within Marxist scholars regarding the current structural crisis of capitalism, identifies two broad streams within the literature dealing, in turn, with aggregate demand and profitability problems, and proceeds to concentrate on an analysis of issues surrounding the profitability problem in two steps. First, evidence on profitability trends for the Nonfarm Nonfinancial Corporate Business, the Nonfinancial Corporate Business and the Corporate Business sectors in post-War U.S. are summarized. A broad range of profit rate measures are covered and data from both the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (NIPA and Fixed Asset Tables) and the Federal Reserve (Flow of Funds Account) are used. Second, the underlying drivers of profitability, in terms of technology and distribution, are investigated. The profitability analysis is used to offer some hypotheses about the current structural crisis.
Keywords: profitability, technological change, income distribution, structural crisis.
«La crisis mundial y el movimiento obrero»: Paul Mattick
El desarrollo del capitalismo es inseparable de las crisis: esta ley se confirma empíricamente de vez en cuando. A pesar del retorno de las crisis la economía burguesa no ha propuesto, hasta hoy, ninguna teoría que se adapte a la realidad. La razón es que el punto teórico del que parte es en si mismo erróneo. La teoría capitalista, en efecto, partía de la idea errónea de que la producción estaba subordinada al consumo y que, por consiguiente, la oferta y la demanda se adaptarían en el mercado. Aunque se reconocía que este mecanismo de ajuste podía verse interrumpido debido a superproducciones parciales, se estaba convencido de que el mecanismo del mercado resolvería, de modo espontáneo, estas discordancias. La teoría del mercado, como la teoría del equilibrio a partir del cual la oferta condiciona la demanda y viceversa, todavía está vigente aunque reformulada de distinta manera. En la teoría neoclásica de la utilidad marginal, que se fundamenta en principios psicológicos, se trata simplemente de anunciar de nuevo la vieja teorfa de la oferta y de la demanda, que había permanecido intacta hasta 1936.
«The Marxist Theory of Overaccumulation and Crisis»: Simon Clarke
In this paper I intend to contrast the ‘falling rate of prot’ crisis theories of the 1970s with the ‘underconsumptionism’ of the orthodox Marxist tradition. The central argument is that in rejecting traditional underconsumptionist theories of crisis contemporary Marxism has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, with unfortunate theoretical and political consequences. A more adequate critique of traditional underconsumptionism leads not to the falling rate of prot, but to a disproportionality theory of crisis, which follows the traditional theory in seeing crises not as epochal events but as expressions of the permanent tendencies of capitalist accumulation.
The background to the paper is my recent book, Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the State (Clarke, 1988a), in which analysed the development of capitalism on the basis of a version of the theory of overaccumulation and crisis which is proposed here. However in the book this theory is developed in relation to the historical analysis, without reference to either traditional or contemporary debates. The purpose of this paper is to draw out the theoretical signicance of the argument as the basis of a re- evaluation of the Marxist tradition. The issue is of the highest importance as erstwhile Marxists, in both East and West, fall victim once more to the ‘reformist illusion’ that the negative aspects of capitalism can be separated from the positive, that the dynamism of capitalism can be separated from its crisis tendencies, that capitalist prosperity can be separated from capitalist immiseration.
«Marx’s Theory of Crisis»: Simon Clarke
Political Economy and the Necessity of Crisis
With every boom the apologists for capitalism claim that the tendency to crisis that has plagued the capitalist system since its very beginnings has finally been overcome. When the boom breaks, economists fall over one another to provide particularistic explanations of the crash. The crisis of the early nineteen nineties was the result of the incautious lending of the nineteen eighties. The crisis of the early nineteen eighties was the result of excessive state spending in the late nineteen seventies. The crisis of the mid nineteen seventies was the result of the oil price hike and the inflationary financing of the Vietnam war … the crisis of the nineteen thirties was the result of inappropriate banking policies … … . Every crisis has a different cause, all of which boil down to human failure, none of which are attributed to the capitalist system itself.
And yet crises have recurred periodically for the past two hundred years. Bourgeois economists have to deny that crises are inherent in the social form of capitalist production, because the whole of economic theory is built on the premise that the capitalist system is self-regulating, the principal task of the theoretical economist being to identify the minimal conditions under which such self-regulation will be maintained, so that any breakdown will be identified as the result of exceptional deviations from the norm.
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