ellen wood - modernity, postmodernity or capitalism

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ReviewofInternationaloliticalEconomy:3 Autumn1997:539-560

Modernity, postmodernity orcapitalism?Ellen Meiksins Wood

York University, Toronto

ABSTRACTThis articlechallengesthe currentlyfashionableperiodizationof historysince t:he ighteenthcenturyinto two majorphases, 'modernity'and 'post-modernity'. Questioning the conception of 'modernity' itself, Woodemphasizes the specificityof capitalismin opposition to other aspects ofmodernity with which it is conventionally associated, and argues thatif we are now witnessing an epochal shift, it is not a transition from'modernity'to 'postmodernity'but the maturationand universalizationof capitalism.The 'universalization'of capitalismis then distinguishedfrom 'globalization',a concept which, she argues, obscures more than itreveals.

KEYWORDSCapitalism; modernity; postmodernity; globalization; Enlightenment;perio(lization.

FROM MODERNITY TO POSTMODERNITYSince about the early 1970s, we are supposed to have been living in anew historical epoch. That epoch has been variously described. Someaccounts emphasize cultural changes ('postmodernism'), while othersfocus more on economic transformations, changes in production andmarketing or in corporate and financial organization ('late capitalism','multinational capitalism', 'flexible accumulation', 'globalization' and soon). These descriptions have in common a preoccupation with new tech-nologies, new forms of communication, the internet, the 'informationsuperhighway'. All these factors - cultural and economic, with theirtechnological foundations - have been brought together in the conceptof 'postmodernity' and the proposition that in the past two or threedecades we have witnessed a historic transition from 'modernity' topostmodernity.

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ARTICLESI want to considerwhat is involved in periodizing the historyof capi-talism into these two major phases, modernityand postmodernity. ThenI shall look more closely at what seems to me wrong with the conceptof modernityitself. If thatconcept falls, it should follow that therecannotbe much left of postmodernity.My main objective s to consider whetherthis periodization helps or hinders our understandingof capitalism.I had better make one thing clear at the start.Of course it is impor-tant to analysethe never-ending changesin capitalism.Butperiodizationinvolves more than just tracking the process of change. To propose aperiodizationof epochal shifts is to say something about what is essen-tial in defining a social form like capitalism. Epochal shifts have to dowith basic transformationsn some essential constitutive element of thesystemn.n other words, how we periodize capitalism depends on how

we define the system in the first place. The question then is this: Whatdo concepts like modernity and postmodernity tell us about the waysin which the people who use them understand capitalism?I had better explain, too, that I shall not be talking about the ideas ofthose people we loosely call, or who call themselves, postmodernists.Mymain concernhere is the political economy of what some people, includ-ing marxists like Fredric Jameson and David Harvey, are callingpostmodernity.So let me sketch out very brieflywhat they have in mind.'Accordingto theorists like Jamesonand Harvey, modemity and post-modernity representtwo differentphases of capitalism.The shift fromone to the other has notbeen a shift fromcapitalism o some postcapitalistor 'post-industrial'era,and the basic logic of capitalist accumulationstillapplies. But there has nevertheless been a 'sea-change' in the nature ofcapitalism,a shift from one materialconfiguration o another, expressedin a transitionfrom one cultural formation to a different one.For Jameson,for instance, postmodernity corresponds to 'late capital-ism' or a new multinational, 'informational'and 'consumerist'phase ofcapitalism. David Harvey, following the Regulation School, woulddescribe it as a transition from Fordism to flexible accumulation. Asimilar idea occurs in rather less nuanced form in certain theories of'disorganized capitalism'.2Postmodernity then corresponds to a phaseof capitalism where mass production of standardized goods, and theforms of labour associated with it, have been replaced by flexibility:newformsof production- 'leanproduction',the 'teamconcept', 'just-in-time'production,diversificationof commodities for niche markets, a 'flexible'labour force, mobile capital and so on, all made possible by new infor-mational technologies.Correspondingto these shifts, according to these theories, there havebeen major cultural changes. One important way of explaining thesechanges, notably in Harvey's account of postmodernity, has to do witha 'tine-space compression', the accelerationof time and the contraction

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITY OR CAPITALISM?of space made possible by new technologies, in new forms of tele-communication, n fast new methods of productionand marketing,newpatternsof consumption,new modes of financialorganization.The resulthas been a new cultural and intellectualconfigurationsummed up inthe formula 'postmodernism',which is said to have replacedthe cultureof modernism and the intellectualpatternsassociated with the 'projectof modernity'.The project of modernity, according to these accounts, had itsoriginsin the Enlightenment, houghit came to fruition n the nineteenthcentury..The so-called Enlightenmentprojectis supposed to representrationalism,technocentrism, he standardizationof knowledge and pro-duction, a belief in linear progress and in universal, absolute truths.Postmodernism s supposed to be a reaction to the projectof modernity- though it can also be seen as rooted in modernism,in the scepticism,the sensitivity to change and contingency,which were already present inthe Enlightenment.Postmodernism sees the world as essentially frag-mented and indeterminate,rejects any 'totalizing' discourses, any so-called 'meta-narratives', omprehensiveand universalistic heories aboutthe world and history.It also rejectsany universalisticpolitical projects,even universalisticemancipatoryprojects in otherwords, projects or ageneral 'humanemancipation' rather than very particular strugglesagainst very diverse and particularoppressions.What, then, are the implicationsof dividing the history of capitalisminto these phases, modernity and postmodernity?The first importantthing to keep in mind is that modernity is identified with capitalism.This identificationmay seem fairly innocuous, but I shall argue that itis a fundamentalmistake, that the so-called project of modernity mayhave little to do with capitalism.The second point is that this periodization seems to mean that thereare really two major phases in capitalismand one majorrupture. First,modernity seems to be everything from the eighteenth century until(probably) he 1970s(Harvey actually gives it a very precise date: 1972).We can subdivide the long phase of modernityinto smaller phases (asboth Jamesonand Harvey do); but postmodernity seems to representadistinctive kind of break.People may disagree about exactly when thebreak took place, or about its magnitude. But they seem to agree thatthis break is different from other epochalchanges in the history of capi-talism. It seems to be a breaknot just from some immediatelyprecedingphase but from the whole preceding history of capitalism. At least, thatseems to be the inescapable implication of tracingmodernity back tothe Enlightenment.So there is a major interruption in the history ofcapitalism somewhere between modernity and postmodernity. I shallargue thatthis interruption,or at least this way of looking at it, is prob-lematic too.

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ARTICLESLet me take each of these points separately: first, the concept ofmodernityand the identificationof modernitywith capitalism;and thenthe question of the historic rupture in the latter half of the twentiethcentury. I shall argue that the theory of postmodemity which empha-sizes the discontinuities within capitalism is based, explicitly orimplicitly, on a theory of history that downplays the discontinuitiesbetween capitalist and non-capitalist societies, a theory that disguisesthe historicalspecificity of capitalism.

MODERNITY AND THE NON-HISTORYOF CAPITALISMLet us look first at the identification of modernity with capitalism.Forthat, we have to begin at the beginning, with the origin of capitalism.3The imainpoint I want to make is this: in most accounts of capitalism,there really is no beginning. Capitalism seems always to bethere, some-where; and it only needs to be released from its chains - for instance,from the fetters of feudalism - to be allowed to grow and mature.Typically, these fetters are political: he parasitic powers of lordship orthe restrictions of an autocratic state; and these political constraintsconfine the free movement of 'economic'actorsand the free expressionof economic rationality.The 'economic' is identified with exchange ormarkets;and the assumption seems to be that the seeds of capitalismare contained in the most primitive acts of exchange, in any form oftrade or market activity. That assumption is typically connected withanotherone, namely that history has been an almost natural process oftechnological development. One way or another, capitalism more or lessnaturally appearswhen and where expanding markets and technologicaldevelopment reachthe right level. Many marxist explanationsare funda-mentally the same - with the addition of bourgeois revolutions to helpbreak through the fetters.The effect of these explanations is to stress the continuitybetweennon-capitalist and capitalist societies, and to deny or disguise thespecificity f capitalism.Exchangehas existed since time immemorial,andit seems that the capitalist market is just more of the same. Inthiskindof argument,capitalism'sneed to revolutionize the forces of pro-duction is just an extension and an acceleration of universal andtranshistorical,almost natural tendencies. So the lineage of capitalismpasses naturally romtheearliestmerchant hrough the medieval burgherto the Enlightenmentbourgeois and finally to the industrial capitalist.There is a similar logic in certain marxist versions of this story, eventhough the narrative n more recentversions often shifts from the townto the countryside, and merchants are replaced by rural commodityproducers.In these versions,petty commodity production,releasedfrom

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITYOR CAPITALISM?the bonds of feudalism, more or less naturally grows into capitalism.In other words, petty commodity producers, given half a chance, willtake the capitalist road.What gets lost in these narratives is a perception of the capitalistmarket as a specific social form, the product of a dramatic historicalrupture. The capitalist market looks more like an opportunity thanan imperative,a compulsion, the imperative of accumulation and profitmaximization, which is rooted in very specific social property relationsand which creates its own very specific drive to improve labour produc-tivity by technical means.

The concept of modernity as commonly used belongs to this standardview of history, the one that takes capitalism for granted as the outcomeof already existing tendencies, even natural laws, when and wherethey are given a chance. In the evolutionary process leading from earlyforms of exchange to modern industrial capitalism, modernity kicks inwhen these shackled economic forces, and the economic rationality ofthe bourgeois, are liberated from traditional constraints.This concept of modernity, then, belongs to a view of history thatcuts across the great divide between capitalist and non-capitalist societies.It treats specifically capitalist laws of motion as if they were the universallaws of history. And it lumps together various very different historicaldevelopments, capitalist and non-capitalist. At its worst, then, this viewof history makes capitalism historically invisible. At the very least, itnaturalizes capitalism.It is important to notice, too, that even anti-modernism can havethe same effect of naturalizing capitalism. This effect is already visiblein the sociological theories of Max Weber: modern history, he says, hasbeen a long process of rationalization, the rationalization of the statein bureaucratic organization and the rationalization of the economy inindustrial capitalism. The effect of this process - the progress of reasonand freedom associated with the Enlightenment - has been to liberatehumanity from traditional constraints; but at the same time, rational-ization produces and disguises a new oppression, the 'iron cage'of modern organizational forms. Much of this argument depends, ofcourse, on assimilating the various meanings of 'reason' and 'rationality'(which Weber is famous for distinguishing, though his analysis ofmodern history arguably relies in large part on their conflation, so thatthe instrumental 'rationality' of capitalism is by definition related to'reason' in its Enlightenment meaning). The paradoxical implication hereis that capitalism and bureaucratic domination are just natural exten-sions of the progress of reason and freedom. In Weber's theory, wecan already see one of the characteristic paradoxes of today's post-modernism: in anti-modernism there is often no great distance betweenlament and celebration.

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ARTICLESMODERNITY AND THE 'ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT'

I have suggested that the conflation of capitalism with modernity hasthe effect of disguising the specificity of capitalism, if not conceptual-izing it away altogether. Now let me turn briefly to the other ide of thecoin. My point is not just that capitalisms historically specific. The otherside of the coin is that, if this so-called modernity has little to do withcapitalism, then the identification of capitalism with modernity maydisguise the specificity of modernity too.I shall illustrate what I mean by going straight to the fountainheadof this so-called modernity: the Enlightenment. Here, again, are someof the main features of modernity which are supposed to go back to theEnlightenment: rationalism and an obsession with rational planning, afondness for 'totalizing' views of the world, the standardization ofknowledge, universalism - a belief in universal truths and values, anda belief in linear progress, especially the progress of reason and freedom.These features are supposed to be associated with the development ofcapitalism, either because early capitalism, in the process of unfoldingitself, created them, or because the advancement of these principles -like rationalization - brought capitalism with it.As we all know, it has become the height of fashion to attack theso-called Enlightenment project. These Enlightenment values I havejust been enumerating are supposed to be - and here I quote one ofthe milder indictments - 'at the root of the disasters that have rackedhumanity throughout this century':4 everything from world wars andimperialism to.ecological destruction. There is no space here to pursueall the latest anti-Enlightenment nonsense, which by now far exceedsthe reasonable insights that may once have been contained in suchcritiques of the Enlightenment. So I shall just make one simple point:the conflation of 'modernity' with capitalism encourages us to throwout the baby with the bath water, or, more precisely, to keep the bathwater and throw out the baby.Postmodemists are inviting us to jettison all that is best in theEnlightenment project - especially its commitment to a universal humanemancipation - and we are being asked to blame these values for thedestructive effects we should be ascribing to capitalism. Marxist theo-rists of postmodernity like Harvey and Jameson generally do not fallinto this trap, but their periodization does little to avoid it. What I wantto suggest here is that it might be useful to separate out theEnlightenment project from those aspects of our current condition thatoverwhelmingly belong not to the 'project of modernity' but to capi-talism. This might, by the way, be useful in countering not justanti-Enlightenment postmodernism but also capitalist triumphalism(though maybe they come down to the same thing). Anyway, theobvious way to start is to look at the question historically.

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITY OR CAPITALISM?My own argument,to put it baldly, is that much of the Enlightenmentprojectbelongs to a distinctlynon-capialist society,not just pre-capitalistbut non-capitalist.Many features of the Enlightenment, n other words,are rooted in non-capitalistsocial propertyrelations.They belong to asocial form that is not just a transitionalpoint on the way to capitalismbut an alternativeroute out of feudalism.Here is a quick and very incomplete sampling of the kind of thing Ihave in mind. First,a quick sketch of the relevanthistoricalcontext,theabsolutist state in eighteenth-centuryFrance: he main point about theFrenchabsolutist state was that it functioned not justas a politicalformbut as an economicresource for a substantialsection of the ruling class.In that sense, it represents not just the political but the economic ormaterialcontext of the Enlightenment.The absolutist state was a central-

ized instrumentof extra-economicsurplus extraction,and office in thestatewas a formof propertywhich gave its possessorsaccess to peasant-produced surpluses. There were also other, decentralized forms ofextra-economicappropriation,he residues of feudalism and its so-called'parcellizedsovereignties'.These forms of extra-economicappropriationwere, in other words, directly antitheticalto the purely economicformof capitalist exploitation.Now think about the fact that the principal home of the so-calledproject of modernity, eighteenth-centuryFrance, is a predominantlyruralsociety (somethinglike 85-90 per cent rural?),with a limited andfragmentedinternalmarket,which still operateson non-capitalistprin-ciples, not the appropriationof surplus value from commodified labourpower, not the creationof value in production,but rather the age-oldpracticesof commercialprofittaking- profiton alienation,buying cheapand selling dear, tradingtypicallyin luxurygoods or supplying the state- with an overwhelmingly peasantpopulation which is the antithesis ofa mass consumermarket.As for the bourgeoisie which is supposed tobe the main materialsource, so to speak, of the Enlightenment, t is nota capitalistclass. In fact, it is not, for the most part, even a traditionalcommercialclass. Themainbourgeoisactorshere,and laterin the FrenchRevolution, are professionals, office holders and intellectuals. Theirquarrelwith the aristocracyhas little to do with liberating capitalismfrom the fetters of feudalism.Where, then, are the principlesof so-called modernity coming from?Are they coming out of a new but growing capitalism?Do they repre-sent an aspiring capitalistclass struggling against a feudal aristocracy?Can we at least say that capitalism is the unintended consequence ofthe project of modernity? Or does that project represent somethingdifferent?Consider the class interests of the Frenchbourgeoisie. One way offocusing on them is to project forward to the French Revolution, the

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ARTICLESculmination of the Enlightenment project. What were the main revolu-tionary objectives of the bourgeoisie? At the core of their programmewere civil equality, the attack on privilege,and a demand for 'careers opento talent'. This meant, for example, equal access to the highest state officeswhich the aristocracy tended to monopolize and which they were threat-ening to close off altogether. It also meant a more equitable system of tax-ation, so that the burden would no longer be disproportionately carriedby the Third Estate, for the benefit of the privileged estates, among whosemost cherished privileges were exemptions from taxation. The main tar-gets of these complaints were the aristocracy but also the Church.How did these bourgeois interests express themselves ideologically?Take the example of universalism, the belief in certain universal prin-ciples which apply to humanity in general in all times and places.Universalism has certainly had a long history in the west, but it had avery special meaning and salience for the French bourgeoisie. To put itbriefly, the bourgeois challenge to privilege and the privileged estates,to the nobility and the Church, expressed itself in asserting universalismagainst aristocratic particularism.The bourgeoisie challenged the aristo-cracy by invoking the universal principles of citizenship, civic equalityand the 'nation' - the nation as a universalistic identity which tran-scended particular and exclusive identities of kinship, tribe, village,status, estate or class.In other words, universality was opposed to privilege in its literalmeaning as a special or private law - universality as against differen-tial privilege and prescriptive right. It was a fairly easy step fromchallenging traditional privilege and prescriptive right to attacking theprinciples of custom and tradition in general. And this kind of chal-lenge easily became a theory of history, where the bourgeoisie and itsorganic intellectuals were assigned a leading role as the historic agentsof a rupture with the past, the embodiments of reason and freedom, thevanguard of progress.As for the bourgeois attitude towards the absolutist state, it is rathermore ambiguous. As long as the bourgeoisie had reasonable access tolucrative state careers, the monarchical state suited it well; and evenlater, it was the so-called bourgeois revolution that completed thecentralizing project of absolutism. In fact, in some ways the bourgeoischallenge to the traditional order was simply extending rather than repu-diating absolutist principles.Take, again, the principle of universality. The monarchical stateeven in the sixteenth century had challenged the feudal claims of thenobility - often with the support of the Third Estate and the bourgeoisiein particular - precisely by claiming to represent universality againstthe particularity of the nobility and other competing jurisdictions.The bourgeoisie also inherited and extended other absolutist principles:

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITY OR CAPITALISM?the preoccupation with rational planning and standardization, forexample, something pioneered by the absolutist state and its leadingofficials, like Richelieu and Colbert. After all, even the standardizationof the Frenchlanguage was part of the state's centralizingproject- aproject of 'rationalization'which had its classic cultural expression inthe formal gardens at Versailles.5Let me introduce an interesting footnote here: people like DavidHarvey (and MarshallBerman6),who have given us some of the mostimportant treatments of modernity and postmodernity, like to em-phasize the duality of the modernist consciousness. The modernistsensibility, they say, combines universality and immutability with asensitivity to ephemerality,contingency, fragmentation.They suggestthat this dualism goes back to the Enlightenment.The argument seemsto be that the preoccupation with universalityand absolute truth wasactually an attempt to make sense out of the fleeting, ephemeralandconstantlymobile and changing experienceof modem life, which theyassociate with capitalism.Bermanquotes some passages from Rousseau's New Eloise,as one ofthe earliest expressions of the modernist sensibility (he calls Rousseau'the archetypalmodem voice in the early phase of modernity'7).Themost telling passage comes from a letter in which Rousseau's characterSt Preux records his reactions on coming to Paris.What Berman seeshere is the modernist sense of new possibilities combined with theunease and uncertaintythat come from constant motion, change anddiversity. It is an experiencethat Bermanassociateswith an early phaseof capitalism.But something ratherdifferent occurs to me when I read the wordsof St Preuxin the NewEloise,or even when I readBerman'sown accountof the 'maelstrom'of modern life:not so much theexperienceof moderncapitalismbut the age-old fear and fascinationaroused by the city. Somuch of what Rousseau'sSt Preux,and MarshallBermanhimself, haveto say about the experienceof 'modernlife' could, it seems to me, havebeen said by the Italiancountrymanarriving n the ancient city of Rome.It may be significant that one thinker for whom Rousseau himselfexpresses a special affinity- quoting him on the title page of Emile,ona theme that is central to the New Eloiseand to Rousseau's work ingeneral,the need to restorethe healthof humanity by a returnto naturalprinciples - is the Roman philosopher Seneca. For all Rousseau's so-called romanticism,the sensibility of the New Eloisemay indeed havemore in common with ancientStoicism than with capitalistmodernism.But in any case, it may be no accident that these so-called 'modernist'literarytropes- Rousseau'sand those of other Europeanwriters- comenot from a highly urbanizedsociety but from societieswith a still over-whelmingly ruralpopulation.

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ARTICLESAt any rate, my main point is that the ideology of the French bour-geoisie in the eighteenth century had not much to do with capitalismandmuch more to do with struggles over non-capitalist orms of appropria-tion, conflictsover extra-economicpowers of exploitation.I have no wishto reduce the Enlightenmentto crude class ideology; but the point isthat in this particularhistorical conjuncture, n distinctly non-capitalistconditions, even bourgeois class ideology ook the form of a largervisionof general human emancipation,not just emancipation or thebourgeoisiebut for humanity in general. In other words, for all its limitations,thiswas an emancipatoryuniversalism- which is, of course, why it couldbe takenup by much more democraticand revolutionaryforces.

MODERNITY VS. CAPITALISMTo see the complexities here, we need only compare France withEngland. England is not generally seen as the main home of 'moder-nity' in the currentlyfashionable sense of the word, but it certainly isassociatedwith the rise of capitalism.Englandin the eighteenthcentury,at the height of 'agrariancapitalism', has a growing urban population,which forms a much larger proportionof the total population than inFrance. Small proprietors are being dispossessed, not just by directcoercion but also by economic pressures. London is the largest city inEurope. There is a far more integrated - and competitive - intemalmarket,the first national market in Europe,or the world. There alreadyexists the beginning of a mass consumer market for cheap everydaygoods, especially food and textiles, and an increasingly proletarianizedworkforce. England's productive base, in agriculture, is already oper-ating on basically capitalist principles, with an aristocracy deeplyinvolved in agrarian capitalism and new forms of commerce. AndEngland is in the process of creating an industrial capitalism.What, then, are the characteristicand distinctive ideological expres-sions of English capitalism n the same period? Not Cartesianrationalismand rational planning but the 'invisible hand' of classical politicaleconomy and the philosophy of British empiricism. Not the formalgarden of Versailles but the irregular, apparently unplanned and'natural' andscape garden. Certainly there is an interest in science andtechnology shared with England'sEuropean neighbours. And, after all,the French Enlightenmentowed much to people like Bacon,Locke andNewton. But here in England, the characteristic deology that sets itapartfrom otherEuropeancultures s above all the ideology of 'improve-ment': not the Enlightenmentidea of the improvement of humanitybutthe improvement of property, the ethic - and indeed the science - ofproductivity nd profit, the commitment to increasing the productivityof labour, the ethic of enclosure and dispossession.

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITY OR CAPITALISM?The iclea of improvementand productivityin this sense goes back tothe seventeenth centuryand has its earliesttheoreticalexpressionin thepolitical economy of William Petty, and in the writings of JohnLocke.This deology, especially the notion of agriculturalmprovementand theimprovement literatureproduced in England, is conspicuously absentin eighteenth-centuryFrance,where peasantsdominate productionandlandlords retain their rentiermentality - as, for that matter, does thebourgeoisie n the whole. The exception here, by the way, proves therule: in particular,the Physiocrats, those French political economistsfor whom English agriculturewas the model.Now if we want to look for the roots of a destructivemode'rnity'the ideology, say, of technocentrismand ecological degradation- wemight startby looking here,not in the Enlightenmentbut in the project

of 'improvement', he subordinationof all humanvalues to productivityand profit. Dare I say that it is no accident that the mad cow diseasescandal has happened in Britain,the birth-placeof 'improvement',andnot elsewhere in Europe?AN EPOCHAL SHIFT?

So much for modernity. Now let me return to the larger question ofperiodizationand to the shift from modernityto postmodernity.I havetried to situate the concept of modernity in a particularconception ofhistory which I think is deeply flawed and which has the effect ofobscuringthe historicalspecificityof capitalism,neutralizing and natu-ralizing capitalism, if not actually conceptualizingit out of existence.But we still have to deal with the changesn capitalism.Capitalism bydefinition means constant change and development, not to mentioncyclical crises. But was there a historic rupture of some special kind -perhaps in the 1960sor 1970s?I have to confess straight away that I am only beginning to clarifymy thoughts on this. But the one thing I am fairlycertainabout is thatthe concepts of modemity and postmodernity,and the periodizationofcapitalism n these terms,will offer little help in understandingwhetherthere has been some historic rupture,and if there has, what exactly itis, how deep it is, how lasting and decisive, or what consequences itmight have for any politicalproject.These concepts and this periodiza-tion invite us, I think, to look in all the wrong places.I have been saying here that the concept of modernity as currentlyused is associated with a view of capitalistdevelopment that combinestechnological determinism with commercialinevitability, so that capi-talism is simply an extension of certaintranshistorical,almost naturalprocesses:the expansionof tradeand technologicalprogress.What kindof periodizationof capitalism would we expect from this kind of view?

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ARTICLESWhat would be the signposts of majorepochal change?We might expectthe milestones to mark some majorchange in the market and/or somemajor technological shift. That is, in fact, largely what we are offeredby currenttheories of the transitionfrom modernity to postmodernity.And while these theories may tell us many interesting things, they tellus little about any majorhistoricalruptures in capitalism.Take the so-called transitionfrom Fordism to flexible accumulation.Let us accept, for the sake of argument,that these changes in the labourprocess and marketing strategies are as widespread as the theorists of'disorganized' capitalism say they are. What exactly is new about thisshift? There are no doubt many new things;but what is so new that itjustifies talking about an epochal transition from modernity to post-moderity, and even from the whole of capitalism up to that point tosome really new kind of capitalism?The old Fordism used the assembly line as a substitute for higher-cost skilled craftsmen and to tighten the control of the labour processby capital, with the obvious objective of extracting more value fromlabour. Now, the new technologiesare used to the same ends: to makeproducts easy and cheap to assemble (how else, for instance, wouldoutsourcingbe possible?), to control the labour process, to eliminate orcombine various skills in both manufacturingand service sectors, toreplace higher- with lower-wage workers, to 'downsize' the workforcealtogether- again to extract more value from labour. Whatis new, then,about this so-callednew economy is not that the new technologies repre-sent a unique kind of epochal shift. On the contrary,they simply allowthe logic of the old mass production economy to be diversified andextended.Now, the old logic can reach into whole new sectors, and itcan affect types of workers more or less untouched before.To see these developments as a majorepochal rupture, we must focuson the more or less autonomous logic of technology,whether the tech-nology of the labour process or the technology of marketing. Myemphasishere s on the logic of capitalism, ot some particular echnologyor labourprocessbut the logic of specific social property relations. Therecertainly have been constant technological changes and changes inmarketingstrategies.Butthese changesdo not constitute a majorepochalshift in capitalism'slaws of motion.Orperhaps it is possible to say thatFordism itself did constitutesomekind of epochal shift, at least in the sense that it represented the comple-tion of the process that Marxcalled the real, as distinct from the formal,subsumption of labour by capital. In that sense, the new technologiesrepresent not an epochal shift so much as an extensionof Fordism.It isnot just that the logic of capitalistaccumulationstill applies in some gen-eral sense to the new technologies or to new forms of production andmarketing,but that they are following the logic of Fordism in particular.

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITY OR CAPITALISM?On the whole, I am inclined to dismiss the 'condition of postmoder-nity' as -notso much a historical ondition correspondingto a period ofcapitalismbut as a psychological condition correspondingto a periodin the biographyof the western Leftintelligentsia.It certainlyhas some-thing to do with capitalism, but it may just be the theoretical self-consciousness of a generationof intellectualswho came to maturityinthe atypicalmoment of the long postwarboom. For some in this gener-ation, the end of the boom felt like the end of normality,and so thecyclical decline since the 1970s has had a special, cataclysmicmeaningfor thenm.Others, especially 'postmodernists',still seem to be stuck inthe prosperous phase of so-called consumercapitalism.If there has been some special kind of epochal change in the latterhalf of t:he wentieth century,we have to look for it somewhere else. If

we are looking for some change more profound than a change in tech-nology or marketing strategies, then explanations having to do withflexibleaccumulationor consumerismarejustnot good enough. If therehas bee:nan epochal shift in the latter half of the twentieth century,weshall have to look for it somewhereother than in flexibleaccumulation,consumerism, nformation echnology,the culture of postmodernism,orany of the usual suspects. EricHobsbawm,in his recent history of thetwentieth century, talks about a monumental change in the mid-twentieth century, in fact what he calls 'the greatest, most rapid, andmost fundamental (economic, social, and cultural transformation) nrecorded history'.8Its most dramaticsymptom, he suggests, has beenthe massive decline of the world's rural population, and in particularthe death of the peasantry.But what underlies this change, I think, isthat thi's is the period when capitalism itself has become for the firsttime something approachinga universal system.I mean that capitalism,even in so-calledadvancedcapitalist societies,has only now truly penetratedevery aspect of life, the state, the prac-tices and ideologies of ruling and producingclasses, and the prevailingculture. In ThePristineCultureof Capitalismsee Note 5) and elsewhere,I have suggested some of the ways in which even in Europe (andcontrary to some conventions, more in continental Europe than inBritain),capitalism has been slow to absorb the state and the dominantculture; but in the past few decades, the process has been all butcompleted.The issue here is not, for reasons I shall explain in a moment,what is generally meant by that rathertired formula, 'globalization'.Iam speaking here about the universalization (or should I say the total-ization?) of capitalismitself, its social relations, its laws of motion, itscontradictions- the logic of commodification,accumulation and profitmaximizationpenetratingevery aspect of our lives.

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ARTICLESGLOBALIZATION OR UNIVERSALIZATION?

'Globalization'figures prominently in just about every account of thecurrent epoch, but this now all-pervasive concept is problematic forseveral reasons. There are, first, empiricalquestions about how 'global'the currenteconomy really is. Butbeyond these specific empiricalques-tions there are largerissues, having to do not only with the answersbutwith the questions themselves and with the assumptionson which theyare based.'Globalization' akes as its starting point the modern nation-state andthe nationaleconomies associatedwith it. Globalization, n other words,is in the first instance concerned with geographic space and politicaljurisdiction.What defines the present historicalmoment is supposed tobe the breaching, transcendence or obliteration of national boundariesby economic agencies, and, correspondingly,the weakening of politicalauthorities whose jurisdiction is confined within those boundaries -manifest not only in the expansion of marketsbut in the transnationalorganization of corporations,the more or lescs ree movement of capitalacross national borders, and so on.Questions have been raised (for instance, by Michael Mann in thisjournal, pp. 472-96) about the degree to which the increasingly 'global'economy really has weakened the nation-state or diluted local andregional particularities.These are certainly important questions (and Ihappen to share many of the doubts expressed here by Mann);but equally significant is the fact that the debate is taking place onthis terrain at all. What is striking, among other things, is how faith-fully the concept of globalization reproduces the question-beggingassumrptions nd proceduresassociated with the traditional non-historyof capitalism.The traditionalmodels of capitalist development, as we saw, took forgranted the logic of capitalism. They concerned themselves simplywith its liberation from constraints and its quantitative expansion.Capitalismwas simply the extension of a perennial 'economic' ration-ality, a rationality inherent in every act of exchange, even the mostrudimentaryand primitive.This economic logic inevitably worked itselfout, coming to fruition in 'commercialsociety', wherever it was liber-ated from external constraints, especially from the political parasitismof lordshipand the dead hand of autocratic tates, advancing in tandemwith technological progress. And once certain artificial barriersto thespread of markets were removed (barrierserected, say, by 'barbarian'invasions of the Roman empire, or - as in the 'Pirenne thesis' - by theclosing of east-west traderoutes as a consequenceof Muslim conquests),these economic principles moved along a growing network of trade toembracemore and more of the world.

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITYOR CAPITALISM?In these accounts, then, the rise of capitalism represents little morethan a cluantitativeexpansion of trade, effected in large part by tech-nological advance and the casting off of political fetters. It was only amatter of time before a theory emerged that would do for the currenthistoricalmomentwhat old theoriesof capitalistdevelopment had donefor the transition from feudalism to capitalism. 'Globalization' s justanother step in the geographic expansion of 'economic'rationalityandits emancipation from political jurisdiction. In the long geopoliticalprocess that has constitutedthe spreadof capitalism,the borders of thenation-state appearto be the last frontier,and national-statepower thefinal fetter to be burst asunder.'Globalization' ven has in common with the old non-historyof capi-talism a kind of technologicaldeterminism. Just as in old theories of

economic development the ultimate cause of capitalist expansion wasan almost naturalprocessof technologicalprogress,now the new infor-mation technologiesseem to representnot only the necessaryconditionsof possibility for globalizationbut its causal explanation.Just as capi-talism emerged when - and because - it was technically possible, so ithas been 'globalized' by the simple realization of technicalcapacities.This conception of globalization as a kind of territorial mperativeand/or an inexorable impulse for liberation from political constraint,driven by the natural laws of technological progress, is ill-equipped todeal with some of the most notablefeatures of todays world order. Forinstance, by definition 'globalization'entails a weakening of the nation-state;and however much this conception may permit us to acknowledgethe incompleteness of the globalizing process and the residual powersstill left to the state, it has far greater difficulty in accommodatingthe simple fact that the global economy - the transnationalizationofmarketsand capital- not only presupposesthe nation-statebut relies onthe state as its principal instrument.9 f anything, the new global orderis more thanever a world of nation-states;and if these states are perme-able to the movements of capital, that permeabilityhas as its corollary,indeed as its condition, the existence of national boundaries and statejurisdictions.The contrastbetween today's 'global' economy and earlier forms ofcolonial imperialismshould suffice to illustrate the point: colonies werewhat they were precisely because they presented no effective geopolit-ical barrierto imperial power. The movement of capital across colonialboundaries was, of course, not just a matter of paper transfers or elec-tronic transmissions but the bodily movement of coercive force.Geopoliticalborders, n other words, were not only notionally but phys-ically permeable.Today, transnational apital is even more effective thanwas the old-style military mperialism n penetratingevery cornerof theworld; but it tends to accomplish this through the medium of local

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ARTICLEScapitaland nationalstates,and it depends on local political jurisdictionsto maintainthe conditions of economic stabilityand labour discipline.10'Globalization', hen, is imperfecteven as description,but it is moreprofoundlyvacuous as explanation.Reallyto explainthe origins of capi-talism it was necessaryto give up the habit of assuming the very thingthat needed explanation,and to account for the origins of a new histor-ical dynamic - the historicallyunprecedentedimperatives of capitalistaccumulation by explainingthe transformationof social propertyrela-tions that set it in train. Similarly,we must now talk about the newworld order not just in essentially geographicterms, nor simply as theliberationand spatial expansionof some perennial'economic'logic, butas a continuing process of social transformation a social transforma-tion that increasingly subjectshuman beings, their social relations andpractices,to the imperativesof capital accumulation.Forthat reason,I preferto talk about the universalizationf capitalism- the increasing imposition of capitalist imperatives,a capitalist 'logicof process', on all aspects of social life - rather than about 'globaliza-tion'. This also means,by the way, that while the processof globalizationmay be limited in the ways suggested by Mann,it does not follow - ashe seems to think it does - that the determinativeand transformativeeffects of capitalism re correspondingly limited. The nation-state maysurvive, local and regional specificities may persist, and yet the imper-atives of accumulation, competition, commodification and profitmaximizationmay be no less universal for that.ElmarAltvater'selaborationof Polanyi'sconception of 'disembedding'comes closer to the kind of thing I have in mind, as does Bob Jessop'snotion of the increasingsubsumption by capitalof every social 'sphere'.I do, though, have certainreservations about both these formulations-which I can only briefly sketch out here. Polanyi's idea of 'disembed-ding' has many attractions. It displays a greater sensitivity to thespecificity of capitalism - 'market society' - than almost any otheraccountof economicdevelopment,a greater appreciationof the massivehistoricalruptureentailed by the advent of capitalism, and of its inher-ently destructive effects, which have from the beginning requiredcorrectivecountervailing forces - particularlyby means of state inter-vention - to preserve the social fabric. But Polanyi's account is also insomneways misleading - not least because it retains a strong measureof technological determinism and a suggestion of inevitability (which Idetect in Altvater too), reminiscentof the conventional non-history ofcapitalism. For ali its emphasis on the social changes and disruptionswrought by 'marketsociety', in the final analysis the pivotal momentin the history of 'market society' was a (virtuallyinevitable, at least inthe west) technologicalchange:not the establishmentof capitalist socialrelationsbut the IndustrialRevolution.1

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITYOR CAPITALISM?It is iinportant, oo, not to allow the idea of 'disembedding'to obscurethe very insight it is meant to convey. The 'disembedding' of the'economy' from society is, of course, not - or not only - the separationof the economy from society but also, and above all, the subordinationof social relations to the disembedded economy, or the subsumptionofsociety by the economiclogic of capitalism.There seems to be a growing,or renewed, tendency - amply displayed at the conference from whichthe present articles are drawn, and clearly visible in this journal- tostress the division of the modem (or postmodern) social world into'spheres',each with its own autonomouslogic. This tendencyin a senseregisters precisely those historical conditions that Polanyi was seekingto capture with his idea of 'disembedding':after all, even the concep-tual possibility of distinguishing the 'economic' from the legal or

political spheres,or the 'economy'from 'society', is historicallyspecific;and Polanyi's theoryof disembedding goes some distancein accountingfor that historical specificity. But Polanyi's crucial insight about thesubordinationof society to the 'economy'seems to be missing from thecurrentlyfashionablediscourseof 'spheres'.In fact,the primarypurposeof that discourse is to denythe efficacyof economic determinants.The problem may lie in treating the 'economy' itself as a 'sphere'.There is, first, the fairly elementary point that all 'spheres' have incommon an irreducibledependenceon materialconditions of existence.I have yet to see a convincing argument that there are conditions ofexistence other than materialones with the same degree of universalityand irreducibility.Until I do, I intend to hold on to this basic article ofmaterialist aith:that the specificconditionsin which people gain accessto the materialmeans of their subsistence and self-reproductionrepre-sent the bottomline in socialexplanation.If the 'economicsphere'standsfor those material conditions, then at the very least it already has astatus differentfrom the other 'spheres';but in that case, to talk aboutan economic 'sphere' - as distinct from the material conditions of allsocial life - simply begs the question.In general- and leaving aside forthe moment the historical specificity of capitalism, with its 'disem-bedded' economy - it certainly makes sense to talk about all kinds ofother 'spheres'and institutions(states, families, churchesand so on) andto acknowledge that each has its own internal logic; but if we alsoacknowledge that they all have materialconditions of existence, whator where is the economicsphere'?Is it everywhere or nowhere?In the specific material conditions of capitalism, and only in thoseconditions, therereally does, in a sense, exist a separate, 'disembedded'economic sphere. What implications does this have for the auto-nomy of other spheres? If the separation of the 'economic' sphere isaccom-paniedby the increasingdifferentiationof other spheres too, doesthis rnean that their autonomy increases in proportion to their

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ARTICLESdifferentiation?Thediscourse of spheresinvariablyseems to suggest thatseparation is synonymous with autonomy. Thereappearsto be a directand unambiguousrelationbetween the differentiationof anysocialsphereand the integrityof its own intemallogic, its resistanceto intrusionby theautonomouslogic of otherspheres.Moreparticularly and this is in theend the objectof the exercise thediscourseof spheresis meant to counterthe propositionthat the 'economy'hasa 'privileged'determinativepowerand, specifically,thatcapitalism s a 'totalizing'system.But the differentiationof spheres may mean exactly the reverse:thehistorical conditions in which the various 'spheres' of society are mostclearly differentiated are the very conditions in which social relationsand practicesin generalare subordinatedto the 'economy. The currentdiscourse of spheres is, of course,capableof accommodatingsome kindof interactionamong spheres, but it seems incapableof acknowledgingthat there may be an inverserelation between their differentiationandtheir autonomy.Yet the disembedding of the capitalist economy meansprecisely that the 'economic' logic of capitalism is uniquely - if, ofcourse, never completely- immune to the logic of other spheres,whilethe converse is not at all true. On the contrary,the disembeddingof theeconomy has meant that other spheres have become susceptible to apurely 'economic' logic - to the logic of commodification, profit maxi-mization and capitalaccumulation in historicallyunprecedentedways.The state, for example, may have become more differentiated fromthe 'economy' or from 'civil society' than ever before, but it is far fromclear that this differentiationhas given the state in capitalist society agreater autonomy than it possessed in pre-capitalistformations, where'political' and 'economic'power were fused - that is, where the statetypically acted as a primaryappropriatorof surplus labour.'2This doesnot, again, mean that capitalhas no need for the state. On the contrary,as Polanyi insisted and Altvater emphasizes, the disembedding of theeconomy has from the beginning been accompanied by a constantneedfor controlling mechanisms to prevent the self-destructionof 'marketsociety'. But to put it crudely, where the main business of organizing asociety's material reproduction is conducted by capital in a differenti-ated economic sphere, the 'political'sphere is likely to follow the logicof the 'economic'.This is why, for example, I am less persuaded by Helmut Dubiel'sclaim thatcontemporarycapitalismhas made the economy more suscep-tibile to an autonomous democratic impulse than I am by Altvater'sobservation that economic disembedding undermines political democ-racy..Dubiel suggests that contemporary capitalism has enlarged thepolitical sphere, in the sense that 'it is increasingly difficult to draw aline between a structurally decisive economic core and a politicalperiphery ' in advanced capitalist societies where the state is so

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITY OR CAPITALISM?economically active, where elites are driven by a 'scientific and techno-logical rationality, and where capitalists are more responsive to theculturaland politicalattitudes of consumers. But would it not be moreaccurate to say that, though the operations of the state are vital inpreservingthe social fabricand in saving capitalismfrom itself, it is the'economic' sphere that has been enlarged by contemporarycapitalism?Altvater's proposition about the underminingof political democracyis true not only in the sense that, as he points out, 'the market imposesits logic on politics', destroying 'political democracyto the advantageof the economicdemocracy of the dollar or the Deutschmarkballotpaper ', but in the even more fundamental sense that disembeddingthe economy meansprecisely removing large domainsof humanactivityfrom the political sphere and placing them outside the reach of demo-craticaccountability, eaving themto be governed by separate economic'rules and hierarchies. The more this is so, the more the 'economy' mayneed the state; but, unless the organization of material life is (by polit-ical means) detached from the logic of the capitalist market, the stateitself will be obliged to follow its 'economic' rules. For this reason, too,an effectiveanti-capitalist pposition,one thatgoes to the strategiccentreof capitalist power, would be still more likely to take the form of somekind of class politics than a socially indeterminate democratic' truggle.

Or, to put it another way, it may indeed now be difficult to draw astructural line between an economic core and a political periphery, butfor exactly the opposite reason to that proposed by Dubiel: because thelogic of the economic 'core' has so thoroughly penetrated the political'periphery'and every other sphere. The trend in contemporary capi-talism has been not to reverse but to accelerate this process. Surely ourepoch is notable not for the dilution of 'economic' principles by a varietyof extra-economic rationalities but rather for the degree to which polit-ical, technological and cultural 'logics' have been subsumed by theeconomic logic of commodification and profit maximization. Withoutthe universalization of a capitalist logic it would be difficult to explain,for instance,the globalizationof 'society'and 'culture'that MartinShawis talking about. At the same time, given capital's need for correctivecountervailing forces, or even as a medium for insertion into the globalmarket, the same universalization also helps to account for a fact thatseems to puzzle Shaw: that the globalization of the state (that is, themovement towards organizationalforms and regulatory institutions atthe global level) seems a less established and irreversible process thanthe globalizationof society and culture.The generalizationof the 'economic' logic of capitalism certainly hasa geographic dimension, in the sense that parts of the world formerlyoutside its orbit, or subject to its pressures externally through themedium of imperialist coercion, are now directly governed by it, as it

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ARTICLESwere from within. The substance of yesterday's 'inter-imperialistrival-ries' was the division and redivision of a largely non-capitalistworld;and classical theories of imperialismseem to have taken it for grantedthat, the imperativesof capitalistexpansionnotwithstanding,this wouldalways be so - until capitalism itself had suffered its terminal crisis.Today, the formerobjectsof thatrivalryare likely to be not only sourcesof cheap labour, resources or growing markets but capitalist competi-tors themselves.The global reach of capitalismin this sense is not, however, synony-mous with 'globalization'.To say that virtually the whole globe is nowcapitalist is not the same as saying that all capital is now 'globalized'.It does not, for instance,necessarilyimply the dissolution of the nation-state or even a declining role for it. 'Globalization' in particular,thewithdrawal of the state from regulatory and social welfare functions inthe interests of capital mobility and 'competitiveness' in the worldmarket is the productof policy choices,not the working out of naturallaws,, not even the inevitable destination of history - however muchthese policies have spread from neoliberalismacross the whole politicalspect:rum.'Globalization'in this sense is, to be sure, not simply a contingentand arbitrarychoice. It is certainly a response to structuralchanges -in fact, a response precisely to the universalizationof capitalism,repre-senting policy choices adopted to meet the needs of capital in a globalsystem where all significanteconomicactorsare operating accordingtothe logic of capitalism,just as old-style imperialismrepresentedpolicychoices in the interests of capital in a largely non-capitalistworld. Butto say this is immediately to concede that there are alternativeways ofresponding to the same structuralconditions.The scope of correctiveorcompensatoryinterventions by the state may indeed be more restrictednow than it was in the Keynesian era, precisely because the logic ofcapitalismis now so universal that the regulatorypowers of the nation-state areinadequate to encompassit. But this simply means thatpoliticalaction can no longer take the formof merely interveningn the capitalisteconomy. It must increasingly take the form of detachingmaterial lifefrom the logic of capitalism.To return, then, to the question of epochal shifts: if there has been amajor epochal shift since the 1970s, it is not a major discontinuity incapitalism but, on the contrary,capitalism itself reaching maturity. Itmay be that we areseeing the first realeffectsof capitalism as a compre-hensive system. We are seeing the consequences of capitalism as asystem not only without effective rivals but also with no real escaperoutes. Capitalism is living alone with its own internal contradictions.It has little recourse outside its own internalmechanisms to correctorcompensate for those contradictionsand their destructive effects. Even

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MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITYOR CAPITALISM?imperialism,which was supposed to be the last refuge of capitalism,nolonger is what it was when capitalist powers played out their rivalriesand contradictionson non-capitalist terrain,in 'extra-economic'ways,by means of colonialwars and territorial truggles.Now even this correc-tive mechanismhas for the most partbeen replaced by purely capitalistmechanisms of economic domination and financialimperialism.So this is not just a phaseof capitalism.This is capitalism.If 'modern-ity' has anything at all to do with it, then modernity is well and trulyover, not created but destroyed by capitalism. The Enlightenmentisdead. Maybe socialism will revive it, but for now the culture of'improvement' reigns supreme. And if this is what the story is about,we really have no need for the idea of postmodernity.The only conceptwe need to deal with this new realityis capitalism. he antithesisto that,of course, is not postmodemism but socialism.The universality of capi-talism, then, is not grounds for abandoning the socialist project, ascapitalist triumphalistswould like to believe. On the contrary, he 'total-ization' of capitalismalso means its increasing vulnerability to its owninternalcontradictionsand to oppositional politics.

NOTESThis article is based on a talk originally presented at the Socialist ScholarsConference n April 1996,for a panel organizedby MonthlyReview.A somewhatdifferent version was presenteda few weeks later at the conference on whichthisvolume is based.A revised and expandedversion was published in MonthlyReview48 (3) (July/August 1996).It has been furtherrevised and substantiallyexpanded for this volume, takinginto account themes that emerged during theconferenceand especiallyin the other articles ncluded here. I am very gratefulto Andrew Chitty and Hannes Lacher for their very helpful criticsms andsuggestions- though I am sure they will feel I did not do enough to meet theirtrenchantobjections.1 See, for example,FredricJameson n 'Fivetheses on actually existing marx-ism', MonthlyReview47 (11) (May 1996);and David Harvey, TheConditionof PostmodernityOxfordand Cambridge,Mass., 1990).2 Forthe theoryof 'disorganizedcapitalism', ee S. Lash and J. Urry, TheEndof OrganisedCapitalismOxford, 1987).3 I have developed some of the argumentsin this section in 'Fromoppor-tunity to imperative:the history of the market', Monthly Review 46 (3)(July/August 1994).4 Roger Burbach, For a Zapatistastyle postmodernist perspective',MonthlyReview47 (10) (March1996):37.5 I have discussed some of the points in this paragraphat greater length inThePristineCulture f Capitalism: HistoricalEssayonOldRegimes ndModernStates(London, 1991).6 MarshallBerman,All That s SolidMelts into Air:TheExperiencefModernity

(New York, 1982).7 ibid., p. 18.559


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ARTICLES8 EricHobsbawm,TheAge of Extremes: Historyof theWorld, 914-1991(NewYork, 1995), pp. 8, 289.9 See Leo Panitch,'Globalisationand the state',in R. Milibandand L. Panitch(eds) SocialistRegister 994:BetweenGlobalismndNationalismLondon, 1994).

10 On this latterpoint, see 'An interview with Aijaz Ahmad', MonthlyReview48 (5) and 'The politics of literary post-coloniality',Race and Class 36 (3)(1995):10-12 especially.11 I have developed this argument about Polanyi in 'From opportunity toimperative'.12 A much more detailed discussion of the relations between the 'economic'and the 'political',as well as argumentsthat have a bearing on the discus-sion of democracy which follows here, appears in my book, DemocracyAgainst Capitalism: enewingHistoricalMaterialismCambridge,1995), espe-cially Chs 1, 7 and 8.

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