Turning Points and Starting Points: Brenner, Left Turbulence and Class Politics

Abstract

Robert Brenner's recent attempt to get a handle on the 'global turbulence' of capitalism's past half-century was soon followed by a more localized turbulence: a highly agitated response from the Marxist left. The hype injected by Brenner's editors at New Left Review ('Marx's enterprise has certainly found its successor') may carry some responsibility for the reaction, but great blurbs have rarely aroused Marxists. Brenner's amply justified reputation, and his impressive integration of a mass of economic data, no doubt contributed to the intense interest in his essay but this too falls short of explaining the tempest. His central argument, that the key to the 'turning point' in post-war profits is to be found in the relationship amongst capitalists rather than in the class conflict between capital and labour, is certainly controversial but in itself only resurrects a discussion that seemed to have exhausted itself in the seventies.3 And his addition to that earlier debate-that the high fixed costs of incumbent firms limited their exit from the world market, leading to excess capacity and pressures on profits-is, as others have emphasized, not entirely novel nor convincing. Why then such attention to, and controversy around, this essay?