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Robert Brenner & Dylan Riley, Continued
2021-02-04 :: by Leighton Woodhouse <https://web.archive.org/web/20210422124511/https://n2pe.berkeley.edu/podcast/robert-brenner-and-dylan-riley-continued/>
Inflection Point is a podcast that asks whether the neoliberal economic order is over, and if so, what comes next? This is the second of three parts of a conversation between UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley and UCLA sociologist Robert Brenner. In this episode, Brenner discusses his ideas about the evolution of capitalism in the postwar period.
* Tags: capitalism, Dylan Riley, neoliberalism, Robert Brenner
Notable Quotes:
* On the long downturn and decline in profitability…. Since the end of the '60s and early '70s, there has been a more or less continuous decline…. I never would have thought that there would not have been some sort of recovery, some sort of regaining of dynamism…. You have overcapacity leading to falling profitability, which is discouraging investment…
* One after another, economies were able to use the technologies of the leading economies and combine them with cheaper labor to enter the world market. Germany, Japan, the East Asian Tigers, and then the big one—China—all followed this pattern…
* The response has to be cutting investment, cutting costs to stay competitive, and finally getting the state to cut spending…. By 1980, they'd tried everything—and they were now hitting the worst recession of the post-war period…
* The turn to finance can only be understood as part of a broader reorientation. Policymakers effectively gave up on the idea that policy could improve profitability through traditional means…. Neither party would ever consider industrial policy again…. Instead of nurturing capital accumulation by improving profitability, the new policy was about directly giving profits flat out…
* As productive investment declined, finance shifted to more speculative activities and politically driven redistribution…. Finance became about borrowing to pay dividends, fund stock buybacks, and enrich executives—not about investment in production…
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inflectionpointpodcast.substack.com
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By Inflection Point Podcast2021-02-04 :: by Leighton Woodhouse <https://web.archive.org/web/20210422124511/https://n2pe.berkeley.edu/podcast/robert-brenner-and-dylan-riley-continued/>
Inflection Point is a podcast that asks whether the neoliberal economic order is over, and if so, what comes next? This is the second of three parts of a conversation between UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley and UCLA sociologist Robert Brenner. In this episode, Brenner discusses his ideas about the evolution of capitalism in the postwar period.
* Tags: capitalism, Dylan Riley, neoliberalism, Robert Brenner
Notable Quotes:
* On the long downturn and decline in profitability…. Since the end of the '60s and early '70s, there has been a more or less continuous decline…. I never would have thought that there would not have been some sort of recovery, some sort of regaining of dynamism…. You have overcapacity leading to falling profitability, which is discouraging investment…
* One after another, economies were able to use the technologies of the leading economies and combine them with cheaper labor to enter the world market. Germany, Japan, the East Asian Tigers, and then the big one—China—all followed this pattern…
* The response has to be cutting investment, cutting costs to stay competitive, and finally getting the state to cut spending…. By 1980, they'd tried everything—and they were now hitting the worst recession of the post-war period…
* The turn to finance can only be understood as part of a broader reorientation. Policymakers effectively gave up on the idea that policy could improve profitability through traditional means…. Neither party would ever consider industrial policy again…. Instead of nurturing capital accumulation by improving profitability, the new policy was about directly giving profits flat out…
* As productive investment declined, finance shifted to more speculative activities and politically driven redistribution…. Finance became about borrowing to pay dividends, fund stock buybacks, and enrich executives—not about investment in production…
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inflectionpointpodcast.substack.com