Page 261 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

ANGELA MCROBBIE 249

decent and socially responsible (it never was), but as an expansive popular
system’ (Hall, 1988:215, quoted in McGuigan, 1992:38). In this way the
market is opened up theoretically to incorporate some of the active cultural
concerns of those who participate. Contrary to this position, for Clarke
and Pollert the market remains nothing other than the outcome of the
process of accumulation. The market is ideological in that it suggests a field
of choice and expression but in reality it is a determined space, the point at
which the rate of profit is managed, often through a complex set of
controls and manoeuvrings involving the state in the form of subsidies,
investments and ‘welfare’, all of which are means of ensuring the
sustainability of profits for capital. Clarke’s argument is that post-Fordism
represents little more than a strategy developed from within capital for
dealing with the falling rate of profit which the old interventionist state can
no longer prop up. It is the threat to profits which requires capital to
reorganize itself along the lines of flexible specialization.
In fact, between these writers there is less disagreement on post-Fordism
emerging from the crisis of capital following the break-up of the old
postwar settlement than they themselves seem to imagine. It is more a
question of the political analysis which follows. Needless to say there is no
mention of the word ‘culture’ in the Capital and Class writing. The nearest
Clarke comes to engaging with what people might look for or find in the
commodities of consumer capitalism lies in a fleeting reference to the old
postwar settlement responding to ‘rising working-class aspirations’. My
point is precisely that the refusal to unpack the world of meanings in the
idea of ‘rising aspirations’ is a much greater flaw in the otherwise
sophisticated arguments of both Pollert and Clarke than the difficult and
sometimes uncertain attempts by the New Times writers to revise orthodox
left thinking on the market, to bring the economy back into cultural theory
and at the same time to engage with the ‘politics of theory’, all in the space
of an accessible and deliberately open-ended dialogue.
The Capital and Class position in contrast means being left with capital
lurching from one crisis to another but always with a set of strategies
tucked up its sleeve for further exploiting the working class and also for
pre-empting any possibility of class politics. It is here that ideology comes
into play. It manipulates and controls the working classes, end of story.
(Capital and Class have little to say about women or black people and even
less to say about cultural or identity-based politics.) This is in my mind a
deeply anachronistic model. While no single account can hope to embrace
the entire sweep of social changes which leave their mark across the whole
landscape of everyday life, the real value of the New Times writers is that
they recognize the importance of understanding social change. Thus they
take the emergence of new forms of work and new kinds of workers
seriously. This is the first account for example to acknowledge the
existence of substantial numbers of ‘design professionals’ whose job it is to