'Weekly Worker' Andrew Kliman interview

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

During a recession, for instance, only the most vulnerable businesses go bankrupt. Some are hardly affected. Yet the recession is still a systemic problem. So the real question is whether the crisis is indeed system-wide. I think it definitely is.

To Article... (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/931/crisis-theory-and-politics)

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Kliman does say:
What was good about Laws of chaos was that it forcefully challenged what was and still is a standard assumption in Sraffian and mainstream Marxian economics: namely the notion that all firms and all industries receive the same rate of profit. Farjoun and Machover showed that this is not a harmless approximation; one simply can’t deduce conclusions about real-world capitalism from models that make this assumption.

Hmmm... i haven't seen him go into detail on the differences of rates of profits of different organic compositions of capital... What gives :confused:

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Has anyone else heard, read seen Kliman go into detail about varying rates of profit in different sectors??? Do tell.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sorry, but Kliman's overrated. Over on Libcom my eyes rolled when I saw that he argued that workers' real wages were on the rise, deriding counter-arguments as "left-Keynesianism."

[Paul Cockshott]

Has anyone else heard, read seen Kliman go into detail about varying rates of profit in different sectors??? Do tell.

his models in the past always assumed same rate so this is a step forward

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Sorry, but Kliman's overrated. Over on Libcom my eyes rolled when I saw that he argued that workers' real wages were on the rise, deriding counter-arguments as "left-Keynesianism."

LOL, he does go strong against the "underconsumptionists". What i think he is trying to push forward with that is that consumption hasn't decreased, and he's right about that. Strange that he would say workers real wages are on the rise though; like said, probably just the overzealous counter-underconsumptionist.

[Die Neue Zeit]

He's a crisis zealot, too, but in a different way.

[Creative Destruction]

LOL, he does go strong against the "underconsumptionists". What i think he is trying to push forward with that is that consumption hasn't decreased, and he's right about that. Strange that he would say workers real wages are on the rise though; like said, probably just the overzealous counter-underconsumptionist.

He covers this in the Failure of Capitalist Production and some talks like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0yU5mTYxas

If he is showing the data truthfully (and, reading through FoCP, I have no reason to believe he isn't), then real wages have remained stable, at least until the crisis came along, but it doesn't make the bulk of compensation increases, which is mainly through benefits packages (he also consider "total compensation," such as government welfare that is paid into with wages like social security, etc. Total compensation has risen for workers.). I think his main point is that the left typically focuses on supposed falling wages and thus have less of an ability to consume and thus crisis. This is wrong according to the data that Kliman dug up.