Robert Brenner

Robert Paul Brenner (born November 28, 1943) is an American economic historian. He is a 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 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.

Brenner contributed to a debate among Marxists on the "Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism", 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.

His influential 1976 article, Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, started the Brenner debate. He argued that smallholding peasants had strong property rights and had little incentive to give up traditional technology or go beyond local markets and no incentive toward capitalism. In his introduction to the book, Rodney Hilton writes, "Brenner strongly emphasizes the class struggle rather than developments in the forces of production as being determinant of the various historical developments in the countries of late mediaeval and early modern Europe".

In the spring of 2017, Brenner and Vivek Chibber assumed editorial duties and co-launched the academic journal Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, with the assistance of Jacobin magazine.

Books and publications

 * 1976:
 * 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