"As soon, however, as capitalist competition has definitively established the equal rate of profit, that rate becomes the starting point for the calculations of the capitalists in the investment of capital in newly-created branches of production"
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Hilferding is describing capitalism less as a free-for-all than as a self-normalizing machine. Once competition has done its bruising work and an “equal rate of profit” hardens into a baseline, capitalists stop behaving like romantic gamblers chasing wild, idiosyncratic returns. They begin acting like engineers of expectation. The “rate” becomes a social fact: not a law of nature, but a benchmark produced by conflict, consolidation, and imitation. That’s the quiet bite of the passage: competition, the supposed engine of difference, ends up manufacturing sameness.
The intent is analytical but also political. Writing in the era when cartels, big banks, and corporate finance were reorganizing European capitalism, Hilferding is mapping how investment decisions get disciplined by a shared yardstick. New industries aren’t funded because they are socially useful or technologically beautiful; they are funded because they can be made to clear a hurdle rate already set elsewhere in the system. “Newly-created branches” sound like innovation, but the subtext is constraint: novelty is welcomed only after it is rendered legible in profit terms.
That framing helps explain why capitalism can look dynamic on the surface while reproducing familiar hierarchies underneath. If the equalized profit rate is the starting point, then risk, labor, and even scientific breakthroughs are filtered through a single question: can this be made to pay like everything else? Hilferding’s line is a warning about how finance turns the future into a spreadsheet before it turns it into a factory.
The intent is analytical but also political. Writing in the era when cartels, big banks, and corporate finance were reorganizing European capitalism, Hilferding is mapping how investment decisions get disciplined by a shared yardstick. New industries aren’t funded because they are socially useful or technologically beautiful; they are funded because they can be made to clear a hurdle rate already set elsewhere in the system. “Newly-created branches” sound like innovation, but the subtext is constraint: novelty is welcomed only after it is rendered legible in profit terms.
That framing helps explain why capitalism can look dynamic on the surface while reproducing familiar hierarchies underneath. If the equalized profit rate is the starting point, then risk, labor, and even scientific breakthroughs are filtered through a single question: can this be made to pay like everything else? Hilferding’s line is a warning about how finance turns the future into a spreadsheet before it turns it into a factory.
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| Topic | Investment |
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