S21 © 263 The Condition of Postmodernity ‘An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change David Harvey pe 4 cu vie OT ¢ 21 +2°118 The passage from modernity to postmodernity powerfully since 1970. If the only thing certain about modernity is uncertainty, then we should, surely, pay considerable attent the social forces that produce such a condition. It is t socal forces that I now ey "eis to these socal Part IT The political—economic transformation of late twentieth- century capitalism “The incerval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new, constitutes a period of transition, which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and ‘wild and fierce fanaticism. Join Calboun188 Political—economic capitalist transformation stil shine through, and ia many instances with a luminosy than before all the surface oth sed cane characteristic of flexible accumulation. Is the latter, then, anything more than a jazzed up version of the same old story of capitalism as usual? That would be too simple judgement. Te ects of capitalism historically, as a non-dynamic mede of production, wher all the evidence (including that explicitly laid out by Marx) is that capitalism is a constantly revolutionary force in world history, a force that Perpetually re-shapes the world into new and often quite unexpected Configurations, Flexible accumulation appears, a least, to be » new configuration and, as such, i requires that we scrutinize its man. festations with the requisite care and seriousness, using, aeverthe the theoretical tools that Marx devised. as “ i Flexible accumulation — solid transformation or temporary fix? T have argued that there has certainly been a sea-change in the surface appearance of capitalism since 1973, even though the under- lying logic of capitalist accumulation and its crisis-tendencies remain the same. We need to consider, however, whether the shifts in surface appearance betoken the birth of a new regime of accumulation, capable of containing the contradictions of capitalism for the next generation, or whether they betoken a series of temporary fixes, thus constituting a transitional moment of grumbling crisis in the con- figuration of late twentieth-century capitalism. The question of flexi- bility has already been the focus of some debate. Three broad positions seem now to be emerging. The first position, primarily espoused by Piore and Sabel (1984) and accepted in principle by several subsequent writers, is chat the new technologies open up the possibility for a reconstitution of labour selations and of production systems on an entirely different social, economic, and geographical basis. Piore and Sabel see a parallel between the current conjuncture and the missed opportunity of the mid-nineteenth century, when large-scale and eventually monopoly capital ousted the small firm and the innumerable small-scale co- operative ventures that had the potential to solve the problem of industrial organization along decentralized and democratically con- trolled lines (the figure of Proudhon’s anarchism looms large). Much is made of the “Third Italy’ as an example of these new forms of worker-co-operative organizations which, armed with new decen- tralized technologies of command and control, can successfully in tegrate with, and even subvert, the dominant and repressive forms of labour organization characteristic of corporate and multinational capital, Not everyone shares this rosy vision of the forms of industrial organization (sce, for example, Murray, 1987). There is much that is regressive and repressive about the new practices. Nevertheless,