The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

60------50% 30Annual rate 01 change in mortgagedebt in the United States40 (Dept 01 Commercel1009080From Fordism to flexible accumulation 147Total manufacturingUtilities70'"CIlen;CIl-E Vltl ijl 400-e£ :::1CIl Ii§ 300'" '"W 2rof- 200.. '""' 01CIl t:.g 0c."' ';;;v; oL,C=9-=67,,-l---L--...L-;-;;-::.L---lL----L-----L-,iC9l-i7:;j4-'c.·c300II)I)(CIl'0£CIlu·c2000..CIl:;;.c.'"e0..Figure 2.6 Some indices of the property boom and crash in Britain and theUnited States, 1955-1975. Top: Annual rate of change in mortgage debt inthe United States (Department of Commerce Data) Middle: Share prices ofreal estate investment trusts in the United States (Source: Fortune Magazine)Bottom: Property share price index in Britain (Source: Investors Chronicle)1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988Figure 2.7 Capacity utilization in the United States, 1970-1988(Source: Federal Reserve Board)Flexible accumulation, as I shall tentatively call it, is marked by adirect confrontation with the rigidities of Fordism. It rests on flexibilitywith respect to labour processes, labour markets, products,and patterns of consumption. It is characterized by the emergence ofentirely new sectors of production, new ways of providing financialservices, new markets, and, above all, greatly intensified rates ofcommercial, technological, and organizational innovation. It has entrainedrapid shifts in the patterning of uneven development, bothbetween sectors and between geographical regions, giving rise, forexample, to a vast surge in so-called 'service-sector' employment aswell as to entirely new industrial ensembles in hitherto underdevelopedregions (such as the 'Third Italy', Flanders, the various silicon valleysand glens, to say nothing of the vast profusion of activities innewly industrializing countries). It has also entailed a new round ofwhat I shall call 'time-space compression' (see Part III) in thecapitalist world - the time horizons of both private and publicdecision-making have shrunk, while satellite communication and decliningtransport costs have made it increasingly possible to spreadthose decisions immediately over an ever wider and variegated space.These enhanced powers of flexibility and mobility have allowedemployers to exert stronger pressures of labour control on a workforcein any case weakened by two savage bouts of deflation, thatsaw unemployment rise to unprecedented postwar levels in advancedcapitalist countries (save, perhaps, Japan). Organized labour wasundercut by the reconstruction of foci of flexible accumulation inregions lacking previous industrial traditions, and by the importationback into the older centres of the regressive norms and practicesestablished in these new areas. Flexible accumulation appears toimply relatively high levels of 'structural' (as opposed to 'frictional')