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 the, tendency of, tendency, rate, profit and/or fall:
“The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“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)
“At this very moment,... the most frightful horrors are taking place in every corner of the world. People are being crushed, slashed, disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rot and their eyes decay with the rest. Screams of pain and fear go pulsing through the air at the rate of eleven hundred feet per second. After travelling for three seconds they are perfectly inaudible. These are distressing facts; but do we enjoy life any the less because of them? Most certainly we do not.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Grant me profits only, grant me the joy of profit made,
and see to it that I enjoy cheating the buyer!”
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
“I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that what is is, when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for anything else to be; that we walk on in our particular paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must walk in some path; that every man can get a living, and so few can do anything more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength are gone, and yet this suffices.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)