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The significant increase since the early 1980s in the share of income accruing to capital (rather than labor), in both the United States and the European Union, created the potential for economic stagnation. Stagnation was postponed, however, by the development of the banking sector in these countries, notably in the increasing amounts of credit granted to wage earners. To the extent that such lending will be curtailed in the aftermath of the recent financial-economic crisis, stagnation looms. Within the confines of capitalism, this dilemma can be overcome only by making a significant shift in the macroeconomic pattern of income distribution to realign consumption with income. While particular banks and banking policies are usually blamed for the crisis and indeed played an important role, the roots of the crisis are located at a deeper level. The implication is that the economic problems we face will be much more difficult to overcome than the usual analyses suggest.

The significant increase since the early 1980s in the share of income accruing to capital (rather than labor), in both the United States and the European Union, created the potential for economic stagnation. Stagnation was postponed, however, by the development of the banking sector in these countries, notably in the increasing amounts of credit granted to wage earners. To the extent that such lending will be curtailed in the aftermath of the recent financial-economic crisis, stagnation looms. Within the confines of capitalism, this dilemma can be overcome only by making a significant shift in the macroeconomic pattern of income distribution to realign consumption with income. While particular banks and banking policies are usually blamed for the crisis and indeed played an important role, the roots of the crisis are located at a deeper level. The implication is that the economic problems we face will be much more difficult to overcome than the usual analyses suggest. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Written at the onset of a major world crisis of the capitalist mode of production, the incomplete yet internally systematic 1857-58 notebooks subsequently published as the Grundrisse provide us with a unique window onto Marx's theoretical laboratory. This text brings together in an uneasy modus vivendi themes from Marx's earlier work in the 1840s, while anticipating elements that will only reach full fruition throughout the successive drafts of Capital.

Written at the onset of a major world crisis of the capitalist mode of production, the incomplete yet internally systematic 1857-58 notebooks subsequently published as the Grundrisse provide us with a unique window onto Marx's theoretical laboratory. This text brings together in an uneasy modus vivendi themes from Marx's earlier work in the 1840s, while anticipating elements that will only reach full fruition throughout the successive drafts of Capital Marx disturbs this modus vivendi via two approaches, which dialectically interact throughout his analysis: on the one hand, the method of immanent critique leads Marx to reformulate concepts derived from his previous study of political economy, a reformulation that sometimes amounts to fundamental conceptual transformation alongside the maintenance of the older terminology; on the other hand, Marx's growing awareness of the potential durability and strength of the capitalist mode of production leads him to seek for more systematic conceptual determinations and explanations. In this perspective, the significance of the Grundrisseis that it constitutes a Kampfplatz upon which we can observe the struggle between different elements of Marx's project. This struggle is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the treatment in this text of the \"tendency of the rate of profit to fall,\" which has long constituted one of the most controversial elements of Marx's theory. Adapted from the source document.

The rate of profit has a tendency to fall--and a tendency is a concept belonging to a specific level of abstraction and is quite different from the concept of an empirical trend. The main issue discussed is that the rate of profit to fall is regarded as being insufficiently grounded--it lacks a microeconomic foundation.