last time, all it took for the world to take just one step back from laissez-faire capitalism was

  • democracies collapsing all over europe
  • the great depression
  • a world war (or maybe two)
  • threat of imminent communist revolutions

The new deal era ended and neoliberalism took over because we had some inflation off and on for about 9 years.

  • Classic_Agency [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Yeah I agree thats one of his more simple articles. Here is how he measures the rate of profit for the US economy :

    Readers of my blog and other papers know that I prefer to measure the rate of profit by looking at total surplus value in an economy against total private capital employed in production; to be as close as possible to Marx’s original formula of s/C+v. So I have what I call a ‘whole economy’ measure, based on total national income (less depreciation) for surplus value; net non-residential private fixed assets for constant capital; and adding in employee compensation for variable capital. This is what might be called a general or gross rate of profit. The rate of profit will be lower if we look only at the corporate sector, or the non-financial corporate sector, before or after tax etc.

    I find the rate of profit argument to be convincing because it seems the most logical explanation for why the system seems to be teetering towards decline and collapse. The capitalists wouldn't want to risk a rise of socialism and the decline of imperialism just to 'rig the system in their favour', there must be something forcing them to implement these policies.