Was this because of the relatively fixed and monopolistic character of the steel industry? And I mean here a "real" monopoly - as in one based on a sort of rent on land. I mean I couldn't exactly start a steel plant in South Dublin. This would tie into my criticism above. Namely, that in Brenner's conception (now I'm really putting words in his mouth) base commodities may not be at issue. The overproduction may be taking place at the "second stage" of production - for want of a better phrase - the stage where competition becomes essentially absolute. (Sorry, for the questions, but might as well push this as far as it goes...)
>
> You can always tell a story of problem
> cascading into problem at any period of capitalist history - even the
> postwar boom - but you're missing something if you see it as
> permanently embattled, staggering from one depression to the next.
I really think that that's a matter of opinion really. Not even opinion, perspective even. I agree that capitalism is a very productive system, the most productive that's ever been seen but that doesn't necessarily mean that its not grossly imbalanced. How you view these gross imbalances is up to you and I don't think it really blocks perspective on anything by taking one viewpoint or another. To put together a rather crude analogy but one that works: say that capitalism is like a bi-polar patient. Now obviously its in the patient's best interest to view things in a positive and progressive manner. However, the psychiatrist will probably view the condition in the opposite manner. Why? Because he's the one who has to explain the phenomenon when everything gets hairy!
>
>
> The problem I have with the falling-rate-of-profit explanations of the
> current crisis - in general, not just Brenner's version - is not that
> I think the rate of profit is never an element of crisis. It's with
> this weird idea that a crisis hasn't been properly explained until
> it's been linked to the rate of profit, or at least something in the
> 'real economy', out of some misguided belief that finance is an
> epiphenomenon. I have some sympathy for overaccumulation theories of
> the crisis, but only if they can deal in an integrated way with the
> financial side of accumulation, and not see it as just froth. And a
> financial crisis is possible even without overaccumulation
> (overaccumulation defined, by the way, as a generalised accumulation
> of capital whose value is out of touch with future income flows to the
> owner of the assets, whether financial or physical).
>
I think you're setting up a straw man here. Of course Brenner's main thesis is that at bottom the problem is overproduction/overcapacity. His books certainly emphasise this, but as he says in the passage I quoted the housing-bubble was linked to an expansion of aggregate demand through credit instruments backed by low interest-rates. When this "mask" fell off there was without doubt a major overproduction problem.
What I mean is that finance is tied firmly into his thesis. It is by no means an epiphenomenon. You have to look at Brenner's methodology to see this clearly. All these political manoeuvrings with exchange-rates, all the attacks on labour, all the hyper-speculation are part and parcel of Brenner's argument. However he claims that the rate-of-profit is the best means to tell the health of the system. Why?
"My way into the problem of providing a theoretical-cum-comparative historical account of the postwar economy is through an analysis of the path of profitability. The realized rate of profit is the direct measure of firms' ability to derive surpluses from their plant, equipment and software. It is also the best available predictor of the rate of return that firms can expect on new investment. As a result, the rate of profit is the fundamental determinant of the rate at which the economy's constituent firms will accumulate capital and expand employment, therefore of its output, productivity and wage growth, and, in turn, of the increase of its aggregate demand, both investment and consumer. (Global Turbulence, page: XX)."
What Brenner's doing - and here we employ a bit of lit crit - is using profitability as a thread with which to unravel the trajectory of the global economy after WW2. As you can see he claims to pursue his analysis through the "path of profitability". So this means that all he encounters on that "path" along the way are by no means epiphenomenon but maneuvers by various bodies to try and increase profit. These maneuvers may take place in the "real economy", in the labour market or in the financial sphere. This doesn't make them any less real but Brenner is concerned with how they are related to the profit rate. Why is there such a problem with this? I mean its beyond doubt that all these phenomenon are undertaken to increase profit in some sense, right?
The overcapacity/overproduction argument grows out of this approach. To explain the fall in the rate of profit (and hence, presumably, of growth) in the 50 year period he forges a link between this fall and his notion that uneven geographical development leads to over competition and thus to overcapacity.
As you can see this is a highly integrated argument - I'd almost say "dialectical" - and can't be reduced to simple caricatures such as "X in the 'real economy' causes Y in the 'superstructure' of finance/politics/exchange-rates".