The tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) is a hypothesis in economics and political economy, most famously expounded by Karl Marx in chapter 13 of Das Kapital, Volume 3. It was generally accepted in the 19th century. Economists as diverse as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Stanley Jevons noticed a long-run empirical trend for the internal rate of return on capital invested to produce industrial products to decline, and Marx called this tendency "the most important law of political economy" and sought to give a causal explanation for it, in terms of his labour theory of value.
Read more about Tendency Of The Rate Of Profit To Fall: Adam Smith's 1776 Comment On The Rate of Profit, Marx's Argument, Quote From Marx On The Tendency of The Rate of Profit To Fall, Later Marxist Interpretation, Criticisms, In Terms of Mainstream Economics, Empirical Evidence, Further Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words tendency of, tendency, rate, profit and/or fall:
“The tendency of things runs steadily to this point, namely, to put every man on his merits, and to give him so much power as he naturally exerts,—no more, no less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“This tendency to consider only bombings or picking up the gun as revolutionary, with the glorification of the heavier the better, we’ve called the military error.”
—Bernardine Dohrn (b. 1942)
“We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. A man must stay sober: not always, but most of the time.”
—Clarence Day (1874–1935)