April 2001
Volume 52, Number 11
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
April 2001 |
Volume 52, Number 11 |
New! Spring 2001
» About
MONTHLY REVIEW’S March 2001 February
2001 January 2001 December 2000
November 2000
October 2000
September 2000
July-August 2000 June 2000
May 2000
Back
Issues
[ V.52 ]
AN
INTERVIEW WITH: |
c o n t e n t s » A note to MR readers from Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff: It was just over a year ago that we asked John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney to serve as acting co-editors of Monthly Review, with a view to having four co-editors.| more | REVIEW
OF THE MONTH In the last few years the idea of a “New Economy” has gained wide currency, almost rivaling “globalization” as a neologism that characterizes our era. Thus The Economic Report of the President, 2001, begins: “Over the last 8 years the American economy has transformed itself so radically that many believe we have witnessed the creation of a New Economy.” This New Economy is seen, first and foremost, as consisting of those firms and economic sectors most closely associated with the revolution in digital technology and the growth of the Internet. The rapid convergence of information technologies—including computers, software, satellites, fiber optics, and the Internet—has, it is believed, fundamentally altered the economic landscape. Since the mid-1990s, these revolutionary technological developments have, it is argued, spilled over into the wider economy, generating higher productivity growth, a sustained acceleration of economic growth, lower unemployment, lower inflation, and an attenuation of the business cycle. New Economy…Same
Irrational Economy What can we say about the assertion that there is a “New Economy”? That depends on what we mean by this term. It is nonsense to claim, and few do any more, that the business cycle has been eliminated or that the contradictions of capitalism have been resolved. In 2000 we witnessed a massacre of technology and Internet stocks ending what many considered the country’s biggest financial mania of the past hundred years. The NASDAQ lost over half of its value, a paper loss of 3.33 trillion dollars, the equivalent of a third of the houses in the United States sliding into the ocean, as one Wall Street wag tells us. While only a few months ago, all we heard about was the magic of the market and that crises are the result of bad government policies, whether “crony” capitalism or simply failure to make information available to markets in a full and timely fashion, and that the new information technology now makes markets even more efficient; all of this talk is now shown to be the usual exaggeration we find in the up stage of most long expansions. As in the past it disappears as the economy weakens. Indeed as inventories pile up the nature of capitalism becomes clear to even the financial press and the politicians. The “New”
Economy and the Labor Movement A New Economy? Today, we hear a lot of talk about the New Economy, much of it unsubstantiated and hyperbolically stated. In the United States, for example, consumers are supposedly concerned, as never before, with high-quality goods and services tailored specifically to their individual needs. Rapidly changing technology continually creates new, high-quality products, so consumer needs are perpetually changing as well. This rapid change places new demands on businesses. They must be maximally flexible, capable of changing product lines quickly, and able at all times to meet discerning and highly individualized consumer needs. Everything must be geared to customer satisfaction; a firm that does not quickly and consistently please its customers will lose business sooner than at any time in the past. The tremendous range of choices available means that customers will not be loyal to any company that cannot offer speedy gratification. Recently an Internet book company opened that promised same-day delivery! The Disposable Worker During the late-1990s the United States experienced rapid economic growth. But while the unemployment rate by 1999 had fallen to its lowest point since the 1960s, the number of contingent and nonstandard workers reached an all-time high. The Magical-Market World of Disney
Discussions of the New Economy generally point to media and communication as the dynamic industries that are at the eye of the free market hurricane. The creation of ideas and images, we are told, has overtaken the production of things. The culture of consumer choice that commercial media offer, it is said, provides the basis for free societies and human happiness. Time-Warner CEO Gerald Levin proclaimed on CNN in January 2000 that “the global media is fast becoming the predominant business of the twenty-first century, and we’re in a new economic age.” In this article I would like to take a look at the Disney company, one of the three largest media firms in the world, and a firm often invoked as the type of company poised to dominate in the twenty-first century. From its evolution as a small Hollywood animation studio, Disney has expanded into a giant media conglomerate. From a political-economic perspective we need to ask: How has Disney expanded beyond the commodification of children’s culture to the commodification of culture more generally? How does it exemplify in the digital age what Harry Braverman in Labor and Monopoly Capital called “the logic of the universal market”? The “New Economy” and the Speculative Bubble: An Interview with Doug Henwood Doug Henwood, author of Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom (Verso, 1997) and publisher and primary author of the newsletter Left Business Observer, is a frequent contributor to Monthly Review. Doug was interviewed earlier this year for the San Francisco Bay Guardian by another good friend of ours, Christian Parenti—author of Lockdown America (Verso, 1999, reviewed in last month’s MR). At the end of February we asked a few additional questions of Doug. The composite interview follows. BOOKS |
f e a t u r e d
f e a t u r e d
f e a t u r e d
f e a t u r e d
f e a t u r e d L I N K S :
|
||
 |
||||
About the Editors: Paul M. Sweezy· Harry Magdoff If you have any questions or comments |
||||
 |
||||
| | Top | About MR | Subscribe | Order Single Issue | Back Issues| MR Index | MR Press | |
||||
All material © copyright 2000 by Monthly Review |
||||
