The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

184 Political-economic capitalist transformation(c) Time-space displacements, of course, have a double powerwith respect to absorption of the overaccumulation problem, and inpractice, and particularly to the degree that fictitious capital formation(and, usually, state involvement) is essential to both temporal andspatial displacement, it is the combination of the temporal and spatialstrategies that counts. Lending money (often raised on, say, Londonor New York capital markets through fictitious capital formation) toLatin America to build long-term infrastructures or to purchasecapital equipment which will help to generate output for manyyears to come, is a typical and powerful form of absorption ofoveraccumulation.How, then, did Fordism solve the inherent overaccumulationtendencies of capitalism? Before World War II it lacked the appropriateregulatory apparatus to do very much more than engagein some tentative pursuits of temporal and spatial displacement (mainlywithin countries, though overseas direct investment on the part ofUS corporations did begin in the 1920s), and was therefore forced,for the most part, into savage devaluation of the sort achieved in the1930s and 1940s. Since 1945 - and largely as a consequence ofdetailed war-time planning to stabilize the post-war economic order- there emerged a fairly coherent accumulation strategy built aroundcontrol of devaluation and the absorption of overaccumulation byother means. Devaluation through violent swings in the businesscycle was brought under control and reduced to the kind of steadydevaluation through planned obsolescence that posed relatively minorproblems. On the other hand, a strong system of macro-economiccontrol was instituted which controlled the pace of technological andorganizational change (mainly through corporate monopoly power),kept the class struggle within bounds (through collective bargainingand state intervention), and kept mass production and mass consumptionroughly in balance through state management. But thismode of regulation would not have been anywhere near as successfulas it evidently was, had it not been for the strong presence of bothtemporal and spatial displacements, albeit under the watchful eye ofthe interventionist state.By 1972, for example, we find Business Week complaining that theUS economy was sitting atop a mountain of debt (though fromcurrent heights it all looks like a mole-hill now; see figure 2.13).Keynesian debt-financing, initially intended as a short-term managementtool to control business cycles, had, predictably, becomesucked into an attempt to absorb over accumulation by continuousexpansion of fictitious capital formation and consequent expansionTheorizing the transition 185of the debt burden. Steady expansion of long-term investments,orchestrated by the state proved a useful way, at least up until themid-1960s, to absorb any excess capital or labour. Spatial displacement(combined, of course, with long-term indebtedness) was aneven more powerful influence. Within the United States the radicaltransformation of metropolitan economies (through the suburbanizationof both manufacturing and residences), as well as the expansioninto the South and West, absorbed vast quantities of excess capitaland labour. Internationally, the reconstruction of the economiesof Western Europe and Japan, accelerating flows of foreign directinvestment, and the enormous growth in world trade played a criticalrole in absorbing surpluses. Planning for postwar 'peace with prosperity'in World War II emphasized the need for a global strategyfor capital accumulation within a world where trade and investmentbarriers were to be steadily reduced and colonial subservience replacedby an open system of growth, advancement, and co-operation withina decolonized capitalist world system. Even though some facets ofthis programme were to prove ideological and illusory, enough of itscontent was realized to make a spatial revolution in global tradingand investment entirely possible. -It was primarily through spatial and temporal displacement thatthe Fordist regime of accumulation resolved the overaccumulationproblem during the long postwar boom. The crisis of Fordism canto some degree be interpreted, therefore, as a running out of thoseoptions to handle the over accumulation problem. Temporal displacementwas piling debt upon debt to the point where the only viablegovernment strategy was to monetize it away. This was done, ineffect, by printing so much money as to trigger an inflationary surge,which radically reduced the real value of past debts (the thousanddollars borrowed ten years ago has little value after a phase of highinflation). Turnover time could not easily be accelerated withoutdestroying the value of fixed capital assets. New geographical centresof accumulation - the US South and West, Weste_ffi Europe andJapan, and then a range of newly-industrializing countries - werecreated. As these Fordist production systems came to maturity, theybecame new and often highly competitive centres of overaccumulation.Spatial competition intensified between geographically distinctFordist systems, with the most efficient regimes (such as the Japanese)and lower labour-cost regimes (such as those found in third worldcountries where notions of a social contract with labour were eitherlackin.g or weakly enforced) driving other centres into paroxysmsof devaluation through deindustrialization. Spatial competitioninte ;ified, particularly after 1973, as the capacity to resolve the