The falling rate of profit : Marx's law and its significance to twentieth-century capitalism / Joseph M. Gillman, Ph D.

Errata pasted in: pages 61, 117, grammatical errors; Appendix 4 should face p. 65, not p. 85

Includes bibliographical references: p. 161 - 167.

1. Why a theory of the falling rate of profit -- 2. Structure of the law -- A. Source of capitalist profit -- B. The dual nature of capital -- 3. The law questioned -- 4. Statistical tests of the law: I. flow basis -- A. Traditional approach -- B. Trend of the ratios -- C. Stock vs.flow -- 5. Statistical tests of the law: II. stock basis -- A. Ratios and trends -- B. Was Marx wrong? -- 6. The need for a reformulation -- A. The law in the context of twentieth century capitalism -- B. The conditions of change -- C. The transformation in the creation of surplus-values(s) -- D. Transformation in the realization of surplus-value -- 7. Surplus-value and unproductive expenditures -- A. Theory of the diminished s -- B. Demonstration of the law, s-u basis -- C. Conclusions -- 8. The dynamics of the law -- 9. The increasing severity of the cyclical crisis -- A. Theory and fact -- B. The explanations -- C. Effects of World War II -- 10. Final appraisal -- A. The 'secular impoverishment of the masses' -- B. The 'mystery' of the constant relative shares

"Statistical and other historical evidence shows that Marx's formulation of his Law of the Falling Rate of Profit, related to a rising organic composition of capital (a rising ratio of inversted capital to the wage bill), requires substantial modification if it is to apply to the capitalist stage of high monopoly-profit and extensive capital-saving technology.
"In this age of the rise of socialism and of colonial emancipation, imperialism and the export of capital can no longer serve as sufficient means of disposing of the excess surplus-value of advanced capitalist countries as was the case before World War I. This represents a forty-year leap from the capitalist conditions descrbed by Lenin in his Imperialism.
"In view of the above two propositions we coe to the conclusion that, as imperialist exploitation becomes less possible and capital-investment potentials at home contract, advanced capitalisms must seek viability in a progressive increase of their domestic consumption potentials.
"But in view of the capitalistically circumscribed private consumption potentials, advanced capitalisms must increasingly seek outlets for their fast accumulating surplus-value in government consumption, in various other forms of unproductive expenditures, and in such temporizing expedients as consumer financing.
"These means of disposing of excess surplus-value tend to convert capitalism into a consumption economy. Since, however, a trend toward a consumption economy negates the essence of capitalism as a system of private capital accumulation, it becomes an intensifying factor in what Marxists conceive as the general crisis of capitalism and a harbinger of its ultimate transformation into socialism." from blurb on dust jacket.