The falling rate of profit and the great recession

Abstract

This thesis develops a new, temporalist interpretation of Marx's value theory. It applies this to US national accounting statistics, in order to test Marx's Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit (LTFRP) and whether it can explain the causes of the Great Recession of 2007 - 2009 in the US. It finds that movements in the rate of profit in the US conform to Marx's law and that the Great Recession can be explained by a prior decline in the US rate of profit. It also gives empirical confirmation of Marx's account of the tendencies and counter-tendencies which determine movements in the average rate of profit. The interpretation builds on the important breakthroughs of the temporal single system interpretation (TSSI) of Marx's value theory, which refutes two allegations of internal inconsistency against Marx's system: the transformation problem and the Okishio Theorem. This includes showing how a temporalist approach can be extended to account for the devaluation of capital due to crises and obsolescence, overcoming problems associated with historical cost accounting while still making it possible for cost-reducing technological change to lead to a falling rate of profit with a constant real wage. The thesis also gives a method for measuring the turnover time of variable capital. This makes it possible to measure the value composition of capital and the organic composition of capital as the ratios of one stock to another stock, and to quantify the influences on the rate of profit of changes in the organic composition of capital, changes in the turnover time of variable capital, the cheapening of new capital, the devaluation of existing capital and changes in the rate of surplus value. The thesis also quantifies the relationships between the total stock of surplus value, unproductive expenditures of surplus value, profits from production, profits from secondary exploitation and fictitious profits. This forms the basis for two new types of measure of the rate of profit with which to test Marx's law. This value accounting framework is then extended to explain how the creation of fictitious capital can create fictitious profits, and how this can be used to explain average rates of return on financial assets and the interest rate. The results show there has been a long-term decline in the US rate of profit, and declines in the US rate of profit in the lead up to all major crises. Since 1945, the organic composition of capital has increased more or less continuously, and its effect on the rate of profit was counteracted to a limited extent by the other factors Marx identifies, including a rising rate of surplus value. Marx's observations concerning the relationship between the interest rate and the business cycle are also supported by the evidence over the long-term. This is strong evidence in favour of the predictive power of Marx's value theory in Capital.