Re: Musings of a Brennerite

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>In any case, you know I have written a number of posts -- some of
>them just a couple of days ago! -- in opposition to Wojtek & Ricardo
>on the question of racism, Eurocentrism, etc.  You also know that I
>have made use of Brenner & Wood in my criticism of racism &
>Eurocentrism.  In fact, I like B & W because their works demolish
>racism & Eurocentrism much better than other Marxists'.
>
>Yoshie

Yes, this is true but my argument is not with you. It is with the broad
intellectual milieu that Brenner is part and parcel of. The Brenner thesis
has been embraced by a number of Eurocentric thinkers from Eric Jones to
John Hall and Michael Mann. It has filtered down to a generation of
political scientists and historians in the 1980s who mix Marxist orthodoxy
on the verbal level with some rather retrogressive political ideas. This
trend has been much more influential in academia than Wallerstein et al. It
has fused with mainstream sociology of the Skopcol, Moore type and serves
to perpetrate the illusion that chatting about social classes and modes of
production has something to do with the Marxist project.

It is part of the long reactionary retreat of the 1980s and 90s and should
be placed in the same context as AM, market socialism, postmodernism and a
dozen other retreats from Marxism in the name of Marxism.

If the Brenner thesis had produced a generation of militant
scholar-activists like Yoshie Furuhashi, then I would probably have no
objection. The truth is that it has produced a generation of Andy Daitsmans
instead, professors who pimp for Pinochet while quoting the Grundrisse at you.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/