The best road to progress is freedom's road. - JFK
Texas
Robert Paul Brenner (born November 28, 1943, in New York) is a professor of history and director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA,[1] editor of the socialist journal Against the Current, and editorial committee member of New Left Review. His research interests are Early Modern European History; economic, social and religious history; agrarian history; social theory/Marxism; and Tudor–Stuart England.[2]
He has contributed to a debate among Marxists on the "Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism," [3] emphasizing the importance of the transformation of agricultural production in Europe, especially in the English countryside, rather than the rise of international trade as the main cause of the transition.[citation needed] His influential 1976 article on "Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe" set forth the controversial "Brenner thesis."[4]He argued that smallholding peasants had strong property rights and had little incentive to give up traditional technology or go beyond local markets, and thus no incentive toward capitalism.
Books
1993: Merchants and revolution : commercial change, political conflict, and London's overseas traders, 1550–1653 (Princeton, Princeton University Press) ISBN 0-691-05594-7
2002: The boom and the bubble : the US in the world economy (New York, Verso) ISBN 1-85984-636-X
2006: The economics of global turbulence : the advanced capitalist economies from Long Boom to Long Downturn, 1945–2005 (New York, Verso) ISBN 978-1-85984-730-5
2009: Property and progress : the historical origins and social foundations of self-sustaining growth (London, Verso) ISBN 978-1-84467-318-6