Economic historian of political Marxism known for the transition debate and his account of the long downturn
Brenner is professor emeritus of history and director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, editor of the socialist journal Against the Current and a member of the editorial committee of New Left Review. His 1976 article on agrarian class structure started the "Brenner debate" on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and with Ellen Meiksins Wood he is credited as a founder of political Marxism. In The Economics of Global Turbulence (2006) he analysed the long boom and long downturn of the advanced capitalist economies since 1945, and in a 2009 interview for the Hankyoreh he called the 2008 crisis a "Marxian crisis" rooted in the fall of the rate of profit.
Also known as: Robert Paul Brenner
Activities and affiliations
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1976–
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1976Article that started the Brenner debate
- 2006The Economics of Global Turbulence
- 2009.01.22Interview for the Hankyoreh
Related historical events
- 1971.08.15–1980The crisis of the 1970s: the Nixon shock, the oil shocks and stagflationEconomic historianExplained the long downturn after the 1970s by international overcapacity in manufacturing and falling profitability after West German and Japanese catch-up.
- 1985.09.22–2006.03.09Japan's bubble economy and its collapseMarxist economic historianPlaced the bubble within the long downturn of advanced capitalism, marked by global manufacturing overcapacity and a falling rate of profit, and read the Plaza Accord as a shift of the burden of adjustment.
- 1997.07.02–1998.09.23The Asian financial crisis and South Korea's IMF crisisMarxist economic historianIn his analysis, as presented by Walden Bello, the reverse Plaza Accord undermined the dollar-pegged East Asian economies and so deepened the global crisis of overproduction.
- 2007.08.09–2009.06The 2008 Global Financial CrisisEconomic historianTraced the crisis to the fall in profitability and manufacturing overcapacity since the late 1960s, and called growth through bubbles "asset price Keynesianism".