From: "Lowe Laclau" <lowelaclau-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: AUT: Class struggle/new economy
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:22:14 -0400




Thom, 

I'd agree that this is an important area of focus. This area of logistics centralizes a lot of the emerging strategies in revolutionizing/developing services. But is it the central area? Not sure. Not thought about it. There is important research going on now in France...(maybe in other places as well but I don't know about them) from the opposite end of the spectrum that is trying to figure our what the revolution in services, mobility, motility, logistics and transport means for the working class. I think most of it came from calls for actual historical and sociological research into a lot of the uncritical, unscientific statements about the dramatic new world that we are entering that were all generalization of the work of people like Harvey 'space-time compression' and the 'liquidization' of social relations (Bauman) etc. All of this competition driven technological (and technical) revolution is interesting, but its still quite hard for me at least to conceptualize what the working classes can derive from it. Can't think now of the names of the people who are doing this research. Vincent Kaufman is one of them, Bernard someone... ahhh forget it. 

I guess one would have to simultaneously look at both the coduits opened, what constraints would become pronouned as result of money, public infrastructure etc. 

I thought about this when reading someone's comments someplace about the confusion and large cultural divide that separated the Central and South American participants in the WSF from the people in the North. But if anyone has ever been to Central or South America you immediately realize something we tend to take for granted in the North. We've lived 10 years of more excellent communications and transportational infrastructures. We can gather so much commonality through the internet in terms of knowledge, information, etc. There is many places (perhaps I say without qualification in MOST places) only the tiniest population has things like internet access. In Honduras where part of my family lives only 1 in every 100000 people has a computer. If you're outside of a city, you most likely don't even have a telephone. 

This area of the new economy has made pronounced a great divide people stuck to their localities and those for whom the world is their backyards. Manuel Castells talks a lot about this. There is also an interview with Michel Aglietta done by the Futur Anterieur people where he responded about economic policy geared towards doing away with this "public" impoverishment in terms of motility (mobility as capital) by reinforcing policies that are non 'individualizable' in terms of social returns and returns on capitalist rate of profit. Such that these developments could actually contribute to the social wealth of the working classes. 

Lowe

 

>From: "Thomas Ashton" <t.ashton-AT-merseymail.com> 



>Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU 

>To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU 

>Subject: AUT: Class struggle/new economy 

>Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:42:43 +0100 

> 

>To understand where Capital is now you need to look at the developments 

>taking place around supply chains.This is the area where capitalism is 

>devoting its energies and money.And logistics is is central to supply chain 

>sucess.key in supply chain case studies on google to have alook. 

> 

> 

>-------------------------------------------------------------------- 

>FREE eLearning courses for Merseyside SMEs 

>Register NOW at: http://www.training.connect.org.uk/elearning-mm/ 

>Improve your productivity, profitability and competitiveness through learning 

> 

> 

>      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- 




------------------------------------------
 
------------------------------------------
Check out Election 2004 for up-to-date election news, plus voter tools and more!
------------------------------------------
 
------------------------------------------


--- StripMime Warning --  MIME attachments removed --- 
This message may have contained attachments which were removed.

Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list.

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- 
text/html (html body -- converted)
---


     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---