Andrew Kliman – författare

This book seeks to reclaim Capital from the myth of internal inconsistency, a myth that serves to justify the censorship of Marx's critique of political economy and present-day research based upon it. Andrew Kliman shows that the alleged inconsistencies are actually caused by misinterpretation. By modifying the standard interpretation of Marx's value theory in two simple ways, the recent 'temporal single-system interpretation' eliminates all of the alleged inconsistencies. Written especially for the non-specialist reader, in a clear, accessible style and with the bare minimum of mathematics, Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital' introduces readers to Marx's value theory and contrasting interpretations of it, the history of the internal inconsistency controversy, and interpretive standards and methods. Kliman then surveys Marx's falling-rate-of-profit theory, the relationship of prices to values (the 'transformation problem'), Marx's exploitation theory of profit, and other topics. The book ends with a discussion of why the myth of inconsistency persists, and a call to set the record straight.

This book seeks to reclaim Capital from the myth of internal inconsistency, a myth that serves to justify the censorship of Marx's critique of political economy and present-day research based upon it. Andrew Kliman shows that the alleged inconsistencies are actually caused by misinterpretation. By modifying the standard interpretation of Marx's value theory in two simple ways, the recent 'temporal single-system interpretation' eliminates all of the alleged inconsistencies. Written especially for the non-specialist reader, in a clear, accessible style and with the bare minimum of mathematics, Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital' introduces readers to Marx's value theory and contrasting interpretations of it, the history of the internal inconsistency controversy, and interpretive standards and methods. Kliman then surveys Marx's falling-rate-of-profit theory, the relationship of prices to values (the 'transformation problem'), Marx's exploitation theory of profit, and other topics. The book ends with a discussion of why the myth of inconsistency persists, and a call to set the record straight.

This collection focuses on a long-running debate over the logical validity of Karl Marx’s theory that exploitation is the exclusive source of capitalists’ profits. The “Fundamental Marxian Theorem” was long thought to have shown that orthodox Marxian economics succeeds in replicating Marx’s conclusion. The debate begins with Andrew Kliman’s disproof of that claim. On one side of the debate, representing orthodox Marxian economics, are contributions by Simon Mohun and Roberto Veneziani. Although they concede that their simultaneist models cannot replicate Marx’s theory of profit in all cases, they insist that this is as good as it gets. On the other side, representing the temporal single-system interpretation of Marx’s theory (TSSI), are contributions by Kliman and Alan Freeman. They argue that his theory is logically valid, since it can indeed be replicated when it is understood in accordance with the TSSI. While the debate initially focused on logical concerns, issues of pluralism, truth, and scientificity increasingly assumed center stage. In his introduction to the volume, Nick Potts situates the debate in its historical context and argues forcefully that the arguments of the orthodox Marxist economists, and the manner in which those arguments were couched, were “suppressive and contrary to scientific norms.”The volume concludes with a 2014 debate, in which many of the same issues re-surfaced, between the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff and proponents of the TSSI.

The recent financial crisis and Great Recession have been analysed endlessly in the mainstream and academia, but this is the first book to conclude, on the basis of in-depth analyses of official US data, that Marx's crisis theory can explain these events.Marx believed that the rate of profit has a tendency to fall, leading to economic crises and recessions. Many economists, Marxists among them, have dismissed this theory out of hand, but Andrew Kliman's careful data analysis shows that the rate of profit did indeed decline after the post-World War II boom and that free-market policies failed to reverse the decline. The fall in profitability led to sluggish investment and economic growth, mounting debt problems, desperate attempts of governments to fight these problems by piling up even more debt - and ultimately to the Great Recession.Kliman's conclusion is simple but shocking: short of socialist transformation, the only way to escape the 'new normal' of a stagnant, crisis-prone economy is to restore profitability through full-scale destruction of existing wealth, something not seen since the Depression of the 1930s.