Falling rate of profit

The tendency of the rate of profit to fall — Marx's law of capitalism's self-undermining, fully exposited by Haz in debate.

From the DEBATE BLOODSPORTS stream

> "Capital's production aims not for use values but for exchange value expanding... Production for exchange value runs into contradictions — one being the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. These tendencies reveal a contradiction between the use value necessary for society and the exchange value... Society is at a fork: production at the level of what's necessary for society as society sees fit, versus what's necessary for the valorization of capital.

> The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is a consequence of overproduction. Marx regarded that contradiction as incredibly ironic: overproduction — creating more abundance, more wealth — yet at the level of the commodity form and exchange value, it's actually the depletion of wealth... Marx regards that as the foundation of a new mode of production based on use value."

The significance

Not an econometric prediction but a dialectical structure: capital's success producing abundance registers as failure in value terms — hence crisis, hence the forced choice between use-value production (socialism) and value-destruction (barbarism). It grounds We already live in socialism: socialized production has outgrown the value-form; only command by the value-form keeps abundance from being social (Capitalist Socialism).

See also

• Economic Calculation Problem