Page 77 - Culture Society and Economy

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CULTURE, SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

other civic measures proposed by Giddens cannot be a substitute for
measures to address the democratization of the enormous concentrations
of economic power of global monopoly capitalism. Surely these will turn
out to be yet another cruel illusion and undermine even further public
confidence in the political process?
These theories raise the fundamental question of whether lifeworlds
at the local or community levels can be significantly altered without
encroaching on the rights of monopoly capital at the center, either by
resorting to the large-scale redistributions of the old welfare state or by
interventions in the relations of production. Can the new social strata
which have arisen in the latest phase of capitalism, by dint of their new-
found sense of responsibility and with opportunities provided by the
State, forge their own destiny against the immensely powerful structures
of finance capital at the local, national and global levels? At best, this is
a dubious proposition. It brings us face to face with the reality that for
democratic constitutional reforms, devolution, social provision or civic
activism at the local or regional levels to be meaningful, then reforms at
the economic and political center will be essential. The really critical
issue is the continued concentration of political and economic power at
the national and global center and how to democratize that point of
concentration. Regional devolution of power over secondary matters and
single-issue activism do not address this reality.
There is a general tendency in risk society theory to make broad
generalizations about globalization which do not take into account the
continued, indeed enhanced role, of developed national economies in the
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world market and the role of force. Risk society theory also does not take
account of the fact that capital since the late nineteenth century has been
finance capital and that this inherently seeks a monopoly over world
markets and the division and re-division of the world as new centers of
capital arise and old ones decay. It is an inherently unstable system based
upon the dominance of the weak by the strong.
The instability derives from the fact that monopoly capital, although
hugely concentrating capital to an unprecedented extent, does not abolish
the capitalist market. It still operates on the basis of private ownership of
the means of production and of the consequent capitalist market rela-
tions. In the very nature of the system, now some groups of monopolists
advance while others retreat and vice versa. Some parts of the world,
experience unprecedentedly rapid rates of economic development while
others, especially in the old manufacturing countries such as Britain and
the United States, decline. Uneven development derives from the persis-
tence of market relations and the private property which undergirds it.

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