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

Kliman (economics, Pace U.) contests charges that Karl Marx's theories of value, profit, and economic crisis in Capital are riddled with internal quantitative inconsistencies that necessitate correction or rejection of his work. According to Kliman, these inconsistencies result from the standard interpretation of Marx's theories that input and outputs are valued simultaneously (so input and output prices are necessarily equal) and that there are two separate systems of values and prices. However, he argues that if one instead looks at Capital with a temporal single-system interpretation that assumes valuation is temporal (so input and output prices can differ) and that values and prices are determined interdependently, then all of the alleged inconsistencies disappear. He examines the textual evidence that this latter interpretive framework is the one Marx intended and also works out the implications of such an interpretation. His volume is not intended to prove Marx correct, it is aimed at the somewhat narrower goal of proving that Marx's theory of value is not necessarily incorrect due to inconsistency. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Andrew Kliman is professor in the Department of Economics at Pace University.