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On 12.10.2014 21:53, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
One of the upcoming featured articles in the ISO’s International
Socialist Review is titled “The poverty of Political Marxism”. Written
by Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu, it will obviously be a
polemic directed against the academic trend dedicated to applying the
“Brenner thesis” to various historical events, including the American
Civil War.
Briefly summarized, the Brenner thesis claims that capitalism
developed originally in the British countryside in the 17th century as
a result of the introduction of tenant farming that put a premium on
competition. Once it took hold in Britain, it diffused to the rest of
the world.
Furthermore, Political Marxism has a fairly strict definition of
capitalism. Without free labor, it simply does not exist. So, in the
case of the Southern slave states, you had something called
“precapitalism”, according to Charles Post. Needless to say, this
category was not very prevalent in a Marxism that continued to stress
the need for identifying social relations more exactly. Wouldn’t there
be a need to distinguish 19th century plantations in Alabama from
slave labor during Nero’s age?
full:
http://louisproyect.org/2014/10/12/the-tide-turns-against-political-marxism/
On your Facebook page, Louis, I've commented that you don't really
appear to be familiar with the theoretical tradition that the ISO and
ISR come from. Certainly in the publications of the British SWP there
has been a constant critique of Brenner and Political Marxism from its
early days. I posted a link to a transcript of a 2004 e3bqate between
Chris Harman and Robert Brenner: http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=219
There even seems to be a recording of this debate available at:
http://mp3skull.com/mp3/robert_brenner_amp_chris_harman.html
I subsequently discovered that you yourself once discussed this debate
in 2004, when the recording first became available at a link that still
seems to be functioning. Your discussion is at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins/BrennerHarman.htm - but in
that article you only really discuss Brenner's position and not Harman's
critique.
Harman wasn't the only person in the British SWP to criticise Brenner
and 2004 wasn't the first time he did so, but I don't have time at the
moment to chase up all the links to texts available online. Whatever
differences may have arisen in the last 10-15 years between the ISO and
the SWP on various other issues, they still broadly share this critique
of Brenner. Of course this critique has been largely (but not
completely) outside the ivory towers of academia so perhaps it's been
largely been beyond the radar of most of the people involved in
promoting the Brenner thesis and political Marxism.
Einde O'Callaghan
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