Kilman's rejection of Underconsumptist theories of the Crisis.
- Thread starter revol68
- Start date
Well.... you must.... be mentally.... ill
love detective
there's no love too small
pregnant pauses add to the tension and atmosphere of the post
ItWillNeverWork
Messy Crimbobs, fellow humans.
Run along now firky. The grown-ups are talking.
revol68
what, fucking what?
40 pages in to the Kliman's Failure of Capital Production and I have to say I'm impressed, he writes extremely clearly.
Pity about the tribute to Chris Harman
Just joking, anyone who had the balls to denounce Ho Chi Minh to his face in a room full of fawning pseudo leftist has earned the right to such tributes, trot hack or not.
Pity about the tribute to Chris Harman
Just joking, anyone who had the balls to denounce Ho Chi Minh to his face in a room full of fawning pseudo leftist has earned the right to such tributes, trot hack or not.
Ho was dead, so it was to the faces of his cheerleaders.
love detective
there's no love too small
yep, he's one of those (rare) types that can unravel the core of complex issues and articulate them in a way that doesn't alienate the person reading it while at the same time not condescending or patronising them
this is one benefit of being an anti-academic academic - there's no pressure to ape the convoluted & opaque writing style that seems to be mandatory throughout dreary academic marxian analysis
revol68
what, fucking what?
Ah, not as impressive then but still ballsy considering the sentiments of idiot leftists.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
40 pages in to the Kliman's Failure of Capital Production and I have to say I'm impressed, he writes extremely clearly.
Pity about the tribute to Chris Harman
Just joking, anyone who had the balls to denounce Ho Chi Minh to his face in a room full of fawning pseudo leftist has earned the right to such tributes, trot hack or not.
What did he denounce HCM for?
I suppose, in a room full of Stalinists and recently converted Mao fanboys and girls.
The London meeting was in memory of the recently deceased HCM, but Harman used it to honour the memory of prominent Vietnamese Trots assassinated by the ICP/Viet Minh in the 1940s.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
Ah I misread revol's post and thought that HCM/his supporters were being denounced by Kliman not Harman. I was just preparing to froth off about academic marxists having not a clue what the actual practical demands of a revolutionary war/national liberation struggle might be. But tbf Harman lived his beliefs out in a practical way. And anyway back in the 60s the whole 4th International thing was still pretty fresh - it feels like the stone age now (to me anyway).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
These demands? They entail killing revolutionaries?
What 4th international thing?
What 4th international thing?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I know what the 4th international was is and never shall be ta. I was really asking what on earth it had to do with nationalists killing revolutionaries and the later defence/criticism of this from someone not in the 4th international which wasn't new at the time anyway. I found it a very confusing thing to add to the post.
revol68
what, fucking what?
You can't make a national liberation scramble without smashing the fuck out of some revolutionary eggs. Criticising the slaughter of revolutionaries by nationalists is the kind of decadent sentimental liberalism one would expect from the western aristocracy of labour!
Pol, Pot, Pol, Pot, Pol, Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot!
Pol, Pot, Pol, Pot, Pol, Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot!
love detective
there's no love too small
always the bridesmaid 
revol68
what, fucking what?
Really enjoying reading this but am finding the claim of workers income share rising still very unbelievible, that doesn't mean it's wrong just that it stands against virtually every other report or claim by economists across the political spectrum, and I can't think of any reason why they would wish to fugde the analysis of the empicial data or cherry pick what data to use.
love detective
there's no love too small
Kliman says he didn't believe it either till he did the research/crunched the numbers
This is what I meant when I said in the first post on this thread that his empirical work is is very useful for keeping a focus on the deeper contradictions of capital
Kliman said:
This is what I meant when I said in the first post on this thread that his empirical work is is very useful for keeping a focus on the deeper contradictions of capital
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Two diff things there. Workers share of total income and av rate of profit.
love detective
there's no love too small
all other things being equal though if the former rises the later decreases (presuming that by total income you mean total value produced)
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The av rate of of profit can go down with the labour % of income (and yes, we need to know what he means by that) rising or falling can't it?
(and we're meaning within national blocs here aren't we?)
(and we're meaning within national blocs here aren't we?)
revol68
what, fucking what?
Yeah I don't think the claim about the average rate of profit has any necessary bearing on whether or not labour income is a smaller or larger slice of this shrinking pie.
Also his dismissal of the financialisation thesis, is that applicable to the UK where financialisation of the economy is so obvious and a stated government policy.
love detective
there's no love too small
yes it can go down or up (depending on what happens to the composition of capital, which is the 'third' variable so to speak)
and this is pretty much the main discovery of Kliman's empirical work, that the bulk of the decline in the rate of profit that he has identified over the last 4-5 decades is attributable to increases in the composition of capital and not due to an ever increasing share of value produced going to labour - so text book marxian increasing composition of capital/declining rate of profit stuff really (which also ties in with his assertion that not enough capital/value has been destroyed to bring about a rise in the profit rate, so capital really needs a good war to sort that out)
he also points towards a more or less stable proportion of value produced going to labour (in contrast to the standard view that this has been falling rapidly in the last 4 decades or so) - so if proportion of value produced going to labour is relatively static combined with a fall in the rate of average profit for capital, the only other variable that can produce this is an increasing composition of capital - edit: which he also tries to prove empirically
love detective
there's no love too small
It's not that he dismises that it's happening - it's more that he argues that financialisation is an effect of the deeper crisis/contradiction in capitalist production rather than its cause.
So he's hitting out at those who say (by implication rather than explicitly) that Capitalism could be stable if the excesses of the last thirty years were brushed away and tidied up, i.e. it's not neo-liberalism that's the underlying problem here
revol68
what, fucking what?
Aye I get that, I don't think many Marxist's think the problem is neo liberalism itself, rather that neo liberalism is an attempt to address other forms of crisis. Certainly that was my reading of Harvey, though I suppose a big difference between Kliman and Harvey is that Harvey doesn't seem to hold that there is one fundamental underlying contradiction (falling rate of profit), but rather a kind of constantly shifting and rolling variety of contradictions within capitalism expressed in various forms of crisis.
By his dismissal of financialisation I was more talking about his empirical claims about it in relation to investment in production, his data is all US based, I'm wondering what the data would be like for the UK.
love detective
there's no love too small
True, but I don't think his book is aimed at other Marxists - it's more aimed against the 'conventional wisdom' on the left that the crisis was 'irreducibly' a financial one and therefore what is needed is activist keynesian policies and financial regulation (this is what i meant by those who effectively implicitly, but not explicitly, argue that capitalism would be stable if neoliberalism could be rolled back - i.e. their relentless focus on neoliberalism or financialisation implicitly suggests that these are the problems, not the thing that actually produced them)
not sure - not sure what empirical claims he actually makes in relation to this - will have a proper look later
