Page 12 - Culture Society and Economy

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INTRODUCTION

space’. The main feature of this work is the claim that the most recent
economic transformations – the deployment of new production techniques,
information technology and market relations – in a word, ‘flexible
specialization’ – is creating new opportunities for overcoming the domina-
tion of the world economy by corporate capital. In other words, this school
differed from the Giddens group in recognizing, if only implicitly, the
dominance of ‘organized capitalism’ up until the early 1970s. However, it
argued that this had now been replaced by a ‘disorganized capitalism’ and
economic networks with the potential to undermine the previous economic
system and to open a space for greater personal freedom, ‘reflexivity’ and
community. I argue that this represents wishful thinking. It fails to recognize
that, far from flexible specialization and Japanese production techniques
‘disorganizing’ global capitalism, in fact, it represented the re-organization
of capitalism on an infinitely larger scale. Moreover, this view failed to
appreciate that transnational corporate capitalism is inherently organizing –
in so far as it strives for economies of scale and scope, and at the same time,
inherently disorganizing – in so far as it remains based on private owner-
ship of the means of production and market competition. The point is not
one or the other, but that both prevail, leading to unprecedented volatility
and unevenness in the global economy.
I then proceed to discuss the sixth key point. This is largely a critique
of that tendency in the global justice movement which adopts an anti-
globalization or ‘localization’ position. I try to show that this position is
riven by contradictions and is infeasible. Where it is feasible, it has reac-
tionary political and cultural implications which are inconsistent with the
ethical and political beliefs of its adherents. I conclude this review by
arguing that many of the positions in the global justice movement are
seriously in need of re-thinking.
Finally, I come to the seventh and most difficult part of the argument.
This is the attempt to set out what an alternative economic system to
transnational corporate capitalism could possibly look like. This argu-
ment tries to show that the state-dominated, centrally planned form of
Soviet socialism was not only economically disastrous and necessarily
politically repressive, but that it is the very opposite of the direction to be
taken. The approach adopted is similar in some respects to that argued
for by David Schweickart which necessarily requires the preservation but
regulation of market relations of exchange. However, it is my view that
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there is a residual communitarianism in Schweickart’s alternative eco-
nomic model which underestimates the necessity for central coordination
and planning of a modern economy, including central coordination on
a global scale.

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