A criticism of this essay published in Jacobin https://jacobin.com/2023/09/robert-brenner-marxist-economics-falling-rate-of-profit-stagnation-overcapacity-industrial-policy

Some of this goes a bit over my head tbh

  • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]
    hexagon
    ·
    1 year ago

    Something which is alluded to briefly in this essay but I want more on is the increase in the rate of exploitation as a way to stave off profitability crisis. It seems like that is a good measure for how much worse things have gotten for working class people over the last few decades, really accelerating considerably since covid. Does anyone have anything good to read on that?

  • plinky [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Am i exceedingly dumb or is jacobin measuring profit rate as (s/cc)? Good substack tho

    • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It seems so, or at least that's what Nicolas is saying, and is also calculating it as the ratio of surplus to constant capital to meet the jacobin piece on its terms while showing that the author makes a terrible error in switching methodologies halfway through a graph and then pretending that it shows anything valuable (and instead actually shows a greater fall in the rate of profit if the entire date range is calculated using that methodology).