Tony Smith, IIRE 1994, £3.50, $5.25.
ISSN 0298-7902 REVIEWED by Michel Dupont, the ACl movement against unemployment IN THE "NOTEBOOK"
series of the Amsterdambased International Insti tute for Research and Education (LIRE), Tony Smith offers welldocumented critique of the theses that "lean production" makes it possible to overcome, in a lasting way, the contradictions between capital and labour.
This is high quality work, based on a deep familiarity with the international literature on this subject.
Tony Smith uses the conceptual tools of Marxism in a very pedagogical way, in order to show how hese innovations in no way abolish the structural contradiction between capital and labour. Instead.
"lean production" re-creates these contradictions, in a new form.
The result is a remarkably clear and well-documented text, which reviews contemporary developments. It is highly recommended, and stimulating reading, and an excellent synthesis for the non. specialised reader.
The problem is that lean production theory can be demolished using the critique which Marxists' make against capital, whatever the historical period. Curiously, Smith sous to narc missco the target Nowadays there are very few writers who claim that lean production makes it possible to go beyond The thesis we ought to be attack. ing is the suggestion that lean production could make it possible to launch a new period of long term capitalist growth.
Although Smith mentions Ernest Mandel in his bibliography, he doesn't refer to the Belgian Marxist's work on long waves of boom and slump.
Indeed, Smith avoids the very concept of long waves. He explic. itly rejects all "regulationist" apProaches.
This is a common attitude among excessively "orthodox" Marxists Frightened of suggesting that a reformist alternative might be pos. sible, they don't want to even consider the possibility that capitalism could be capable of regencrating it. self and rebuilding viable social structures which will permit con. tinued accumulation.
Since he reluses to ask the ques tion, Smith can hardly convince us that the answer is no. inis cov ously weakens the impact of his criWUUC Could lean production be the support lot a ach long ware of expansion?
Capitalism has regained a historically high average rate of profit. A new model for the extraction of surplus value is being introduced. In that it reinforces control over la"Capitalist Bastard, Capitalist Bastard. bour while simultancously partially liberating labour's capacity for initiative, this model is more efficient than Fordism. So, given all this, why is there no new dynamic of durable growth?
To answer questions like these, you need to stop concentrating on the sphere of production, and look at the global configuration of the new regimes of industrial and finaricial accumulation, and the rela. tionship between prayale accumulation and the public sphere.
As you do so, you begin to realise that neo-liberalism, even when rechlorced by the most innovative forms of lean production, does not offer the possibility of credible, long term growth. of neo-liberalism goes hand in band with the aggravation of social contradictions and conflicts.
But to prove this to people we need to go beyond generalities about the capitalist mode of production, however true they are, and bite into the question, of specific modes of capitalist production, in their historical context.
Let's hope that, in his future work, Tony Smith touches on this. Tony Smith replies... I am very grateful to Michel Dupont for his generous review. I would like to acknowledge that much of the credit for whatever is of worth in the monograph goes to comrades working of the front lines of the struggles against lean production, especially unose associated with the newsletter Labor Certain criticisms made in the graph does not examine the global in mone Coir ism, the political strategy ofheoIberalism, nor the role of the My only detence is that it was not possible to talk about everything in a relatively I am less sure about other objections. Dupont asserts that! missed the target" because no one today believes lean production goes bewhere notes, my target was not the caim that lean production transcends capitalism, but the quite different thesis that lean production is a form of capitalism with the poten. tial to abolish many antagonisms between capital and labour, capital ano consumers, and amore units of capital. And this thesis is still being proclaimed in the popular and scholarly business press, the bourgeois academic community, and in production is being introduced.
Dupont claims that my account orthodox clating capicalism's ability to regenerate. This is puzzling, given statements such as the following in the Notebook: *The epoch of Fordclose. We now appear to be in the midst of a transitional period, in which a new variant of capicalism is gradually taking shape."
It is completely consistent to ae cept criticisms of the regulationist school and still hold that capitalism develops in long waves in which technologies and forms of social orannati nool sway in one waive give way to new technologies and social forms.
he moston nue cated in the review is whether lean pro. duction could in principle be part of a solution to low growth rates. In a manner perhaps in tension with his antost or orthodox marasts. Dupont denies that this could be the case.
I am not so sure a definitive judgement is yet possible. As Ernest Mandel argued, the start of an expansionary wave does not deparo sampy soon to stalley of new technologies and forms of so. cial organisation; a myriad of contin. especially those connected to class struggle.
Among these contingencies is the extent to which the ideology of lean and its allies. This is why I thought it worthwhile to establish that the promises proclaimed by advocates of lean production can only be fulfilled in socis ism.
But Dupont is correct to insist that this is part of a much bigger story, and that much remains to be done in response to the restructuring of capital. * To order Lean Production: A Capitalist Utopia, send a cheque for £4.00 to Outlook International, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU. (Michel Dupont's review was of the French edition)
is incompatible with long wave the- ry, and lumps me with