Cullenberg et al: >And, again, this world >structured according to the object-life of the commodity has been thought >to have received an enormous recent boost by the emergence of new >information technologies, especially the internet. According to this view, >computers have made commodity time and space ultimately traversable in ways >unthinkable for past generations of producers and consumers. In addition to >the use of computer technology in such "post-Fordist" production methods as >"flexible specialization," it is claimed that one need not leave one's >chair (in front of one's screen, of course) to be bombarded by commodity >images and the cornucopia of goods that exist and are transacted in >cyberspace. This obliteration of previous constraints of time and >geographical location in buying and selling (lowering considerably >transactions costs and reducing to rubble other past barriers to the >international flow of financial capital and goods) reconstructs all notions >and experiences pertaining to community and nation, hence the idea of the >"global economy" that is said to be the hallmark of the postmodern. Whoever really thinks this needs to read vol 2 of 'Capital'. Marx goes into how capital constantly revolutionises not only the means of production but also the means of distribution and payment. Since the rate of turnover of capital has a substantial affect on the rate of profit, and profit is the name of the game, how could it be otherwise? Ironically, these days it is probably the squeeze on surplus-value and the stagnation of the productive sphere that is driving globalisation and communications development. In any case, given the massive *potential* for IT, what is interesting is not the development that has taken place, but that such development is still quite slow and impaired. This is true even in the imperialist world. In the Third World, there is no sign of a mass computer culture. After decades of IT development, the vast majority of humanity is still excluded. It has always seemed to me that postmodernist intellectuals' understanding of the world is limited to what they can see in their own university departments and out their windows. Their worldview is often less broad than that of the small shopkeepers of their class. At least the shopkeepers deal in the real world. The pomo 'intellectuals' need to get out more. Philip Ferguson Louis Proyect The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
