Page 98 - Culture Society and Economy

Robotham-05.qxd 1/31/2005 6:23 PM Page 91

CAPITALISM ORGANIZED AND DISORGANIZED

subjectivity of the individual, global ‘disorganized’ capitalism is perceived
to have also placed the ‘reflexivity’ of the nation in receivership. Although
therefore a forerunner of what would now be regarded as a truly global
approach, Lash and Urry did not themselves propose such an approach.
They remain mired in what Beck has designated ‘methodological nation-
alism’, even as they pointed out that this national framework for social
science analysis has collapsed. 35
In End of Organized Capitalism no less than four of the fourteen points
which they argue lead to the ‘disorganization’ of capitalism have to do
with the erosion of national level processes and control. These include:
‘the decline in the importance and effectiveness of national-level collec-
tive bargaining’; the ‘increasing independence of large monopolies from
direct control and regulation by individual nation–states’; then there is
‘the spread of capitalism into most Third World countries which has
involved increased competition … and the export of the jobs of part of the
First World proletariat’; finally, there is ‘the considerable expansion in
the number of nation–states implicated in capitalist production’. One could
even add their final point about the spread of popular cultural forms
across national boundaries independent of national cultural processes
36
and policies. Lash and Urry do not mention the growth of international
migration in their first book, but this worldwide phenomenon would fit
well with their overall analysis.
This sense of the complete collapse of the old national entities –
economically, culturally and politically is even more developed in Economies
of Signs and Space. Here Lash and Urry emphasize seven critical points
which point to the fact that the old developed European nation–state is
no longer a ‘national community of fate’. The first factor is the immense
37
scale of transnational financial flows. The second is the severe structural
inequalities of the process at the global level which is a consequence of
the domination of the process by the developed capitalist countries of
Western Europe, North America and Japan. The third factor is the inabil-
ity of national governments to effectively manage domestic economic
affairs in the light of the scale of international financial flows in a dereg-
ulated world free market. The fourth is the tendency which this has created
for the integration of states into regional blocs. Fifth is the necessity which
has thus resulted for there to be new forms of global governance. Sixth is
the fragmenting effect which this has had on the traditional international
order defined by the nation–state. Finally, Lash and Urry conclude that
all this is leading to the creation of an entirely new form of international
order in which the sovereignty of nation–states is no longer the accepted
principle organizing global relations between peoples. 38

91