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Letter and reply on Michael Roberts review of Glyns Capitalism unleashed - finan

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis of this exchange is a defence of Marx's law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) against what is presented as a Ricardian, wage-squeeze explanation of capitalist crisis. The reader, Chris Kaihatsu, argues that Andrew Glyn and Bob Sutcliffe's empirical observation—that rising labour costs squeezed profits in the late 1960s—is correct and compatible with Marxism. Michael Roberts replies that while wage-squeeze played a secondary role in the latter part of the cycle, the primary cause of the post-war profit decline was a rising organic composition of capital. The claim is that Glyn's framework, by denying the theoretical role of the organic composition, falls back on a pre-Marxian political economy that cannot explain why capitalism failed to restore its Golden Age even after labour was decisively weakened in the 1980s and 1990s.

Theoretical Grounding

The exchange is situated squarely within the long-running Marxist debate over crisis theory, specifically the tension between the "profit squeeze" school (associated with Glyn, Sutcliffe, and later the Monthly Review tradition) and the "falling rate of profit" school rooted in Volume III of Capital. Roberts draws on Marx's law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, arguing that the rising organic composition of capital (the ratio of constant to variable capital) is the fundamental driver of declining profitability over successive long waves. The wage-squeeze is acknowledged as a conjunctural factor in the later stages of a cycle—something Marx himself recognised—but it is not granted causal primacy.

The theoretical stakes are clear: if crisis is merely a distributional struggle between capital and labour, then capitalism can "right itself" by crushing wages and restoring the conditions for accumulation. If, however, the root cause is the internal contradiction of capital's own drive to mechanise production, then no amount of labour discipline can permanently restore profitability. This is a defence of the Marxist tradition against what is seen as a Ricardian or neo-Keynesian dilution.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in 2007, on the eve of the Global Financial Crisis. Roberts's prediction that capitalism was entering a downswing "similar to the period 1964-82, lasting up to 2014" proved remarkably prescient. The exchange identifies several features of the conjuncture:

  • The over-dependence of the global economy on US growth, itself dependent on consumer spending—a clear reference to the debt-fuelled, fictitious capital expansion that would soon collapse.
  • The failure of the post-1982 neoliberal offensive to restore the growth rates of the Golden Age, despite weakened labour movements, privatisation of former Soviet assets, and cuts to social welfare.
  • The role of emerging markets (China and India) as "relative latecomers" that serve as both indicators and effects of a mode of production on its downslope—a recognition that globalisation is not a solution to capitalist crisis but its spatial displacement.

Roberts's periodisation—an upswing in profitability from 1982 peaking in 1997, followed by a downswing—directly anticipates the 2008 crash and the subsequent era of low growth, quantitative easing, and renewed inter-imperialist rivalry.

Where the Argument Continues

This exchange is a fragment of a much larger corpus. Roberts's empirical work on the rate of profit, later published in The Great Recession (2009) and The Long Depression (2016), develops the data and periodisation sketched here. The debate with the profit-squeeze school continues across multiple articles on marxist.com, particularly in reviews of books by Andrew Kliman, David Harvey, and others. The question of whether the TRPF is a "law" or a "tendency," and how to measure the organic composition of capital empirically, is taken up in later Against the Current episodes and in Roberts's blog, The Next Recession.

The article also leaves open the question of the subjective factor—working-class organisation and consciousness—which Kaihatsu raises but does not develop. Roberts's reply ends with a nod to this, but the relationship between objective crisis and subjective intervention is a theme that runs through the RCI's broader theoretical output, particularly in discussions of the revolutionary party and the strategy of transitional demands.

Connections

  • Andrew Glyn and Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profit Squeeze (1972) – The original target of Roberts's critique.
  • Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's "Capital" (2007) – A contemporary defence of the TRPF against both profit-squeeze and underconsumptionist readings.
  • Michael Roberts, The Great Recession (2009) – The empirical elaboration of the argument made here.
  • Marx, Capital, Volume III, Part III – The theoretical foundation for the TRPF.
  • Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (1972) – A long-wave theory that integrates the TRPF with conjunctural analysis of class struggle.
  • Against the Current podcast episodes on crisis theory – For the ongoing internal debates within the Marxist tradition.

Key Quotes

  1. "The empirical evidence compiled by several people (including myself, yet to be published) is that the rate of profit in the OECD economies started to decline after 1964 well before labour's share rose sharply. The rising organic composition of capital was the main cause."

  2. "Glyn and Sutcliffe at the time not only denied the role of a rising organic composition of capital empirically but also denied its role theoretically in explaining any decline in capitalist profitability. They fell back on a non-Marxist explanation based on Ricardo."

  3. "This was important, because if profits were only squeezed by labour power then capitalism could right itself by destroying wage gains. My argument is that even if wages are held down, capitalism cannot succeed indefinitely because of Marx's explanation of declining profitability."

  4. "It was also two deep economic recessions 1974-5 and 1980-2 that cut back the cost of constant capital (plant, machinery etc) and thus reduced the organic composition of capital. That was the key factor in renewing the profit cycle for capitalism."

  5. "I reckon that capitalism is again in a downswing similar to the period 1964-82. That heralds a period with more economic slumps than we saw between 1982-00 (just one in 1990-1), lasting up to 2014."

  6. "Unless the working class seizes its opportunities over the next decade, then capitalism will find a way to revive itself at the expense of us all."