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Talk:Tendency of the rate of profit to fall

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This article is very long.

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WikiDan61 has suggested to me that this should be brought up on the talk page, so I'll go ahead and do that here, pasting some complaints I have with the article I brought up on my talk page. This is a behemoth of an article. At time of writing, it is 160 kB of very long prose, more than twice the preferred size, a size it apparently has maintained for the past six years without repair, if the template is anything to go by. Additionally, it is filled with language that seems practically illegible to the layman. When editing, I was flabbergasted at both the use of the word "econometrically" and its shocking eleven occurrences throughout the article. What is said in the article is very well-cited and deeply descriptive, I will not dispute that. However, I think it is quite obvious that the article is far too long, so some removal of more tangential information feels very justified.

There are many arguments for and against how and why TRPF exists, as well arguments about whether it exists at all. Instead of listing every economist, Marxist, and intellectual who has made remarks about the TRPF, I would hope that we can restructure the article into:

  • Explanations for why it exists / ought to exist, grouped by concept and not by intellectual
  • Arguments for and Against its existence, again grouped by concept

and then

  • Empirical Studies and Science that investigates the phenomenon.

This idea is, as the article states, a foundational concept in classical Marxism. Having its article be difficult to comprehend to the layman is, even if not intentional, a malicious act against Marxism, as it obscures a key intuition that would allow people to much better understand and greatly appreciate Marxism as a whole. Altoids0 (talk) 20:48, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • I am no expert in this field, so my only input was to inform Altoids0 of the need for this discussion. I'll defer to the opinions of others on the actual content matters. Altoids, if you get no feedback to these comments in three days or so, I'd have no problem to you moving ahead with the edits you propose. If you do so, remember to reference this talk page discussion in your edit summary. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 22:10, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I want to note that I am not an economist, nor a terribly great Marxist, and so might (and likely will) mess up in my abridging of this topic. If you, as an economist or otherwise, find things that I cut that you personally feel should remain, feel free to add it back in with your own, better summaries. Altoids0 (talk) 13:40, 8 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bias.

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The tendency for the rate of profit to fall was not held to be extremely important by Marx, since his Capital volume 1 did not include any mention of it. Moreover, in volume 3, there is mention as to when it is counteracted, namely by increased exploitation of workers or through decreased raw material costs via technological advances. Though it was mentioned in his unwritten work Grundrisse, to say that this unfinished thought constitutes Marx' finished and refined ideas is misleading. This article is somewhat disorienting in its bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:7171:2D00:DE33:47E0:DBB1:A32B (talk) 19:18, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Capital Vol. 1 wasn't meant to be his complete exposition of capitalism, so I'm not sure why non-inclusion in Vol. 1 means it wasn't important. In my opinion, counteracting influences don't signify its nonimportance - Engels thought it was central to Marxism as well. Regardless, if a scholar or some other source attacks the idea that it was central to Marx's thought (as I believe is a position held by some Marxists), feel free to include it as an addition to the sentence you have an issue with (something like "although this has been contested by some scholars"). Acalycine (talk) 08:29, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reference 82 is incorrectly claimed to contradict TRPF

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Reference 82 (the paper attributed to Òscar Jordà) doesn’t contradict TRPF.

The returns in this research are measured for someone investing in financial assets plus housing; they are not measuring industrial profit as a share of capital outlay, nor are they distinguishing productive versus “non-productive” capital in the sense that Marxian analyses would.

Because the paper is measuring a different concept of ‘rate of return’ than the one in Marx’s TRPF. If 50% of the “capital” here is housing, that alone is a red flag to a strict TRPF reading: in Marx’s framework, housing rents are typically considered a transfer of surplus value (rather than new surplus value produced in industrial production).

If large chunks of total household wealth are in forms that yield stable or rising rents and do not require employing more workers, that can mask any underlying “profit squeeze” in productive manufacturing or industry.

For these reasons this paper doesn’t contradict TRPF nor does it claim to contradict TRPF. OnodOfTheNorth (talk) 19:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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