[Pen-l] Robert Brenner versus the dependency theorists

To: activists and scholars in Marxist tradition <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Pen-l] Robert Brenner versus the dependency theorists
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:58:15 -0400
Cc:

Ten years after Monthly Review published André Gunder Frank's "Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America", Robert Brenner wrote an article in the July-August 1977 New Left Review that took aim at the "dependency school" associated with Paul Sweezy, Paul Baran, Samir Amin and André Gunder Frank. All of these authors were readily identifiable with Monthly Review, but Brenner attacked Immanuel Wallerstein as well, who was seen much more as a "world systems" theorist than a dependency theorist. Whatever differences existed between the dependency and world systems theories, they were united in their belief that capitalism was responsible for the development of underdevelopment in the 3rd world.

The proximate cause of Brenner's article was to refute Paul Sweezy's analysis of the origins of capitalism. In the 1950s, Sweezy debated Maurice Dobb in the pages of Science and Society over the "transition to capitalism question". In "Studies in the Development of Capitalism" Dobb put forward the argument that capitalism developed through a combination of changes in the British countryside (enclosure acts, etc.) and colonialism in the New World. Strongly influenced by the historian Henri Pirenne, Sweezy took the position that a revival of trade with Asia was primarily responsible. Sweezy's analysis influenced A.G. Frank as will be evident in Brenner's polemics below.

Brenner adopted Dobb's basic thesis but dropped the part about colonialism. Indeed, he was so emphatic about capitalism originating in the British countryside that he was positively hostile to any analysis that looked to "primitive accumulation" in the New World. In other words, he found the analysis of Baran and Frank that I have posted here over the past month or so to be outside of Marxism insofar as they supposedly put the struggle between nations over that of the class struggle. Basically, Brenner was arguing from the standpoint of classical Marxism against "Third Worldist" deviations-at least that is the way he saw it.

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/robert-brenner-versus-the-depency-theorists/

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Thread context:
- [Pen-l] the major reserve currency issuing countries, Chris Burford Sun 12 Oct 2008, 22:37 GMT
- [Pen-l] Robert Brenner versus the dependency theorists, Louis Proyect Sun 12 Oct 2008, 18:37 GMT
- [Pen-l] The Wall Street Coup and the Bailout Scam, Louis Proyect Sun 12 Oct 2008, 13:36 GMT
- [Pen-l] The precarious struggle between race and class, Marvin Gandall Sun 12 Oct 2008, 12:39 GMT
  - Re: [Pen-l] The precarious struggle between race and class, Carrol Cox Sun 12 Oct 2008, 14:08 GMT
    - Re: [Pen-l] The precarious struggle between race and class, Doyle Saylor Sun 12 Oct 2008, 15:01 GMT

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