Written jointly with Andrew Kliman, this paper was presented to the Marx International II conference in Paris, 30 September-2 October 1998. It sets out the principal propositions of the Temporal Single System Interpretation of Marx’s theory of value in a systematic and comprehensive way, making it a reference document of this school of thought. It establishes many theorems that underpin subsequent debates, for example
- An early systematic refutation of the Fundamental Marxist Theorem (FMT) for the simultaneous interpretation and a demonstration that this yields negative profits with positive surplus value under quite normal conditions of capitalist reproduction;
- An explanation of why simultaneous valuation cannot support Marx’s theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall whilst temporal valuation does;
- A demonstration that under simultaneous valuation, the value of the product is not in general equal to the time of labour whereas under the temporal interpretation it is always so.