[PEN-L:8305] MR "debate" on Brenner

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In the June 1999 issue of MONTHLY REVIEW, there's a "debate" on Bob
Brenner's book THE ECONOMICS OF GLOBAL TURBULENCE. It's not really a
debate, since the two authors (David McNally & John Bellamy Foster) don't
address each others' articles, but it's worth reading at least one of them.

The article by McNally is the one worth reading. It has the right attitude:
instead of the academic or sectarian approach of slashing and burning the
book in order to prove the validity of McNally's own view, his point is to
put Brenner's book in the broader perspective of Marxian political economy,
linking Brenner's "middle-level" theory with more high-level (or
hifalutin') theory. At the same time that he points up some limitations of
Brenner's book, he also provides a complementary perspective that gives us
a greater understanding of the stagnation of the last 25 years in the
advanced capitalist countries than Brenner's book can do on its own. It's
also well-written and tries to deal with current events (though "current"
seems to mean 1998 due to normal publication delays). I like how McNally
brings in some theory from David Harvey to clarify his presentation of
Brenner's work.

Foster's article has the more traditional style in debates about crisis
theory. Though he makes some valid points against Brenner (some that are
also made by McNally), Foster basically aims to discredit Brenner's book
and to build up his own perspective, an underconsumptionist-stagnationist
theory based on the normal capitalist tendency toward the overexploitation
of labor. Though his theory has some validity in the current era and he is
correct to say that Brenner really didn't address the Baran-Sweezy-Foster
theory, I found that he didn't have much to say except that Brenner left
issues out, like those to the "third world." He is right that Brenner
doesn't deal with the normal capitalist tendency toward the concentration
and centralization of capital, but Foster doesn't address the fact that
this tendency has been largely overwhelmed by increasing international
competition in many cases during the last 25 years. I also got a little
tired of his appeal to authority, e.g., "Kalecki, Steindl, Baran, Sweezy,
and Magdoff."

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html