It was the failure of the anti-Keynesians to come to terms with such problems that led some Keynesians-and some on the far left influenced by Keynesianism-to blame them for the demise of the "golden age". It was not the system as such, they argue, that was behind the recurrent crises. But, as Notermans has pointed out:
If neither the recovery from the Great Depression or post-war growth can be attributed to Keynesian policies . . . [it] cannot serve as an explanation for the termination of full employment. 14
So where does the explanation lie?
Where the crises came from
Missing from all the most influential mainstream explanations for the end of the "golden age" was what was happening to the rate of profit. Yet various efforts at measuring it have come to a single conclusion: it fell sharply between the late 1960s and the early 1 980s.
The results are not always fully compatible with each other, since there are different ways of measuring investment in fixed capital, and the information on profits provided by companies and governments are subject to enormous distortions.1.• Nevertheless, economists Fred Moseley, Thomas Michl,16 Anwar Shaikh and Ertugrul Ahmet Tonak,17 Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy, Ufuk Tutan and Al Campbell,18 Robert Brenner, Edwin N Wolff,19 and Piruz Alemi and Duncan K Foley20 have all come to very similar conclusions. A certain pattern emerges, which is shown in graphs given by Dumenil and Levy (Figure 1 ) for the whole business sector in the US and by Brenner (Figure 2) for manufacturing in the US, Germany and Japan.
The End of the Golden Age
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