is priced in dollars) it could have boosted profitability in those countries and helped them compete in the US and other markets.
It could also, of course, have lowered costs for the increasing number of US multinationals producing abroad. It is not clear why such exchange rate changes should have led to generalised crisis.
Actually, Brenner's analysis of the link between exchange rate changes and crisis is spelt out by implication on pages and 29 of his book.
T he basic argument is InaT some of the gains of higher exchange rates in Japan and Germany went, not to capitalists, but to workers. Wages did not fall in those countries to reflect the extra purchasing power of the mark and the yen - and as a result German and Japanese companies became uncompetitive.
But this means that Brenner's account is not different from the "profit squeeze" and "regulation" approaches as he hopes. They emphasise workers' militancy and see restraints on capitalists in raising prices as a secondary factor. Brenner sees these restraints as central and workers militancy as a secondary factor. But both work in the same framework.
Even if we accept that capitalist competition may have sparked off the downturn, it is still hard to explain why it has persisted for 25 years. The fight against Renault plant closures has spanned Europe ignores the way in which crises have always been seen in the Marxist tradition as providing the basis for restructuring and change.
Analytically, A despite individual insights, Brenner fails to help us understand the long boom and the following downturn, and by extension the current economic crisis. He is certainly right to argue that inter-capitalist competition must be a part of any explanation of booms and crises. But this is hardly a new insight, and the links Brenner proposes between such competition and other key areas, for example class struggle and technological change, are simplistic and misleading.
Politically, however, the book is even more problematic. The best political conclusion that carrerbe drawn from Brenner's work is a reformist one -that the USA, EU and Japan should jointly agree to co-ordinate their production and share out markets more equitably.
The worst though is a reactionary one - that the problems in each individual economy spring not from the nature of capitalism itself but from the producers living and working in other countries.
Sadly, Brenner's account may well turn out.to be an obstruction to the forging of the international working class solidarity, which is the only solution to the current economic turmoil.
OPEN Marxism Today, the longdefunct magazine that once did so much to amongst trade union and Labour leaders, paving the way for the rise of Tony Blair, has clambered temporarily out of the grave to stage a bizarre posthumous protest. ALAN THORNETT takes a look at the special one-off issue, and wonders whether its publishers should be prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act. THE CRISIS in the world economy, the turmoil in the stock exchanges and money markets, and the nghtward march of the Blair government has rattled the cage of the long defunct Marxism Today magazine. A one off November/December edition has been published under the editorship of Martin Jacques.
The magazine provides a useful intervention into current debates around British and international politics and the neoliberal offensive, even for those like myself who reject most of its conclusIons. Its contributors include Eric Hobsbawm, Stuart Hall and Will Hutton and David Held. Although they have their different angles on the issues there is clearly a common thesis.
They present a useful demolition of Blair's claimed "third way", pointing out that what Blair actualiy represents is continuity with Thatcherite and Reaganite policies. He is carrying forward US/IMF/World Bank style neoliberal policies at every level, from his acceptance of Tory spending limits to his drive for a "flexible" labour market. "WRONG" they say in large letters on the front cover across a photo of Blair himself. They rightly point out that recent events pose a big question mark over the perceived wisdom since the fall of the wall - that the free market works. Blair, they say, is not only wrong for throwing himself behind the neoliberal agenda, but he has missed the boat. He has backed neoliberalism - the deregulation of capital and the drive for super profits - when it is not only out of fashion, but is in profound crisis and is coming to an end.
They argue that neoliberalism is directly responsible for the international financial crisis. International capital they say will be (and already is) forced to recognise this and respond accordingly. If you are in a hole, stop digging! This is an interesting but controversial view, which is repeated in the latest edition of New Left Review, in an article by Robert Wade.
It is true that the victory of the US model of raw unregulated capitalism over the Japanese more regulated model and it release on the world is at the core of the current world economic crisis, including the 'Asian' crisis and the Russian crisis. This is what makes the current crisis something new and not an old style cyclical crisis (although there are cyclical crises within it at the national level).
Whether they are able to stop digging, however, is another matter altogether.
Certainly the bourgeoisie is split on what to do world-wide. Japan, already in deep recession, is advocating both Keynesian solutions (the government is currently giving away free shopping vouchers and urging people to spend them!) and re-regulation of the currency markets.
Maharthir in Malaysia has reintroduced controis - against IMF advice. There are calls for an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) as an alternative to the IMF and based more on the Japanese model.
Some of the so-called "thinking capitalists" like George Soros have called for some re-regulation since, he says, unregulated capitalism will tear the world apart. In Europe, new German Chancellor Schroeder and French Prime Minister Jospin are trying to loosen the Stability Criteria to give them more room for Keynesian manoeuvre within the Maastricht Treaty.
This is a major debate: but is it likely that the neoliberal offensive will be brought to an end by a return to regulation and/or Keynesian pump-priming? I don't think so.
International capital does not sit down and work out its problems in that way. Each section of capital (and individual capitalist) acts in their own interest -not in the best interests of capital as a whole - even if re-regulation and a return to Keynesianism was capable of solving the problem.
Clinton made clear during his recent visit to Japan that in the USA's view the answer to Japanese recession is not watering down the neoliberal agenda but stepping it up.
The current crisis has it roots in the failure of Keynesianism and de-regulation going right back to the ending of the Bretton Woods settlement and the free floating of currencies in the early 1970s. It is unlikely that all this will be thrown overboard now, even given the scale of the problem.
The most likely answer from the USA, the IMF and the World Bank will be more neoliberal policies. not less -despite the political consequences in countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea. There will be no AMF, and moves to reintroduce controls will be opposed.
Marxism Today not only advocates a regulated, Keynesian solution, but has plenty of suggestions as to exactly what these measures should be: they include stake holding, maintaining welfare, the strengthening of international agencies and their "regulatory" role, tightening banking regulations, putting controls on capital and regulating the markets.
It is hard to see, however, what scope there is for such solutions given the decline in profits and over production which exists in the world economy. The Japanese government has been unable CLD LABOUR to make any headway despite huge cash injections into the economy. As far as regulation is concerned, the IMF and • the World Bank are unlikely to be No, not the Marxism Today line! impressed.
Marxism Today's one-off edition has made a contribution to an important debate but their central thesis is flawed. Capitalism is not a rational system that can simply plan its way out of a crisis. The neoliberal offensive is likely to be deepened rather than reversed.
As far as Tony Blair is concerned, despite divisions amongst the bourgeoisie world-wide, he stands unflinching with neoliberal agenda, and sees his task as ensuring that its writ runs though the European Union.
We are not told what Marxism Today proposes to do about that: it is a problem for us, the living Marxists, not those whose journal is long dead.
nowhere'). However, the governthat neo-Keynesian pump-prim-