Profit, Competition, Credit, and Crisis
Module 9 of Capital and Political Economy: follow surplus value into profit, competition, interest, and credit without losing its origin in production.
- Time
- About 91 minutes
- Activities
- Read, retrieve, compare, apply
- Concepts
- Profit rate, competition, credit, and crisis
Completion and recall are different.
Completion records what you finished. Recall records what you attempted from memory and when it should return for review.
- Pathway completion
- 0 of 14 steps
- Checkpoints rated
- 0 of 2
- Next review
- Not scheduled
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
- Explain how the profit form obscures the origin of surplus value by relating it to total capital.
- Treat the tendency of the rate of profit to fall together with its counteracting factors.
- Analyze credit as both an organizer and accelerator of accumulation and a source of fragility.
Commit to a first explanation.
Two firms exploit labor at the same rate but use very different amounts of machinery. Would you expect their observed profit rates to be identical? Explain.
Follow the causal sequence.
Parts I, III, and V: Profit, Crisis Tendencies, Interest, and Credit
Karl Marx
Read with a scope
Read Part I on the transformation of surplus value into profit, Part III on the falling-rate tendency and countertendencies, and Part V selectively on interest-bearing capital and credit. Keep production, realization, and distribution distinct.
Keep one question in view: How do the forms visible to competing firms both express and conceal the social production of surplus value?
Explain the method without the source.
Watch the analytical operation.
A retailer reports a higher margin than a manufacturer, proving retail workers created more surplus value.
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Distinguish production from realization
A reported margin records revenue over accounted cost; it does not directly identify where new value originated.
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Follow redistribution
Wholesale prices, commercial discounts, rent, logistics, taxes, and market power redistribute portions of total surplus.
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Examine labor in both firms
Retail labor may perform necessary circulation functions and be exploited without all commercial profit originating there.
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Compare capital and turnover
Different fixed capital, inventory speed, credit terms, and risks shape observed rates and margins.
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Specify the evidence gap
Firm accounts alone cannot reconstruct the total value and surplus relations across the chain.
Complete the missing steps.
The opening steps are supplied. Finish the analysis in your own words, then compare your reasoning before trying the independent case.
Automating a hypothetical foundry must lower its profit rate permanently, regardless of what happens to surplus value or input values.
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Define the initial value relation
For a simplified period, assume total advanced c = 80 and v = 20, with s = 20 produced and realized. Abstract from price redistribution and turnover differences.
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Isolate the initial change
Automation raises advanced c to 180. First hold v = 20 and s = 20 unchanged; later changes will be tested separately.
Apply the structure to a new case.
Rate both checkpoints, then record this pathway step.
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