Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND THE MARKET
the ‘information society’ has a real human history, that it is made by social forces,
then by the same token we may imagine another way of making. To hold to the
possibility of an alternative surely does not mean that one must endorse the only
one – communism – that has presented itself to date and subsequently failed.
And yet is this quite sufficient to answer Schiller’s critics? It is interesting to
compare the Marxian analysis of the ‘information society’ with those coming from
the Right, not least because there is a good deal of consonance one with another
– with the important proviso that, to those from the Right, there is no feasible
alternative to capitalist organisation. That is, the ‘information revolution’ is also
conceived as a creation of a particular type of society – capitalism – and therefore
it is possible to imagine alternative social forms, but each is judged inferior
to the (admittedly imperfect) capitalist system. Francis Fukuyama (1992), in a
book which achieved a good deal of attention when it appeared, offers an account
not radically dissimilar to that of Marxist scholars. Of course, he argues, we live
in a capitalist society, and of course market criteria are key determinants of what
is produced in what circumstances. A crucial difference, however, is that
Fukuyama asserts that capitalism is superior to alternative economic systems
(and that it can help deliver liberal democracy) in that it manages to generate
wealth most efficiently. Moreover, while Fukuyama concedes that collectivism
may have been able to demonstrate some success in an era of heavy industry,
he contends that it is impossible so to achieve in the ‘information age’ when
adaptability is at a premium and markets and entrepreneurs come into their own.
Thus he writes that communist societies are
much less able to cope with the requirements of the information age.
One might say in fact that it was in the highly complex and dynamic ‘postindustrial’
economic world that Marxism-Leninism as an economic system
met its Waterloo.
(Fukuyama, 1992, p. 93)
Such an observation may make one pause before total endorsement of Schiller’s
approach.
Another objection is that there is a strong sense of a ‘fall from grace’ in
Marxian accounts. Demonstrating increased corporate influence, the spread of
market relationships and the development of consumerism, it is easy enough to
conclude that things have got worse. The implication, for instance, is that a
deluge of ‘garbage information’ has swamped what was once reliable knowledge,
or that the spread of computer network facilities has led to more observation and
thereby tighter control of workforces, citizens and individual consumers.
But we need to be sceptical of the notion of a ‘decline’, if only because we
lack reliable historical and comparative knowledge. Certainly it may be shown
that contemporary information is flawed in particular ways, but we must be
careful not to assert that this necessarily makes it worse than hitherto. Further,
as Anthony Giddens (1990, 1991) argues, the imposition of technologies for
purposes of control or even to inflate the sales of corporate capital does not
inevitably result in wholly negative consequences. For example, it is possible that
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