The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

122 Political-economic capitalist transformationtaking the form of norms, habits, laws, regulating networks and soon that ensure the unity of the process, i.e. the appropriate consistencyof individual behaviours with the schema of reproduction.This body of interiorized rules and social processes is called themode of regulation' (Lipietz, 1986, 19).This kind of language is useful, in the first instance, as a heuristicdevice. It focuses our attention upon the complex interrelations,habits, political practices, and cultural forms that allow a highlydynamic, and consequently unstable, capitalist system to acquiresufficient semblance of order to function coherently at least for acertain period of time.There are two broad areas of difficulty within a capitalist economicsystem that have to be successfully negotiated if that system is toremain viable. The first arises out of the anarchic qualities of pricefixingmarkets, and the second derives from the need to exert sufficientcontrol over the way labour power is deployed to guarantee theaddition of value in production and, hence, positive profits for asmany capitalists as possible.Price-fixing markets, to take up the first problem, typically provideinnumerable and highly decentralized signals that allow producers toco-ordinate output decisions with the needs, wants, and desires ofconsumers (subject, of course, to the budget and cost constraints thataffect both parties to any market transaction). But Adam Smith'scelebrated 'hidden hand' of the market has never been sufficient initself to guarantee stable growth for capitalism, even when the backgroundinstitutions (private property, enforceable contracts, appropriatemanagement of money) have been functioning properly. Somedegree of collective action - usually state regulation and intervention- is needed to compensate for the market failures (such as unpriceddamages to the natural and social environment), to prevent excessiveconcentrations of market power, or to check the abuse of monopolyprivilege where such cannot be avoided (in fields such as transportand communications), to provide collective goods (defence, education,social and psysical infrastructures) that cannot be produced and soldthrough the market, and to guard against runaway failures due tospeculative surges, aberrant market signals, and the potentially negativeinterplay between entrepreneurial expectations and marketsignals (the problem of self-fulfilling prophecies in market performance).In practice, collective pressures exercised by the state orother institutions (religious, political, trade union, business community,and cultural organizations) together with the exercise ofdominant market power by large corporations and other powerfulinstitutions, affect capitalism's dynamic in vital ways. The pressuresIntroduction 123can be direct (such as mandated wage and price controls) or indirect(such as subliminal advertising that persuades us to new concepts ofour basic needs and desires in life), but the net effect is to shape thetrajectory and form of capitalist development in ways that cannot beunderstood simply by analysis of market transactions. Furthermore,social and psychological propensities, such as individualism and thedrive for personal fulfillment through self-expression, the search forsecurity and collective identity, the . need to acquire self-respect,status, or some other mark of individual identity, all play a role inshaping modes of consumption and life-styles. One only has tocontemplate the whole complex of forces implicated in the proliferationof mass automobile production, ownership, and use to recognizethe vast range of social, psychological, political, as well asmore conventionally understood economic meanings which attach toone of the key growth sectors of twentieth-century capitalism. Thevirtue of 'regulation school' thinking is that it insists we look at thetotal package of relations and arrangements that contribute to thestabilization of output growth and aggregate distribution of incomeand consumption in a particular historical period and place.The second arena of general difficulty in capitalist societies concernsthe conversion of men and women's capacity to do active workinto a labour process whose fruits can be appropriated by capitalists.Labour of any kind requires a certain concentration, self-discipline,habituation to different instruments of production, and knowledgeof the potentialities of various raw materials for conversion intouseful products. Commodity production under conditions of wagelabour, however, locates much of the knowledge, decisions as totechnique, as well as disciplinary apparatus, outside the control ofthe person who actually does the work. The habituation of wagelabourers to capitalism was a long-drawn-out (and not particularlyhappy) historical process, that has to be renewed with the additionof each new generation of workers into the labour force. The discipliningof labour power to the purposes of capital accumulation -a process I shall generally refer to as 'labour control' - is a veryintricate affair. It entails, in the first instance, some mix of repression,habituation, co-optation and co-operation, all of which have to beorganized not only within the workplace but throughout society atlarge. The socialization of the worker to conditions of capitalistproduction entails the social control of physical and mental powerson a very broad basis. Education, training, persuasion, the mobilizationof certain social sentiments (the work ethic, company loyalty, nationalor local pride) and psychological propensities (the search foridentity through work, individual initiative, or social solidarity) all