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Capitalist Macrodynamics: A Systematic Introduction, by David Laibman. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1997. Paper, L14.99. Pp. xv, 143.
This balanced, clearly-written and accurately argued book, based on a series of lectures in Argentina in 1995, puts forward an account of what can be salvaged of the doctrines that might be called "good, old-fashioned Marxism" here at the end of the 20th century. Laibman begins by boldly staking out a "strong" position on capitalist crisis: "The continuing accumulation of capital must imply progressive worsening of crises...." But Laibman does not want to go so far as to claim that these crises "take place `automatically,' . . . or in the same way at all times and in all places, or that some sort of mechanical breakdown is implied" (13-14).
The core of the book is a completely articulated but self-contained model of capital accumulation, intended to demonstrate the logical and economic viability of the falling-rate-of-profit theory of capitalist crisis. Laibman reasonably enough emphasises the role of labor-saving, capital-using technical change in raising the capital-labor and capital-output ratios over time. He motivates this by assuming a "mechanization function" that establishes a trade-off between increases in labor productivity and decreases in the capital-output ratio. For a given real wage, and plausible parameters of this function, entrepreneurs may choose techniques that lower their anticipated costs (and are therefore "viable") by increasing labor productivity and raising...