Ed misunderstands Brenner's earlier work if he thinks that Brenner--a historian by trade--ever put forward a general theory abvout class struggle as the explanation of all major historical events. The Brenner Thesis is a theory about the rise of capitalism, and specifically how the intercation of class structure and rational self interest prompoted the development of capitalsim in England and frustrated it in Poland and France. Brenner made no claim about "the history of all hitherto existing societies [being] the history of class struggle."
Second, I don't think the critique of Marxist crisis theories offers in chapter 1 of the work is "sophmoric." It's an overview, done at a certain level of abstraction, but in fact I think reasonably plausible and fair enough given the purpose, which is to motivate the need for Brenner's theory by referring to well-known defects of the standard accounts. Sure, repliesa re possible to each objectio to any of the standard accounts, but at some point you have to say, OK, why not look at it _this_ way?
Third, I don't think Brenner displaces class structure or even class struggle from his account. It's just that it plays a different role than in the wage- pressure theories--in Brenner's account, class structure is essential to understand why competition takes the form investment in labor saving machiny and class struggle comes in as a constraint on the ability of capital to make the profitable investments the exploitation of labor requires. I am not putting this quite right.
I think people who like Falling Ratre of Profit Theories ought to be pleased that Brenner has adopted the phenomenological structure of FROP as the analytical framework of his crisis analysis, although without any essential reference to value and the organic composition of capital (so described)--in my view, definte advantages to Brenner's approach.
--Justin