Brenner reply to doug henwood

joshua william mason jwm7 at midway.uchicago.edu
Fri Nov 20 06:59:33 PST 1998


I feel churlish persisting in this argument because I've barely begun to read the various books you've reccomended. This weekend I'm heading to Labyrinth and the Columbia library...

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:


> Quite the opposite. Brenner is arguing that terminating Keynesian
> stabilization may well work to revive growth. Brenner is blaming Keynesian
> stabilization for "insufficient adjustment to manufacturing overcapacity,
> market by insufficient exit and too much entry."

Obviously I wasn't clear; this is exactly the argument I was attributing to Brenner. But I don't get it: can't Keynesian policies *change* the amount of exit and entry required? Why isn't it possible to expand demand to the point where all existing manufacturing capacity can be profitably employed? The issue here is that Brenner doesn't offer a good answer to this question, not that there isn't one. Michael Perelman's very interesting piece here (when's the book coming out?) offered one possibility--but one that you won't find in Brenner's essay, in part because competition as half the competition-monopoly dyad doesn't exist there.

Greg Nowell has been making these same points better than I'm likely to.

Josh



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