IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aub/autbar/485.01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Descriptive and Analytic Look at Marxs Own Explanations for the Falling Rate of Profit (Long Version

Author

Listed:
  • Howard Petith

Abstract

Marxs conclusions about the falling rate of profit have been analysed exhaustively. Usually this has been done by building models which broadly conform to Marxs views and then showing that his conclusions are either correct or, more frequently, that they can not be sustained. By contrast, this paper examines, both descriptively and analytically, Marxs arguments from the Hodgskin section of Theories of Surplus Value, the General Law section of the recently published Volume 33 of the Collected Works and Chapter 3 of Volume III of Capital. It also gives a new interpretation of Part III of this last work. The main conclusions are first, that Marx had an intrinsic explanation of the falling rate of profit but was unable to give it a satisfactory demonstration and second, that he had a number of subsidiary explanations of which the most important was resource scarcity. The paper closes with an assessment of the pedigree of various currents of Marxian thought on this issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard Petith, 2001. "A Descriptive and Analytic Look at Marxs Own Explanations for the Falling Rate of Profit (Long Version," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 485.01, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    • Handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:485.01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://pareto.uab.es/wp/2001/48501.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Blaug, 1999. "Misunderstanding Classical Economics: The Sraffian Interpretation of the Surplus Approach," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 213-236, Summer.
    2. Michael A. Lebowitz, 1976. "Marx's Falling Rate of Profit: A Dialectical View," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 9(2), pages 232-254, May.
    3. Okishio, Nobuo, 1977. "Notes on Technical Progress and Capitalist Society," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 1(1), pages 93-100, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Howard Petith, 2003. "Marx's Analysis of the Falling Rate of Profit in the First Version of Volume III of Capital," Working Papers 25, Barcelona School of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Howard Petith, 2001. "A Descriptive and Analytic Look at Marxs Own Explanations for the Falling Rate of Profit," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 486.01, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    2. Heinz D. Kurz & Neri Salvadori, 2011. "In Favor of Rigor and Relevance: A Reply to Mark Blaug," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 43(3), pages 607-616, Fall.
    3. Howard Petith, 2003. "Marx's Analysis of the Falling Rate of Profit in the First Version of Volume III of Capital," Working Papers 25, Barcelona School of Economics.
    4. Roger E. Backhouse, 2013. "Understanding Mark Blaug's attitude towards Sraffian economics," Chapters, in: Marcel Boumans & Matthias Klaes (ed.), Mark Blaug: Rebel with Many Causes, chapter 11, pages 146-158, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Luca Timponelli, 2021. "From Pareto to Bridgman: The Operational Turn of Samuelson, Sraffa and Leontief," Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Torino (Italy), vol. 55(1), pages 303-328, June.
    6. Neri Salvadori & Rodolfo Signorino, 2013. "The Classical Notion of Competition Revisited," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 45(1), pages 149-175, Spring.
    7. Duccio Cavalieri, 2009. "Sull'inseparabilit? delle strutture sintattiche nell'analisi classica del valore e della distribuzione," STUDI ECONOMICI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 0(97), pages 5-46.
    8. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, 2018. "Growth and distribution: a revised classical model," Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, Center of Political Economy, vol. 38(1), pages 3-27.
    9. Pedro Garcia Duarte & Yann Giraud, 2014. "Chasing the B: A Bibliographic Account of Economics’ Relation to its Past, 1991-2011," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2014_06, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    10. Levrero, Enrico Sergio, 2009. "Marx on absolute and relative wages," MPRA Paper 20976, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Roemer, John E, 1979. "Continuing Controversy on the Falling Rate of Profit: Fixed Capital and Other Issues," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 3(4), pages 379-398, December.
    12. Dong‐Min Rieu, 2009. "Has The Okishio Theorem Been Refuted?," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 162-178, February.
    13. Fabio Petri, 2006. "General Equilibrium Theory and Professor Blaug," Department of Economics University of Siena 486, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    14. Philippe Van Parijs, 1980. "The Falling-Rate-of Profit Theory of Crisis: A Rational Reconstruction by Way of Obituary," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 12(1), pages 1-16, April.
    15. Howard Petith, 2002. "An Analytic and Descriptive Look at Marx's Own Explanations of the Falling Rate of Profit (second version)," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 549.02, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    16. Howard Petith, 2005. "Marx's analysis of the falling rate of profit in the first version of Volume III of capital," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 269-290.
    17. Fachru Nofrian, 2019. "Industrialization and Profit-Rate Analysis in Indonesia," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 51(3), pages 438-456, September.
    18. Mark Blaug, 2001. "No History of Ideas, Please, We're Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 145-164, Winter.
    19. Mariolis, Theodore, 2014. "Η θεωρία οικονομικών κρίσεων του Karl Marx [Karl Marx’s theory of economic crises]," MPRA Paper 56831, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Luiza Nassif Pires, 2020. "Notes on Intersectional Political Economy: The Long Period Method, Technical Change, and Gender," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_957, Levy Economics Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marx; Falling Rate of Profit; Natural Resources;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P10 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - General
    • Q10 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:485.01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Xavier Vila (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ufuabes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.