Book Reviews: ‘Population 10 Billion’, & ‘The Failure of Capitalist Production’

Email about Kliman review :In the December 2014 Socialist Standard review of The Failure of Capitalist Production it appears that there might be an inaccuracy in the concept of 'original value' or 'historic cost': ‘Kliman argues for using the original value (‘historic cost’) rather than the current replacement cost used by the others’.The explanation might be in Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital': A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, The Raya Dunayevskaya Series in Marxism and Humanism (New York, Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).  I think that Andrew Kliman is arguing in his earlier book, and most explicitly on pp34-5, for the temporal valuation of fixed capital inputs, and not the simultaneous valuation which you refer to as the ‘current’ replacement cost. That is he argues for the Temporal Single System Interpretation (TSSI) and not the Simultaneous Single System Interpretation (SSSI).The Temporal approach says that fixed capital inputs should be valued when they enter into the production process, which might be quite different from both their historical cost and their replacement cost.Maybe the misunderstanding is mine, and if so my apologies.Ian Abley