[lbo-talk] brenner debate

Sean Johnson Andrews inciteinsight at hotmail.com
Sun Mar 12 10:19:58 PST 2006



> Doug wrote:
>
>
>>Yeah, well Brenner's a red. But the Brenner debate was, what, 25-30
>>years ago, right?
>
>
> Right, but it was revisited in the late 80s.

There is also a new generation of scholars who are returning to this debate to cull it for other disciplinary concerns. In International Relations, for instance, a recent book that I am in the middle of reading takes Brenner's insights and methods and considers them in the context of the modern system of states assumed to have begun with Westphalia. The book is called _The Myth of 1648_ and the author, Benno Teschke is a student of Justin Rosenberg who has written several compelling books using a more general historical materialism. Kees van der Pijl uses some of Teschke's conclusions in analyzing the french riots last fall in a piece in the latest New Left Review.


> Yeah. I should have clarified and said debates among historians in the
> U.S. Even with the Brenner debate, I think Brenner was the only U.S.
> based participant. But even here there has been a big shift in thinking
> about the major lines of the history of the American West that is very
> recent and still ongoing. And there's the world system stuff. One book
> that I wish was read much more widely is Abu-Lughod, Janet 1989. Before
> European Hegemony. The World System A.D. 1250-1350. New York: Oxford
> University Press.
>
> Great book, albeit with a clunky title. So you're right, nothing dies
> completely.
>

A few others that take their cue from this one are Gunder Frank's _ReOrient_ (which claims to undermine Marx and all of western social science with its global view) and the more detailed history of Kenneth Pommerantz in _The Great Divergence_. Brenner actually wrote a review of the latter in the Journal of Asian studies in 2002 supposedly using his earlier perspective to argue for why England and China went in different directions (and where Pommerantz is wrong). This review, when I read it, sounded like it was a retooling of the earlier stuff through his dabbling in rational choice, but after a while I start to get numb to the distinctions being made. In any case, that set of theories and discussions is being somewhat revitalized in light of the rise of China, among other events.

-s



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