Talk:Tendency of the rate of profit to fall/Archive 1

Archive 1

Preconditions of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall

1) In a branch, firms, which, with a given amount of invested capital, can produce the most, have an advantage against competitors. Therefore firms try to out-produce each other.

2) To increase production (or production capacity) firms can enlarge their enterprise by investing their profits on the basis of the given technique. More workers, more means of production are used with the same technique.

3) To increase production (or production capacity) firms can increase investments per worker in order to increase production per worker. The technical composition of capital rises thereby.

4) In order that for a firm it is rational to use profits to increase the technical composition of capital (the capital intensity) by a certain percentage, it is necessary that thereby production per worker is increased by a larger percentage. Otherwise more production could be achieved by investing profits in capacity enlargements on the basis of the existing technique.

5) Therefore, an incentive for firms to use profits to increase the technical composition of capital by a certain percentage exists, if thereby production per worker can be increased by a larger percentage.

6) In so far as this incentive is given, firms will try to increase the technical composition of capital as much as possible. They will try to increase it, if possible, by a percentage, which is larger than the preceding rate of growth of the productivity of their workers. (They might use only their profits to finance more investments per worker, but they can also borrow money from banks or merge with other firms. Capital concentration – growth of single firms – goes hand in hand with capital centralisation – the number of firms declines in order to allow even higher growth rates for the remaining firms.)

7) If this continues to happen, if an increase in the productivity of labour in firms is followed by an even larger increase in the technical composition of capital, then it follows mathematically, that growth of employment will slow down, employment will even shrink sooner or later. According to the labour theory of value, this means that the rate of profit must decrease. (It might suffice to say, that employment must finally shrink. This is sufficient for a tendency for crisis to come about.)

8) So, the condition for a slowing down of employment growth or for a falling rate of profit is, that firms have an incentive to increase the technical composition of capital more (in %) than the productivity of their workers has increased (in %).

9) If this incentive is given, firms are caught in a rationality trap or in a prisoners’ dilemma. It is rational for individual firms to increase the technical composition of capital more than labour productivity has risen, but for the collective of firms, for the economy as a whole, this leads to crisis.

Alex1011 22:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Addition to Criticism of Marx's Interpretation of TRPF section

I added a fourth response to the criticism.

The page in general could use better documentation of its sources.

--Rainercale 19:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Change to "Marx's Argument" Section

I don't mean to be presumptuous or mean, but I took the liberty of changing the intro to this section in order to more accurately reflect Marx's own explanation and the terms he uses in that explanation, as found in Capital, vol. 3, chapter 2 and chapter 13, as well as to draw the connections between these terms as Marx draws them. The previous intro offered a general idea of Marx's argument, but in such as way as to confuse some of the key elements going into that argument. The use of "technology" in place of Marx's "constant capital," for example, gives us only a tiny fraction of the ingredients that go into constant capital. The intro was right to point out the pardoxical character of the decline in profits in spite of rising productivity, but failed to point out the relation of surplus value to variable capital inherent in the term productivity; and thus the reason behind the paradox remained somewhat obscure, when in fact Marx's argument makes this relation plainly evident.

I also added Marx's argument in mathematical terms.

The rest of the section is good and I left it as is.

--Rainercale 13:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You say "and since profit equals surplus value divided by total capital ...", don't you mean "since the rate of profit equals ..." I believe that "profit" is different than "rate of profit" and is arrived at by a different calculation (profit = revenue - (variable expenses + depreciation). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.3.56.57 (talk) 04:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The Correct Adam Smith Quote

Book I, Chapter X, Part I, Pg.132 in The Modern Library Classics edition (unabridged)..The paragraph heading is "and higher profits". I feel qualified to assist you since I read the whole text....Now get out from under your bridge, dust your ego off and make it right. Gee whiz if you can,t hack this striving for perfection ditch it!!--Oracleofottawa (talk) 06:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Philosophy? Why not Economics?

I understand that the theory of TRPF has been discredited by modern economists. But I don't quite see why this article falls under the domain of philosophy rather than economics. It is apparent that this theory once pervaded economic thinking, especially during the Great Depression and the aftermath of WW2. I won't claim to know how the WikiGods organize articles into projects, but it seems to me that this should be categorized as Economics instead of Philosophy. MisplacedFate1313 (talk) 01:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Amen friend....--Oracleofottawa (talk) 06:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Okishio

I don't see how the Okishio argument is at all relevant to the Marxist articulation of the falling rate of profit. Okishio says, if unit prices remains the same, the rate of profit will rise, but that's obvious to anyone with half a brain. Marx's point, however, was that unit prices will not remain the same.Alexandergreenb (talk) 22:02, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Translation

There is a french translation : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baisse_tendancielle_du_taux_de_profit I don't know how to add a link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.82.178.85 (talk) 21:56, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

TRPF or LTFRP?

see above; Marx uses the term 'law of the tendential falling rate of profit' and its abbreviation is thus LTFRP not TRPF.

Also, reference #2 should be removed. It leads to an irrelevant source (http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/subpage.aspx?id=9836) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 09:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Spruce-up

I have tried to spruce up the article I started, and bring it up to speed with current controversies. I have fitted the references into notes.Jurriaan (talk) 19:10, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if, from now on, super-radical amateur nincompoops with no real understanding of the literature refrained from messing with the article. The topic is complex enough without all kinds of people introducing errors in the text as well.Jurriaan (talk) 09:26, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies?

In writing this article, I have done my best to cover all the main controversies in the Marxian tradition, as well as noting ideas outside that tradition. I cannot help it, if criminal editors destroy the valid content of the article by simply removing referenced text that explained different points.Jurriaan (talk) 13:34, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Salon link

It is perhaps of interest that Salon.com hyperlinked to this wiki article [1] so, despite attacks against the article, I have not done so badly, it seems.Jurriaan (talk) 12:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Misusing sources

Jurriaan, why did you reinsert all this stuff even after I pointed out problems with synthesis, original research, and misuse of sources? These articles are not your personal soapbox, and you are not exempt from wikipedia's policies. bobrayner (talk) 17:11, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

bobrayner, looking at that editor's contributions, it would appear that some "vandalism" on other articles may need restoring, and someone may need to read WP:NOTVAND. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:50, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

The amateur editor Bob Rayner has entered into a holy crusade to combat what he considers, according to his own political bias, leftwing bullshit in wikipedia (he never, or almost never, touches rightwing articles). His rightwing striving might be honorable, were it not for the unfortunate fact, that he has evidently no scholarly knowledge at all of most of the topics covered in the articles that he wants to cut down to size, and therefore cannot even explain his own edits. He just "alleges" later that there are problems, using a cryptic phrase. For Rayner, however, that does not matter a hoot, because he regards himself as the authority on spotting bullshit statements, and uses his own "common sense" to work out why what is written can't be right as it stands. Once Bob Rayner has cut out large chunks of material that he does not happen to like, he either provides no explanation at all for his surgery, or alludes only to some vague reason (or wiki procedurality) that "might justify" his surgical operations - if further explanations were elaborated. But of course he does not provide any details for his deletions to readers of the article. From his elevated position there is no need for him to provide any reasons for his actions; he regards himself as the supreme authority, like it or not. Not infrequently his procedure becomes very cavalier indeed. For example, he cuts out more than 1,000 words on the ground that "it doesn't seem to have anything to do with profit decline". Huh? It does not "seem" to have anything to do with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (this is not the same thing as "profit decline", by the way)? Thanks very much, I contributed 1,000 words and Bob Rayner cuts them out in a second because it "seems" wrong. The correct course of action by Bob Rayner would be, that if he objects to the material, that he would state his objection on the talk page, verify his concern, and discuss it with the writer(s). However, he never does that, he simply wipes out what he doesn't like. And that is all he does, most of the time. Okay, wikipedia is a chaotic anarchy, and Bob Rayner has found a nice niche for his destructive deletion activities in wikipedia circles. But that is not editing. It is simply destroying content according to personal bias. The topic of this article, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, has played a central role in the history of Marxian economics across the 20th century and beyond, and has been the subject of a very large scholarly literature. Necessarily, therefore, the article will be fairly substantial. I was still building up the article, and referencing it, when Nikkimaria started to cut it down in size... without offering any explanation. I can accept Nikkimaria's general concern about article length; if points can be made in a briefer way, that is all to the good. But in fact Nikkimaria makes errors too, wiping out points which are in reality essential... and wiping out, or misplacing, references. So the edits may not be an improvement at all, and they most often aren't. What I definitely do not accept, is Bob Rayner's arbitrary erasures for reasons which are just spurious, or completely absent. In general, I am very wary about editors who edit articles about which they don't have any knowledge or experience. Because the odds are that they get it wrong. I can supply plenty more references to back up each and every statement of the article, without any original research being necessary, because nothing what I said is especially controversial among people who know the subject. So anyway: best to leave alone what you don't understand.Jurriaan (talk) 11:31, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Reduction edits?

At this stage the article has about 17,800 words, 97,700 characters, 1,500 lines and 136,000 bytes. If that is too long, I would like to hear that from readers first, and I would prefer people to discuss this rationally, before Nikkimaria once more autocratically runs roughshod over the article to reduce its size by any means possible.Jurriaan (talk) 19:43, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I have noticed that User:Nikkimaria is cutting out chunks of the article and condensing things, without explanation or discussion. I guess that means my contribution therefore ends. If people want to see the uncut full version, they can consult the version of 22 May 2014 in the archive annex of this article.Jurriaan (talk) 07:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

In the past month I added some stuff anyway that was essential for the completion of the article.Jurriaan (talk) 19:07, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Unqualified editors, back off!!!

I am very annoyed to find that the article which I originated, has been edited by people who obviously do not know what they are talking about, resulting in a lot of deformed waffle in the article, instead of a clear explanation of the concept and its implications User:Jurriaan 19 July 2009 13:10 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.182.183.8 (talk)

→What a delightfully refreshing and naive piece of wishful thinking! :) This is Wikipedia. Good luck! Don't get me started on trying to get the correct adiabatic burn temperature of Jet-A1 Aviation Kerosene recorded on WP (it's about 2300 Celsius). 124.168.117.136 (talk) 03:35, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Length

I intend to find ways to reduce the length of the article.Jurriaan (talk) 07:14, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Facebook

Some 107 people "liked" this article on Facebook[2].Jurriaan (talk) 22:55, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

"In terms of mainstream economics"

The section entitled "In terms of mainstream economics" pretty much has nothing to do with mainstream economics, aside perhaps from the first sentence. In mainstream economics the falling rate of profit is a result of diminishing returns to capital and that's it. Volunteer Marek  00:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Left mainstream vs. Marx: http://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/04/the-rule-of-robots-in-stiglitz-and-marx/ --Alex1011 (talk) 12:28, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

unproductive labour

If the amount of labour is proportional or at least in a relation to the amount of goods produced, labour is productive. If there is no relationship between the amount of labour employed and the amount of goods produced (administration, planning, research etc.) labour is unproductive. See also the "machine chapter" in Marx's "Grundrisse" describing unproductive labour like supervising etc. --Alex1011 (talk) 06:29, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Mill and the TRPF

The student User:Timmartin decided to weigh in with a longwinded paragraph in the introduction about Mill's theory of the TRPF. I have removed this, because (1) the intro paragraphs to the article must be brief and not long and convoluted, (2) because a statement such as "Marx considered his theoretical working out of the 'Law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall' and its 'counteracting tendencies' to be his greatest theoretical achievement and is the theoretical underpinning for his Crisis Theory and the marxist theory of capitalist imperialism." is FALSE. There is no evidence whatever that Marx believed this, and there is nobody that argues this. (3) In his revision User:Timmartin misplaces references or provides a reference that is dubious. To accommodate his alteration somewhat nevertheless, I have restored a short bit from the original article, to the effect that Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Jevons etc. all had a theory of the TRPF. This true and referenced statement was previously removed by the right-wing journalist Bob Rayner from Richmond VA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.124.14.59 (talk) 13:57, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Law of value

Callinicos (1) mentions that Engels introduced that one senctence insisting on the validity of the law, a sentence, which is not from Marx himself. And (2) he critisises (rightly or wrongly) Engels for his remarks on the labour theory of value. [What Engels means, is that the law of value in a narrow sense - prices are directly proportional to labour values - is modified in capitalism, where production prices replace the direct labour value prices.] This is, however, in Callinicos's book in a new paragraph, which does not deal with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Therefore I deleted the following, which might (without the first senctence) find a place in law of value or in something like that:

"Professor Alex Callinicos, the chief theoretician of the British International Socialists after Tony Cliff, believes that Friedrich Engels seriously misrepresented Marx's tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Callinicos believes, that Engels said in his afterword to Capital, Volume III that the law of value existed prior to capitalism, but not during capitalism – “a complete misunderstanding of Marx’s value theory.” This contrasts with Engels's preface to Capital, Volume III, where Engels says the law of value does exist during capitalism, and criticizes Conrad Schmidt for abandoning that idea."

--Alex1011 (talk) 09:52, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

===Well, the actual passage on p. 42 of Callinicos's book states: "...the biggest weakness of Engels’s edition of Volume III has long been well known， namely the famous Supplement and Addendum where he outlines the so-called historical interpretation of the labour theory of value, claiming that it holds true in conditions of simple commodity production， prior to the development of capitalism， but ηot where capitalist productions prevails. This involves a complete misunderstanding of Marx's value theory." If Callinicos now wants to widdle out of the implication of his own argument, and erase my report, denying any connection between the Marxian interpretation of the TRPF and the Marxian law of value, then all I can say is that he doesn't even understand what he is arguing himself, and what he is theoretically committed to. If the law of value as a determinant of price levels does not exist in capitalism, as he (falsely) alleges is argued by Engels, then Marx's argument for the TRPF falls down, precisely because Marx's argument is premised on the idea that the value of past labour incorporated in means of production increases vis-a-vis the value of living labour performed, as a longterm historical trend, something which cannot fail to be reflected in the price levels and returns for capital investments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.148.154.58 (talk) 21:02, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Incorrect refutation

"In defense of the theory that the organic composition of capital does rise in the long term (lowering the average rate of profit), Mandel claimed that there does not exist any branch of industry where wages are a growing proportion of total production costs, as a secular trend. The real trend is the other way: toward semi-automation and full automation which lowers total labor costs in the total capital outlay.[115] Critics of that idea point to low-wage countries like China, where the long run trend is for average real wages to rise. For example, the Chinese Communist Party aims to double Chinese workers' wages by 2020.[116]"

The last sentence here is supposed to "refute" Mandel's argument it seems, but if I am not totally mistaken it rests on a spectacular, and obvious, mix-up of totally different things (real wages and wages as part of capital outlay). Is that so, or is it me who is misunderstanding something? ill check in here again in a couple of days, if no reply I'll erase the "respons" and let Mandel's observation stand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.18.169.243 (talk) 19:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

As the author of this article, I do not know whether the CCP can double Chinese workers' wages by 2020. But if hypothetically they could do this, in the space of 7 years, it would mean that the wage-bill grew faster than the increase in the total outlay on fixed capital, materials and operating expenses. In that case, the organic composition of production capital (C/V) would be lowered by rising wage rates. This would in turn contradict Mandel's claim that there is no evidence that wages become a bigger proportion in the total capital outlay for production, in the long run. The counter argument would be, that although continental East-Asian wages rise pretty fast, outlays on constant capital in production rise even faster. That is an empirical thesis, which would have to be tested against available data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.160.222.66 (talk) 08:07, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Have a look at: Steve Johnson, "Chinese wages now higher than in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico". Financial Times, 26 february 2017.[3] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.148.154.58 (talk) 22:40, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

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Original research?

This article contains a lot of content that violates Wikipedia rules. Passages like the one below need to be removed. Intuition plays absolutely no role in what should or should not appear in an article. Everything has to come from the secondary literature and be referenced.

Intuitively, Okishio's argument makes sense. After all, why would capitalists invest in more efficient production on a larger scale, unless they thought their profits would increase? Orthodox Marxists have typically responded to this argument in five kinds of ways (there are, of course, numerous other arguments, involving more or less complex mathematical models): — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.67.107 (talk) 03:35, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

The expression "intuitively" could be replaced by "At first sight" or "Prima facie" or "At the level of common sense". This has nothing to do with the use of intuition in wikipedia articles, but with the contrast between what appears to be the case at the surface and what turns out to be the case on closer inspection. This article does attempt to reference the claims made by scholars as much as possible; there is nothing in it that is not referenced in the literature.Cambridge Optic (talk) 13:09, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Message for User:Sdio7 - Please, give us a break

I have noticed that user Sdio7 has inserted more text in the section "empirical studies"in the 20th century. The way this is done is highly objectionable, on several counts. First, the new text concerns the 21st century, not the 20th century. Second, the new text is waffly and rambling, instead of precise, brief and succinct. Third, the references lack any proper notation and formats, or are incomplete. Fourth, the new text repeats points already made explicitly or implicitly elsewhere in the article. Fifth, there are punctuation and spelling errors. This sort of freshman "editing" is NOT what we want in this article, because then other people have to tidy up the mess. If you want so badly to weigh in with your own research, and add it to the article, bear in mind the article is already too long. Familiarize yourself with its content, before adding even more stuff to it. As pointed out in the TRPF wiki, there exist literally thousands of articles and books on the TRPF, and the article could be extended by hundreds of pages. But that is not the purpose here, it is only just a brief overview. What I have done for now, is to edit the long ramble down to size. But actually, I am keen to remove most of the Sdio7 edits, because they add little to what is already said, and are in the wrong section. Cambridge Optic (talk) 13:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

New section on 21st century empirical studies

I have created a new section 4.2 on empirical studies in the 21st century, and shifted the relevant material down to that section.Cambridge Optic (talk) 23:57, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Non-Neutral Point of View

This whole article could use a review but as it goes on (interminably) the point of view of the author becomes less and less neutral until it's simply stating opinions with citations (to cleverly disguise them as factual, of course) near the end. 98.172.49.132 (talk) 15:47, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

If the article "becomes less and less neutral" as it goes along, where is the evidence for that? And if it is not neutral enough, how would I correct that? The trouble with critics of the article is, that they rarely give any specifics about what is wrong, and how to put it right. There is just a vague accusation, smear or complaint about the effort made (actually contrary to wiki policy). The concluding section was specifically included to balance out the article, and alert people to important contemporary counter-arguments, and thus to overcome e.g. accusations of "anti-profit bias" in the article and suchlike. The last section just notes that the issue has been raised, of what the point is of the TRPF narrative in the end, and what it is good for, in particular since whole societies do not exist without profits, or without a surplus product in some or other form. As the writer, I am not taking any particular position in what I wrote, I am merely describing that all these viewpoints exist, and I think that if readers are smart enough to read the article, they can make their own judgements from the info provided quite well. Maybe it is not me who is biased, but instead readers who are uncomfortable with positions being included in the article which diverge from their own favorite cherished ideology. The concept of "loss of narrative" can be interpreted in several ways, but it seemed a good way to end a long article. It's a bit like a David Lynch movie. If my formulations are insufficiently neutral, then I think my critics ought to be able to say why they are not neutral, and how I would correct that. Since I completed the main edit of this article, the readership has approximately doubled, so I think I did not do so badly. It is true that the article is long, but there are plenty articles which are even longer (check out Wikipedia:Wikipedia records). There are a lot of aspects to cover, because the article deals with a scientific controversy which has continued for one and a quarter century so far. I have done my best to include every aspect of the topic that is important and noteworthy, in relatively simple language, and to reference scholarly claims. This provides a resource for others to use, whatever their position on the subject. I think, actually, that I deserve a Barnstar for all the work I put in to create a quality article. I do not "own" this article, others can edit it, but I do hope that if other editors start working on the article, that they have proven scientific competence in the subject-matter, and do not start changing things on a whim, just because they prefer a different flavour in their milkshake. A lot of wiki's have been ruined, because editors who have no genuine competence, experience or knowledge about the subject-matter jump in and start "improving" things so that the articles become a mess of nonsense. Just because "anyone can edit Wikipedia" does not mean that "anyone" should edit "anything they feel like". The presumption is, that the editor is actually editing something, that he or she is truly able to edit, knowing what he or she is doing, through verifiable competence in the subjectmatter.Cambridge Optic (talk) 23:43, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

The entire "loss of narrative" section is horribly worded, so that even non-Marxists feel alienated by it, whereas, granted, Marxists can feel that way about Wikipedia articles in general anyway.

"They hated reformism even more than they hated capitalism, because reformists always help capitalism to survive, when the TRPF causes capitalism to crash. They rewrote the history of Marxian economics to emphasize the centrality of the TRPF. Yet, it became less and less clear exactly why they remained so obsessed with that narrative. If the TRPF was the answer, what is the question? And if the TRPF is the question, what is the answer? Once we know that the profit rate is, or is not falling, how does that help to create a better economic, social or political policy?" - This paragraph sounds like it was written by somebody whose last will it was to bash anything written regarding the TPRF by Marxists before dying of asphyixation caused by an unending rant about how stupid Marxists are. "As the writer, I am not taking any particular position in what I wrote, I am merely describing that all these viewpoints exist" is a quite cheap retort, given that who you are giving voices and who you do not give voices are an act of bias as well. Refer to WP:IMPARTIAL regarding this. If you want the article to be as neutral/unbiased as possible, specifically with such a long article, you ought to present the conflicting viewpoints or opinions within a maximum of a paragraph/very short section *or* clearly denote that this paragraph/very short section presents a different viewpoint. That said, in regards to the aforementioned problematic paragraph, I would suggest either putting such quite angry-sounding argumentation in quotes - if they are quoted - or rewording it in accordance with Wikipedia's policies on impartial tone, which I linked earlier. JulkaK (talk) 16:22, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

To add in on that again, after having read more of the article, it would be a lot better - if not necessary - to compile the sources present in all sections starting from 20th century Marxist controversies, weed out marginal or relatively unnecessary sources and undo the previously mentioned wording issues. As well, the "loss of narrative" section specifically (the only one I found so far, but if there are similar ones, these need to be included as well) needs either a complete rewording in order to fit WP:IMPARTIAL or the views present in it (more favorable) need to be incorporated in the sections and subsections prior to the one in question. In general, if you want to portray all opinions in a neutral manner, you need to do so within sections and not cut up the article into two halves representing two viewpoints respectively. As well, I entirely forgot about that when I first responded to you, but:

"(...)since whole societies do not exist without profits, or without a surplus product in some or other form."

How is that not an inherently biased statement? There is still an ongoing debate - in fact this specific statement is one of the core dividers - in the social sciences, whether this is true or not and within e.g. Marxist historical materialism, this statement is simply not true. If you want to portray this within your articles, provide the two main voices on this matter in a generally readable paragraph or two, not within an article almost as long as the longest articles on Wikipedia. If you're still calling for more examples on how to be neutral, I am starting to question your intellectual honesty. At this point, it should be quite clear. JulkaK (talk) 07:28, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

The people who are specifically given a "voice" in the last section are people who doubt, criticize or reject the whole point of the long and seemingly interminable discourse about the TRPF, and I try to state plainly what the type of arguments are, that are usually made in this respect. When you say "This paragraph sounds like it was written by somebody whose last will it was to bash anything written regarding the TPRF by Marxists before dying of asphyixation caused by an unending rant about how stupid Marxists are", that is certainly not my intention at all, it is a slur, my aim is only to convey plainly what the contrary argument is about, whether the reader agrees or disagrees. Would it be possible to restate the text, so that it does not rile your ire, and if so, how do you think it would be done - without entering into emotional rhetoric? If I have done it wrong, what is the right way to do it, according to you? Quite likely the text could be better worded, that is always true. If I have made a real mistake in the text, you a welcome to note that, and suggest an alternative. You talk a lot about me being "not neutral" but do not indicate much at all about HOW to make the text more "neutral" if indeed it is "not neutral". To resolve this practically, we need to know WHY the text is wrong and HOW to alter the text to make it better. If you can provide evidence for any country that demonstrates that profit and a surplus product does not exist there, or anybody who disputes that profit and a surplus product exist somewhere, you are welcome, of course. If there are unwanted or unnecessary references, which ones are they? What do you mean exactly by "compiling" references? We could drop the whole last section, but in that case we have deleted another viewpoint on the whole issue. I think it is important to note, that this viewpoint exists, as demonstrated by Hodgson's recent book about the "wrong turnings of the left", for example (Hodgson played an important role in the whole academic debate about the TRPF, from the 1970s onward). I thought it would be a good idea to include this last section, if only for the sake of balance and as food for thought, even if true believers in the TRPF theory do not like it. To understand the positive case better, you have to understand the inverse (the critique) as well. That is a basic principle of rational discourse. Have you read the article as a whole, or only bits of it? At issue is not my personal intellectual honesty, but whether or not the text provided is correct and appropriate, or whether it should be scrapped or rewritten, and if the latter, why and how this should be done. If I have made errors, then I am grateful if these are noted, and intend to correct them as time permits, but if there is just an accusation of errors without evidence of what they are, I cannot do much with that. My honest aim was only to indicate what is at issue in this topic, what the controversies are about, as an aid to the reader who maybe is not familiar with basic econometrics, the history, and the literature. If I have failed, what is the evidence, and can we do a better job? That is the challenge.Cambridge Optic (talk) 18:52, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

These are not the only issues with the article, I may quote myself regarding its general readability once more. As well, I have mentioned examples of what is problematic about the text above. "If I have done it wrong, what is the right way to do it, according to you?" - WP:IMPARTIAL

You, over and over again, tell people that they don't properly tell you how to rewrite the article, when, if they would, they could do it instead of you anyway. That there is a certain amount of energy that has to be spent in order to criticise an article - and to work over it - should be clear; and that, given this fact, it is expected to be intellectually honest about one's apparent neutral stance. So, people may refer to you about certain parts of this article and where they object, but they can't point at every single thing. But since they do tell you the basics of what you can do better or to what they object, your rebuttal is void. As well, you seem to have not read my very specific criticism that the opposing views should be presented at maximum within one section and not divide the whole articles into more or less two opposing halves.

"If you can provide evidence for any country that demonstrates that profit and a surplus product does not exist there, or anybody who disputes that profit and a surplus product exist somewhere, you are welcome, of course." - That is not what you said. You said, I quote: "(...)since whole societies do not exist without profits, or without a surplus product in some or other form." - That is a very general statement that does not or not necessarily or not fully refer to currently existing countries, but to the claim at large, which is simply not true. Marxist historical materialism clearly postulates an internally consistent structure in which surplus and consequently profits are abolished. That is not subject to debate, whether you are a Marxist or not, honestly. Its practical implementation may be, but its theoretical internal consistency and therefore the objective truth behind the fact that a society without surplus and profits may exist is simply not. Though that is what you denied.

Anyway, I don't necessarily object to your usage of an extensive list of literary input, though some are, in my opinion, unfitting or redundant, I object to the overall division of the article in opposing halves and its unnecessary extensiveness (as, once more, indicated by Wikipedia:GENAUD). I've said this plenty of times now, I don't think I can make it any clearer than this (in regards to general readability and the compilation of opposing views into sections, rather than the whole article.) Otherwise its neutrality will stay justly disputed. Again, the last sections and paragraphs read not only like opinions, but like lampoons. How do you suggest you "prove" that something sounds like a lampoon? You can't, really. That is why I am, once more, appealing to your intellectual honesty and to actually summarize - properly - what is said in your citations and not write it yourself based on primary sources. Either """quote""" or summarize according to WP:IMPARTIAL. A bunch of rhetorical questions (again, the previously, above quoted paragraph) is simply not a NPOV. If you really want a practical example for that one specifically:

"They hated reformism even more than they hated capitalism, because reformists always help capitalism to survive, when the TRPF causes capitalism to crash. They rewrote the history of Marxian economics to emphasize the centrality of the TRPF. Yet, it became less and less clear exactly why they remained so obsessed with that narrative. If the TRPF was the answer, what is the question? And if the TRPF is the question, what is the answer? Once we know that the profit rate is, or is not falling, how does that help to create a better economic, social or political policy?"

should be something like

They "hated reformism even more than they hated capitalism", as in their view reformism aided the survival of capitalism, whereas the rigorous adherence to the TRPF would "cause capitalism to crash". According to 'insert source here', they rewrote Marxian economic history in order to emphasize the centrality of the TRPF. Their reasoning behind this move was, however, seemingly obscure and they often times failed to properly explain or prove the TRPF's centrality. - The problem here already is that the opposing narrative is lost because, as I mentioned earlier, it is not presented within the same section, but somewhere totally else or not at all. Apart from that, it is unclear where your summarization begins and where the author's words end, which is a problem already pointed out by User:Czar. JulkaK (talk) 23:36, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

You are NOT a Czar, and I think you should stop calling yourself that. "Opposing halves"? This is not about a gender change, is is about the TRPF. It is quite clear from the text, that in the final section we are talking about people who don't see much merit anymore in the whole story about the TRPF. That is also why it is the very last section in the whole article. If I am not correctly representing things, okay, I am prepared to change that, but for the rest I think it is perfectly valid. The centrist critique of the TRPF exists, no doubt about that. It ought to be mentioned. A section on mainstream economics is also included in the article. I don't see any problem with that, the task is to describe simply the kinds of arguments that are being mooted, as an orientation, that is all; people can make their own judgements about the considerations that are presented, and I do not expect them to agree with everything in the article, it is just food for thought. Since the TRPF is primarily associated with Marx, plenty attention is given to that, but that is not all there is to it. When you say that "Marxist historical materialism clearly postulates an internally consistent structure in which surplus and consequently profits are abolished", what does this mean? Look, as soon as a tax-levying state exists to govern society (and that happens already 6000 years ago) then a surplus product exists. It is, in fact, the existence of a surplus product that enables the taxes to be levied. It may be that in some failed states today, the surplus product and profits are miserably small, but they are there. Plenty Marxists have argued that a surplus product existed in the USSR, Eastern Europe and the PRC. Question is, whether you can show that a society exists without a surplus product and profit. Maybe you can do that, but they are only small tribal communities, that exist within a state that does feature a surplus product and profits. There is a difference between arguing about what actually exists, and what should exist or could exist. I do not deny that a society could exist without profits or a surplus product, I can conceptualize that, but that is not the issue here. Marx himself never used the terminology of "historical materialism", and for good reason: he did not wish to promulgate a "doctrine" about understanding history, since understanding history requires that one studies it in an open-minded, scientific way in which the answers one finds are not prejudiced by one's method of inquiry. What he called the "materialist conception of history" was a non-theistic perspective on history in which people are not made by God, but "people make themselves". It was a "guide to research" (Leitfaden) or general perspective, and not a philosophical "system" - and that perspective could be modified as new research became available (as Prof. Makoto Itoh points out). The modern notion of "historical materialism" has nothing much in common with Marx, because it mostly does not involve a scientific study of the facts about human history provided by modern research, and is more a philosophical and literary undertaking about the flavours of concepts to which the writers have a sentimental attachment (which Marx and Engels criticized in their youth). Marx never wanted to instruct people on "how to do science". His attitude appears to have been more along the lines, that either you are interested to fathom the real truth about society and its history through systematic, sustained research of human experience, or you are not, and if you are not interested in that, you should not go around calling yourself a "scientist". The whole tenor of Engels's polemic against Eugen Duehring was that the whole endeavour of grandiose philosophical "system-building" about society and human nature was wrongheaded; we ought to draw our light not from philosophical systems cooked up from behind the writing desks of theorists, but from the actual experience that people had, in practice, about which plenty facts are available. In the article, I have deliberately opted to refer to some primary sources, and for a good reason: oodles of bullshit are told about Marx and Engels, readers know this very well by now, and people want to know what the original sources are. But in fact the original sources provided are only about 10% of the references. The vast majority of sources refer to the secondary literature. I am perfectly willing to admit, that the text "could be wrong" in places, but in that case I require evidence which demonstrates this, so that I can alter the text appropriately. From a Marxist perspective, reforms can either promote the cause of the oppressed and exploited people, or they can hinder them. People live today and tomorrow, not in the next century, and they want a decent life in their lifetime, not in the "never never". That is perfectly understandable. But ultra-leftist thought twists this perfectly acceptable idea into the idea that reformism as such is a sin - anything short of total revolution is an error. The real dispute, is - absent a real mass revolt against unjust policies - about which reforms are a real gain for people who are oppressed and exploited, and those which aren't. In this dispute, we have to reckon with the reality that perhaps a third of government policies turn out to have been an error - in hindsight, they are based on political compromises, which do not really "deliver the goods" that people want (trade unions know this issue very well). But that is the brutal political reality that people have to deal with, the reality that different groups and classes exist with conflicting interests. You can choose, of course, not to accept any compromises short of "total revolution". It is just that, in that case, you opt out of governmental politics (which necessarily requires compromises, which have to take into account the interests of all). It is very easy for an academic or a bystander to adopt a super-radical standpoint, because in that position you do not carry the can, you don't have the responsibility for what happens. In a real political position, you do not have that luxury, you have to deal with the force field of political power, in which compromises have to be made. The centrist perspective which I describe in the last section, says that a lot could be gained simply by shifting focus. But it is not the purpose of a wikipedia article to tell people what focus they ought to have - it is only to describe what is involved in a concept or idea.Cambridge Optic (talk) 20:49, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

"You are NOT a Czar." Uh, did you misunderstand something? I am referring to user:Czar, the Wikipedia Admin, not myself.

""Opposing halves"? This is not about a gender change, is is about the TRPF. It is quite clear from the text, that in the final section we are talking about people who don't see much merit anymore in the whole story about the TRPF." - It is not, though. Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be read fully and not in one go, there's a reason why we have sections or sub-chapters. If anybody scrolls down to the last section and reads it on its own, they're gonna have a problem. And that is what I - among others - have been criticising.

"When you say that "Marxist historical materialism clearly postulates an internally consistent structure in which surplus and consequently profits are abolished", what does this mean? Look, as soon as a tax-levying state exists to govern society (and that happens already 6000 years ago) then a surplus product exists." - I doubt that you are present within the social sciences, because that very fact is at the very least controversial. Primitive communism (Urkommunismus) has existed without surplus and it very much had to. Similarly to Rousseau, Marx had postulated two "golden eras" in human history, one at the beginning and one at the end of human society (with Rousseau) or of class society (with Marx). This golden era in the beginning, backed by anthropological and archeological data of the recent decades, was free of surplus and thus of classes.

"Plenty Marxists have argued that a surplus product existed in the USSR, Eastern Europe and the PRC." - Indeed they have, so am I and every other somewhat serious Marxist, because they were socialist societies. They were societies in transformation from capitalism to communism and showed aspects of both. They are the dialectical negation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie - the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism, however, is no dictatorship of the proletariat. It's a classless society, which includes the doing away with of the primary classes in capitalism: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. And since these two exist in a state of dialectical unity, getting rid of one automatically gets rid of the other.

"There is a difference between arguing about what actually exists, and what should exist or could exist. I do not deny that a society could exist without profits or a surplus product, I can conceptualize that, but that is not the issue here." - That is very much the issue here, since theory is an undetachable part of praxis, as praxis is an undetachable part of theory. A society without surplus is entirely possible, as it had already existed once before: primitive communism. The question if it is possible in the future is part of the ideological battle of humanity, which will not cease until such a society would be achieved. Though, as a note, a society in which unfree laborers under feudal reign would eventually become free and, *gasp*, heathens or atheists was deemed impossible by feudal lords as well - and look where we are at right now. The fact that class society exists and that its internal contradictions constantly seek to resolve is, however, not only backed by Aristotlean logic - which Marx so famously makes use of in his proofs - but simply generally by even liberal empiricism. And the only answers to a society with ever-intensifying contradictions is the eventual resolvement of these contradictions, which is, per definitionem, a classless society or, to be in line with this sentence's build-up, a society rid of class contradictions and its derivatives.

"It was a "guide to research" (Leitfaden) or general perspective, and not a philosophical "system" - and that perspective could be modified as new research became available (as Prof. Makoto Itoh points out). The modern notion of "historical materialism" has nothing much in common with Marx, because it mostly does not involve a scientific study of the facts about human history provided by modern research, and is more a philosophical and literary undertaking about the flavours of concepts to which the writers have a sentimental attachment (which Marx and Engels criticized in their youth)." - That is a really dishonest claim, mostly, because it's simply not true. Naturally, Marx' works on what eventually became historical materialism are a Leitfaden, however, I am not sure if you are a German speaker - I am a native German speaker - a Leitfaden, specifically in the Marxist sense, is rather translated as "fundamental groundwork", than a simple "guide to theory". Marx' and Engels' perception of history was very certainly a child of its times, based on Morgan's research, and ought to be modernized - which it was, very clearly, by Marxist scholars throughout its history. You may think of Maria Mies and Silvia Federici, who have contributed a lot to the materialist explanation of sex and gender, where it is undetachably linked to the existence of surplus (with the "inauguration" of surplus comes the existence of gender). Those two are only part of a certain sphere of historical materialism, but it gives you an idea. To claim that Marx "actually meant something totally different" is entirely bogus. Development of what came to be called historical materialism still has to utilize method of dialectical materialism in accordance with present data - and it does exactly that, as e.g. evidence by Mies' and Federici's contributions to Marxist feminism and consequently historical materialism.

"The whole tenor of Engels's polemic against Eugen Duehring was that the whole endeavour of grandiose philosophical "system-building" about society and human nature was wrongheaded; we ought to draw our light not from philosophical systems cooked up from behind the writing desks of theorists, but from the actual experience that people had, in practice, about which plenty facts are available." - Entirely correct, though, what you're missing is that Marx' and Engels' epistemological view was not one that put praxis over theory, instead of theory over praxis; it was one that dialectically combined theory with praxis, recognizing their inseperable nature. That only through experiencing we can deduce, yet only through thinking we can induce. That is the very core of the Marxist conception of theory and praxis, which, in a more modern form, by the way, is re-capped by Mao Zedong in "On Praxis" and "On Contradiction". Engels' criticism of Eugen Dühring was a critique of idealistic epistemology, which they (Marx and Engels) had replaced by materialist dialectics.

"But ultra-leftist thought twists this perfectly acceptable idea into the idea that reformism as such is a sin - anything short of total revolution is an error." - (In response to the sentence prior to this one as well:) I am at least glad that, put casually, you don't hate poor people. lol. Nonetheless, there is a reason for why reformism is treated the way it is by revolutionary socialists. The criticism of reformism is quite extensive and the achievements of revolutionary socialism, which was fruitful in the end, versus reformatory socialism, which has not been able to take the proletarian struggle to a victorious conclusion - probably most evidently in Germany and specifically Austria - ought to present the merits of revolutionary socialism. Surely, this is a debate to be held somewhere else, because, quite honestly, a Wikipedia talk page is way too unfitting (given its format) for a discussion like this.

"But that is the brutal political reality that people have to deal with, the reality that different groups and classes exist with conflicting interests. You can choose, of course, not to accept any compromises short of "total revolution". It is just that, in that case, you opt out of governmental politics (which necessarily requires compromises, which have to take into account the interests of all)." - I disagree - at least with the insinuated conclusion of these sentences: Certainly we have to realize that we live in a class society, with class contradictions seeking to resolve, and I am glad that you recognize this as well, though what we can deduce from this - and this is the historical mission, and in the end the core of all subjective forces, of Marxism - is that we are eventually battling for a better world. That, if we acknowledge, what we live in right now will always produce winners and losers, we have consequently a historical duty to undo this system - for the very sake of humanity.

In the end, again, my issues with the article are solely based on the fact that it is generally not read in one go and thus needs a "distribution" of opposing views within sections. It just cannot be expected that people read the entire thing, they'll cherrypick and that is good, that is what an encyclopaedia is partially for. JulkaK (talk) 13:52, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to start by saying I really, really appreciate Cambridge Optic's effort to re-write the article. It's much improved. However, I feel the final section does have a few problems with how it is written. For example, the section about Liberty starts by stating the following:

Today's neoliberal ideology affirms that people should be free in the global market place - but not "too free". After all, people might (and do) use their freedoms also for things which, according to the elite, do not benefit society at all, in which case business and governments make more and more rules to control more and more aspects of human behaviour. More freedom for capital can mean less freedom for labour.[590]

Problems: It asserts that a neoliberal ideology states that people should be free but not to free. I checked the source for this (source 590) and couldn't find any reference to this anywhere - indeed neoliberalism isn't even mentioned in the article. It seems like it is simply a statement of opinion trying to use a source to back itself up. This breaks away from the purpose of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia and veers into original thought and research territory, as well as possible soapbox territory, which again runs contrary to wiki rules. It lacks sources for some claims - it notes an observation about Brexit being about things like sovereignty but doesn't provide a link to source for this (I am aware this is true but it still needs a source)

Other parts have similar problems: The section on Equality has no sources for any paragraph after the first one. In the section "Alternatives", there is a note that Marxists rush for the barricades but then don't explain what comes after the revolution. It notes that neither Stalin, Hitler nor Mao knew the answer to this either and cites threw sources. However these are biographies on the three aforementioned dictators rather than a source that argues "Marxists have no idea what will replace our current system when they tear it down". I am aware this is a criticism of Marx and Marxism but it needs a source. The inclusion of the three dictators also seems odd without a source explain their relevance to the issue at hand, making it again appear closer to original research. The section "Here to stay" explains, in its first paragraph, how surplus value/labour is appropriated by capitalists but provides no sources for this claim. In addition, the notion of surplus value isn't accepted anymore in mainstream economics to my knowledge, so it's inclusion is counter to established economic science.

Essentially the issue is that there are numerous claims made in the section that seem to be the editor's opinion or argument rather than reports of what sources have made. It reads like an essay intended to argue a point rather than a report of information and facts. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia so this is counter to the purpose of the site.

And again, I fully respect and appreciate Cambrdige Optic's work on the page. In addition, I don't think the "Loss of Narrative" section should be removed. Since it seems to be a section discussing whether or not the falling rate of profit is even relevant or the right question for people to be asking, it is essentially intended as a commentary section. I think this is a welcome element. However in its current state I don't think it meets wiki standards, which is a shame given the high quality of the rest of the article. Thus I posit that changes should be made to make it more neutral and not appear to be like a personal opinion. Additional sources should be provided as well. Sdio7 (talk) 03:29, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

I do agree with your criticism of the article and, as well, recognizing the work Cambridge Optic has put into it, though my previously mentioned points still stand as well. There is way too much original thought and unreferenced bias in what they have written, in my opinion, and it ought to be rewritten to a large degree (at least the sections in question).

Though, I have to say, the notion of surplus value is still entirely part of mainstream economics, as can be seen by Samir Amin, Anwar Shaikh, Li Minqi or other Marxian economists. It is discussed as controversially as it always has been. And, in addition to your criticism, I may repeat the fact that the article, in my opinion, really does need its opposing views to be put inside sections and not have one half of the article present one view or one set of similar views, and the other half of the article portray the other. If that needs to be the case, for whatever reason, it demands a reference that that is the case. JulkaK (talk) 13:57, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, I agree that the footnoting could be improved, I will try to do that, when I have an opportunity (I work fulltime and have plenty other stuff to do; I wrote most of this article in between other activities at home, or just when I had a free moment and thought of something to write). Some bits could be made clearer, or more neutral. "Surplus value" is not a concept used in mainstream economics, which uses the concept of "value added". The German equivalent concept of Mehrwert literally means "value-added" or "added value", but for Marx it does not refer to the value of the net addition to wealth (the net output), but to the gross value of the yield on invested capital. Hence, the concept was translated as "surplus value" and not as "value added". The statement about the "free, but not to free" bit was not itself separately referenced, Hodgson certainly refers to such constraints on freedoms, but this item refers to the topic of "governance", which involves among other things the regulation of life by the state, so that things stay workable and liveable for citizens. The statement itself is not especially controversial, the cultural controversy is more about what the boundaries of acceptable behaviour and their enforcement are (people often do not agree anymore, what those boundaries ought to be, in part because large groups of people nowadays inhabit quite different "lifeworlds" operating different kinds of norms).Cambridge Optic (talk) 19:09, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Mehrwert literally also means surplus value. The concept of surplus value is used in mainstream economics, just not by non-Marxian economists, simply because the concept of surplus value is already solely part of Marxian economics. The question should rather be: Are Marxian economics part of your definition of Marxian economics? In either case, yes, Mehrwert refers to the "wage of the capitalist", in Marx' words. JulkaK (talk) 21:50, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

You are correct that surplus value can be translated either as "value-added" or as "surplus value", although they are not at all the same things. But in German official statistics, Mehrwert denotes simply value added, and not surplus value. You are also correct that some modern economics textbooks (neoclassical or heterodox) do have a section on Marx, and then mention the term "surplus value". But it is not true, that surplus value is an accepted concept within neoclassical economics. The great British econometrist Richard Stone, one of the main inventors of standard national accounts, documents that the conceptual inventor of "value-added" was Arthur Young circa 1770, to the extent that Young estimated the first-ever production account for the value added for British agriculture (Marx took a dim view of Young, though). The concept of value-added was being used in official statistics of some countries already in the 19th century. I cannot remember Marx saying anywhere that Mehrwert refers to the "wage of the capitalist", so, if you have a source available for this claim, I would be interested. How the personal income of the employer is accounted for, depends on tax law, accounting conventions and type of business. It can be charged as a labour cost, or considered a component of profit, depending on the situation (in part or as a whole). For Marx, gross surplus value in the economic sense (as generated from production) includes mainly profit, net interest, net rents, net taxes, net fees, net royalties receipts and honorariums. The personal income of the capitalist is, at best, one component of total surplus value produced. Of course, in Marx's own time, the tax-take was very low (around 1850, Alan Turner Peacock notes, government expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the advanced capitalist economies was around 5%; in 1870, a bit above 8%; today it can be anywhere from 30% to 50%). A definition of Marxian economics is provided in wikipedia (I did not write that though). Marxian economics does not necessarily imply any particular political stance, though usually Marxian economists are left-wingers of some sort.Cambridge Optic (talk) 00:28, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

I've never claimed that surplus value was an "accepted concept" within neoclassics, so I'm not sure why you're strawmanning me. Neither have I claimed that value-added and surplus value are the same things. "But in German official statistics, Mehrwert denotes simply value added, and not surplus value." - And what definitional power do "German official statistics" all of a sudden possess in the realm of Marxian economics? Why does it matter what German official statistics say? In general, you dive into aspects I've never touched, nor that would be relevant to the discussion.

"For Marx, gross surplus value in the economic sense (as generated from production) includes mainly profit, net interest, net rents, net taxes, net fees, net royalties receipts and honorariums. The personal income of the capitalist is, at best, one component of total surplus value produced." - Same goes for the worker's wage, yet variable capital is entirely considered as being ("replacing the value of") the wage of the worker. What a capitalist reinvests (that is "(...)net interest, net rents, net taxes, net fees, net royalties receipts and honorariums") is still firstly part of his profit - and thus his "wage" (which, by the way, should be somewhere in Marx' Economic-philosophical manuscripts, though I can't find it right now). As well, it would do people good, if you could partition your messages, so that they're not just one big chunk and thus make it easier to read. JulkaK (talk) 01:46, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Karl Marx did not invent the concept of surplus value, the underlying distinction between unpaid necessary labour and surplus labour appropriated by the capitalist occurs already in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. It was just that, as Marx notes in Vol. 1 of Theories of Surplus Value, Adam Smith did not conceive or analyze generic surplus value as a category separate from its different forms (profit, interest, rent etc.), which Marx considered to have been the source of numerous errors in Smith's understanding of the commercial economy. In fact, we can also show, that the category of surplus value was already thought of in some or other way much earlier on in history, even if it was not systematically theorized. The reason was that an agricultural surplus product already existed of which part was appropriated by landowners and the state. Since you are so rude, rhetorical and catankerous, and since you provide nil evidence for your claims, my comments stop here.Cambridge Optic (talk) 09:31, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

I as well never doubted that the concept of surplus value existed prior to Marx, so this is another strawman, I numerously said quite the opposite. The only proper rudeness I can see here is doing exactly that - strawmanning me every time. As well, I don't see a single source to back up your claims either - you only vaguely source certain economists to denote that they have mentioned a certain concept, nothing further than that. JulkaK (talk) 18:55, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

 Note: I have slightly refactored the discussion in this section to improve threading and accessibility, particularly to avoid list gaps and skips, which can be problematic for those using screen readers. The changes can be seen here. I hope they are acceptable.

What, specifically, appears to be the problem here, JulkaK? And what, specifically, does that problem have to do with specific contents of this article? Moreover, what specifically and actionably can be done to address that problem? While I appreciate the time and effort you all have contributed to discussing these matters at length, and though it is heartening to see some thoughtful discussion about these matters, please remember that these talk pages are not forums to discuss political and economic theory (or anything else). They are for discussing the article with the goal of improving it and specific recommendations are what is important. I am intervening now because I don't want anyone here departing from this discussion with bitter feelings, which may discourage further productive contributions or even risk losing thoughtful editors such as yourselves. If there is any way I can help address matters here, if only as an uninvolved third party (fourth party?), I'm more than willing to do so. I have no intention of remaining uninvolved, either; if I can contribute substantively to improving the article, whether through this discussion or beside it, I will.

With that said: Cambridge Optic, I have been observing your contributions here and at other Marxism-related articles (such as at Value-form and Law of value) over the months, since you first showed up on Wikipedia in late February earlier this year due to many of those articles being on my watchlist. While it is obvious that you are erudite on these subjects (are you an academic?), I have been concerned since you began that you may be contributing to these articles in the way one might expect an academic authoring an original work to be published in a book or journal to do. I generally agree with the concerns (and praise) stated by JulkaK and Sdio7 above, but let me be specific as well.

Specifically, your contributions have been in excellent detail, but might be too detailed for the summary style and readership of a general encyclopedia such as Wikipedia. Moreover, the tone and style they have are unlike almost anything I have seen on Wikipedia, including among Featured articles (where "brilliant prose" and complete coverage are necessary criteria for promotion). The content is engaging and thoughtful and nuanced, but my immediate concerns are whether the language is too close to being non-neutral (in Wikipedia's terms) and opinionated, and may qualify as original synthesis or outright original research in many places. All of that is not what Wikipedia is about and they are all problems which can lead to other editors concluding that one is not here to build an encyclopedia, which is commonly used as grounds for blocking editors as disruptive to the project. I'm not saying that is my opinion, but I am being candid about the realities here as someone familiar with the wiki way and the community's norms and conventions. Unless that is rectified, any clueful editor can justifiably (according to the policies and guidelines) begin undergoing major changes of their own, including simply deleting large amounts of content you have added, since the onus is on you to keep your changes within policy and justify their inclusion. This has been such a concern of mine that I have been almost expecting someone to notice your prolific changes and intervene, probably in a much more bitey way with warnings and reversions and reports, though that fortunately seems to have not yet occurred—perhaps, in part, because these articles on abstruse Marxian theory have few monthly views and even fewer watchers.

Nonetheless, I'm explaining this now because I want to bring these general observations to your attention. I have remained quiet and largely kept out of your way up until now, since your contributions have generally been improvements to neglected articles on neglected subjects in Wikipedia, but I might as well bring it up now while I'm intervening here. You may also want to consider soliciting input and attention from WikiProject Socialism about the articles you have expanded, especially if you're interested in some additional opinions about your changes. Perhaps someone there might even be willing to adopt you. Given your general interests and apparent expertise, as exemplified by your contributions history, consider joining the WikiProject as a member and watchlisting it to keep track of discussions, as well. That goes for all three of you, by the way, JulkaK and Sdio7 included.

Lastly, I want to thank all of you for your interest in contributing to Wikipedia and improving coverage of topics related to Marxian theory. All three of you are new users (as in not even one-year-old accounts, excepting Sdio7 by almost a month) and all three of you have demonstrated a clear capacity to communicate, collaborate, and contribute with enough competence to be constructive members of this project. If any of you ever want assistance, feel free to ask me on my talk page or via email, ask your questions at the Teahouse or Help Desk, or place {{help me}} on your talk page with a description of your problem and someone else should come along to answer eventually. Given it appears all four of us have a predilection for hypergraphic paragraphic prose, I hope you all can forgive my own prolixity. Lastly, since it seems none of you have received a welcome that wasn't from a template (my favorite is {{Welcome to Wikipedia}}), I have one that is long overdue: Welcome to Wikipedia! —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 20:44, 8 September 2018 (UTC); last edited for minor rewording at 21:08, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, Nøkkenbuer! The problems I view with the articles of Cambridge Optic in regards to Marxian economics (Only this one and the one on the value-form) is, agreeing with Czar for one, that they are written like an essay, focusing mostly on primary literature and, within that as well, predominantly on non-Marxian sources. Of course non-Marxian viewpoints must be presented, as this is Wikipedia, but I feel it does the whole topic a lot of unjustice, if, and this is my second concern, these are presented in a way that it splits the article, like I mentioned above (though, I do not expect you to read through all of the back-and-forth between me and Cambridge Optic).

I think it would be a lot better, and also in accordance with WP:IMPARTIAL, to fuse the opposing halves of this articles (primarily Marxian vs. non-Marxian), so that, given its length, people can more easily observe the conflict and thus make it more neutral. Especially considering its length, I think it's very realistic to assume that people will not read the entire thing from A to Z, but rather cherry-pick. Thus, in order to keep the content presented more nuanced, I would suggest the aforementioned.

As well, some of the mentioned essay-like phrasings are honestly quite clearly biased, like the one I quoted somewhere above in the discussion and corrected in a way I think would give it the neutrality it deserves. I think that Cambridge Optic has interacted with (my) criticism in an intellectually dishonest manner and has often times deflected a lot from what I said and either misconstrued most of what I said or deliberately misunderstood me, based on the strawmanning in the discussion above (or did not respond to points of critique at all, whereas he gave other insignificant ones a lot more attention than they deserved, diving into topics that were not relevant to the discussion). Speaking from experience in debates such as this, I have often lost my assumption of good faith, which has led me to respond the way I did, but I do think that was not optimal at all, and I apologize for that. Nonetheless, all points I mentioned here and in the discussion above are still relevant and correct, in my opinion, and should thus also be given attention and honest consideration. JulkaK (talk) 21:05, 8 September 2018 (UTC) (Typo fixing 21:10 UTC, 8 September 2018)

Let's focus on the content and not the contributors. This article, like value-form, is illegible in its current state. That's an opportunity. Its text needs to be, at the very least, halved. Excise the primary sources and drill down to the main topics by removing the superfluous subheadings. This may appear to be cutting corners in your eyes, but remember the focus is for a general audience and that the content can always be recovered from the page history and split elsewhere if/when warranted. Remember that as part of writing for a general audience, the weeds of arguments that might interest advanced readers should either be covered in a subarticle (if a split is warranted by sources) or another wiki/venue (i.e., isn't our place to satisfy anyone more than a general reader). For discussion, I wouldn't even focus on potential non-neutral perspective yet—the article needs to be readable first, and then we can discuss if it weighs too heavily or underweights certain sources. This process shouldn't be complicated. Alternatively, if no one is willing to trudge through the muck to do that halving, another option is to return to a time in the page's history when the prose was manageable. Please {{ping}} me if you need anything. czar 22:09, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this advice. If anyone is concerned about losing content, despite it all being in the page history, feel free to open the whole article in edit mode, copy the text, and save it in an offline text file. I do that sometimes when I'm doing major work. An alternatively is to copy all the text and post it on a blog or wiki you created (the HTML can be seen in the page source). So long as you provide appropriate attribution (as simple as a link to the Wikipedia article and, preferably, to WP:CC BY-SA and WP:FDL) and you release it under CC BY-SA 3.0 (and state it), you have satisfied the minimum legal attribution requirements necessary to mirror and fork Wikipedia content on another site. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 22:24, 8 September 2018 (UTC); last edited at 22:32, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your explanation, JulkaK, and I think I understand where you're coming from.I skimmed the conversation before my post above to get some basic understanding of the issue, check if the specific problems have already been stated in actionable ways, and ensure that I'm not thanking and praising anyone who actually deserved neither. I did not initially read it all because, noticing the recent timestamp of the last reply and the fact that frustration was obviously developing enough for the communication to break down, I should intervene before any further replies might occur and conditions worsen. I intend to now go back and read the entire discussion (and any linked discussions for background), but let me respond first.

First, as a minor addendum to my initial post that was edit-conflicted by yours before it could publish: I also agree with what Czar had stated at their talk page (permanent link), as well. Much of it reads very essay-like, albeit like a professional academic essay rather than some school project. Adding to the initial addendum: Simply deleting large amounts of content may not be entirely appropriate, though, since some of it may be worth splitting into a new article so long as sufficient secondary coverage on that new article's subject qualifies it as notable. Czar's statements do kind of prove my point above about any clueful editor justifiably deleting and reverting major content changes, though. An administrator (which I am not, mind you) who has been editing Wikipedia since 2005—over 13 years!—effectively stating as much should not be taken lightly.

Second, yes, it is considered best practice on Wikipedia to handle criticism with care, avoid "Criticism" sections, and integrate the criticism into the prose where it is contextually relevant. Segmenting the content like this can be helpful for those skimming the content to find the criticism and it consolidates that kind of content into one place; however, it generally functions as an intra-article POV split that quarantines the criticism in a disjointed way. Unless the criticism is against the whole subject and its due presentation is separate because it is not easy to fold it into the rest of the text without disrupting the flow, it is best to add throughout the article where appropriate. Doing so also encourages those critic skimmers to actually read the article, which might teach them more than one side of the debate.

Third, please keep in mind that you might actually be dealing with an academic, in which case they are coming from an environment and culture that is radically different from here. From the perspective of an academic, you might just seem like yet another amateur who is sealioning their layman opinions because they disagree and don't know any better, and so they may need to be provided some reference-free lies-to-children to bring them up to speed. It's not like Wikipedia's relationships with academic and expert editors have ever been very good; just ask Randy (but not Ryan). For academics, their strength is in essaying and original thought; diligent research with primary sources and citing sources to support their original analyses and syntheses (in more of a cf. or viz. way than a vid. one) is what they do for living. Consequently, they are pretty clueless, both colloquially in the cluocratic WikiSpeak sense, and write and behave on Wikipedia in many of the ways that Cambridge Optic frankly has been. Even if the person in question is not an academic, that still doesn't prevent certain autodidacts and collegians from stuffing their vests and peering down their eyeglasses anyway. So, what may seem like "intellectually dishonest" and "strawmanning" behavior may actually be due to the fact that we have a stranger in a strange land who doesn't grok the wiki way and thus is behaving like a lecturer might when explaining complex topics to a pestering questioner. I'm not saying this is so with Cambridge Optic, or even that they are an academic (I don't know, which is why I asked), but I think this is at least worth considering here.

Now, with that said, I'm going to read this discussion from top to bottom (including the comments Czar just posted and edit-conflicted with this) and might comment further if I feel I should, though I'll of course reply to any messages directed at me. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 22:13, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you as well for your comments, Nøkkenbuer and Czar! Though, I am coming from an academic background as well, so I think after spending such an amount of time on Wikipedia, its basic ideas should at some point become evident? (Meaning, that original research goes into your paper, not into Wikipedia) Nonetheless, let's focus on the contributions, not the contributors, as Czar made clear, so I will try my best to refrain from any further comments on Cambridge Optic themselves from now on.

"First, as a minor addendum to my initial post that was edit-conflicted by yours before it could publish" - Sorry for that! I did notice that and thought I reverted my original edit, so that yours could be put first.

I generally agree with Czar, specifically on "the article needs to be readable first, and then we can discuss if it weighs too heavily or underweights certain sources.", for what it is worth. JulkaK (talk) 22:32, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

I suspected similarly with you as well, JulkaK, in case you were curious. As for whether it's evident, it may be, but it depends on the person and the environment from which they came. Also, from what I have seen of their contributions and user talk page, it seems that Cambridge Optic has not really had much interaction with editors beyond the sort of responses you have seen (lengthy theory-focused explanations without citing any P&G). This may be a case of them generally "flying under the radar"; moreover, it appears that this thread is the first major intervention they have experienced on Wikipedia, if their talk page activity is any indication.

Among editors generally, ignore-all-rules sort of behavior is common, with many learning what not to do from reversions and user talk page posts. Unlike some, such as me and perhaps you too, they never bother to read much if any of the Kafkaesque catacombs of policies, guidelines, and essays that exist in Wikipedia's internal namespaces. If an editor has mainly been pumping out content and hasn't had much socialization here, as may be the case here, it may be best to assume no clue even if it's difficult to assume good faith any longer.

Edit conflicts happen all the time; there's nothing to apologize for there, though your consideration is appreciated nonetheless. I was just noting it, perhaps superfluously. Please never worry about that, lest you be worrying a whole lot on here. Just so long as you don't "overwrite the offending interim alterations" (that's a humor article, by the way), reverting yourself over it is never needed.

But yes, let's focus on the content. Do you intend to be doing some major changes to the article yourself, especially soon? How do you want to go about it? Shall I leave you to your work or do you want to discuss some changes first? Your input is important here, but there's no rush either, so take as much time as you want. Wikipedia is a volunteer service, after all. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 23:02, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

I guess all of that is true. In the end, I suppose this discussion might be very important for Cambridge Optic and their future work, so that their future contributions can actually enact the unarguably extensive work that was put into them, of course despite my objections.

Not in the next few days, though perhaps in the near future. I'm almost thinking that it might be best to split the article into the main article concerning the TRPF and an article about its controversy (Controversy about the Tendency of the rate of profit to fall), which could include the extensive list of literature cited here by Cam. Opt., without necessarily having to cut it, though it would still necessitate the above mentioned readability and neutrality measures. The main article should only retain the core Marxian vs. non-Marxian debate, though what exactly those entail is, too, subject to discussion. A much more abridged version of this article, as was mentioned multiple times by all of us anyway, is the way to go in either case. That is at least my opinion. Do you (or any others responding to this) have any more, rather "quick" ideas on what could be edited soon? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JulkaK (talk • contribs) 23:15, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

That's fine; it'll give everyone a chance to respond, anyway. If these changes are disputed, WikiProject Socialism is a possible venue to take this. If all else fails, a request for comment (RfC) can be initiated, though I suspect doing so will bring the blunter hacksaws to pare this article down. Although not a suggestion, I don't mind doing some general copy-editing and standardization per the Manual of Style. I already have a lot on my immediate to-do list, however, so I won't guarantee any major work from me here until I address at least some of those to-do items first.

The split you suggested is reasonable and I support it, though I'd personally recommend "Controversies about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall" as the title, pluralized since the controversies have been on various points at various points in time. What do you think, Czar? Regardless, Cambridge Optic's input is important here, too, so let's at least wait until they have been given a chance to provide it before implementing it. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 00:01, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

In general, avoid "controversy" articles/sections. Unless the idea of "controversies surrounding the tendency of rate of profit to fall" is itself the subject of multiple, in-depth treatments, probably isn't worth the split. In any event, I wouldn't worry about that split content anyway since you would still need a summary-style synopsis in this article. If you'd like specific, recommended steps: (1) Nix almost all primary sources (either cited to Marx or to an analyst), as if the perspective is important, a secondary source will cover it. (2) Ask whether the subheading sections are necessary to a general audience understanding the topic. If not, delete wholesale. If somewhat, summarize as a small paragraph or single sentence with relevant references. (3) Bluntly, summarize whatever content is capable of summary. If a paragraph is too convoluted, better to halve it and keep moving than to be paralyzed and do nothing at this point. (4) This is about content, not CO. If an editor's conduct is willfully disruptive or habitually tendentious (and you feel others will agree/that it won't backfire on you), we have forums for that. But I don't think that's the case here, so I recommend dropping all mention of CO and focusing on the content. CO is welcome to participate in making the article more readable. czar 02:19, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

I'll keep my comment fairly short, especially since this guy JulkaK (<NPA redaction>) proves by what s/he writes that s/he has no competence in the subject whatever, and just wants to mess with the article. Adding it up, I spent altogether a lot of time in spare moments across several years, to write this article and other articles. I provided my work voluntarily and free of charge to the general public globally. I have about 40 years experience with Marxian and heterodox economics, I studied and worked at university for ten years, I worked four years as government statistician, as well as having other jobs such as library education officer, government archivist, documentalist, recordmanager, academic translator/editor, news editor and social science researcher. Basically I did the things in practice, that other people cackle about. The article on the Tendency of the rate of profit to fall, aimed at a general audience, was actually well liked, very readable, and used by a lot of people (like many other articles I wrote). The critics don't even know how good the article is, precisely because they are themselves not well-versed in the topic. It was actually read by top academics, top journalists, top economists, activists, public servants and politicians - as well as many students, pensioners and ordinary working people who don't have easy access to all kinds of resources. For almost the whole lifetime of the article, the criticism of it was nil. It gave, for the first time, an accurate, accessible, concise and balanced overview of what the issues are, and the history of the topic, in plain language. But hey, "wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can butcher", isn't that so? So why not butcher the article and create a mess, anyway? You guys make all kinds of allegations without specific evidence, and the allegations are often just false. I don't want to waste time replying to the nonsense, because I value my remaining time on earth. Sure, the article could be improved. But even if the accusations made were true, there is not much point in altering things, if the article looks worse subsequently - because incompetent, nasty dabblers who in truth do not know what they are talking about, have mucked things up badly. That happened with many articles which I piloted, I regret to say: no only do they look much worse now, than when I first wrote them, they now also contain numerous unsupported claims which are plainly false. No doubt that will now happen again, with the Tendency of the rate of profit to fall article - and there will no doubt be fewer and fewer editors working on wikipedia, who will be confronted with more and more articles that have become unreliable and a mess. No one is going defend me and my effort, or genuinely improve on it, they're just going to mess things up more, I know that already. So, all I can say at this point is this: the version of 8 September 2018 is the last one from me. I have concluded, that I will never work in Wikipedia again. Wikiland just stole my time and effort, and I get nothing at all in return for the work I did, except abuse. I will also warn everybody I know, against working in wikipedia, ever. It has become "the encyclopedia which anyone can turn into bullshit".Cambridge Optic (talk) 15:42, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

(Personal attacks redacted. Boing! said Zebedee (talk))

The article on the Tendency of the rate of profit to fall, aimed at a general audience, was actually well liked, very readable, and used by a lot of people (like many other articles I wrote). The critics don't even know how good the article is, precisely because they are themselves not well-versed in the topic. It was actually read by top academics, top journalists, top economists, activists, public servants and politicians - as well as many students, pensioners and ordinary working people who don't have easy access to all kinds of resources.

On what basis do you assert this? You workshopped the article before "ordinary working people"? No one is preventing you from giving the article the bare minimum of legibility. I can dip into any section of this article and have zero mooring as to what the section is meant to address—so even what you deem good information/analysis does little good if not communicated for a general audience. czar 21:48, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

I assert this, on the basis of page-view statistics, social media feedback and personal communications I received from different places in the world. (Redacted) I met, or corresponded/discussed with, many of the scholars mentioned in the article. Following wiki instructions, I have kept the headers as brief as possible, and kept the text as readable as possible – nobody has said they found the article “incomprehensible”. I wrote the article in spare moments and gradually added bits to it. It is based in good part on PhD research I did in 1985-90 (literature reviews and econometrics), but my research material was stolen by criminal Trotskyists in two countries (they don't have any concept of property, except that they want other people to keep their hands off their own stuff). So I had to write it again just from memory, adding new material. This TRPF article is NOT my property, nor does it belong to Marxists and Trotskyists. It is the property of the Wikimedia foundation. If it does not please people, it CAN be corrected, changed or scrapped. The fault in Wikipedia policy though, is that if anybody can edit anything, then editors who have no genuine knowledge of the subject-matter start to run roughshod over articles, to make them “conform better to wiki standards”. They turn the articles into a mess of bullshit full of unsubstantiated and false claims. “Operation successful, the patient died”. This happens all the time, and that is why a lot of editors (including me) have left. You do a lot of extra work for free, only to see your work destroyed by some hick from Richmond VA or from Toronto or wherever, who happens not to like what he reads, because it does not conform to his favourite ideology, or to his favourite milkshake flavour. Nevertheless people just expect to get all the content “for free” and they expect that they can interfere with it if they don't like it. They have no idea of all the work that went into it. I have calculated from wiki guidelines, that this article should ideally be approximately half the size that it is, maximum. This condensed version cannot be produced, without deleting a lot of subject-matter. Yet “Content should not be removed from articles simply to reduce length” (see Wikipedia:content removal ). It would take me a weekend to rewrite the whole article properly in a thoughtful way, and think of ways of shifting content. I do not have that time available right now. A weekend of work by me, is worth 1,600-2,000 euro’s, but all I get for my efforts in wikiland, is scorn; ridicule; and accusations from dabblers and Marxist thugs - without any evidence or constructive suggestions being provided for how to improve things. Why the fuck should I want to have anything to do with that anymore? You’ve got to be joking, you are in the wrong league. Cambridge Optic (talk) 21:23, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

When an anonymous editor on 20-22 september 2018 added (without discussion) a section to the debate with Anwar Shaikh, he proves very clearly how, as I said, the article "gets turned to bullshit" by editors who don't understand the topic. Let's leave aside that the Mariolis criticism is dated 2014, and therefore does not even belong in the 20th century controversies, and let's look at what is being asserted. This new editor claims that "Theodore Mariolis recently proved that the mass of profits may be strictly increasing even when the rate of profit is strictly decreasing". But Shaikh doesn't deny this at all, indeed he wants to argue that the long boom is primarily due to strong growth in the mass of profit, even although the average rate of profit on production capital fell, at first gradually, and at the end of the boom quite rapidly. Moreover, in reality, the Sraffian argument of Mariolis is different: it is that "when the basic profit rate falls, nothing ensures the existence of a stagnation-point for the mass of profits, since the negative 'profit rate-effect' might be weaker than the positive 'capital accumulation-effect'. In other words, the time-path of the basic profit rate (the proximate determinants of which are the technical conditions of production and the evolution of the real wage rate) also matters." ( Theodore Mariolis, "Falling Rate of Profit and Mass of Profits: A Note", Review of Political Economy, Vol. 26, No. 4, 2014, pp. 549–556, at p. 555). So in actual fact, this anonymous author unfortunately manages to misrepresent both Anwar Shaikh's argument and Mariolis's argument at the same time! Do we want readers to have to deal with this false information, which just confuses the issue? The sad thing is, that by adding this rubbish into the article, the editor simultaneously (1) discredits my previous work on this article rather than improving it, and (2) makes the article even lengthier, by (3) inserting false information. That is what happens in wikiland all the time now, and that is why fewer and fewer editors want to have anything to do with wikipedia - the content just degenerates and becomes increasingly unreliable.Cambridge Optic (talk) 14:36, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

This edit was removed, since it's based on primary analysis, not secondary sources. We don't want to have reader deal with this, hence it was removed. This is nothing new to Wikipedia whatsoever. JulkaK (talk) 15:15, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

CO, I hear your frustrations but the vitriol isn't productive. If you have not the time/interest/compensation to make the necessary changes, it's your own call to bow out, but don't be under any illusions that the article is accessible to a general audience in its current form. I'm offering any reasonable assistance I can to help recast/salvage the current content into more readable copy, but surely you can understand why I'll only go as far as the goodwill you choose to reciprocate. czar 23:01, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I am not talking vitriol at all (and if you were a genuine administrator, you would desist from that invective since wiki protocols say that you shouldn't), I am criticizing an editor who is demonstrably messing up the article, which neither benefits readers, nor the writers who put in a lot of time to create the article, nor the reputation of wikipedia. It is not that the article is "unreadable", but just that it is a "long read", yes. Ideally it should be half as long. There exists no rule anywhere in wikipedia protocols though which prohibits long articles, or the use of primary sources. If there was such a rule, you might as well close down the whole wikipedia project straightaway. The wikipedia distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources is itself rather vague. The TRPF argument is primarily associated with Marx, and therefore references to Marx are references to the "original source". Why reference sometimes what Marx says, to Marx himself saying it? Because, as explained in the article, particularly with the publication of the MEGA2, it has become apparent, that much of what academics claim about Marx is simply false. Everybody concerned with Marxian thought knows this by now, and therefore they want to be able to refer to original sources. The other reason for referring to original sources, is because the TRPF topic has been the subject of fierce controversy, in which academics display their own biases. There is however nothing especially contentious, original or controversial in the whole TRPF article, IF you are really acquainted with the scientific literature and IF you understand the arguments that have been made. The only original thing that I have done, is to summarize a whole bunch of already existing arguments about the TRPF in one article, in a way which was never done before. I could reference every and all remaining claims that are not footnoted, but then that would mean up to a thousand footnotes. Since the article is supposed to get shorter, not even longer, I have no intention of doing that.Cambridge Optic (talk) 08:32, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

That guy JulkaK (<NPA redaction>) originally started complaining to Czar (an anarchist from Greece) and to Bob Rayner (a right-wing journalist from Virginia) that he (I will assume "he") had "noticed the rather recent and negatively extensive (and biased) edits" in the TRPF article. The edits did not meet with JulkaK's approval, <NPA redaction>. The real purpose of the edits, however, was not to flaunt biases, but to include different and contrary points of view on the topic, whether any particular reader likes or agrees with that, or not. And this is also made perfectly clear and explicit. The point of a wikipedia article is <NPA redaction> to provide an objective and fair description of the topic, that takes into account all sides of the issue, based on real knowledge of the subject. We are not rewriting the communist manifesto here. Instead, we are writing an article about 124 years of discussion about the TRPF. <NPA redaction>.Cambridge Optic (talk) 01:25, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

(Personal attacks redacted. Boing! said Zebedee (talk))

The best thhing you could probably do, is to find somebody who is a real scientific expert on the topic, and ask him how you would reduce the size of the text by 50%, while preserving the valid content.Cambridge Optic (talk) 12:02, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I tried to create an article on the history of the TRPF controversy that would be readable, timely, relevant and informative, and spent quite a few hours doing that. I do not appreciate the disgusting response I got for my effort. For the rest, I will leave it to others to shrink the article. The version that I wrote, remains available in the archive of this article, and readers can consult it if they want.Cambridge Optic (talk) 18:12, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Meaning of narrative loss

As regards the loss of narrative section, LSE academic Peter Pomerantsev recently picked up this idea, and wrote an article for Francis Fukuyama’s journal on the question: ‘’What happens when the stories through which we make sense of the world collapse? “ (see: Peter Pomerantsev, "Losing the narrative: under the information bubble". The American Interest, 9 October 2018.[4]). Long before Pomerantsev, Jean-François Lyotard stated “I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narratives.” (Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 1984, p. xxiv). “Lamenting the ‘loss of meaning’ in postmodernity boils down to mourning the fact that knowledge is no longer principally narrative” (ibid., p. 26). In the computer age, programming requirements turn knowledge into abbreviated clips and bits of information, i.e. precisely coded messages that fit with the cyber-system of transmission and communication. Technical super-specialization, the compartmentalization and commodification of knowledge, social fragmentation, and lack of moral consensus tend to destroy the coherence of all human narratives. The new legitimation criterion is not storytelling, but instant performativity (the ability to “be” the story, maximizing information flow, and minimizing “noise” and “rubbish”). However, the concept of “loss of narrative” has an ancient history with religious, theological and spiritual roots. Stories make experience meaningful, and those meanings are needed, to orient ourselves in the world and to understand ourselves, even if it was only through consuming newspaper stories written by professional or corporate storytellers. This is the “narrativization process”, which also occurs fairly spontaneously in everyday life. Yet our stories about ourselves and about the world may also be undermined, attacked and destroyed, to the point where it become difficult to construct our own narratives as such anymore. This leads to “narrative loss”. To restore our own sense of narrative, and create new stories of our own, is a process of healing and recuperation, through which we regain our sense of who we are, and our sense of purpose.Cambridge Optic (talk) 12:44, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

My mother used to say that "you shouldn't speak with your mouth full". This is another type of loss of narrative you can have. Seriously though - this is a point of clarification - I do not deny at all that there are still many (and new) narratives that can be told about profitability. For example, on the way home after work today, I talked with a worker who said she was from a big multinational corporation here, embroiled in a reorganization in which thousands of workers were being laid off. She explained, that the corporation had done studies comparing relative profitability in the sector, and had decided to sell off part of its operations for commercial reasons. Profitability, shareholder value and the state of the market seemed to be the main synthetic indicator to express business success. So many workers were losing their jobs, and this led to strike action and complicated negotiations between unions and management. She herself was also losing her job, that was the punchline. She was trying to stay optimistic and dignified, but the life and the future she thought she had worked for, is gone. Shareholders were being compensated billions as a payoff, but the workers didn't think they were getting a particularly good deal so far themselves. This was not a "theoretical" or "scientific" narrative which I had read in some book or scientific paper, but a real-life narrative, about how the quest for profit affects workers' lives and livelihood, and what that means in human terms. Maybe this issue does not seem so serious to young people, but if you have a mortgage to pay and/or a family, or if you are much older, it is a different matter. The "globalization of insecurity" which Prof. Elmar Altvater talked about, means that workers are "free" to run around and see if they can score another job somewhere (possibly for less pay), but reality they lose freedoms they had, since they have reduced control over what happens to their lives and to their own fate. All very well to talk about "positive thinking", ""shit happens", "human development" and "personal challenges", but meantime you face hassles just to keep the basics of your life going in the future, through no fault of your own. You just don't know what will happen. Point is, the stories of these workers' lives are themselves fractured, and they have to keep struggling for their freedom, survival and chances of development. They might have to take on new work (if they can get it) that they don't really want, to pay the bills, etc. That is the narrative of the human drama that exists beyond all the profit calculations.Cambridge Optic (talk) 19:15, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Robin Paula Silbergleid (Associate Professor, Department of English, Michigan State University) has explored the concept of “loss of narrative” in her 2001 thesis, (See: Robin Silbergleid, Narratives of loss, loss of narrative: Crises of representation in twentieth-century fiction. Phd dissertation, Indiana University, 2001, available from ProQuest). Silbergleid notes among other things that, in the Freudian tradition, “Telling the right story – and telling the story right – aspires to get back to the real, the unspeakable kernel of traumatic experience” (p. 5). Loss of narrative is understood here as the very condition, the very stuff of trauma – it is defined psychoanalytically as “an inability to integrate experience into narrative memory” (p. 10). The traumatic experience is rendered timeless, boundless and unspeakable, it is everywhere and nowhere - it is never transformed into an integral story, with a clear beginning, a middle and an end. The postmodernist trouble with coherent storytelling (losing the plot, as it were, finally leaving only a rather inchoate state) could be understood as primarily a melancholic reaction to a traumatic experience, which can sometimes twist and turn into a source of narcissistic indulgence, revelling and ostentation. Cambridge Optic (talk) 19:24, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Deletions of parts of the article

If User:Volunteer Marek cavalierly deletes large slabs of text from the TRPF article, which took a lot of work to write, I would expect that he offers good reasons for doing so, on this talk page, and explains properly WHY he did so, beyond a vague cryptic comment in the article history, as if that will suffice to justify the deletions. If no more detailed explanation is forthcoming, I intend to restore the slabs of text that were removed without any acceptable reason within wiki protocol. The whole section on Thomas Piketty for example was removed, even although Piketty specifically addresses the validity of the TRPF argument - an important contribution to the current debate about the TRPF. This is not "original research" of mine, or some kind of "original synthesis", but merely a descriptive report of what Thomas Piketty actually said and argued about this issue and the scholarly responses to his interpretation; anyone familiar with the relevant literature knows this. I don't see myself, why this section should be dropped, given that Piketty's research has been very influential, and widely read in recent times around the whole world. You don't really improve the article by simply deleting large slabs of text, on the ground it does not meet your personal preferences, without any appropriate explanation.Cambridge Optic (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Look, I can tell you put a lot of work into it. Unfortunately most of the text violates various Wikipedia policies - in particular WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. You made the article into your own personal treatise on the TRPF. But that is not what an encyclopedia article is suppose to be. There's tons of text in there which is either your own interpretation of primary sources, your own interpretation of secondary sources, your fusion of various secondary sources to draw conclusions that none of them make, and a whole bunch of stuff that is either off topic or only tangentially related. Stuff about TRPF and the internet. Piketty who only vagule refers to TRPF. Your own ideas about LToV. Etc. etc. I actually was planning on cutting a whole lot more (just look at how long the article is!) but don't really have much time at present.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:47, 30 December 2018 (UTC

Thank you User:Volunteer Marek for your quick comment. However I don't know whether you have relevant experience or credentials that enable you to judge correctly whether material is off-topic or on-topic. This article is not intended as my "personal treatise" (others have worked on it as well), and I am very aware, that if I say "I put a lot of work into the article", this is irrelevant from the editor's point of view of what SHOULD be in the article, if wiki guidelines are followed. It is my personal issue, only because I have wasted my time, if others simply destroy my work without explanation (why would you want to work on wikipedia articles if you your work is just destroyed anyhow after a while? Just for some cheap thrills?). The impression I have, however (in the absence of extra information), is that you are just bluffing, that you are being arbitrary, that you display bias by deleting contrary arguments in the article text, and that you are deleting text without honouring wiki protocols. You let yourself off the hook, by saying that "you don't have the time" to work on this article. Yet, you did apparently have enough time to delete large slabs of text without discussion or proper explanation. To give an example, since I mentioned Piketty, it is scientifically simply false to say that Piketty "only vaguely"" refers to the TRPF, and I explicitly provided precise sources for this as well. Piketty is very well-informed about the TRPF, through personal research and background (in their youth, his own parents were Trotskyist militants with the Lutte Ouvrière, though they quit this far-left party before he was born). Actually, the very concept of the profit rate and its long-term trend (or, by another name, the "capital income" ratio, or "the rate of return") has an absolutely central place in Piketty's economic research. So, I do not agree myself with your deletions, and I don't think bona fide economists familiar with the topic would either. However, I think I need to give other wikipedians who are knowledgeable about these issues an opportunity to comment first. So, I am just going to leave things as they are with the TRPF article, for now, and wait a while to see if other wikipedians have something to say about the deletions on this talk page (with respect to appropriate content and procedures). If nobody has anything to say about the validity of your deletions, then, after a reasonable time has passed, I will write a more detailed and specific comment about the grounds for my own objections, in terms of content and procedure. To improve the article, what I require most of all is specifics, and not some kind of vandalism disguised with vague and general talk about how I might have transgressed some rule (in the absence of any precise evidence that I have done so). If I am wrong, so be it, but at least I have tried to provide a genuinely informative and useful article, about an issue that is a hot topic in the world today.Cambridge Optic (talk) 11:55, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

As regards the marginalist criticism of the TRPF, I did not originally write that segment, I only added a reference plus a bit which says that if economic outcomes are simply the result of people's subjective choices and preferences, then no inevitable long-run TRPF in the classical sense exists. There are actually many different strands of marginal utility theory, nowadays ranging from interpretations within the framework of neoclassical economics, to Austrian economics. The problem here again is that you do not put things right, if they are wrong, but simply delete text. Now either you truly know the subject, and then you can easily correct the text, or you don't know the subject, in which case I think you ought to stay away from re-editing the article.Cambridge Optic (talk) 12:13, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I'll be specific (and yes I have enough background knowledge to be able to tell wheat from chaff here):

In this edit I removed an unsourced paragraph about the Okishio's paragraph which is original research. At best it's some misguided attempt at criticism of the theorem.

In this edit I deleted the subsequent paragraph, about Shaikh's views on competition under capitalism as it's mostly an off-topic tangent. There's nothing in that paragraph that directly relates to TRPF. It's also a non-sequitur. Maybe the last sentence, cited to Mandel, is relevant but even that is not clear.

In this edit I removed text out of which only a single sentence was sourced. There was also a good bit of original research and off-topic commentary (ex. the EU Microsoft case)

In general, regarding criticism of Okishio's theorem, I think it may be worthwhile to note that he himself reconsidered his assumptions, but then we should also note his alternative theorem from the cited paper (the result that if you let real wages to change, then you converge to a situation with no exploitation).

The stuff on the internet removed in this edit, is pure original research and synthesis. More of this kind of "reflections" and amateur research should be removed from the article.

Ok, the Piketty stuff [5]

First paragraph, which introduces Piketty, it's not really necessary to tell everyone he made the bestseller list.

Second para, has off topic stuff about whether Kuznets was a "neoclassical" or not, which is off topic. Also, the comparison between Piketty and Kuznets is sort of a stretch. You can make that same comparison between Piketty and ANY economist who has worked on long run growth.

Third paragraph is a mess, a jumble of a bunch of unrelated sentences. First one - again, who cares whether Piketty "believes in the neoclassical model" (and for someone who claims not to believe in it, he sure uses it and abuses it a whole bunch in his book). Second one - accurately describes Piketty's thesis ... but what's the relevance to TRPF (and think about it - if both TRPF and Piketty are right then the logical conclusion is that ... inequality would diminish over time! If profit rates fall, then eventually they'll be lower than the growth rate of the economy and boom! No more inequality. One or both has to be incorrect). The next sentence about "quantitative explanation" is, again, original research and just wrong. He provides a "quantitative description", not an explanation. And by the way, the Potemkin Review source is inaccessible or no longer exists. Fourth sentence is... another non-sequitur and completely uninformative without context.

Next paragraph, about Marx. Yes, this is finally something relevant. In fact, I might be fine with putting this paragraph and the subsequent two back in, though let me check my copy of Capital in 21st Century. The quote from the interview should be paraphrased or shortened to just the relevant parts. Last paragraph, about Harvey is superfluous.

I'll be honest, I was actually quite conservative in my removals. This article is way too long and too messy. There's a ton more that should be taken out. I did anticipate that you might object however so I took out what seemed to me the most glaring problems, so we could have a discussion. It is the holidays/new years however, so yes, time is scarce.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:23, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Volunteer Marek for the more specific criticisms, which is useful. Before I go and do something with that feedback though, I am going to wait a while, to see if anybody else has a comment to make. Just to explain, I have been contributing to wikipedia on and off for about 16 years, and I have grown very wary of editors and administrators who just cut out large amounts of text out of hundreds or thousands of articles, without any appropriate explanation or justification. I found they don't have any real knowledge of the topics covered, and just leave a mess for others to clean up.Cambridge Optic (talk) 08:35, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Dear User: Volunteer Marek, just a quick reply to your reasons for the deletions. It is true, that because I did not write the main content of article in one go, but intermittently added to it when I had a bit of spare time to do it, it really needs a rewrite to make it more concise etc. It is normal practice however that if stuff is not referenced, or if there is something substantially wrong with it, that you tag it and/or discuss it on the talk page. Yes, text can be removed, but it is not really acceptable to do this, if it concerns a technical dispute about how economic arguments are represented, and if large amounts of text are involved.

Meanwhile this guy NinjaRobotPirate has blocked my User:Cambridge Optic account totally, on the “suspicion” of Sockpuppetry (use of multiple accounts by the same editor). Normally, one is not guilty until proven guilty, but in this case I am considered guilty on a whim. No sockpuppetry has occurred, and no sockpuppetry was proved. My original account User: Jurriaan was totally blocked on two counts: I objected to another editor removing large chunks of my text without proper explanation and discussion and without acceptable reasons, and because my account was hacked. The administrators were sympathetic, but said under the circumstances there was nothing I could do in this case, except set up a new account later. Quite some time later, I discovered accidentally that I could edit again, and I set up a new account called User:Jurriaan2 to finish a few articles I had piloted. I did not hide anything I did. That account was eventually blocked for the same reasons. Quite some time after that, I found I could set up the User:Cambridge Optic account for the same purpose. That account is now also blocked. Therefore all I can do is just reply to your issues, and leave it at that, perhaps a friend has an opportunity to repair the article.

As regards the deletion of the piece on Okishio’s equilibrium assumptions, the paragraph can be referenced more, but basically Okishio himself admits what is stated in the reference provided. This paragraph was not originally written by me, but by somebody else, I just edited i tand added a bit. Anwar Shaikh was among the first to attack the assumptions of the Okishio theorem head-on, in the Cambridge Journal of Economics from a Marxian perspective, and that is why that piece is there, and I referenced that and other statements.

In his quoted afterword, Okishio argues that if you assume that wages do not remain constant, the organic composition of capital is not constant, and that there is no technical change, then competition would under the assumed parameters ultimately drive the aggregate profit rate to zero (not exploitation, as you say, which is not the same thing; actually the aggregate profit rate on all capitals can reach zero, when all losses fully cancel out all positive gains; Okishio argues that the profit rate will be zero, only if the total profit volume is zero). Marx did often assume a constant wage rate, but also noted, that in reality this is not case, it is a simplifying assumption (as Okishio notes, there is a cyclical movement in wage rates, and Schumpeter and Ernest Mandel drew attention to technological revolutions through long waves of capitalist growth, which radically changes the cost-structure of production). Okishio concluded from his model, that it is proved that for “surplus value to survive, new techniques must be introduced ceaselessly”, a Marxian/Schumpeterian result, but also, that Marx was mistaken in his assumption, that positive profit rates would equalize in his static model. Okishio however does not claim, that “constant wages and organic compositions of capital” and “zero technical change” exist in reality. The criticism of the Okishio theorem focuses precisely on the lack of realism of the assumptions in Okishio’s model – the model merely explains the logical implications of a set of assumptions. That is what I tried to get across, and why this is removed I cannot understand.

The bit about Okishio and what is ignored by the “profit squeeze” theorem (by raising output prices, business managers can squeeze the profit rate of other enterprises and real wages) is not “original research”. It is a basic insight of Kaleckian economics and Robert Rowthorn’s conflict model of inflation (in contrast, that is, to the neoclassical model of cost-push inflation). This can be referenced without any problem. How could inflation rise and escalate, UNLESS enterprises raised their output prices, so that the consumers are faced with more expensive goods and services? That is exactly what happened in the era of “stagflation” in the 1970s, giving rise to so-called “incomes policies” and “price freezes” to control both wages and prices (though the US government for a time allowed enterprises to raise prices anyway, before the Federal Reserve began to drive up interest rates). It is just a very simple and fairly obvious insight, and I don’t see any problem with it. Point is that at a certain level of inflation, enterprises are compelled to raise their prices and/or shed labour, because if they did not, they would obtain no profit. In the crash of 2008/2009, initially most economists did not know whether inflation would rise or fall, but sales slumped and the response was to shed labour at an alarming rate, as noted by Lawrence Summers.

As regards the section on how the average industrial rate of profit is affected by the internet, I make the point that there is little research on this, which I take to be true (I cannot find many studies on this, and if I cannot find them, I cannot cite them). This in itself is an important point to make, given the enormous global impact of the internet on human society. UNCTAD and the OECD do publish extensive reports on the digital economy (UNCTAD estimates the contribution of the Internet to global net output at 4%) but they do not provide data on the profitability trends of the internet, as far as I know – the income indicators there are suggest that internet providers and software development are the most profitable part of the digital industry). I do reference various opinions, research efforts and claims about this topic. Suggestions that this is amateurish are neither here nor there, since as stated there is no decisive evidence on the topic so far.

As regards Piketty: it is inappropriate to shift the component on the housing issue to the section on pollution, and delete Piketty’s argument in his book and elsewhere. Is this a biased distaste for Piketty? I am merely stating what is argued and what the criticism is about. The journal Potemkin which features an interview by Piketty and Graeber in which he discusses his view of the TRPF does still exist, it is just that the URL has changed: http://www.potemkinreview.org/pikettyinterview.html Several economists, including French ones, have commented on Piketty’s broad definition of capital and the implications of that, particularly the effect of the income from the housing stock, and I make the referenced point, that the size of the housing stock happens to be very large, which is an important thing to know. It is also important to make it clear, that Piketty does not accept the neoclassical model of how the economy works, and what his influences were in that case. I do not “compare” Piketty to Kuznets, but say that Kuznets’s empirical approach influenced him. The neoclassical model is also mentioned separately in the article with regard to diminishing returns. The conclusion, that if the rate of profit is lower than the rate of growth in Piketty’s model, inequality would reduce to zero, does not necessarily follow at all. I think the criticisms by Harvey and Maito on Piketty are directly relevant to Piketty’s thesis, and I don’t understand why they should be removed. User:Cambridge Optic 20:05, 13 February 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.169.164.172 (talk)

Sockpuppetry accusation

Personal attacks by blocked user. --MarioGom (talk) 11:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I would like to emphasize again that, unlike a false rumor spread by the criminal wiki administrator NinjaRobotPirate who blocked me from working on articles I wrote in wikipedia (including this one on Tendency of the rate of profit to fall), I have NEVER engaged in "sockpuppetry". It is merely that, some time after my first account User:Jurriaan was permanently blocked (unfairly) in an editing dispute I had with a vandal, I returned with another account User: Jurriaan2 to complete wiki articles I piloted. Subsequently, when this account was also permanently blocked in another editing dispute I had with a vandal, I set up the User:Cambridge Optic account to finish a few articles I had piloted. That is to say, there has NEVER been any point in time when I operated "two or more accounts" at once. I operated one account, the other two accounts I had previously were permanently blocked. So, the sockpuppetry allegation is simply a false accusation, by a wiki administrator who does not even bother to verify the real background. I did submit the case for arbitration, but this was formally refused, on the ground that an unblock request should be submitted on my talk page. But because of the block, I cannot actually use my talk page to make the request, it is a catch-22, and therefore I cannot lodge an unblock request either. Indeed, all the personal text on my original personal page (which stated, amongst other things, exactly which articles I piloted or worked on in English wikipedia) has been deleted by the criminal administrator NinjaRobotPirate. Therefore, I am no longer contributing to English wikipedia. User: Cambridge Optic 82.173.128.20 (talk) 14:45, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

This is not an encyclopedia article

This page is not an encyclopedia article, but a debate between editors. Most of the content is irrelevant or tangential to the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which, along with many of its critiques, is misrepresented throughout. I recommend that admins restrict this page due to flagrant and continuous disregard for Wikipedia standards and general grandstanding throughout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8806:2500:E100:C003:896D:E131:1BA3 (talk) 15:41, 5 January 2020 (UTC)