[lbo-talk] Hardt/Negri's Commonwealth as reviewed in WSJ

[Eric Beck]

I dig. I haven't read the JBF article yet, but I will. For me the
relevant thing about Fordism is less the sort of quasi-Keynesian
capital-labor bargain than the social engineering aspect: the good
wage is paid if one lives a good, clean, moral life within a stable,
nuclear family, and all of this additionally ties itself to and is
completed by the nation. The "post" part is relevant not just for
production relations but capital's attempts to profit from ways of
being that aren't identitical to, or are even opposed to, Fordist
moral demands: nontraditional families, alternative lifestyles, etc.

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Eric, the argument and history in John Bellamy Foster's MR article, The
> Fetish of Fordism, generated the first step in my rejection of the term.
> The second step was trying to get a grip on whether "Fordist" production
> relations or "Fordist" consumption patterns were supposed to be the key
> because I never really saw a coherent statement of the relationship between
> the two much less a critique of the kinds of depoliticizing economic and
> cultural discipline imposed by such relationships and patterns - or even
> their dependence on the Cold War competition and neoimperialism.  Harvey's
> Condition of Postmodernity helped with this.  Despite the limits of the book
> - particularly in terms of its theory of the state - with this title, I tend
> to lean more towards Monopoly Capital.