Falling rate of profit
The tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) is Marx's law of capitalism's self-undermining — presented by Haz Al-Din in debate as the hinge between value theory and civilizational choice.
Haz's exposition
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
- TRPF is not an econometric prediction but a dialectical structure: capital's success in producing abundance is registered as failure in value terms — hence crisis, hence the forced choice between use-value production (socialism) and value-destruction (barbarism, war, artificial scarcity).
- It grounds the We already live in socialism thesis: socialized production has outgrown the value-form; only command by the value-form keeps abundance from being social.