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Conclusion 203

crises. Due to the rapid growth in the volume, rapidity and subsequent
volatility of financial market activities, US mediated reforms of the
GA 1T and the ITU already are conditioning challenges to the struc-
tural capacities of the American state. The decision in 1995 by Pres-
ident Clinton to exercise executive branch authority in response to the
collapse of the Mexican peso - forgoing the two or three weeks needed
to attain Congressional approval for a federal loan plan - reflects the
temporal problematic of democratic debate. In facilitating the free
flow of information in general, and electronically based economic
activities in particular, the old Hollywood adage 'Time is money' is
taking on an extraordinary new meaning. This brings to the surface a
contradiction involving the form in which US-capital relations take
place: the sometimes inflexible characteristics of the American state
will compel continuing tension, frequent crises and ongoing change.
In other words, in this period of post-Fordist political, economic and
cultural change, the state will not always possess the structural capa-
cities needed to accommodate change. In Marxist terms, the state is
the core but ever-problematic mediator of the ongoing dialectic involving
global forces and relations of production.
The hegemonic implications of US and world capitalist dependen-
cies on stable and expanding international communication infrastruc-
tures, in light of the structural reforms and power shifts discussed
above, involves more than Cox's observation that the state has
become, in effect, 'a transmission belt from the global to the
national.' 10 Specifically in regard to information-based commodity
activities, a more accurate description involves predominantly US-
based interests constructing this transmission belt with tools (or struc-
tures) held by the American state. To extend this metaphor, repairs or
major modifications to the belt will continue to require the direct
participation of the United States. As Leo Panitch puts it, 'capitalism
has not escaped the state but rather ... the state has, as always, been a
fundamental constitutive element in the very process of extension of
capitalism in our time.' 11
The vested interests of the information economy have become the
core constituents of an emerging transnational hegemonic bloc. But
these interests and the relations now predominant in the international
political economy remain dependent on the nation state to reproduce
the new structures of global power involving ongoing reforms to
world order through means ranging from coercion to consent. An
emphasis on the former was apparent in US foreign policy in the
1980s. An emphasis on the latter is becoming apparent in part as a