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I read with interest the new booklet on The Economic Foundations of Capitalism's Rise and Fall and while i do have various problems with some issues but the one main problem i find is the reliance on Grossman's theory of Collapse.

In my view, Grossman's statistics are very dubious because 1) he sets the rate of growth of capital at a constant 10% but it has never achieved such a high growth rate (see Our World In Data) 2) the rates of variable capital and surplus value and the latter's division into 3 portions are all very arbitrary and changes could have a big impact on results, 3) the rate of the capitalists' income obtained from surplus value is allowed to reduce annually which is unrealistic and certainly not what has happened in decades of neo-liberalism. 4) no account is taken of capital depreciation or the writing off of assets 5) no account is taken of all the counter tendencies to the FROP eg. the impact of war, increased exploitation of workers, increased population of the workforce.

I know it is only a model but the above surely means is just isnt valid as a model. If we use Our World in Date figures (ourworldindata.org) - but recognising they are just estimates - the growth in capital appears to have been exponential since the outset but only at rates of 3% to 4%, in fact their figures suggest it has increased slightly over the past 2 centuries. These figures of course include waste production which must have increased enormously since the 19th century, so it is clear that capital increase must be lower than these GDP figures - but that does also mean that a significant portion of the surplus value initially exploited from workers has been wasted on waste production.

Marx makes the point that as the ROP falls, it is because of the increased mass of capital and the consequence is that the mass of surplus value must also increase. For some reason Grossman rejected this analysis by Marx, but it this seems to me to be a far better explanation of what has been happening to the capitalist economy over its lifetime than Grossman's theory

I did not think the CWO accepted what he said about capitalist accumulation so I am even more surprised to see the suggestion on p76 that capitalism will collapse in 20 to 30 years! I know i was taken from a quote by Maito here but you do not give any explanation of how this forecast is achieved and, more importantly, neither do you reject it!