The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

166 Political-economic capitalist transformationTable 2.5Dependence on foreign trade for selected advancedcapitalist countriesExports and imports as per cent of GNP1960 1970 1980 1986USexports 4.37 5.35 10.0 7.0imports 4.36 5.00 10.5 10.2UKexports 20.9 23.1 27.7 26.2imports 22.3 22.2 25.3 27.0Japanexports 10.8 10.8 13.7 11.7imports 10.3 9.5 14.6 7.6W. Germanyexports 17.9 21.2 26.3 30.0imports 16.4 19. 1 27.0 24.9Italyexports 12.1 15.4 21.7 20.4imports 12.4 15.0 24.4 18.7Source: OEeDmachine tools, shoes, textiles and cars. The balance of payments ingoods and services for the United States rapidly moved that countryfrom a net global creditor to the status of the world's largest debtor(see figure 2.13). Meanwhile the financial power of Japan grew,turning Tokyo into one of the world's most important financial centres(topping New York for the first time in 1987) simply because of thevast quantities of surplus funds controlled by the Japanese banks.The latter displaced the Americans as the largest holders of internationalassets in 1985, and by 1987 held $1.4 trillion compared withthe $630 billion held by Americans. The four largest banks in theworld (in asset terms) are now Japanese.These shifts have been accompanied and in part ushered in by therise of an aggressive neo-conservatism in North America and muchof Western Europe. The electoral victories of Thatcher (1979) andReagan (1980) are often viewed as a distinctive rupture in the politicsof the postwar period. I understand them more as consolidations of44403660 -62 -58 -c..Zt9 54 -* 50 -46 -of,Federal debtFrom Fordism to flexible accumulationj i I I j I , I i I I I IPersonal debti I I I I I I I j I i I j4440363228 -I24 -50o , -50(f) -100co== -1 50 -co-200 -Corporate debtr I I f I f i l l 1 i I ITrade deficit/surpluso ------------___-250 -·1-.-, -,,-,--, "T",..,-",...., ,-,,--r-, ,,--,,Figure 2.13 Growth of federal, personal and corporate debt in the UnitedStates and deterioration in US trade balance, 1973-1987(Source: Department of Commerce and Federal Reserve Board)what was already under way throughout much of the 1970s. Thecrisis of 1973-5 was in part born out of a confrontation with theaccumulated rigidities of government policies and practices built upduring the Fordist-Keynesian period. Keynesian policies had appearedinflationary as entitlements grew and fiscal capacities stagnated.Since it had always been part of the Fordist political consensus thatredistributions should be funded out of growth, slackening growthinevitably meant trouble for the welfare state and the social wage.The Nixon and Heath governments both recognized the problem inthe period 1970-4, sparking struggles with organized labour andretrenchment in state expenditures. The Labour and Democraticgovernments that subsequently came to power bowed to the sameimperatives, though ideologically predisposed in quite different directions.Their corporatist approach to solving the problem mayhave been different (relying on voluntary compliance and unionenforcement of wages and prices policies) but the objectives had tobe the same. As soon as political choices were seen as a trade-off1 67