REVIEW OF KLIMAN’S BOOK “THE FAILURE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION”
July 29, 2018 2 Comments
GRAPHS Produced assets 1951- 2016 excel
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Kliman review of The Failure of Capitalist Production (ARTICLE)
Please note on page 9, the third paragraph under Table 3 it should read: …eclipsed by Chapter 9 and not 10.
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Marx, in his argument, and affirmation, that the decline in the rate of profit exists as a tendency, a trend. In those circumstances, the actual empirical differences between the rate of profit as you calculate it, “adjusted” for turnover rates, and the rate of return as “conventionally” calculated does not represent a critical variation or “gap,” The two, as demonstrated in your Graph 5 track each other through ups and downs, so that the trends in the ROR are an accurate proxy for the rate of profit. The gaps do not contradict the historical trends.
Ye,s they mimic each other in the medium term but over the longer term the gradients differ. This is because variable capital or circulating capital formed a much larger share of total capital say in the 1950s. The subsequent narrowing effect is what is to be expected from the rise in the technical composition of capital. Hence latterly the absolute differences are less significant than would have been the case fifty years ago. However, in the case of China currently, where the composition of capital is much lower, the gap and the gradient are commensurably larger.