I have had a much, much harder time with Levy than Kliman. I too have never met Levy and had only a brief encounter with Kliman more than years ago.
I agree--and have already emphasized--that Kliman's ideas deserve understanding and debate. I presented no such brief for Levy's ideas. So I have already taken sides on the substantive debate.
Kliman's ideas have also been articulated by John Ernst, Alan Freeman, Alejandro Ramos-Martinez, Guglielmo Carchedi and others. While I don't find their particular arguments for a single system persuasive, I find their temporal approach the correct context for understanding the effects of on going technical change on the profit rate the understanding of the most powerful determinants of the movement of which is a crucial task for any theory of the historical limits of the bourgeois mode of production.
Is capitalism exploitative? What are its laws of motions? I understand that these questions may be out of fashion but they shouldn't be.
Rakesh
There is an interesting dissertation on the theory of capitalist breakdown.by Bernice Shoul who was advised by no less than Josef Schumpeter Yes, the dissertation was submitted in 1947, so fifty years of capitalist expansion would seem to invalidate the ideas. But the dissertation also makes sense of the twenty years which preceded it.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/shoul/1947/breakdown/index.htm