1.   If real product wages rise more slowly than productivity then the profit share rises.

2.   The need for a certain amount of scrapping if accumulation is to proceed smoothly determines a necessary rise in product wages.

3.   Annual money wage increases rose to about twice those of the mid-fifties, and product wages accelerated as well.

4.   So the rise in product wages was both the clearest expression of tightening labour markets and the mechanism which prevented it from inhibiting accumulation.

5.   Ample labour supplies permitted the operation of new machines without the need for product wages to rise as fast as productivity.

6.   For it is the increase in product wages which makes the old machinery unprofitable and permits labour to be transferred to the new.

7.   The behaviour of both productivity and product wages do not conform precisely to the simplest description of overaccumulation.

8.   Productivity and product wages determine the course of the profit share and an account of their movements is given in the next two sections.