[iDC] International Political Economy of Work

Mon Sep 14 10:21:55 UTC 2009

Hi

I am about to publish a book with Palgrave Macmillan that looks at how
workers' subjectivities are being invaded through employment policy that
requires seemingly universal skills such as lifelong learning. It's called
the International Political Economy of Work, Skills Revolutions East and
West, and I've given case studies of the UK and South Korea as well as a
small section on Singapore.

Have a look at my recently published article
http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=151

Phoebe

-- 
Employment profile: http://www.espach.salford.ac.uk/page/Phoebe_Moore

JCEPS--my recent article: UK Education, Employability and Everyday Life
http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=151

Media Ecologies workshop, Nov 2009, Manchester
http://www.espach.salford.ac.uk/sssi/p2p/

Manchester Film Cooperative: http://www.manchesterfilm.coop/

2009/9/14 Adam Arvidsson <adam.arvidsson at unimi.it>

>  With a  bit of delay, here is the second instalment of my analysis
>
> of the current crisis from the point of view of  'the ethical economy’
>
> *I. First Idea Our crisis is a crisis of transition. *
> The present financial crisis is not the first to hit us. Rather, the period
> of relative financial calm that marked the persistence of the Bretton Woods
> accord (1947-1971) has been succeeded by a series of financial boom and bust
> cycles, the stock market in the 1980s, the dot.com boom in the 1990s and
> now the sub-prime/real estate bubble. The reasons behind this recent
> volatility are many ad interconnected in complex ways.  First, the collapse
> of the Bretton Woods system itself created higher levels of volatility (in
> particular in currency markets) and greater scope for speculation. Second,
> the computerization, networking and technological refinement of financial
> markets have vastly increased their speed and scope. Third, deregulation and
> other policy decisions has further accelerated the process (like Margaret
> Thatcher's decision to systematically transform the British economy from one
> centred on industry to one centred on finance and corporate services).
>
> However, at the heart of the expansion of financial markets and, as a
> consequence, of financial speculation, there has been a constant and growing
> over-supply of capital, driven by a persistent decline in the rates of
> profit of virtually all non-financial sectors of the US economy. This
> tendency has  accelerated in the 1990s . Tendencies are the same for Western
> Europe and, not least, China. The result is that capital finds declining
> opportunities for profitable investments in the productive economy, and
> tends to migrate to financial markets where gains can be much higher, at
> least in the short run. Again this has been particularly true for China
> where industrial profits and private savings have been massively channelled
> into the US economy (partly for geopolitical reasons), where they have
> fuelled the recent waves of debt-driven private and public consumer bonanza.
> The flight of capital away from the productive economy and into the
> financial economy is a manifestation of the inability of the present
> economic regime to put the wealth it produces to productive use. This is an
> important point. It is not that there are no more needs to be met in the
> world. It is simply that the prevailing techno-political paradigm is unable
> to open up the markets by means of which capital could be productively
> deployed in meeting such needs. Although there are a number of attempts in
> this direction, like venture capital investing in alternative energy
> systems, or companies cultivating the 'bottom of the pyramid’, the market of
> the global poor, these are the isolated results of mostly private
> enterprise, and not the coordinated outcome of systemic initiatives. Such a
> co-existence of unmet needs and excess capital, and the financial expansion
> that results from this combination is a classic symptom of the immanent
> transition form one system to another. Similar things have happened before,
> for example in the financial boom of the 1920s that marked the transition
> from a 19th century English-style industrial capitalism to an American-style
> consumer capitalism. Then the resolution of the crisis consisted in a series
> of systemic measures- the New Deal and resulting welfare systems- that not
> only managed to realize a more democratic mass consumer society thus opening
> up a range of new markets where capital could be deployed to meet hitherto
> unmet needs and desires, but de facto institutionalized a new, Fordist,
> paradigm of capitalist development. Indeed in his masterful  history of the
> 'long twentieth century' Giovanni Arrighi argues that periods of
> financialization of the economy, like ours, usually constitute the last
> phase of a ‘systemic cycle of accumulation’ and signal the emergence of
> another one.
>
> The reason behind the declining profitability of investment in the
> productive economy is the growing productivity of labour across most sectors
> of the economy (excluding some kinds of personal services). In part, this
> growing productivity depends on what Marxists call the rising 'organic
> composition of capital', that is, the rate of machines and other 'stuff' to
> workers. In particular robots and information technology has rendered
> workers in factories and offices immensely more productive, drastically
> reducing the time needed to produce stuff or do things. The result is a
> supply of 'more stuff' and declining prices, which reduces levels of
> profits. However, the rising organic composition of capital is per se not
> the only factor behind the recent profit squeeze (after all this has been
> going on for a long time). Rather, the rising ‘organic composition of
> capital’  has also caused the emergence of a new mode of production within
> the capitalist economy itself. This new mode of production has a shadowy
> presence on the balance sheets of companies, where it figures as what is
> known as 'intangible assets'.
>
>
>
> Links to full text at
>
>
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crisis-and-the-the-ethical-economy-ii/2009/09/14
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Adam Arvidsson
>
> Associate Professor
>
> Dipartimento di Studi Sociali e Politici
>
> Università di Milano
>
> via Conservatorio 7
>
> 20122 Milano, Italy
>
>
>
> +39.02.503.21209
>   ------------------------------
>
> *Da:* idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net [mailto:idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net]
> *Per conto di *Marta Roldan
> *Inviato:* venerdì 11 settembre 2009 22.41
> *A:* idc at mailman.thing.net
> *Oggetto:* [iDC] Looking for colleagues working on the same or related
> subjects
>
>
>
> Hi, I am looking for colleagues interested in studying "creative" labour,
> work organization,
> capital accumulation,  and development from a critical perspective, among
> related issues. I have been carrying out research bearing on this
> interdisciplinary subject in Argentina  mainly (Editorial and now the TV
> industry, content production, network projects, workers' subjectivity, etc.)
> .We are now discussing  a new law on audiovisual communication that will,
> hopefully, be approved by Congress about the end of this month and that
> might change the "business model" now in practice.
>
>
>
> I am a senior researcher of CONICET, the National Council of Scientific and
> Technical Research of Argentina with institutional site in FLACSO (The Latin
> America Faculty of Social Sciences in Buenos Aires). Thank you for your
> interest.
>
>
>
> Martha Roldán imartharoldan at arnet.com.ar
>
>
>
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