International competition forced down profit rates ending the postwar boom

Evidence

Capitalism as a whole entered a new historical phase, with the sudden fade-out of the post-war boom. The underlying cause of the long downswing, with its much slower rates of growth and higher rates of inequality, was the intensification of international competition, relentlessly forcing down rates of profit and so the springs of investment, in a global economy no longer divisible into relatively sheltered national spaces. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 237

Categorization

• XREF: A classic Marxist crisis-theory account — connects to Brenner and the ‘long downturn’ literature, and to the reader’s economic-historical knowledge. — connects to: Global manufacturing overcapacity triggered the 1970s profitability crisis — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 24; Postwar labor power drove real wages and wage shares to postwar highs. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1553; Global wage suppression was engineered to boost dollar profit rates — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 199