The Cybernetic Revolution and the Crisis of Capitalism (page 7 of 11)
By Jerry Harris and Carl Davidson
The Chicago Third Wave Study Group

Bladerunner versus Ecotopia

Third wave capitalists are already divided between two wings. Both agree that education and the expansion of knowledge is the key to a strong and competitive society. An information capitalist like Wriston even describes knowledge workers as the "new bourgeoisie", noting that "If Marx were alive...he would call education the means of production". (page 108).

One wing, however, carries over the "maximize-profit-in-the-short-run" values of the second wave, and applies them to both electronic and traditional forms of capital. While unabashedly seizing every public subsidy it can for itself, it takes an anti-government , "free market" stance generally. They are fond of quoting Milton Friedman, who emphasizes that the technological revolution "makes it possible to produce a product anywhere, using resources from anywhere, by a company located anywhere, to be sold anywhere."(Fortune 3-8-93) It vision is of an unrestrained and unfettered capital, free to roam the globe at will and exploit an ever changing sea of opportunity, all made possible by the instantaneous flow of information.

The other wing emphasizes creating of new value on a sustainable basis over the unrestrained making of money. It sees itself as information capitalism with a socially responsible human face, with an eye on making its fortunes in the "green industries" of the future. Its current main political representative is Vice President Al Gore, who writes on ecologically sound economics and calls for universal access to the electronic infrastructure. On the business side, elder management guru Peter Drucker defines America as a "post-capitalist" society where the main "social challenge is to preserve the income and dignity of service workers who lack the ability to become knowledge workers and to prevent class conflict". (CSM, August 26, 93). Part of their view is to see a constructive role for an activist government that promotes the dynamism of the market while trying to restrain its ecological and social destructiveness.

Third Wave and Third World

Both the crisis and new technologies have meant deeper penetration into Third World economies. Cheap labor and new markets are seen as solutions for the accumulation crisis. Information technologies have built a "global workshop" complete with a global labor force where, as Wriston and Friedman have pointed out, capital goes where it wants to build anything it desires. In fact, between 1980 and 1990, foreign investment by the world's biggest corporations grew from $560 billion to $1.6 trillion. (U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 24, 1994).

The effects on the Third World have been tremendous. First, we can now see many newly industrializing countries accelerating their transition from rural first wave societies into the second wave. This has meant a new division within the Third World between countries still mainly with agricultural economies, and those with an urban industrial base. Some Third World Marxists like Samir Amin now use the term Fourth World to denote these poor, first wave agricultural societies.