La ley del descenso tendencial de la tasa de ganancia: Evidencia empírica para la economía española

López-Espejo, Iván (2025): La ley del descenso tendencial de la tasa de ganancia: Evidencia empírica para la economía española.

Abstract

This article examines the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in the Spanish economy between 1960 and 2024, considering the organic composition of capital and the rate of surplus value as central variables. Its aim is to determine whether this law, formulated by Marx in Capital (Vol. III), continues to operate in the contemporary context. The methodology consists of transforming orthodox macroeconomic categories derived from the Spanish National Accounts (CNE), available in BDMACRO, into Marxist variables: constant capital (c), variable capital (v), and surplus value (pv). Based on these, historical series of the organic composition of capital (q), the rate of surplus value (pv'), and the rate of profit (g') are constructed, adjusted to constant prices to ensure temporal coherence and comparability. The results show a sustained increase in q and a slight decrease in pv', generating a tendential decline in g' with cyclical fluctuations associated with specific crises. The conclusions empirically confirm the validity of the law in Spain, highlighting the historical limits of capitalism and providing quantitative evidence on the structural dynamics of profitability.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• English Title: The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall: Empirical Evidence for the Spanish Economy
• Language: Spanish
• Keywords: Tendency of the rate of profit; organic composition of capital; rate of surplus value; Spanish economy; economic cycles
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches > B51 - Socialist ; Marxian ; Sraffian; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C9 - Design of Experiments > C93 - Field Experiments; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O11 - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity > O47 - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth ; Aggregate Productivity ; Cross-Country Output Convergence; P - Economic Systems > P1 - Capitalist Systems > P16 - Political Economy

References

Cámara Izquierdo, Sergio. 2003. "La rentabilidad del capital en España." Revista de Economía Crítica (1): 201-228.

Carchedi, Guglielmo. 2011. Behind the Crisis: Marx's Dialectics of Value and Knowledge. Leiden; Boston: Brill.

European Commission. 2025. "Annual Macro-Economic Database (AMECO)." Accessed 1 September 2025. https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-research-and-databases/economic-databases/ameco-database_en.

Farina, Joaquín. 2018. La tasa de explotación como medida de desigualdad global (1973-2012): Un aporte desde el Marxismo Cuantitativo. TeseoPress.

Fuentes Quintana, Enrique, Valle Sánchez, Victorio, and Alcaide Inchausti, Julio. 1993. "Economía española 93: el desarrollo se va, los desequilibrios se quedan." Cuadernos de Información Económica (71): 3-29. https://www.funcas.es/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/CIE-71-Econimia-Espa%C3%B1ola-93.pdf.

Gujarati, Damodar N., and Dawn C. Porter. 2009. Basic Econometrics (5th Edition). McGraw Hill.

Harvey, David. 1999. The Limits to Capital. London; New York: Verso.

Harvey, David. 2012. El enigma del capital. Madrid: Akal.

Kliman, Andrew. 2011. The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession. Pluto Press.

Lapavitsas, Costas. 2013. Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All. London: Verso.

López, Isidro, and Emmanuel Rodríguez. 2011. "The Spanish Model." New Left Review 69 (3): 5-29.

Mandel, Ernest. 1979. El capitalismo tardío. Mexico: Era.

Marx, Karl. 1976. El Capital, Crítica de la Economía Política. Libro III: El proceso global de la producción capitalista. Madrid: Siglo XXI.

Marx, Karl. 2002. El Capital, Vol. I. Madrid: Siglo XXI.

Mateo Tomé, Juan Pablo, and Maximiliano Francisco Nieto Ferrández. 2021. "Profit rates and asset–price inflation in the Spanish economy." Revista Galega de Economía 30(4): 1-21.

Ministerio de Hacienda, Secretaría de Estado de Presupuestos y Gastos. 2025. "Base de Datos Macroeconómicos de España (BDMACRO)." Accessed 29 August 2025. https://www.sepg.pap.hacienda.gob.es/sitios/sepg/es-ES/Presupuestos/DocumentacionEstadisticas/Documentacion/paginas/bdmacro.aspx.

Roberts, Michael. 2016. The Long Depression: How it Happened, Why it Happened, and What Happens Next. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Romero-Jordán, Desiderio. 2024. "¿Cuál es el esfuerzo por vivir de alquiler en España? Evolución y diferencias por comunidades autónomas." En Mercado Inmobiliario y Política de la Vivienda en España, edited by Santiago Carbó Valverde, 85-95. Madrid: Funcas.

Shaikh, Anwar. 2016. Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises. New York: Oxford University Press.

Úbeda, Miquel, Cabasés, M. Àngels, Sabaté, Malena, and Strecker, Tanja. 2020. "The Deterioration of the Spanish Youth Labour Market (1985–2015): An Interdisciplinary Case Study." YOUNG 28(5): 544-563. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308820914838

Wooldridge, Jeffrey M. 2013. Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach (5th Edition). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

Zhao, Feng, Zhang, Jianbao, and Luo, Zhen. 2024. "Market competition, labor value and price: a Marxist disequilibrium theoretical and empirical framework." China Political Economy 7(1): 47-71.