[lbo-talk] revisiting the FROP and the Brenner hypothesis

Mike Beggs mikejbeggs at gmail.com
Mon Apr 6 16:20:00 PDT 2009


On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:28 AM, Philip Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com> wrote:


>
> My point is that you can't simply take the figures and spout them off in
> three sentences as evidence. Crafts doesn't do this either and nor would any
> other economic historian - or historian, for that matter. They would cast
> them in an overall interpretive narrative. Brenner has done this. And his
> attempt is recognised by most as very impressive; this even if they
> disagree. So I'm afraid if you want a total answer - beyond the theoretical
> one, which is the best I can give you - you're going to have to pick up
> Brenner's thick historical work and sit down for a number of hours with a
> highlighter in one hand and a notepad in the other. I promise this will
> prove more effective than us throwing paragraphs of stats at each other...

Philip, there has been tons of critical response to Brenner in the academic literature since he first published in NLR more than ten years ago. A good place to start is the two full issues of Historical Materialism devoted to responses in 1999 I think. Another piece I found convincing is by Ben Fine et al, "Beyond Brenner's Investment Overhang Hypothesis" in New Political Economy 10:1 (2005). This is an empirical, historical study of the steel industry in which the hypothesis of 'persistent overcapacity' is found wanting.

I know Brenner's thesis pretty well, having read it in NLR the first time round, read it again when it came out as a book (with highlighter and notepad even), read The Boom and the Bubble, and followed the debate all along. There's a lot of good stuff in Brenner's work. In particular, the focus on exchange rates is great and a fairly novel contribution to the 'what the hell happened in the 1970s' literature. In my own work on the postwar boom and 1970s crisis in Australia, I've found it works as part of an explanation for how the crisis was transmitted here.

But the persistent overcapacity in manufacturing thesis is really problematic, and as SA and Doug keep saying, the reluctance to believe in a turning point in the 1990s - while defensible in the first publication in 1998 - now looks pretty stretched. And they're right that the postwar boom is the anomaly, taking the long view, rather than the period since.

Cheers, Mike Beggs scandalum.wordpress.com



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