The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

182 Political-economic capitalist transformationvirtue of the Fordist-Keynesian regime that a balance of forces,however tenuous, could be created through which the mechanismscausing the over accumulation problem - the pace of technologicaland organizational change together with the struggle over labourcontrol - could be kept sufficiently under control so as to assuresteady growth. But it took a major crisis of overaccumulation toconnect Fordist production with a Keynesian mode of state regulationbefore some kind of steady macro-economic growth could be assuredfor any extended period. The rise of a particular regime ofaccumulation has to be seen, then as now, as the outcome of a wholehost of political and economic decisions, by no means always consciouslydirected towards this or that specific end, provoked bypersistent manifestations of the overaccumulation problem.3 Absmption of overaccumulation through temporal and spatialdisplacement provides, in my judgement, a much richer and longlasting,but also much more problematic, terrain upon which to tryand control the overaccumulation problem. The argument here israther complicated in its details, so I shall again draw upon accountspublished elsewhere (Harvey 1982, 1985c).(a) Temporal displacement entails either a switch of resourcesfrom meeting current needs to exploring future uses, or an accelerationin turnover time (the speed with which money outlaysreturn profit to the investor) so that speed-up this year absorbsexcess capacity from last year. Excess capital and surplus labour can,for example, be absorbed by switching from current consumption tolong-term public and private investments in plant, physical and socialinfrastructures, and the like. Such investments mop up surpluses inthe present only to return their value equivalent over a long · timeperiod in the future (this was the principle that lay behind the publicworks programmes used to combat the slump conditions in the1930s in many advanced capitalist countries). The capacity to makethe switch depends, however, upon the availability of credit and thecapacity for 'fictitious capital formation.' The latter is defined ascapital that has a nominal money value and paper existence, butwhich at a given moment in time has no backing in terms of realproductive activity or physical assets as collateral. Fictitious capital isconverted into real capital to the degree that investments are madethat lead to an appropriate increase in useful assets (e.g. plant andmachinery that can be profitably deployed) or commodities (goodsand services which can be profitably sold). For this reason temporaldisplacement into future uses is a short-run palliative to the overaccumulationproblem unless, that is, there is continuous displace-Theorizing the transition 183ment via continuously accelerating rates of fictitious capital formationand expanding volumes of longer-term investment. All of thisdepends upon some continuous and state-backed dynamic growth inindebtedness. Keynesian policies after 1945 in the advanced capitalistcountries in part had such an effect.Absorption of surpluses through accelerations in turnover time -a strong feature in the recent period of flexible accumulation - posesa different kind of theoretical problem. Heightened competition certainlyprovokes individual firms to speed up their turnover time(those firms with the faster turnover time tend to gain excess profitsthereby, and so survive more easily). But only under certain conditionsdoes this produce an aggregate acceleration of turnover timeso as to permit aggregate absorption of surpluses. Even then, this is,at best, a short-run palliative, unless it proves possible to acceleratesocial turnover time continuously year by year (a solution thatwould surely imply strong write-offs of past assets in any case, sincespeed-up usually entails new technologies which displace the old).(b) Spatial displacement entails the absorption of excess capitaland labour in geographical expansion. This 'spatial fix' (as I haveelsewhere called it) to the overaccumulation problem entails the. production of new spaces within which capitalist production canproceed (through infrastructural investments, for example), the growthof trade and direct investments, and the exploration of new possibilitiesfor the exploitation of labour power. Here, too, the creditsystem and fictitious capital formation, backed by state fiscal, monetary,and, where necessary, military power, become vital mediatinginfluences. And it also follows that the manner of prior occupationof the spaces into which capitalism expands, and the degrees ofresistance encountered there, can have profound consequences. Insome spaces there has been a history of fierce resistance to theimplantation of Western capital (e.g. China), whereas in other spaces(e.g. Japan or the more recent cases of Hong Kong, Singapore, orTaiwan), dominant or even subordinate classes have aggressivelyinserted themselves into what they saw as a superior economic system.If continuous geographical expansion of capitalism were a real possibility,there could be a relatively permanent solution to the overaccumulationproblem. But to the degree that the progressive implantationof capitalism across the face of the earth extends the spacewithin which the over accumulation problem can arise, so geographicalexpansion can at best be a short-run solution to the overaccumulationproblem. The long-run outcome will almost certainly be heightenedinternational and inter-regional competition, with the leastadvantaged countries and regions suffering the severest consequences.