IMPERIALISM, DRIVEN BY THE FALL IN THE RATE OF PROFIT

This article looks at imperialism via the prism of Marx’s reproduction schema. Marx’s earlier tables in Volume 2 in the Sections on “Simple and Expanded Reproduction” have been turned into modern input-output tables which are easier to grasp. What they show is that the immediate cause of all economic crises together with the resulting intensification of competition, both nationally and internationally, is due to changes in the consumption of the economic surplus by the capitalist class as influenced by movements in the rate of profit which governs their consumption.