The political-economic transformation of late twentieth-century capitalism
Ch. 7 (Introduction,
pp. 121-124) broadly outlines the question of how fundamental the changes in the capitalist mode of production have been during the postmodern period. Despite fundamental changes in the form of social life, we still live, in the West, in a society where production for profit remains the basic organizing principle of economic life
(121). Harvey nods at the general concerns in Althusser's Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatus,
but looks at them more briefly and from an economic, rather than socio-psychological, viewpoint.
Ch. 8 (Fordism,
pp. 125-140) initially defines Fordism
in terms of two primary characteristics: not only the de-skilled, repetitive, rationalized industrial production associated with Taylor's methodologies, but also control over the private
aspects of workers' lives that tends to produce the appropriate ideological stances conducive to the expansion of the then-current mode of capitalist production. Harvey traces the expansion of Fordist production processes from 1913 to 1973, noting that a variety of accommodations had to be made in the regime of accumulation for Fordism to spread outside of the United States as a common regime of accumulation. Two major problems were generally encountered in the spread of Fordism: (1) Fordism accelerates the alienation of labor already present under the capitalist mode of production; and (2) the relations between organized labor, corporate production, and state regulation had to be altered so as to work productively in a Keynesian regime. This relation was only achieved after 1945, resulting in an economic expansion that depended on (1) expanding industrial production; (2) increasing consumer demand by those producers who were able to occupy privileged labor positions; (3) financial systems being interlinked across markets; and (4) neoimperial (in Lenin's sense) appropriation of raw materials from underdeveloped countries. As Fordism was successfully exported, however, other countries increasingly became competing centers of Fordist production, rather than sources of raw materials and markets for products produced in the (previously) nearly unique countries that had fully integrated Fordist systems of production. The requirement of keeping demand for the output of industrial production processes high under these circumstances led to decreasing union power, lower rates of profit and wage increase, and increasing fracturing of labor relations as privileged labor
was increasingly able to take advantage of the joys of mass consumption (especially when combined with existing inequalities based on gender, race, and ethnicity), leaving . (134-8) Centralized administration of benefits tended to produce cultural blandness, and third-world countries found themselves exploited and impoverished even as they were being promised the benefits of Fordism for participating in the global market.
Chapter 9 (From Fordism to flexible accumulation,
pp. 141-172) describes the reorganization of the capitalist mode of production under a new regime of accumulation, flexible accumulation.
Harvey traces the impetus for this change to accelerating tensions under the Fordist regime of accumulation, citing increased international competition for the major Fordist countries; rigidified relations between capital, government, and organized labor; decreasing production and profits, increasing inflation; and heightened social tension between those inside and outside privileged production jobs. Overall, the transition to flexible accumulation has several effects: the restructuring of the labor market into more flexible forms, cutting away at traditionally well-compensated core
jobs in favor of a periphery
and second periphery.
This has numerous advantages for capitalists: it becomes simpler to reduce employment during economically slack times (150-2) and allows for alternate arrangements of production, which reduce the possibility for labor to organize (153). Those production systems that remain Fordist in character have been increasingly transfered to markets where labor costs less and is less regulated. At the same time, a shift in employment from manufacturing to service has accelerated. Harvey, in summary, identifies four major increases in corporate business trends during the postmodern era: (1) mergers; (2) corporate diversification; (3) self-employment; and (4) outsourcing (158). The most important results of these multiple shifts in the mode of production are (1) increased access on up-to-the-minute information for making business decisions (159); and (2) the complete reorganization of the global system of finances, especially insofar as it is increasingly integrated (160-1). Major effects of the decreasing barriers in the global financial system have been the increasing tendency for fictitious capital to be created (paper entrepreneurialism,
etc.) (163-4) and the decreasing power of nation-states (notably the U.S.) to regulate capital flows and processes (165-6). The net effect of these changes has been a rise in neoconservative political power (168-170) as governments struggle with yet another manifestation of capitalism's tendency to produce internal contradictions. Harvey suggests at the end of the chapter that the sense of life as new … fleeting … ephemeral
underlying postmodernity maps onto the characteristics of capital flows during the postmodern period.
Chapter 10 (Theorizing the transition,
pp. 173-188) begins with Harvey remarking on the confusion of economic theorists under the regime of flexible accumulation. Most economic theorists (including Marxists) seem to throw up their hands under the burden of attempting to deal with this mode of accumulation theoretically. Harvey surveys several overviews of postmodern
economics and proposes an analysis based on terms from classical Marxism. Since flexible accumulation is still a form of capitalism, he argues, basic Marxian forms of analysis should provide a way of looking at the post-Fordist economy. Citing three elements of basic Marxist economic theory (Capitalism is growth-oriented,
Growth in real values rests on the exploitation of living labour in production,
and Capitalism is necessarily technologically and organizationally dynamic
), he skims over Marx's argument that these basic conditions are contradictory, i.e. that capitalism is necessarily crisis-prone (180-1). Capitalist crises take the form of periodic overaccumulation, a condition in which idle capital and idle labour supply … exist side by side with no apparent way to bring these idle resources together to accomplish socially useful tasks
(180). The classical Marxian responses to capitalistic crises (devaluation of commodities, productive capacity, or labor value; macro-economic control; absorption of overaccumulation through infrastructural re-investment -- temporal or spatial displacement
) are examined, along with their negative consequences -- inevitably, to precipitate a new crisis of overaccumulation. In this context, Harvey argues that post-World War II Fordism was a response to the capitalistic crisis of the worldwide depression of the 1930s and 40s, and that this regime of accumulation successfully contained the inherent contradictions of the capitalist mode of production until approximately 1973, when the previously mentioned conditions precipitated a new crisis.
Chapter 11 (Flexible accumulation - solid transformation or temporary fix?,
pp. 189-197) sketches the outlines of an evaluation of the stability of the new regime of flexible accumulation. Rejecting the extreme views that (1) the new regime is so radically different that current theoretical perspectives are completely unable to deal with it (189-90); and (2) discourse about the change to a flexible mode of accumulation is mere hype about surface changes that obscures the real solidarity of the working-class movements (190-1), Harvey argues that the technology of flexible accumulation is an increasingly hegemonic form of production that leads to real changes in the relations of capitalist production (191-4), including changes in the underlying possibilities of working-class consciousness (192). Pointing out similarities to past crises of capitalist accumulation, Harvey expresses doubts that the new regime of accumulation will be able to support itself under the increasing fluidity of forms of investment, creation of new forms of fictitious capital, and burgeoning debt levels. He argues that if the flexible system of accumulation is to continue to contain the inherent contradictions of capitalism, it will likely be through the continuing expansion of credit and the continuing displacement of profits across spaces and into the future.