1. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 1 (p. 35 in the International Publishers edition, to which page references apply unless specified.)
2. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 9, section 1 (p. 217).
3. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 47, section 2 (p. 791).
4. Ernest Germain (Mandel), “The Theory of ‘State Capitalism’,” Fourth International (1951).
5. Branko Horvat, The Political Economy of Socialism (1982), p. 48.
7. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 51 (pp. 879-80).
8. When calculating in monetary terms, Marx often said “value” for short instead of exchange value, and we do the same.
9. Engels, Anti-Duhring, Part 3, Chapter 4 (Moscow, 1934; p. 347).
10. Mandel, “Economics of the Transition Period,” in Fifty Years of World Revolution (1968), pp. 281-2.
11. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 15, Part I (pp. 243-4). For “surplus value,” see below.
12. Robinson, An Essay on Marxian Economics (1942), p. 23. The passage from Marx is in Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 10 (pp. 187-8).
13. A distortion of Marx identical to Robinson’s was committed by Joseph Seymour in the Spartacist League pamphlet Why the USSR is Not Capitalist (1977), p. 31.
14. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 1, Section 4 (p. 72).
15. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 1, Section 3.A.3 (p. 60).
16. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 24, Section 1 (p. 583).
17. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 13 (p. 331).
18. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 15, section 5 (p. 436).
19. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 25 (p. 645).
20. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 15, section 2 (p. 249).
21. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 32 (p. 763).
22. This basic definition is often misunderstood. Mandel says that “The average rate of profit Marxist economic theory is concerned with is the rate of profit on the flow of current production ... the fraction of the total capital stock actually used up in annual output and not the rate of profit on the stock of capital invested.” (The Inconsistencies of State Capitalism, International Marxist Group pamphlet, 1969.) Sweezy (The Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 67) says likewise. However, not only do capitalists calculate their profit rate on stocks, not flows, but Marx’s own procedures show that he agrees with the capitalists. See his profit rate charts in Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 9 (pp. 156-7).
23. For example, Marx-Engels Correspondence, April 30, 1868; Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. III, p. 83.
24. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 9 (p. 161).
25. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), p. 115, was one of the first of many to make this argument.
26. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 9 (p. 165). A similar argument is on p. 160.
27. Marx’s view that foreign trade is a counteracting tendency to the falling rate of profit (Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 14, Part 5) confirms this argument.
28. Marx-Engels Correspondence, January 8, 1868.
29. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 9 (p. 168).
30. Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory (1962), Vol.1, Chapter 11, p. 363.
31. Mandel, An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory (1967), p. 38.
32. Cliff, Russia: A Marxist Analysis, p. 156; State Capitalism in Russia, p. 216.
33. Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (1966), pp.3-4.
34. Joseph Seymour, Why the USSR Is Not Capitalist, p. 71. A similar view is given by Cliff’s associate Chris Harman: “What makes man-produced objects – and above all labor power – into a commodity is precisely competition between producing units ...” (International Socialism No. 41, 1969-70.)
35. Marx, Grundrisse (1973), pp. 414-15.
36. Goldfield and Rothenberg, The Myth of Capitalism Reborn, p. 95.
37. Grundrisse, p. 752. Marx leads up to this passage with: “A[dam] Smith explained the fall of the rate of profit, as capital grows, by the competition among capitals. ... A. Smith’s phrase is correct to the extent that only in competition – the action of capital upon capital – are the inherent laws of capital, its tendencies, [first] realized. But it is false in the sense in which he understands it, as if competition imposed laws on capital from the outside, laws not its own.” (pp. 751-2.) The word “first” here is omitted from the published English translation.
38. Grundrisse, pp. 776-7.
39. Grundrisse, p. 650, cited in the incomplete form presented by both the anti-Stalinist Ticktin (Critique No. 16, p. 27) and the Maoists Corrigan, Ramsay and Sayer (p. 151).
40. See Roman Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx’s “Capital”, pp. 41-53.
41. Alex Callinicos, Socialist Worker Review, July/August 1985.
42. Grundrisse, p. 651.
43. Cliff, Russia, A Marxist Analysis, p. 161; State Capitalism in Russia, pp. 223-4.
44. Capital, Vol. II, Chapter 9 (pp. 185-6), emphasis added.
45. Capital, Vol. II, Chapter 20, Part 11 (p. 469).
46. Capital, Vol. II, Chapter 20, Part 4 (pp. 410-11).
47. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 15, Part 1 (p. 244).
48. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, pp. 8-10, 281.
49. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 15, Part 3 (p. 365 in the Vintage/Penguin edition).
50. Bukharin, Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, Chapter 3, (1972 edition, p. 226). In this translation the last word, “capital,” is italicized and capitalized as if it refers to Marx’s book – “rational from the standpoint of Capital” – but this seems wrong in the context. Our interpretation agrees with the translation of the passage in Cliff, Russia: a Marxist Analysis, p. 169.
51. Grundrisse, p. 748.
52. For evidence see “The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall in the United States,” by Dumenil, Glick and Rangel, Contemporary Marxism No. 9 (1984); and our “Karl Marx and the World Crisis,” Socialist Voice No. 19 (1983).
53. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 14 (p. 232).
54. Geoff Hodgson, “On the Political Economy of the Socialist Transformation,” New Left Review, 1982.
55. John Weeks, Capitalism and Exploitation (1981), p. 201, and Ben Fine, Theories of the Capitalist Economy (1982), p. 118. Their view is related to their idea that the FRP itself (unlike the main counteracting tendencies) “arises in production and can be developed for capital as a whole” (Weeks), i.e., without introducing interaction among different capitals. This is valid for the rising organic composition tendency, but (as our presentation shows) both the FRP and its countertendencies are expressed through the cycles and competitive relations at the “many capitals” level of analysis. Marx’s judgment in postponing discussion of the FRP to Volume III of Capital was correct.