Justin,
In terms of game theory, we have to analyze why strategies fail to evolve for cooperation--the specific reasons for the breakdown of the capitalist fraternity and the termination of correspective competition.
With a high rate of accumulation and therewith effective demand for growing commodity output, there is room for all producers; and it is probable that an understanding evolves that no one will undertake greenfield investments by which the others would be undercut and affliced with the serious moral depreciation, if not outright technological obsolescence, of existing capacity that brings down the average rate of profit.
Recessions are awaited as signalling devices for scrapping and construction of low cost capacity; market share of the competitors remains stable--we have here a capitalist fraternity, correspective competition. Indeed, as Galbraith and Darity present this theory of the political business cycle, a consensus may emerge for politically engineered recessions to signal said technological upgrading.
But I am arguing this all this breaks down if there is not enough market room for the growth of all or even if there is great uncertainty that there will be sufficient room; each then attempts to anticipate the other in the construction of low cost capacity; everyone is haunted by the possibility of being stuck with with excess capacity. Investments may not be made at all out of fear of early technological obsolescence or they may be made by all, driving prices and therewith everyone's profit rate down--lotsa of no win/no win outcomes here. Some go down; weaker ones are absorbed; capital is concentrated and centralized. And we are presently witnessing all this on a global scale at record levels.
In terms of Grossmann's scheme it is as if capitals were about to hit year 21 or 22, the point at which capitalist consumption *for the class as a whole* declines absolutely. Only by winning more market share will each capitalist be able to maintain his lifestyle; indeed individual capitals, if not whole nations, could enjoy stable, if not rising profit rates...but now only at the expense of others. They all can't get fatter together. Unevenness at this point becomes a permanent feature of capitalist development.
Fraticidal competition of the sort Brenner describes breaks out upon the slow down in the rate of accumulation, which itself therefore requires explanation. That is why I argue competition (of the fraticidal sort) explains nothing; it must be explained. Moreover, there are indeed streches of accumulation of more or less stable market share of the major players.
But this only shows the abstract possibility of a termination of the capitalist fraternity in the closed and abstract conditions of Marx's/Grossmann's model.
In the real world in which many capitals are organized in different nation states, Brenner may be right that the breakdown of correspective competition was hastened by an intensification of international competition. As Justin may be suggesting, I would be left making an abstract point on the basis of a theory which Marx never intended to apply directly to the real world while Brenner was explaining the dynamics of the real world.
That's a possibility here but I am not convinced that the globalization of trade brought on the sort of fraticidal competition that lowered the average rate of profit, rather than the reduction of the average rate of profit being the efficient cause of globalization, i.e., the need for expanded global markets as each capital attempts to beat off the falling rate of profit to its advantage by ever larger scale, more capital intensive investments that reduce unit costs and thereby enable the procurement of more market share of an ever more slowly growing world market.
The hype about globalization is only the refraction of breakdown in bourgeois propaganda. But even now they see the crisis of the world bourgeoisie.
As for an example of the combination of apples and oranges--that is, a critical, empirically rich analysis of post WWII reality on the strict basis of value theory--you and Brenner know what I would recommend: Mattick's Marx and Keynes: the limits of the mixed economy.
best, rakesh