A query to Robert Brenner

[Louis Proyect]

Hullo, Robert. I haven't gotten around to your NLR article, but it is high
up on my priority list. I went down to the Monthly Review for a brown bag
the day after the stock market dipped 500 points in an apocalyptic mood. I
demanded that they come up with something on the order of your NLR article
at once. Harry shrugged his shoulders and said, "We don't have anybody who
can do it." Then Bill Tabb turned to me and said, "Have you or anybody else
read the article yet? I have a feeling that this is going to be one of
those articles that everybody discusses, but nobody reads." At any rate,
Doug has read it and so has Rakesh. While I generally like to quarrel with
Rakesh, I think I line up with him against Doug on the general drift of
your argument which is that capitalism is sailing off the end of the world.

My real question, however, is what you make of the Harry Shutt book, "The
Trouble with Capitalism", which I have been touting to people like a
Trotskyite would tout the Transitional Program. I think his logic and facts
are very impressive. When I was discussing the Shutt book with an old pal,
who used to edit the Militant years ago, he said that he had just finished
your article and the way I described Shutt seemed very close to the spirit
of your NLR article.

In general, what I like about Shutt is that he removes the discussion from
a value theory problematic, a la Anwar Sheikh, and simply treats the slump
of the past 20 years as a necessary contradiction of the aftermath of the
WWII boom. The more I think about this, the more it seems that Marxism goes
astray when it loses the historical dimension. Since you are not an
economist, but a historian, I am wondering if this has had a salutory
effect on your thinking.

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