Washiington, Turkey and Iraq

["George Pennefather" <poseidon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As comrades know, there has been an ongoing discussion/debate on PEN-L
around the so-called "Brenner thesis". Brenner, a leader of the American
Solidarity group that emerged out of the left-wing of the Shachtmanite
current, argued in articles in the 1970s that Sweezy, Frank, Wallerstein et
al were "neo-Smithians" because their analysis of the origins of capitalism
were rooted in commerce rather than the class struggle. In Brenner's view,
class struggles in the English countryside created yeoman farmers who
helped to launch the capitalist system through more efficient agriculture.
He rejects the idea that 15th and 16th century expropriation of gold and
silver, and the subsequent plantation system gave any kind of liftoff for
capitalism, because if there was no dynamic economic system to take
advantage of the colonial goods, it would have been wasted on luxuries for
the court, military adventures, etc.

While I am going to take up these questions in some depth, I do have a
question or two for the Latin Americans on the list. First of all, how is
Andre G. Frank viewed in Marxist circles? While Nestor has fulminated
against Frank in the past--and I do highly prize Nestor's fulminations--my
question is what exactly is there about his ideas that is so alienating. I
remember Nestor complaining, for example, about the notion of a "lumpen
bourgeoisie". Now, if you ask me, that describes Somoza and his cronies
fairly accurately. Am I missing something?

And on Cardoso. I have discovered that he was a "dependency theorist" in
good standing. So after he took office, and began instituting typical
neoliberal programs, the question came up about his "betrayal" of the
leftist beliefs of his academic past. But has anybody argued that in some
ways his policies reflect a sort of distortion of dependency theory, but
not a qualitative break from it? The reason I ask is that one of Brenner's
big complaints is that the dependency theorists might have powerful
arguments against imperialism, but are weak in a class analysis of their
own bourgeoisie.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)