Modes of Production and Development

by HUGHO DEOGRATIUS

Webster (2004; 2002) and Garnham (2004a) have accused Castells of technological determinism. Castells distinguishes between the mode of production – which determines how production surpluses are distributed – and the mode of development, which drives productivity and thereby determines the amount of surplus production. The mode of development is technological: according to Castells, the industrial mode of development centered on energy; since the oil shock and stagflation of the 1970s capitalism has seized upon informationalism to produce growth. However, he does not believe that capitalism created the informational mode of development as a solution to this challenge, instead tracing it to “the autonomous dynamics of technological discovery and diffusion” (2000b, p. 59).

The theoretical problem raised by Webster is the relative autonomy of the mode of development. The mode of development influences social relations, but is not determined by capitalism and, according to Castells, may survive it: “the new economy . . . may well outlast the mode of production where it was born” (Castells, 2000a, p. 11). For Webster, this implies that the mode of development follows its own technological logic, is “in key respects, beyond the reach of politics” (2004, p. 17), and therefore despite Castells' protestations to the contrary, his theoretical basis – like that of Bell – is technologically determinist.

Garnham's (2004a) criticism centers on productivity. He asks whether what he calls the “thermodynamic” model of productivity, based on inputs and outputs of energy, can be applied to information, which he suggests is non-entropic². Castells claims that the network economy relies on productivity increases made possible by information technology. But, says Garnham, there is little evidence of such productivity increases. Furthermore, he says, the “lack of a stable calculable relationship between the value of outputs . . . lies behind the historical difficulties in commodifying information” (Garnham, 2004b, p. 191). In other words, even if information output is increasing productivity, this activity is difficult for capitalists to measure and commodify, therefore it is difficult to integrate into a capitalist economy.

Alternatively, Garnham (2004a) says, productivity can be examined in terms of consumption and investment and the relations of production. Here, both he and Webster criticize the relatively autonomous role of the mode of development, emphasizing instead determining role of the mode of production. Technology is put to work at the behest of capital: “the informational mode of development is developed for and put at the service of a set of property relations and the goal of accumulation, not vice versa” (Garnham, 2004a, p. 174).

Capital and Labor

This downplaying of the role of capital also applies to Castells suggestion that much of the power of capital has been appropriated by informational (self-programmable) labor, particularly those actors who are at the juncture of different networks (Castells, 2000a, p. 16). As Webster (2002, p. 114) points out, this is very similar to the concept of a meritocracy, in which individuals have power in proportion to their knowledge, skills, or the value of their labor. This hierarchy of power therefore results, in Webster's words (p. 115), from “a 'natural' form of inequality that is supra-social, although of inordinate social consequence”. Again, the informational mode of development appears to be autonomous of – and in fact supersedes – the capitalist material base. A meritocratic model, of course, sidesteps the social and historical process – affected by factors such as wealth, education, and social relationships – by which labor is created: of how individual workers come to be self-programmable, generic, or irrelevant.

The problem with informational labor is more involved, however, for – as with other theories of the information society (Webster, 2002, pp. 115-119), it is a slippery concept to define. Castells includes such a wide diversity of tasks under the rubric of informational labor that it is difficult to accept the interests and values of these workers as a group. Webster provides the examples of journalists, stockbrokers, and surgeons. The relations between these occupations and the information they deal with is anything but consistent, and the group as a whole anything but homogeneous. (Is it level of education? communication? influence?) In fact, it seems that the other groups he mentions – commodity labor, surplus labor, etc. are far more homogeneous – in their work and in their common interests – than is informational labor.

Castells also claims that the information age is still a capitalist age (although he suggests the informational mode of development could survive the end of capitalism), but it is post-capitalist. In his model, capitalists are no longer the ruling class: their power has been usurped by the networks. The true logic of the system is the logic of the networks. But this is not new. Marx wrote (quoted in Garnham, 2001, p. 240):

The function fulfilled by the capitalist is no more than the function of capital – viz. the valorization of value by absorbing living labor – executed consciously and willingly. The capitalist functions only as personified capital, capital as a person, just as the worker is no more than labor personified.

Garnham's comment (2001, p. 240-1) is that “a given person or group can only be described as capitalist in those moments when s/he or they are acting in conscious and willed accord with the logic of capital accumulation.” Again, as both Garnham and Webster explain, the capitalists remain in control. The propertied class has better access to education, and its members are dominant in the top managerial positions which Castells claims are in control of the networks (Webster, 2002, p. 118).

First, the familiarity of Castells' analysis, and the connections he draws between the disparate phenomena and factors he examines, is valuable (here I have looked at the forces dissolving the sovereignty of the nation state).

Webster and Garnham present credible critiques of Castells' concept of an information age. The network society is more convincingly a development of industrial society than an entirely new construct. Capitalism is still the economic basis for society; the manifestation of capitalism's power in faceless networks is a phenomenon going back to Marx's original critique of the system in the 19th century. Meanwhile, the social changes wrought by information technology are not yet on the same scale as the intense period of upheaval that corresponded to the technologies whose effects were greatest in the first half of the 20th century, including the oil industry, the automobile, the aeroplane, electrification, the telephone, and nuclear physics. These criticisms affect not only the question of whether we are entering a new age, but also some of Castells' theoretical foundations.

Garnham's (2004a) wrote his criticism of Castells' treatment of productivity in 1998. The argument has since been weakened by more recent studies of the matter which have found evidence for significant productivity growth arising from the adoption of information technology. For example, Stiroh (2002) claims that annual productivity growth for the nonfarm business sector averaged 1.3% between 1973 and 1995, but the average rate has increased to 2.5% between 1995 and 2000. He credits this increase to information technology.

Castells does seem to be of two minds about the role of technology. On one hand, he describes it as enabling rather than determining: “The internationalization of the economy is only possible because of information technology. It is not information technology which pushes the process.” (1990, p. 9). His (2001) recounting of the history of the Internet also shows how that technology is a product of social forces, themselves shaped by the context of the capitalist society in which they were embedded. On the other hand, Garnham and Webster are correct that Castells seems to be elevating technology to a priviledged topic of analysis. In the context of a wider examination of society and the relations of production, his claims for the epochal impact of information technology seem suspect. However, I find that accusations of technological determinism go to far. Current theories of the social construction of technology do not reject technological determinism out of hand; theories of the social shaping and co-production of technology (e.g. Jasanoff, 2004; Mackenzie & Wajcman, 1999), for example, reject the binay distinction between technological and social determination, and instead examine how society and technology to shape each other.to