"christian a. gregory" wrote:
> I have my reasons for thinking this is true, though I'd like to know
yours.
> Partly because I think you could argue something like the opposite: i.e.
> that in emphasizing the "malign invisible hand" of the market and the
> consequences of competition on an international level (pace Lenin),
> Brenner's argument requires some idea of real-world integration or
> "globalness" to economic activity.
>
> This is too allusive and elliptical for me. Could you explain?
>
> Carrol
>
Sure. First, here's Brenner (p. 23 of *Economics of Global Turbulence*):
"If we are to understand not only the historical regularity of secular capitalist development, but also the historical regularity of secular capitalist downturn, we therefore need a theory of the malign invisible hand to go along with Adam Smith's benign one--a theory which can encompass a self-generating _series of steps_ resulting from individual (and collective) profit maximizing which leads not towards adjustment, but rather away from it."
One of Brenner's polemical targets for this essay was the "contradictions of Keynesianism" narrative that for some time accounted for the long downturn in the world economy after the oil shocks of the early seventies. According to that line of argument, the incipient (and real in the case of Japan and Europe) corporatism of "golden age" arrangements on national levels (i.e. the size of the welfare state, relative strength of trade unions, etc.) inhibited profit growth for industrial capitals--ie. they distorted the market. That argument, according to Brenner, not only justfies neo-liberal policy since the 70's, it mistakes the symptom for the cause. According to Brenner, the long downturn in the world economy emerged out of the mix of balance of payments crises induced by the oil shocks and international overcapacity and overproduction (i.e. fiercer competition among imperial capitalist powers) made more evident in the post-Bretton Woods floating exchange rate regime. The national crises of profitability were but the symptom of the shift in the terms of international competition, in other words. But in order for the competition to appear as such and put pressure on industrial manufacturers, there had to be some level of integration on the international level, at least among the U.S., Japan, and the EU. You could say that "floating" exchange rates were the basis for that kind of integration. That was my point above.
I think Rakesh is right, though, in saying that Brenner's argument punctures the idea of global integration, in any number of ways. That is partly captured in the last half of the last sentence that I just quoted: ". . . profit maximizing which leads not towards adjustment, but away from it." As Brenner details throughout the essay, although US policies were rhetorically justified under the rubric of "competitiveness" or "fairness" or a "level playing field" or what have you, they frequently went in quite the opposite direction.
All best Christian