Falling Rate of Profit in marginal terms

Diminishing returns is measured in terms of output given other factors staying the same. That's one dissimilarity. Falling profit is a result of capitalists trying to increase physical productivity as a means of increasing surplus productivity. Diminishing returns is completely static. It's in terms of applying a quantitative increase in some given factor with others remaining constant. FROP is a result of qualitative changes in the production process with the key being the increase in productivity most classically as a result from the application of technology but also the organization of the labor process, cooperation etc.

Obviously, with most post-Marxist systems, you would have to bear in mind that - firstly trying to look for vaguely acceptable things there might seem strange, as they were generally retrogressions that were proud of this - while Marx does speak of persons in the system, and their organisation, for post-Marxist economic systems the persons are reduced to economic factors, and in that sense any rearrangement of people can be expressed as if an economic shift of significance. In that sense, diminishing returns might, on the axioms on which it is based, actually express something quite similar, because as persons are identified with and absorbed into the economic - albeit unacknowledgedly - and reduced to economic factors rather than human actors, as of course economics had to do to escape from Marxism and sweep its economic relations under the carpet as it were, the general result therefore is that some form of economic exclusion endemic to the system is expressed, but in an undeveloped form. In addition, of course, the separation from use-values entirely in the operation of capital is expressed in such, giving therefore the sense that despite pretending to talk about 'profit,' it is instead talking about the credit-form already, and hence leaving profit itself unquestioned.

Generally speaking, a generic trait of such non-Marxist systems is also that profit is itself taken for granted as a category and then other things spoken of - such as people's incidental relations on the basis of credit - because obviously they are attempting to present the system as stable, and avoid the category of labour-power (or fight against a 'category'), and hence cannot present it in a situation where it is merely seeking profit - either from labour-power or the market - and therefore unstable, but rather must present this as somehow already realised. Marx somewhat left things open for this, as they did not generally distinguish between significant and less significant trait of the economy, but treated every aspect with the same grave significance. They must hence, as it were, treat profit and its system as merely prophetically realised, rather than something which has to be sought. In this sense, slogans like 'people not profits' and whatever else are already beyond their account, and hence are represented as un-economic in a farcical rendition of Hegel's category of 'Unphilosophy,' which of course they are in a sense. Obviously, though, because they are a distraction from the economic system, they are themselves limited, and hence generally assumed to value the input of economists and so on.

Evidently, it would if anything be a pale reflection of Marx's account of the contradictions of capital in every stage, and hence has very little to support it if it is to be taken into such a realm. Obviously, Marx identifies crisis with the collapse of capital, as a culmination of its contradictions which pass beyond it, and obviously because capital's purpose was profit he locates this crisis in a process through which within such a system and its movement profit - its own purpose - is limited and restricted. Its actions hence became contradictory and hollow, on some level, and it was reduced merely to robotic repetition at the expense of the working class or social segments identified with communism - including of course communists - until its end came.

Of course, the reduction of the human being to an economic creature also has a more direct, disciplinary significance, and people are hence scolded for not going along with and being accessible to this system. However, as this is not done directly in marginalism, it is therefore subject to dissent, or in brief 'must decrease' if the social system which it serves is 'to increase.'

Whether or not Marx should be associated with such may depend, really. It must be noted that it is probably sufficient for vulgar economists' disapprobation - their premise was to support capitalism - that Marx didn't get too far in the system, and was inaccessible for it, and hence quite different from its 'normal' ideological products. They would hence generally be critiquing Marx merely to show him how such accessibility is done, rather than any doctrinal disputes being primary - as if they have to reach a conclusion from disputing with Marx, with no primary preferences -, and hence lack for positive and opposed doctrine per se. It must be noted that economists were often only recognised for their scolding the economic system in some form or saying that things should be done slightly, vaguely differently - though not too much - and hence the identity of economists as pathetic Marxists was one with a long history. (In this they diverge from S. Artesian, who was merely a skirt-chaser, but did not think to integrate these skirts into an innovative historical materialism, being burned after their extensive experience with miners and related disrepute in the late 20th Century. In this they resemble the not dissimilar Black Sabbath, who likewise were led to exclaim forthrightly, "Who do you trust when corruption and lust, creed of all the unjust, leaves you empty and unwhole?")

Uh, unless I'm terribly mistaken, there is a big difference. Diminishing returns is the intellectualization of the Maxim "too many cooks spoil the broth" whereas FROP is a result of a complex set of imperatives outlined by Marx.

I'm not sure. If I were to try and frame FROP in conventional economic terms it'd probably be as a Nash equilibrium where each firm's dominant strategy is to invest in fixed capital in pursuit of greater profits, but the sum of the payoffs is reduced when all firms do so. (Ofc that says nothing of the mechanisms behind that payoff structure, which is more what Marx was interested in.)

Yeah, if anything the phenomenon that leads to FROP often leads to INCREASED returns on capital, at least in the short run right? The individual firm that invests wisely can grab profits before the others move in a similar direction and drive the general profit rate down.

Oh that's the other thing, the FROP is a generalized tendency, the result of interaction of capitalist enterprises, whereas diminishing returns, in true bourgeois form, is a 'principle' wantonly applied at varying levels of abstraction (and usefulness) as far as I can tell?

Pennoid

Uh, unless I'm terribly mistaken, there is a big difference. Diminishing returns is the intellectualization of the Maxim "too many cooks spoil the broth" whereas FROP is a result of a complex set of imperatives outlined by Marx.

I was saying that they were similar only given the significant differences between the two frameworks. Obviously, economics can vary from vulgar, or more explicitly opposed to Marxism, to more ordinary, and generally concepts would be more likely to overlap in the latter form than the former, where they will take on a form explicitly opposed to Marxism and which is of little use for it. Perhaps if a Marxist wished to learn Russian, and had a healthy and clear sense of discrimination. In any case, however, I was trying to get at how on the basis on which these things are proposed - humans reduced to economic factors, for instance - discussion of such things does necessarily have implications of exclusion of humans from the productive process which they would not have otherwise, and this might easily be brought out when dissent of some form is present.

Of course, discussion of how a capitalist system implicitly involves the lowering of profits is always, whatever spin is put on it (usually people liked to pretend that capitalism was a human being interacting with others and trying to come to an agreement, rather than as it was an impersonal system - hence, as you point out, psychologising economics as if transhistorical principles could just be readily imported into a historical system), liable to encounter occasional contradictions, given that the system did have profit as a purpose and this could not be elided too much without pretending that it was communism instead, and possibly make a mockery of the apparent stability and order that the system claims when it itself does not know what it wants, in terms of its own mechanics. This is part of why it was liable to the FORP (and possibly vampires), it easily slipped into situations where profits could decline because an anarchic system by design (and profits are a decentralised end, which is a vulgarisation in a way of centralised ends in the labour process that Marx attempts to specify) can hardly prioritise, and insofar as it has a central end of sorts will come into contradiction with this if it is to survive and assert its continued existence as decentralised. I did attempt to specify that they would of necessity be quite different because of the economic systems compared, if that was in question.

Again, these are qualitatively different phenomenon, as Roberts points out.

They suggest that profit is a sort of 'natural' return to capital, based on it's 'marginal' application, and thus, each unit of capital added, beyond the 'optimum' point will yield diminishing returns (of profit). Roberts points out that this is based on a host of assumptions which are pretty untenable:

The mainstream view of profit is that it is income from just one “factor of production” (capital). Wages come from a different factor (labor), and rent comes from another (land). The greater the quantity of a certain factor of production, the lower the return. So if there are lots of workers looking for work, wages will be lower (more workers employed will reduce the marginal increase in wages). Similarly, the more capitalists seeking a profitable return on investment, the less likely they will find it because of competition with other capitalists (the more capital employed, the less the marginal increase in profits).

But what if this theory is fundamentally flawed? What if it’s instead the case that profits are not a return on a factor of production but instead come from the exertion of human labor — that they’re the surplus appropriated by the owners of the means of production (factories, offices, etc.) over and above the wages paid to the workforce, who create the things and services that are sold on the market? This is the Marxist view. Marxists see profits as the unpaid labor of workers, not the earned income of capital.

I get where you're coming from, but they are distinct theories, about distinct phenomenon, and I think Robert's does a good job of pointing out how/why.