Marx without tendency of the rate of profit to fall?
Defense of the coherence of the "ltrpf" within the framework of marxist thought
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46661/rec.11048Keywords:
Marx, tendencia decreciente de la tasa de ganancia, crítica de la economía política, continuidad del debateAbstract
The law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF), introduced in the third volume of Capital, has been one of the most discussed and controversial topics in the Marxian critique of political economy. Among the various debates surrounding this issue, several critics of this law have emerged, claiming that, of all possible scenarios, the most likely is that Marx abandoned this theory during the last decades of his life. This position would absolve the German thinker of the alleged theoretical errors which, combined with an overly optimistic view of the eventual collapse of the capitalist system during the 1850s, led him to introduce the law into the drafts from which Engels shaped the third book of Capital. In this article, we will argue that the LTRPF is a necessary derivation from the development of the determinations of capitalist society laid out in the first book of Capital. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how the arguments used to distance Marx from this law are, at best, very weak and based on improbable scenarios; at worst, they are outright false.
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