Reclaiming Marx's Capital: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency

251 Pages·2006·5.208 MB·English

by  Andrew Kliman

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A Refutation
of the Myth of
Inconsistency
Andrew Kliman
Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”
Raya Dunayevskaya Series in Marxism and Humanism
Series Editors: Kevin B. Anderson, Purdue University
Olga Domanski, News and Letters Committees
Peter Hudis, News and Letters Committees
The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx
by Raya Dunayevskaya, Edited and introduced by Peter Hudis and Kevin B.
Anderson
Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao
by Raya Dunayevskaya
Helen Macfarlane: A Feminist, Revolutionary Journalist, and Philosopher in Mid-
Nineteenth-Century England
by David Black
Karl Marx and the Future of the Human
by Cyril Smith
Reclaiming Marx’s "Capital”: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency
by Andrew Kliman
Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”
A Refutation of the Myth of
Inconsistency
Andrew Kliman
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
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Copyright © 2007 by Lexington Books
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kliman, Andrew, 1955-
Reclaiming Marx’s Capital: a refutation of the myth of inconsistency / Andrew Kliman.
p. cm. - (Raya Dunayevskaya series in Marxism and humanism)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1851-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7391-1851-X (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1852-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7391-1852-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Labor theory of value. 2. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. Kapital. I. Title.
HB206.K55 2007
335.4’ 12—dc22 2006028377
Printed in the United States of America
© The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
For Anne
v

Contents
List of Tables and Figures ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Preface xiii
1 Introduction: The Question of Internal Inconsistency 1
2 Marx’s Value Theory and Contending Interpretations 19
3 A Brief History of the Controversy 41
4 Making Marx Make Sense: On Interpretive Method 55
5 Simultaneism, Physicalism, and the Law of Value 75
6 Was Marx a Simultaneist? 89
7 The Falling Rate of Profit Controversy 113
8 The “Transformation Problem” (1): Marx’s Solution
and Its Critics 139
9 The “Transformation Problem” (2): If It Ain’t Broke,
Don’t Correct It 157
10 The “Fundamental Marxian Theorem” 175
vii
11 An Empirical Defense of the Law of Value? 193
12 Summary and Conclusions 205
Bibliography 213
Index 223
About the Author 231
viii
List of Tables and Figures
Table 2.1 Two Distinctions between Value and Price 26
Table 2.2 Prices of Production and Average Profits 28
Table 5.1 Physical System 85
Table 5.2 Physicalist “Value” System 86
Figure 6.1 Static Equilibrium and Average Rates of Profit 94
Table 6.1 Changes in the Cost of an Input 95
Table 6.2 Marx After Ramsay 102
Table 7.1 Physical Quantities 121
Table 7.2 Simultaneist Value/Price Rate of Profit 123
Table 73 Consistent Physicalist Value/Price Rate of Profit 126
Table 7.4 Temporalist Value/Price Rate of Profit, Given the Law 128
of Value & Constant MELT
Table 7.5 Temporalist Value/Price Rate of Profit, Given the Law 131
of Value & 20% Annual Growth of MELT
Table 8.1 Marx’s Solution 143
Table 8.2 Bortkiewicz’s Proof of Internal Contradiction 150
ix