Given his earlier work, it is unsettling that Brenner displaced class struggle as the principal determinant of historical events in favor of inter-capitalist rivalry. This is a mistake. When workers become strong enough to resist increases in absolute surplus value, capitalists are compelled to try and increase the rate of relative surplus value. This is where Rakesh chooses to begin his synopsis of
>Marx's argument: upward pressure on OCC.
Doug, why quibble over the word "crisis." The same turn from absolute to relative SV is the source of capitalism's dazzling growth and technological innovations. Isn't this the dialectic?
There is a problem with Rakesh's synopsis of Marx's argument. Marx was always explicit about the level of abstraction of his analysis. He planned, but never executed in a systematic way, an analysis on the concrete level of international trade and the division of the world economy into nation states, where Brenner's analysis unfolds. Rakesh writes:
>I don't think Brenner's theory is a continuation of Marx's project.
Thsen what are the mediations between the abstract level where you remain enconced and the concrete level where Brenner works? And where exactly does Brenner stray from propositions consistent with Marxist crisis theory, once we seek mediations beyond the most abstract level?
Edwin Dickens