Julio:
Who claims that concrete, historical capitalist societies involve only market forces? I don't know this Brenner fellow, but claiming that capitalism is market forces only is like saying that the moon is made up of cheese. If that were Brenner's position, then spending a second refuting it would be a waste of time. Without having read this guy, but knowing your Internet persona, I find it very unlikely that such a silly view is the Brenner thesis.
You really need to read Brenner and Wood. They don't say that capitalist *societies* only involve market forces since anybody can see that there was chattel slavery in the USA. But their implication is that the mode of production in the South was not capitalist. One of their supporters, a sociologist named Charlie Post, tried to apply the Brenner thesis to the American Civil War. I totally disagree with this analysis and you can read it here: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins.htm (Look for Capitalism, slavery and the Brenner thesis)
