Where do profits come from?
How do capitalists make profits? An individual capitalist can profit by cheating, or by what orthodox economists call “technological rents” (the ability to charge a higher price for a distinctive product, or to command royalties). But that is no explanation for the whole capitalist class. The simplest form of capitalist profit is the financial capitalist lending money at interest. But that cannot be the basic form. Capitalists cannot live by lending at interest to each other any more than an economy can be built on people taking in each other’s laundry. The question is, how does the value of...