The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

152 political-economic capitalist transformation1982 and 1985) or towards temporary rather than part-time work.This follows a long-established pattern in Japan where, even underFordism, small business sub-contracting acted as a buffer to protectlarge corporations from the cost of market fluctuations. The currenttrend in labour markets is to reduce the number of 'core' workersand to rely increasingly upon a work force that ca quickly be t kenon board and equally quickly and costlessly be laId off when tlmesget bad. In Britain, 'flexible woker' increased b ;:- 16 per cent to 8.1million between 1981 and 1985 whIle permanent Jobs decreased by 6per cent to 15.6 million (Financial Times, 27 ebruary 1987). ?.verroughly the same time period, nearly one thIrd ? f the,ten mIllIonew jobs created in the USA were thought to be III the temporarycategory (New York Times, 17 March 1988) :This has not, evidently, changed very radIcally the problems thatarose in the 1960s of segmented or 'dual' labour markets, but has reshapedthem according to a rather different logic. While it is t r:u ethat the declining significance of union power has reduced the SII ­gular power of white male workers in monopoly sector markets, Itdoes not follow that those excluded from those labour markets, suchas blacks, women, ethnic minorities of all kinds, have achieved suddenparity (except in the sense that many traditionally privileged whitemale workers have been marginalized alongside them). While somewomen and some minorities have gained access to more privilegedpositions, the new labour n. l rket c nditions have for the most partre-emphasized the vulnerabIlIty of dIsadvantaged groups (as we shallshortly see in the case of women).The transformation in labour market structure has been paralleledby equally important shifts in industrial organ ation. Organize?sub-contracting, for example, opens up opportunItles for small bUSInessformation, and in some instances permits older systems ofdomestic, artisanal, familial (patriarchal), and paternalistic ('godfather','guv'nor' or even mafia-like) labour systems to revive ndflourish as centrepieces rather than as appendages of the productlonsystem. The revival of 'sweatshop' forms of production in cities suchas New York and Los Angeles , Paris and London, became a matterfor commentary in the mid-1970s and has proliferated rather thanshrunk during the 1980s. The rapid growth of 'black,' 'informal,' or'underground' economies has also been documented throughout .theadvanced capitalist world, leading some to suggest that ther IS .agrowing convergence between 'third world' and advanced capItalIstlabour systems. Yet the rise of new and the revival .of o .lder forms ofindustrial organization (often dominated by new ImmIgrant groupsin large cities, such as the Filipinos, South Koreans, Vietnamese,From Fordism to flexible accumulation 153and Taiwanese in Los Angeles, or the Bangladeshis and Indians inEast London) represents rather different things in different places.Sometimes it indicates the emergence of new survival strategies forthe unemployed or wholly discriminated against (such as Haitianimmigrants in Miami or New York), while in others it is moresimply immigrant groups looking for an entry into a capitalist system,organized tax-dodging, or the attraction of high profit from illegaltrade that lies at its basis. But in all such cases, the effect is totransform the mode of labour control and employment.Working-class forms of organization (such as the trade unions),for example, depended heavily upon the massing of workers withinthe factory for their viability, and find it peculiarly difficult to gainany purchase within family and domestic labour systems. Paternalisticsystems are dangerous territories for labour organizing because theyare more likely to corrupt union power (if it is present) than unionpower is likely to liberate employees from 'godfather' dominationand paternalistic welfarism. Indeed, one of the signal advantages ofembracing such ancient forms of labour process and of pettycapitalistproduction is that they undermine working-class organizationand transform the objective basis for class struggle. Class consciousnessno longer derives from the straight class relation between capitaland labour, and moves onto a much more confused terrain of interfamilialconflicts and fights for power within a kinship or clan-likesystem of hierarchically ordered social relations. Struggling againstcapitalist exploitation in the factory is very different from strugglingagainst a father or uncle who organizes family labour into a highlydisciplined and competitive sweatshop that works to order for multinationalcapital (table 2.3).The effects are doubly obvious when we consider the transformedrole of women in production and labour markets. Not only do thenew labour market structures make it much easier to exploit thelabour power of women on a part-time basis, and so to substitutelower-paid female labour for that of more highly paid and less easilylaid-off core male workers, but the revival of sub-contracting anddomestic and family labour systems permits a resurgence of patriarchalpractices and homeworking. This revival parallels the enhanced capacityof multinational capital to take Fordist mass-production systemsabroad, and there to exploit extremely vulnerable women's labourpower under conditions of extremely low pay and negligible jobsecurity (see Nash and Fernandez-Kelly, 1983). The Maquiladoraprogramme that allows US managers and capital ownership to remainnorth of the Mexican border, while locating factories employingmainly young women south of the border, is a particularly dramatic