Industry and Work in Contemporary Capitalism: Models, markets and crisis in the global system

Abstract

The current crisis and, in particular its effect on employment in mature economies, is prompting a reappraisal of the mainstream marginalist economic model. This model with its diverse nuances and expressions has exerted enormous influence as an expert tool and has become the basis of common sense understandings of economic processes in the contemporary world. In part, such a reappraisal entails rethinking long-standing views about the place of industry and manufacturing in the process of wealth production. It is significant that these reflections are taking place in a context in which faith and enthusiasm are vested primarily in a ‘knowledge economy’ that implicitly constructs heavy industry as anachronistic and irrelevant to the futures of advanced capitalist economies. The profound transformations taking place in contemporary capitalism towards the dominance of a knowledge economy or cognitive capitalism (Moulier-Boutang 2011), or the emergence of a ‘new spirit of capitalism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2007) are bringing about a redefinition of labour and value, and a reconfiguration of the relations between the material and the non-material, the economic and the social. Because these changes are seen as closely connected to the process of globalization and as fundamentally de-linked from industrial capitalism, we consider that a focus on industry, and especially on heavy industry is important and useful.