Empire (50 page)

the other countries under Soviet control, the demand for higher

wages and greater freedom grew continuously along with the

rhythm ofmodernization. And just as in the capitalist countries,

there was defined a new figure oflabor power, which now expressed

enormous productive capacities on the basis ofa new development

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279

ofthe intellectual powers ofproduction. This new productive real-

ity, this living intellectual multitude, is what the Soviet leaders tried

to lock in the cages ofa disciplinary war economy (a war that was

continually conjured up rhetorically) and corral in the structures of

a socialist ideology oflabor and economic development, that is, a

socialist management ofcapital that no longer made any sense. The

Soviet bureaucracy was not able to construct the armory necessary

for the
postmodern
mobilization ofthe new labor power. It was

frightened by it, terrorized by the collapse of disciplinary regimes,

by the transformations of the Taylorized and Fordist subjects that

had previously animated production. This was the point where

the crisis became irreversible and, given the immobility ofthe

Brezhnevian hibernation, catastrophic.

What we find important was not so much the lack ofor the

offenses against the individual and formal freedoms of workers, but

rather the waste ofthe productive energy ofa multitude that had

exhausted the potential ofmodernity and now wanted to be liber-

ated from the socialist management of capitalist accumulation in

order to express a higher level ofproductivity. This repression and

this energy were the forces that, from opposite sides, made the

Soviet world collapse like a house ofcards. Glasnost and perestroika

certainly did represent a self-criticism of Soviet power and posed

the necessity ofa democratic passage as the condition for a renewed

productivity ofthe system, but they were employed too late and

too timidly to stop the crisis. The Soviet machine turned in on

itselfand ground to a halt, without the fuel that only new productive

subjectivities can produce. The sectors ofintellectual and immaterial

labor withdrew their consensus from the regime, and their exodus

condemned the system to death: death from the socialist victory of

modernization, death from the incapacity to use its effects and

surpluses, death from a definitive asphyxia that strangled the subjec-

tive conditions which demanded a passage to postmodernity.

3.4

P O S T M O D E R N I Z A T I O N , O R

T H E I N F O R M A T I Z A T I O N O F P R O D U C T I O N

Postmodernism is not something we can settle once and for all and

then use with a clear conscience. The concept, ifthere is one, has

to come at the end, and not at the beginning, ofour discussions

ofit.

Fredric Jameson

The good news from Washington is that every single person in

Congress supports the concept ofan information superhighway.

The bad news is that no one has any idea what that means.

Congressman Edward Markey

It has now become common to view the succession of

economic paradigms since the Middle Ages in three distinct mo-

ments, each defined by the dominant sector ofthe economy: a first

paradigm in which agriculture and the extraction ofraw materials

dominated the economy, a second in which industry and the manu-

facture of durable goods occupied the privileged position, and a third

and current paradigm in which providing services and manipulating

information are at the heart of economic production.1 The dominant

position has thus passed from primary to secondary to tertiary pro-

duction. Economic
modernization
involves the passage from the first paradigm to the second, from the dominance of agriculture to that

ofindustry. Modernization means industrialization. We might call

the passage from the second paradigm to the third, from the domina-

tion ofindustry to that ofservices and information, a process of

economic
postmodernization,
or better,
informatization.

P O S T M O D E R N I Z A T I O N

281

The most obvious definition and index ofthe shifts among

these three paradigms appear first in quantitative terms, in reference

either to the percentage ofthe population engaged in each ofthese

productive domains or to the percentage ofthe total value produced

by the various sectors ofproduction. The changes in employment

statistics in the dominant capitalist countries during the past one

hundred years do indeed indicate dramatic shifts.2 This quantitative

view, however, can lead to serious misunderstandings ofthese eco-

nomic paradigms. Quantitative indicators cannot grasp either the

qualitative
transformation in the progression from one paradigm to another or the
hierarchy
among the economic sectors in the context ofeach paradigm. In the process ofmodernization and the passage

toward the paradigm ofindustrial dominance, not only did agricul-

tural production decline quantitatively (both in percentage ofwork-

ers employed and in proportion ofthe total value produced), but

also, more important, agriculture itselfwas transf

ormed. When

agriculture came under the domination ofindustry, even when

agriculture was still predominant in quantitative terms, it became

subject to the social and financial pressures ofindustry, and moreover

agricultural production itselfwas industrialized. Agriculture, of

course, did not disappear; it remained an essential component of

modern industrial economies, but it was now a transformed, indus-

trialized agriculture.

The quantitative perspective also fails to recognize hierarchies

among national or regional economies in the global system, which

leads to all kinds ofhistorical misrecognitions, posing analogies

where none exist. From a quantitative perspective, for example,

one might assume a twentieth-century society with the majority

ofits labor force occupied in agriculture or mining and the majority

ofits value produced in these sectors (such as India or Nigeria) to

be in a position analogous to a society that existed sometime in the

past with the same percentage ofworkers or value produced in

those sectors (such as France or England). The historical illusion

casts the analogy in a dynamic sequence so that one economic

system occupies the same position or stage in a sequence ofdevelop-

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P A S S A G E S O F P R O D U C T I O N

ment that another had held in a previous period, as ifall were

on the same track moving forward in line. From the qualitative

perspective, that is, in terms oftheir position in global power

relationships, however, the economies ofthese societies occupy

entirely incomparable positions. In the earlier case (France or En-

gland ofthe past), the agricultural production existed as the domi-

nant sector in its economic sphere, and in the later (twentieth-

century India or Nigeria), it is subordinated to industry in the world

system. The two economies are not on the same track but in

radically different and even divergent situations—of dominance and

subordination. In these different positions of hierarchy, a host of

economic factors is completely different—exchange relationships,

credit and debt relationships, and so forth.3 In order for the latter

economy to realize a position analogous to that ofthe former, it

would have to invert the power relationship and achieve a position

ofdominance in its contemporary economic sphere, as Europe did,

for example, in the medieval economy of the Mediterranean world.

Historical change, in other words, has to be recognized in terms

ofthe power relationships throughout the economic sphere.

Illusions of Development

The discourse ofeconomic
development,
which was imposed under

U.S. hegemony in coordination with the New Deal model in the

postwar period, uses such false historical analogies as the foundation

for economic policies. This discourse conceives the economic his-

tory ofall countries as following one single pattern ofdevelopment,

each at different times and according to different speeds. Countries

whose economic production is not presently at the level ofthe

dominant countries are thus seen as developing countries, with the

idea that ifthey continue on the path followed previously by the

dominant countries and repeat their economic policies and strate-

gies, they will eventually enjoy an analogous position or stage. The

developmental view fails to recognize, however, that the economies

ofthe so-called developed countries are defined not only by certain

quantitative factors or by their internal structures, but also and more

important by
their dominant position in the global system.

P O S T M O D E R N I Z A T I O N

283

The critiques ofthe developmentalist view that were posed

by underdevelopment theories and dependency theories, which

were born primarily in the Latin American and African contexts

in the 1960s, were useful and important precisely because they

emphasized the fact that the evolution of a regional or national

economic system depends to a large extent on its place within the

hierarchy and power structures ofthe capitalist world-system.4 The

dominant regions will continue to develop and the subordinate will

continue to underdevelop as mutually supporting poles in the global

power structure. To say that the subordinate economies do not

develop does not mean that they do not change or grow; it means,

rather, that
they remain subordinate in the global system
and thus never achieve the promised form of a dominant, developed economy. In

some cases individual countries or regions may be able to change

their position in the hierarchy, but the point is that, regardless of

who fills which position, the hierarchy remains the determining

factor.5

The theorists ofunderdevelopment themselves, however, also

repeat a similar illusion ofeconomic development.6 Summarizing

in schematic terms, we could say that their logic begins with two

valid historical claims but then draws from them an erroneous

conclusion. First, they maintain that, through the imposition of

colonial regimes and/or other forms of imperialist domination,

the underdevelopment ofsubordinated economies was created and

sustained by their integration into the global network ofdominant

capitalist economies, their partial articulation, and thus their real

and continuing dependence on those dominant economies. Second,

they claim that the dominant economies themselves had originally

developed their fully articulated and independent structures in rela-

tive isolation, with only limited interaction with other economies

and global networks.7

From these two more or less acceptable historical claims, how-

ever, they then deduce an invalid conclusion: ifthe developed

economies achieved full articulation in relative isolation and the

underdeveloped economies became disarticulated and dependent

through their integration into global networks, then a project for

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the relative isolation ofthe underdeveloped economies will result

in their development and full articulation. In other words, as an

alternative to the ‘ false development’’ pandered by the economists of

the dominant capitalist countries, the theorists ofunderdevelopment

promoted ‘‘real development,’’ which involves delinking an econ-

omy from its dependent relationships and articulating in relative

isolation an autonomous economic structure. Since this is how the

dominant economies developed, it must be the true path to escape

the cycle ofunderdevelopment. This syllogism, however, asks us

to believe that the laws ofeconomic development will somehow

transcend the differences of historical change.

The alternative notion ofdevelopment is based paradoxically

on the same historical illusion central to the dominant ideology of

development it opposes. The tendential realization ofthe world

market should destroy any notion that today a country or region

could isolate or delink itselffrom the global networks ofpower in

order to re-create the conditions ofthe past and develop as the

dominant capitalist countries once did. Even the dominant countries

are now dependent on the global system; the interactions ofthe

world market have resulted in a generalized disarticulation ofall

economies. Increasingly, any attempt at isolation or separation will

mean only a more brutal kind ofdomination by the global system,

a reduction to powerlessness and poverty.

Informatization

The processes ofmodernization and industrialization transformed

and redefined all the elements ofthe social plane. When agriculture

was modernized as industry, the farm progressively became a factory,

with all ofthe factory’s discipline, technology, wage relations, and