“ The rate of profit does not fall because labour becomes less productive, but because it becomes more productive. ”
Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1894). copy citation
Author | Karl Marx |
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Source | Das Kapital |
Topic | profit labour |
Date | 1894 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | |
Weblink | https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-... |
Context
“Nothing is more absurd, for this reason, than to explain the fall in the rate of profit by a rise in the rate of wages, although this may be the case by way of an exception. Statistics is not able to make actual analyses of the rates of wages in different epochs and countries, until the conditions which shape the rate of profit are thoroughly understood. The rate of profit does not fall because labour becomes less productive, but because it becomes more productive. Both the rise in the rate of surplus-value and the fall in the rate of profit are but specific forms through which growing productivity of labour is expressed under capitalism.
VI. THE INCREASE OF STOCK CAPITAL The foregoing five points may still be supplemented by the following, which, however, cannot be more fully treated for the present.”
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