Following the literary model, this final chapter represents denouement of the narrative. With the setting and characters established in the first chapter, with character development in the second, and the weighty concern of critical issues in the third, this final chapter initially both reviews the study then provides elaborations of specific to the character-setting (the Internet) in utopian, anti-utopian and the more probable, dystopian, guises. These elaborations occur along the various rationalization complexes, hypothesizing likely changes in constantive, regulative and expressive orientations between social systems and cultural lifeworlds. Finally, the specific example of the Internet is contextualised within a wider schema of the role of communications technology in social development, taking into account debates on the transition from traditional to modern social formations and of the structural constitutions of modernity and hypothetical postmodern social formations. On an poetic level, the confrontation faced in this final chapter is whether the Internet is indeed a part of, and contributes to, an epic narrative of human and social development, or whether it is yet another contribution to the dramatic tragedy of the species.
[ As a term, denouement has its origins in Aristotle's Poetics (330 BCE), to describe the turning point in a tragic plot, including a moment of peripeteia - where the plot situation reverses in a consistent but unexpected manner - and of anagnorisis - a moment of identifying insight that occurs with the reversal of situation. If indeed, a social theory of the Internet is a dramatic tragedy, the remorseless unwinding of fate, the reader should also expect catharsis, which Gadamar provides an excellent qualitative definition: What is experienced in such an excess of tragic suffering is something truly common. The spectator recognizes himself and his finiteness in the face of the power of fate. What happens to the great ones of the earth has exemplary significance. . . .To see that "this is how it is" is a kind of self-knowledge for the spectator, who emerges with new insight from the illusions in which he, like everyone else, lives. (132) Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Revised translation Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1995., p132 ]
The study began with recognition of the recent and rapid growth of the Internet encaspsulated by the claim that is seemed destined to become the dominant commmunications medium, spanning the globe, establishing connections between parties with minimal costs and forming a global communications community, a global village. "This is a social fact, and arguably the most important and confrontational of our times". Caution was raised, especially with the experiences of other communication and information technologies, both in terms of content and the capacity of the medium itself to alter sense perceptions and thus structures of thinking, which suggesting a more careful analysis and typology of technology and distribution of resources on a per capita basis. Already existing literature, especially that from cultural anthropologies, further defined the study. As important as fiction themes, actor psychoanalysis and interpretation is, an must be included in any social theory of the Internet, attention was drawn to technological facts, institutional status and history and with an explicit commitment to emancipatory social and political theory, especially evident from the works of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt.
From Habermas the study derives a commitment to analytical precision on the philosophical level, most evident through the careful typology of formal pragmatics. On a sociological level, this precision is replicated through the differentiation between social systems, the factual, instrumental and institutional experiences of social life, and cultural lifeworlds, the intrepretative, the communicative and community experiences of social life. From Arendt, a motivational interest is derived, a commitment to political activism is derived as the means to protect life from the possibility of totalitarianism, and to enhance human freedom. Whilst by necessity study of the Internet as a technical and institutional artefact is requisite, along with consideration of the cultural history and structures of its users, the social theoretical intrest and orientation always remains one not of technical explictation or of cultural narrative, but one of moral and regulative reasoning - not what the Internet is, not whether the Internet is beautiful, but rather whether the Internet contributes to justice.
This commitment to justice is of course problematic to any idea of social theory and in particular comparisons are drawn between the proposed theoretical and practical unity of Habermas and Arendt with structural and post-structural theory and that of neoliberalism, with supplementary concepts from cybernetics and neofunctionalism. Whilst it is recognized that the core of social theory must be sociology, the social inquiry of interconnectiveness, sensitivity and knowledge of scientific and aesthetic theory must also be evident. In contrast to objectivist and subjectivist philosophies, the very concept of society is grounded through the mutual recognition of shared symbolic values, most evident in language. Through symbolic expressions, particular validity claims are raised in all statements concerning the truth of a proposition, the justness of a course of action, or the aesthetic value according to the subject. These expressions can be made across the objective, intersubjective and subjective "worlds" generating "complexes of formal pragmatics" from which all statements can be evaluated in terms of their rationality and irrationality and whether or not they are orientated towards success or understanding.
The theoretical grounding of the concept of "the social" and its elaboration to formal pragmatics and action theory provides the foundation of the differentiation between social systems and cultural lifeworlds and the positing of the counterfactual ideal speech situation to establish a standard by which distortions to "the rules of the language game" are evident. It is also possible at this stage to to note contextualise these "rules" in socio-historical structures and in terms of individual development. In the former, broad social formations (primitive, traditional and modern) correlated with means of communication (speech, writing, print), means of production (gathering, agriculture, industry), institutional means (kinship, the state, the corporation), systematic differentiation (sex/age, political rank, economic class) and a mode of consciousness (mythic, religious, secular). In the latter, biological evolution of the self (infancy, early childhood, late childhood, adolescence and adulthood) correlates with neurological and social development of the person along cognitive, moral, identity and expressive dimensions.
Among mature persons in modern society, particular concerns are raised concerning the prospect of social and individual neuroses in a complex and technologically advanced world where simple answers are often simply not forthcoming. In a such a situation, the possibility of totalitarian regimes - technologically powerful, ideologically simplistic, based on terror and inevitably unstable - is a frightening reality. Such regimes are most likely when people are alienated from civic involvement, where human activity is reduced to either utilitarian work or necessary labour. To counter such a prospect a social theory dedicated to libertarian democracy is proposed, whereby the pragmatic boundaries of personal freedom and social democracy are rationally allocated and counterposed to both monopoly capitalist and monopoly socialist perspectives. The intuitive consideration that the Internet contains telic inclinations which assist the development of a libertarian democracy provides the motivating foundation of the inquiry.
The Internet, properly understood, is the network of computers which utilize the TCP/IP suite of protocols. A historical predecessor exists with the Network Control Protocol, and for the purpose of this study is included in the the definition of "the Internet", especially the institutional affiliation through the United States Department of Defense Advanced Projects Research Association. A basic analytical differentiation is drawn between communication and information applications based on synchronicity (or asynchronicity) and capacity for reciprocal response and input. Description of the Internet as an anarchist and decentralized body are tempered by the existence of a very real hierarchy of power for decision making, which has the United States government as the ultimate authority, followed by the Internet Assigned Names and Numbers Authority, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers for practical management, and then Regional Internet Registries. In terms of technical development, the Internet Society, the Internet Architeccture Board, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Engineering Steering Group and the Internet Research Task Force are authoritative. Three historical phases of the Internet are proposed with technical, institutional and cultural correlations; a Milnet phase (mainframe, US Department of Defense, hacker culture), an APRANET phase (personal computer/BBS, university, cyberpunk culture) and a Internet phase (networked pc, commercialization, netizen culture).
The literature review of a social theory of the Internet is characterized by an by phenomenological theories of technology, under the title of "virtual reality", anthroplogical approaches to culture, under the title "virtual community", and psychoanlaytic approaches to literary fiction, under the title of "cyberpunk science fiction". The assumption is that if the Internet can be understood as a setting and social theory as a theme, then the collection of individual consciousnesses and experiences that make up the Internet can be analysed as a "Generalized Other" in order to understand its character and development. Phenomenological, semiotic and psychoanalytic perspectives are presented an an array with analytical types of technology (embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, background), which is in turn expanded in the differentiation between communication and information technologies generating new experiential relations and psychologically thereaupetic tendencies. Through seeking validity according to the functionalist schema of adaptability, pattern-maintenance, goal-attainment and integration a synthesis of multiple models of action, technology and interpretation is achieved with requires no modification to their existing positions.
A literature review under the title of "virtual reality" sought to analyse the capacity of computer mediated systems and their human actors to provide simulations and possibly expansions of physical and social reality. The undervalued popular hobby of roleplaying games receives an honourary mention through the dramatic real-world experiences relating to GURPS Cyberpunk. The collection of essays in Cyberspace: First Steps represents the first serious collection of essays to take William Gibson's potrayal of cyberspace as a benchmark, wheras Howard Rheingold's Virtual Reality discusses the range of personal experiences of a variety of virtual reality technologies. In comparison, Silican Image: The Art and Science of Virtual Reality is apparently pitched to a more technical and scientific audience, an establishes quantitive benchmarks for virtual reality experience as well as existing values. Finally, War of the Wolrds: Cyberspace and the High Tech Assault on Reality, expresses a humanistic opposition to the claims and orientation of the "digerati" who seek technological transcendence. An evaluation of virtual reality literature suggests that the emancipatory potential is minimal and the most prominient use is military domination through remote presence and automatic weaponary.
Under the title of "virtual community", the second literature review seeks to examine the shared symbolic structures and practises among Internet users. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution looks at the original practitioners of such a culture and community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the incoporation of libertarian political orientations, and the development of the hacker ethos and code of ethics. In The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Computer Frontier, a definitive study of the U.S. government crackdown on hackers from 1988 to 1991 is provided, along with the differentiation between early hackers and cyberpunks. The third literature review, the Mondo 2000 User's Guide to the New Edge, is a combination of speculative science and popular consumables with an overemphasis on an assumed victory for the new digital culture. In comparison, Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier provides a far more mainstream account of the same period and experiences, but also raises the serious political issues in a sober and problematic manner, whereas Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace, provides an popular, albeit unintential, parody of cyberculture. An evaluation of the literature suggest bifurcation of Internet culture, a paralysis in the generation of new symbolic values abd a slowing down of community growth.
The final literature review, "cyberpunk science fiction", sought to analyze the rational and irrational concerns of the community through an examination of fictional and mythological literature in order to analyze the collective state of mind. In the first text, The Shockwave Rider, an individual libertarian having established trust in one other liberates the generalized other through freedom of information. In the second text, Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep? the thematic consideration is the conflict between post-human lifeforms, moral reasoning and the instrumental (technical and legal) control of such life, which again individualism is transcended through action for others. The review of "the Sprawl Trilogy", including William Gibson's famous Neuromancer, indicates the setting of standards for style and expression of setting, but also notably for how contextually bound the characters are with the exception of the new posthuman lifeforms. Along similar considerations, "The Robot Series", concerns the development of post-human sentient life and their conflict with the human species which surpasses political and economic concerns. This contrasts with Schismatrix Plus where the development of the species correlates with highly divergent political and economic changes spanning several centuries where the protagonist ends in a crisis of motivation. Finally, Snow Crash, a deliberate combination of post-structuralist linguistic theory and cyberpunk literature, including large scale political fragmentation and a loss of mass democracy. An evaluation of cyberpunk literature indicates that whilst the culture understands the problems relating in the transition from human to posthuman life, a flawed conception of consciouess and "retreatist" concepts of political involvement.
The literature reviews suggested that the Internet had reached a peroid of paralysis in expression and product development, community fragmentation and imbalances in its relationship with other institutional bodies. In seeking further elucidation, the third chapter of the study dealt with critical issues of the Internet, with which an initial methodology was developed that in the first instance defined what constituted a "critical" issue, in the second counterfactual approaches and in the third difference in idealization in the objective scientific sense and the social scientific sense. The relationship to this methodology and utopian literature is justified, with demands for exceptional caution and consideration of unintentional side-effects. Counterfactual statements must be made relate to objective material conditions and without ambiguity. Idealizations must be made with a consistent orientation towards freedom and communicative action. The possibility is raised of an Internet that is universally accessible, where communication and content is free from censorship, has veracity and is secure, where technology is interoperable, and governing bodies are democratic and transparent.
Following an ontological precedence, the concept of critical issues to accessibility is initially analyzed. The natural components of communication as well as product limits to size, institutional standards, and the particular mode of consciousness provide psychic and physical limitations in primitive societies. The introduction of the written form in traditional societies ensured the development of literary and political elite, whereas in modern society mass literacy and industrialization correlated with a concentration in the productive means of communication and information. Replications exist in the current distribution of Internet resources with the most significant correlations of Internet access occuring with purchasing power. Another significant restrictions to access is the dominance of the English language and the lack of standardization among character encoding sets. Furthermore, approximately 1% of the population suffer from a severe disability and up to 10% with a moderate disability which are only partially compensated by existing technological standards. Examination of other issues of access suggest minor sexual inequalities in systematically advanced nations, but more significant ones in less developed nations, and a cultural shift with a disprortionately high level of young adults accessing the Internet. The most significant correlation remains one of income.
Recommendations to overcome the disparities to access include a reduction in the Gini coefficient, higher labour force participation, reduced unemployment, increased urbanization and the provision of minimum standards of Internet access and bandwidth as a public utility. With regards to language and character encoding, the adoption of the technologically mature Unicode character encoding standards, the world wide web consortium standards for xhtml and css, and the adoption of the DAISY Consortium standards for "talking books" is recommended. In particular it is noted that the economic subsystem of competing organizations cannot provide these collective goods, even though they are in the interests of each and every individual organization in that subsystem. Finally, existing disparaties in ethnicity in gender are perceived as direct systematic and structural distortions outside of the discourse of the Internet per se.
The second critical issues concerned that with content censorship, ontologically proceeding from questions of accessibility. Censorship was defined in terms of self-censorship with both moral and normative orientations and systematic censorship, the legal and official prohibition enforcement of expression. The censorship of acts in primitive societies was invariably related to breaches of the mythic narrative in the form of taboo behaviour. With the introduction of traditional society, censorship became a matter of behaviour and expression, applied to both matters of religious doctrine and to government officials. With introduction of movable type print in Europe the central concern of censorship became matters of sedition, sexual eroticism and violence. With regards to the Internet key themes included the application of media censorship, especially prevalent in religious states (including the atheist People's Republic of China), blasphemy and sedition, with similar prevalence but also in developing nations, sensual expressions, in liberal democracies with the age-based ratings system, and finally individual and group vilification, again prevalent in liberal democracies.
Recommendations with regard to content censorship noted that the Internet will inevitably cause a degree of instability over any authority seeking to control expression and that a society should not choose technologies that are structurally inappropriate to their mode of consciousness. In modern societies and for matters of symbolic expression, it is recommended that the caveat "harm" is only used in the most restrictive sense, such as captive audiences, verbal acts, defamation, intimidation and direct incitement to violence, and with global appliciability. Futhermore, existing age-based ratings systems need to develop to incorporate individual variation. Ultimately however, in the interest of people being able to form rational convictions from available material, total opposition to prior content censorship is recommended.
The third critical issue is those related to data security, again following ontological linearity, defined as the assumption that communication and information provision is secure, private, and honest. Prehistorical examples can be found in ritualistic encryption methods, although the metaphor becomes literal with the development of written codes, which were often given religious and magical significance along with military applications. In modern societies, the military application component retained the key role with supplementary encryption for commercial purposes. Also developing in modern society was the notion of intellectual property. With computerised information and communication technologies, the possibility of "unbreakable encryption" becomes a practical reality, along with mass reproduction of intellectual property. Specific case studies include the use of computer technologies for commercial fraud especially with global reach, export restrictions on PGP encryption, rights of anonymity, state computerised surveillance systems and software "piracy", especially in relation to the culture industry, and computer hacking, ranging from unauthorised access, propogation of viruses and worms, and denial of service attacks.
In relation to data security, recommendations take into account the often contradictory intepretations from moral and motivational concerns along with those from technological and legal imperatives, and contradictions between economic science and commercial influence over legal processes. In contrast, recommendations are offered that fall under the general headings of secure freedom of expression, democratic social information and the legalisation of non-malicious computer hacking. Under the first heading, the use of strong encryption is considered allowable under the ontological differentiation between expressions and acts - and also with consistency with the proir subchapter's recommendations. Under the second, social organizations are perceived as being institutions that must be under the open jurisdiction of the public. In contrastr, democraticization and disclosure is recommended, along with the abolition of the current copyright regime and its replacement by a public license system. Finally, the legalization of non-malicious hacking is recommended for diagnostic and security purposes, to improve public faith in computerized information and communication technologies.
The final critical issue was that of data integration, the capacity of society to absorb the effects of the Internet. This capacity was reviewed thematic concerns; pedagogy and public opinion, the production of goods and services, technologoical srandards and institutional status, and social adaptability and dynamicism. Examples are provided for premodern societies, especially teaching and the formation of opinion in primitive societies and the development of state-enforced standards in traditional societies with the development of writing. With the advent of printing, educational theory gained a more secular orientation, leading to a stronger public sphere albeit distorted through capital accumulation which now challenges the educational subsystem. With contemporary technology, concerns exist with the generation of knowledge according to proprietory organizations, that copyright restrictions limit the development of Internet public libraries and the inability of educational practise to adapt to the new medium. With regards to production and exchange, issues include the lack of a standard digital signature system, the impact of unsolicited bulk email, and monopolistic commercial activities. With regards to standards and institutional status, the status of ICANN, and the lack of standars on the world wide web have priority. Finally, with regard to social adaptability and dynamicism, the use of the Internet for political and even military or revolutionary purposes is reviewed, especially the possibility of "ungovernability". The influence of network typology on organization structure is likewise noted and concerns are raised that widespread adoption of information and communication technologies are having minimal and even negative influence on economic growth.
Recommendations for this final review of critical issues, includes the adaption of a network typology for organizations, especially military but also with great appliciability to commercial bodies. Another major institutional change would be the establishment of the educational subsystem as an equivalent to commercial subsystems and with direct support from the latter, along with a reorientation of taxation systems. The education subsystem must be totally re-orientated towards producting open-source knowledge for the general public and utilize new pedagogical methods appropriate to the generation of such knowledge. Again, as with the recommendations in the first critical issue inquiry (Data Access), the W3C standards for the world wide web are recommended as mature and necessary. Finally, it is strongly recommended that ICANN be replaced by a multilateral governing authority, which may be represented by a UN specialized agency, but must include all members of the Internet society.
As a whole, the Internet is considered a social fact with a reality independent of its constituent components. It is not possible to understand the Internet merely by aggregation of its constituent components. It is a community location with shared cultural values, mythos and symbols in its own right. However, there is an ineviatble conflict between the Internet's reliance on institutions and procedures and those values. The degree to which Internet changes existing institutions and procedures or the degree that the system changes the Internet is the general critical question of the entire thesis. Even at this stage, this question cannot be entirely resolved. Firstly, deriving from the critical issues of the Internet further predictions must be made which examine the trajectory and distribution of resources across rationalization complexes. Secondly, a historical review of the rise and development of the modernity is required to specify the degree that information and communications technology influences social formations. Finally, the question is raised whether contemporary changes to communications technology constitute a transformation to a postmodern society. Only when these matters are evaluated can an answer be given to the general question of the inquiry.
Lest it find itself supplanted by the thoroughly populist and unsystematic study commonly known as futurology, it is imperative that social theoretical studies provide at least some semblance of predictive capacity. It is of course entirely necessary for social theory to provide a grounding of the concept of the social world and regulative reasoning, and thereby differentiate itself from other disciplines, and likewise to provide a strong typology of the said social world and the procedures that govern it and the hierarchy of influences. However, in addition to providing such theoretical models it is also necessary for social theory to provide elaborations from said models in order to test both their validity and the exactness of the social theorists value-assignments. In this particular instance, the model used is the complexes of formal pragmatics, the influences of strategic and instrumental action versus communication and mediative action, and the differentiation between social systems and cultural lifeworlds. Obviously, a somewhat exclusive emphasis is placed on the role and influence of the Internet in these developments.
1. Changes in Science and Technology
According to Kaku's investigative review of current scientific practise, the main theatres of activity include computer engineering, biotechnology and quantum mechanics. The integration of these three endeavours will lead to the most important technological advances. With regards to the former, the long-held predictive (albeit disputed) quality of Moore's Law continues to hold, despite predictions of its impending demise. Contemporary developments in applying flash memory to transistors, the use of ionized air for cooling, and massive advances in data storage technologies suggest something very to the various interpretations of Moore's Law will continue to apply. The most recent industry roadmaps predict that the "law" will continue for several chip generations. Whilst data storage seeks speeds will not advance as quickly (although storage capacity gains are impressive), costs are expected to fall at a greater rate, and the gains by volatile memory will be even less. The gap between hardware and software development will increase with the latter significantly lagging in quality and resource efficiency. In video display technology, the quantity of colours seems to have flattened out at 16 million whereas pixel resolution continues to grow. Bandwidth and connectivity improvements are evident through the popularisation of broadband and xDSL connections (e.g., cable modem at 512 kbps rather than telephone modem at 56 kbps), supplemented with wireless technologies.
[ Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond, Doubleday, 1997 Ashley Dunn, The Demise of Moore's Law Signals the Digital Frontier's End, New York Times, August 14, 1996 http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/surf/0814surf.html and John Markoff, Chip Progress May Soon Be Hitting Barrier, New York Times, October 9, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/10/biztech/articles/09chip.html and Chales C. Mann, The End of Moore's Law?, Technology Review, MIT Press, May 23, 2000 http://staff.philau.edu/bells/keepup/Tech Review Newsletter.htm John Markoff, New Chip May Make Today's Computer Passe, New York Times, September 17, 1997 http://fox.rollins.edu/~tlairson/ecom/mooreslaw2.html 'Nano-lightning' could cool computer chips, New Scientist, 15-24 March, 2004 http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994816 Moore's Law for Intel CPUs Simple graph showing how Intel's x86 microprocessors have obeyed Moore's Law. http://www.physics.udel.edu/wwwusers/watson/scen103/intel.html Ikka Tuomi, The Lives and Deaths of Moore's Law, First Monday, Issue 7 (11). http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/ Information Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, 2003 Edition http://public.itrs.net/Files/2003ITRS/Home2003.htm ]
The general trend, at least in a scientific sense, is embedded computerised technologies and Internet connectivity throughout everyday objects and places (home environment control, personalized health monitoring and data, personalized security and identification, integration of communications and information technology). Whether defined as IP addresses or responding to ping requests Internet growth doubled yearly during the early 1990s, and slowing to doubling every eighteen months by the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Similar increases in ISP Points of Presence and Network Access Points should be expected as should software developments in voice-activated computing and robotisation of most areas of industrial production. IPv6 will provide the capacity to incorporate any plausible advances in domain registrations, and voice and video over IP will become the norm. Improvements in battery technology and portability will assist constant connectivity and object portability. Overall, the general expectation is that the 21st century will be a world of ubiquitious remote control and communication with high powered computing.
[ Matrix Maps Quarterly 601, The State of the Internet, January 1999. Partially available at: http://www.mids.org/mmq/601/ and Internet Hosts, 1995-2001 http://navigators.com/statall.gif Larry Press, The State of the Internet: Growth and Gaps, INET 2000 Proceedings, The Internet Society http://www.isoc.org/inet2000/cdproceedings/8e/8e_4.htm ]
2. Changes to Institutions and Systems
The Internet contributes to a general trajectory towards globalisation and the organizational establishment of decentralized network of trust relations. Significant trends therefore exist towards the fragmentation of existing states, yet with the simultaneous growth of international organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union and the World Trade Organization, and international systems (e.g., global currency). This occurs even to the extent that the definition by Max Weber of the state as the body that claims a monopoly on physical force is under doubt - indeed the objectives of the World Federalism Movement seem increasingly appropriate with proposals to democraticize the United Nations, expand citizenship rights, international and universal jurisdiction etc - although that does not counter tendencies towards decentralization within existing nation-states. Further, with the loss of state legitimation, existing trends for commercial privitization and outsourcing remain likely albeit with threshold limitations, especially in those areas regarded as "non-essentials" (e.g., telecommunications).
[ Max Weber, Politics as A Vocation, First presented 1918 'Politik als Beruf,' Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Muenchen, l921), pp. 396-450. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker & Humblodt, Munich. http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Weber/polvoc.html World Federalist Movement http://www.wfm.org/ Randall S. Kroszner, Promoting Economic Growth: The Productivity Challenge (revised edition), University of Chicago, 2003 http://www.econ.nyu.edu/cvstarr/seminars/colloqium0329_kroszner.pdf ]
Nevertheless, such changes do not alter problems relating to the general tendency of profits to fall with the accumulation and concentration of capital relative to labour inputs requiring increased social security per capita. Widespread communications technology does mean that corporations are very suspectible to public opinion, thus requiring significantly higher standards of auditing, responsibility and regulation. Prospects exist for higher levels of industrial democracy as non-mechanized labour means greater reliance on workforce for service deliverary, despite the reduction in absolute level of labour-inputs. Attempts to privitise and commodify education will be strong, as will all attempts to engage in monopolistic behaviour with declining industrial production and wants. General tendency however towards systematic independence of educational subsystem and treatment of education and skills as a collective good. Attempts to commodify information strongly weakened along with copyright regimes; open source software will rapidly become the dominant on desktop and server.
[ For recent affirmations of this tendency see: Alan Freeman and Guglielmo Carchedi, Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics, Edward Elgar, 1996. Robert Brenner. 'The Economics of Global Turbulence', New Left Review no. 229: 1-264, 1988 W. Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell, The Scientific Status of the Labour Theory of Value, Eastern Economic Association conference, April 1997 http://www.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wpc_ac/wpc_ac.html Compare with: EDIT "Technical Changes and the Rate of Profit" EDIT THIS URL c.f., the establishment of Europe's Works Councils. M. Hall, P. Marginson, K. Sisson, The European Works Council: Setting the Research Agenda. Warwick - School of Industrial & Business http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/BibEc/data/Papers/fthwarwin41.html EDIT "Information is not a commodity, at least not in the way the term is used in neoclassical economics or understood in industrial society. Industrial commodities are produced in discrete, identifiable units, exchanged and sold, consumed and used up, like a loaf of bread or an automobile. One buys the product from a seller and takes physical possession of it; the exchange is governed by legal rules of contract. . . . Information, or knowledge, even when it is sold, remains with the producer. It is a collective good in that once it has been created, it is by its nature available to all." Daniel Bell, The Social Framework of the Information Society in The microelectronics revolution., Ed T. Forrester., Basil Blackwell, 1980. ]
3. Changes to Psychology and the Mind
Despite constantive orientations to the subjective world being ultimately irrationalizable, developments in genetic and neurological sciences further sharpen the distinction between the programmable elements human facticity and the sense of self, although persistant problems arise in studies that attempt to engage in thoroughly deterministic neurological explanations for behaviour, as are attempts to modify behavior through neurological drug therapy. Nascent studies in consciousness and quantum theory require further elaboration. More likely are the prospects for genetic profiling, DNA analysis, cloning and genetic modification are high, although current techniques are fraught with high degrees of failure. In other suggestions of reaching boundary limits between objective and subjective mental orientations, claims exist for machine intelligence to develop from utility robots (lizard brain), to human-like intelligence within a generation. Whilst these claims have incomplete theories of consciousness there is little question on their veracity in reference to computational ability. Humanistic concerns over the prospect and degree of the programmability of the species have led some to argue for a moral reasoning based on pre-personal human rights.
[ William R. Uttal, The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain, MIT Press, 2001 and Jerry Fodor, The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, The MIT Press, 2000. Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner, Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics: The Connection and Analogies, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Summer 1999, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp 229-256 and Mark Stephen Pestana, Complexity Theory, Quantum Mechanics and Radically Free Self Determination, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Autumn 2001, Volume 22, Number 4, Pages 365-388 Philip S. Ant�n, Richard Silberglitt, and James Schneider, The Global Technology Revolution: Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015, RAND Corporation, 2001 Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard University Press, 1990. and Robot: mere machine to transcendent mind, Oxford University Press, 1998. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Viking Press, 1999 Jay W. Richards (Editor), Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I., Discovery Institute, 2002 Jurgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, Polity Press, 2003 ]
4. Changes to Theology and Metaphysics
The impossibility of resolving validity claims concerning rightness or wrongess from objective facts has contributed substantially to the loss of faith and the rise of secular society. Religious fundamentalism (including fundamentalist atheism), whether state-sponsored or not, therefore increasingly engages in morally irrationalisable behaviour which discredits liberal and secular adherents of the same faith. A tendency exists among more liberal and secular adherents towards tolerate theological pluralism, yet engage in a "radical dialogue" over the moral issues of empathy and care. As the acceptance of diversity in theological and metaphysical points increases along with a consensus in universalistic moral reasoning, the main differences will be between institutional systems. A further tendency with the acknowledgement and recognition of other cultures, as well as self-identification, concern for the conditions of the natural environment, and rejection of organized or authoritarian religious institutions, is the rise of a non-doctrinal neo-paganism. Finally, related to computational aspects of consciousness, is the para-theology of transhumanism, the suggestion that the development of technology leads to a generation of supra-human intelligences. As mentioned in that analysis, it is realistic to expect the technical capacity of self-transformation of the species in the near future.
[ Ronald A. Cram, Beyond Tolerance: Radical Dialogue in an Era of Expanding Religion, Vol 2 No 2, 2001 http://www.meadville.edu/cram_2_2.html Helen A. Berger, A Community of Witches Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States, University of South Carolina Press, 1988 World Transhumanist Association, http://www.transhumanist.org/ ]
5. Changes to Jurispudence and Law.
Changes in law and its enforcement, whilst remaining primarily influenced by competing claims of systematic efficiency and moral norms, will be substantially influenced by the new technologies and the rise of global communication. These technologies and the resulatant communication further enhance the rise of accepting decentralized governance and personal rights bounded by universal moral responsibilities. With regards to breaches of universal moral responsibilities increasing elements of legal responsibility, especially in matters concerning universal moral, will be ceded by nation states to international law and international legal authorities such as the International Criminal Court. At the same time the demands for decentralized and localized self-management suggest that civil codes will be increasingly diverse and fragmented. According to formal legal predictions, existing trends towards more comprehensive and precise legal definitions will continue, along with adherence to culpability, and systemization of law. In contrast to this formal approach to jurisprudence, critical legal studies contextualizes law in terms of the hierarchy of social relations. Along a further dimension, the contrast between natural law and positive law is only resolvable with the allocation of the former to universal moral rights, and the latter to rules of systematic efficiency, with criminal law belonging in the former category and civil law in the latter.
[ Paul H. Robinson, Four Predictions for the Criminal Law of 2043, 19 Rutgers law Journal 897-911, 1988 Stephen M. Griffin, Robert C. L. Moffat (eds), Radical Critiques of the Law, University of Kansas Press, 1997. Jeffrey Reiman, Critical Moral Liberalism, Rowman & Littlefield, 1996 ]
Whilst advancements in instrumental technology posit the possibility of a more authoritarian society and indeed some sectional interests benefit from such an orientation (e.g., private prisons), communication and information technologies, the universality of rights and the demands of economic efficiency suggest reforms to the prison and punishment models that implement the principles of restorative justice and rehabilition in a manner that is non-discrimatory. Existing use of electronic tagging of criminals and DNA analysis for investigations is likely to increase, as is secure biometric identification generally. Further technological solutions to legal breaches in a computerised society including the gradual abolition of physical money and effective data surveillance of commercial transactions. Extraordinarily new problematic issues will arise with the possibilities of transhumanism, self-development of the species and the capacity of legal systems to evolve from recognition of "human rights" and "natural persons" to include "sentient rights" and "artifical persons" - along with developing legal theory of the rights of children and higher mammals (differentiated by cognition rather than age or species).
[ Edited by Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, New Press, 2002 Andrew Cole, A Human Rights Approach to Prison Management: Handbook for Prison Staff, International Centre for Prison Studies, 2002 http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/human_rights_prison_management.pdf Forseight Crime Prevention Panel, Turning the Corner Crime Prevention Panel Consultation Recommendations Report: Final Report and Recommendations - Using science and technology to tackle crime, Office of Science and Technology (Government of the United Kingdom), 2000 http://www.foresight.gov.uk/ ]
6. Changes to Morals Principles and Situational Ethics
The development of universalistic morality requires the separation of the secular from faith-bound justifications of the rightness and wrongness of subjective actions. The evolution of this moral principle and its application in situational ethics has often been a political one to extend the notion of "rights" beyond that of dominant social groups (European, heterosexual, males, property-holding etc) to include "the other" (non-European, non-heterosexual, female, workers etc). Whilst overemphasis on general principles with unambigious algothrithmic formulae have distorted the ability to apply ethical decisions and has also led to the entrapments of both moral absolutism and ethical relativism, the general tendency for the rights of the self to equate to rights of others is increasingly accepted and empirically confirmed. Globalised commerce, the rise of organizational networks, and the development of multilateral and international covenants, environmental consciousness etc., further support the development of universalistic moral systems of reasoning.
[ Albert R. Jonsen, Albert R. Josen, Stephen E. Toulmin, The Abuse of Causity: A History of Moral Reasoning, University of California Press, 1998 Christopher Hallpike, The Evolution of Moral Understanding, Prometheus Research Group, http://www.prometheus.org.uk/Files/EvolutionOfMoralUnderstanding.pdf Previously published in ZiF Mitteilungen (2/98: 4-18), Zentrum f�r interdisziplin�re Forschung (ZiF), Bielefeld University (1998). ]
This study has already raised numerous instances of transformations to situational ethics due to the availability of communications technology (e.g., data access, censorship, intellectual property etc). Further matters, possibly in the realm of science fiction, are also raised due to computational manipulation of the human (or other) genetic code. For universalistic morals to remain the same principles must also apply - that the treatment of others is dependent on the capacity to reach mutual understanding and agreement - as must the same ethic - of empathy and care. Whereas consistent proof exists that enhanced moral competence is a product of social welfare, secularization, and civil rights, the prospect of coercive behaviour from arising from institutional (religious, state or corporate) loyality or procedural demands (class conflict, breakdown of welfare system compromise) or an inability to consider ethical transformations arising from the new technologies, weakens the prospect for widespread improvement in moral reasoning or thought.
[ George Lind, Off-limits: A cross-cultural study on possible causes of segmentation of moral judgement competence, Psychology of Morality and Democracy and Education, University of Konstanz (Germany), 2000. Presentation to the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 24-28, 2000 http://www.uni-konstanz.de/ag-moral/pdf/Lind-2000_Off-limits-Segmentation.pdf Snarey, J. R. (1985) 'Cross-cultural universality of social-moral development: a critical review of Kohlbergian research'. Psychological Bulletin 97, 202 - 232 See: Nancy Willard's presentation "Moral Development in the Information Age", Proceedings of the Families, Technology, and Education Conference, University of Illinios, October 30 - November 1, 1997, http://ecap.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/books/fte/internet/willard.html ]
7. Changes to Aesthetics and Art
The application of human expression to the objective world is rationalizable as aesthetic practise and artistic product. Themes have appliciability across time and culture due to the universality of human existential conditions and thus, on a psychoanalytic level, necessarily posit idealised and utopian content. Other aesthetic aspects, such as setting, style, narrative, characterisation etc are structurally contextualised. Contemporary aesthetic approaches displays an orientation towards the future (albeit often dystopic), correlating with institutional planning and instrumental projections. Likewise contextual, technological changes also introduce new media by which aesthetic expression is mediated. Contemporary information and communication technologies have highlighted the hitherto sublime mathematics in many artistic endeavours and have inspired "generative aesthetics". This includes the sculptures of Helaman Ferguson, the non-Euclidean geometry of M.S. Escher, recursive functions in Mandelbrot sets and their visual (e.g., Uwe Schneider) and audio display (Nick Didkovsky and Phil Burk). Likewise, the technologisation of the organic is portrayed disturbingly initially by H.R. Giger, and with increased optimisation with "genetic art and music".
[ Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension : Toward A Critique of Marxist Aesthetics, Beacon Press 1979 FP 1978 Douglas R. Hofstadter, G�del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Harper Collins, 1999 FP Professor Paul Fishwick of the University of Florida maintains a set of links dedicated to "Mathematics, Art and Computing" at: http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~fishwick/mac/ ]
Systematic imperative however affect the aesthetic dimension as well. Artists too must work for a living, and a useful distinction can be made between artwork (the practical activity for the artists' expression) and workart (a technical use of the artists' skills for the expression of the employer). The possibility of cultural impoverishment increases as through the replication of the same commercial artistic product through different media (the profit-orientation application of "multimedia") and increasing cost pressures on producing new aesthetic products, rather than the replication of previously released intellectual property. Likewise, the new emphasis on digitisation allows censorship and alteration of content for political purposes. The systematic pressures suggest a fragmentation in the artistic profession and community with one side concentrating on 'workart' and the culture industry, whilst the other on artwork, open source and historical public domain productions. The challenge of aesthetic consideration of modified humans, artificial intelligence or non-human intelligences has already been thoroughly considered by advanced science fiction artists. The onus is on moral philosophers and political representatives to recognize the legislative authority of these poets.
[ Russ Kick (ed) You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths, The Disinformation Company, 2001, Russ Kick (ed) Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies, The Disinformation Company, 2003 See also Russ Kick's website: http://www.thememoryhole.org ]
8. Changes to Language and Culture
Whilst it is not possible to test the sincerity or beauty of a shared expression (expressive approach to the intersubjective world), it is possible to consider this dimension through idealised versions of language and culture. Economic and political globalization and the increasing use of wide-range communications and information technology will tend to provide extra leverage to "global" languages (e.g., the languages of the United Nations; English, Mandarin, Russian, French, Spanish, Arabic) at the expense of local languages and with additional biases due to economic trajectories and technological limitations (both which seem to favour English). Nevertheless this does not necessarily mean the total demise of marginal languages, rather the quantity of people who have a global second language may increase. Further, as globalization advanced, cultural differences will become superceded by subcultural differences which will also embody their own shared symbolic values. The prospect also exists for linguistic mutation, particularly for those regions with close geographical, economic and linguistic proximity (e.g., the fusion of Brazilian Portuguese with Latin American Spanish, the fusion of Latin American Spanish with North American English). Problematic issues arise with the prospects of modified humans, artificial intelligences etc with physical abilities of symbolic expression that are not universal, thus suggesting the formation of technologically modified subcultures. Of paramount immediate importance is the development of natural language programming and machine translation.
[ Humphrey Tonkin and Timothy Reagan (eds), Language in the Twenty-first Century. Selected papers of the millennial conferences of the Center for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems, held at the University of Hartford and Yale University. John Benjamins, (Amsterdam), 2003 Sergei Nirenburg, ed., Machine translation: Theoretical and methodological issues, Cambridge University Press, 1987 ]
9. Changes to Sensuality and Eroticism
Sincere expressive orientations from the subjective world constitute spontaneous sensual exclamations. Enhancent of sensual reactions is most evident in the use of natural narcotics, stimulants and psychedelics and eventually becomes technologically mediated, reaching most potent states with the examples of heroin, methamphetamines, methylenedioxymethamphetamine and d-lysergic acid diethyl amide. In the latter case suggestions have been made, based on participant involvement, on consciousness programming, equivalent to computer programming. Whilst more associated with the related concern of health (which could be described as "long-term sensuality"), research and development funding into drug technologies, nominally for health purposes but also distorted by patent rights and monopolistic orientations, has increased dramatically. Future developments include a convergence of gene sequencing technology and nanotechnology engineering, nootropics (including anti-ageing therapy). With related studies in artificial intelligence, the future of medical cybernetics is a transformation from simple replacements to self-organized programmable systems.
[ Antonio Escohotado, Kenneth A. Symington (Translator), A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age, Inner Traditions International Ltd, 1999 John C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: Theory and Experiments, Abacus, 1974 [FP 1969] see Eric K. Drexler, The Engines of Creation, Anchor/Doubleday, 1986 especially chapter 9, "A Door to the Future" http://www.foresight.org/EOC/EOC_Chapter_9.html Ward Dean, John Morgenthaler, Steven William Fowkes, Smart Drugs and Nutrients: How to Improve Your Memory and Increase Your Intelligence Using the Latest Discoveries in Neuroscience, Smart Publications, 1992 Elias Pampalk, Gerhard Widmer, Alvin Chan A.: A New Approach to Hierarchical Clustering and Structuring of Data with Self-Organizing Maps. Technical Report, �sterreichisches Forschungsinstitut f�r Artificial Intelligence, Wien, TR-2003-09, 2003 http://www.oefai.at/cgi-bin/get-tr?paper=oefai-tr-2003-09.pdf ]
Problematic concerns may be raised over the medical safety of technologically mediated erotic practises, as with all such practises. However widespread evidence exits of the distortions in medical and scientific behaviour by political and economic imperatives arising from the profit-motive and class division. Coupled with the ideological baggage of systematic superiority (the so-called 'Protestant work-ethic' and its transformation into the 'money ethic'), technological mediation of sensual activity is invariably considered legally suspect, especially when it does not equate with the norms of patriarchial Christian European culture (thus tobacco and alcohol are marginally acceptable, as is some cosmetic surgery). Such an orientation will inevitably be applied with any future development in drug technology or for that matter, teledildonics. Further stresses to the legal and ideological superstructure are already apparent with a consistent decrease and variation of adult cognitive and physical maturity and transsexual medical procedures. There is an inevitable clash with existing premodern ideologies with the artificial and modified intelligences of the future, and with increasing individualisation versus the patriarchal family structure. Once again, science fiction literature has provided a more comprehensive and imaginative inquiry to these problems that that found in conventional academia.
[ Robert S. Mendelsohn, Confessions of A Medical Heretic, McGraw-Hill, 1990 [FP 1979] and Mark Pendergrast, Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives, Upper Access, 1995 Pekka Himanen, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, Secker and Warburg, 2001 Janice Raymond. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. New York: Teachers College Press, 1994. Anne Balsamo. Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, Duke University Press, 1996. ]
These predictions must, of course, be considered on the most preliminary sketch which demands a further elaboration and review. Nevertheless some general principles can be enunciated even at this stage. Firstly, the critical importance for sociological studies to take up the field of inquiry from the unsystematic, populist and uncritical approach of futurology. Secondly, the revolutionary - and this term is not used lightly - effects of information and communications technology on institutional typology and cultures. Finally, with equivalent transformative power, the role of computational technologies on the instrumentalization up to and including the transformation of human nature.
It is in consideration of the contemporary critical issues of the Internet and the preliminary predictions of social changes related to communication and computational technologies that an analysis of the the transformation from a traditional to a modern social formation is deemed necessary. For if it is possible to uncover causitive or correlational historical examples of changes to communication technology and social formations, then this can be used to provide greater understanding of the significance and trajectory of contemporary communications technology and in particular aid claims of a transformation from a modern to a post-modern society. Firstly, in order to carry out this analysis an initial attempt is made to define the concepts of modern and traditional societies. Secondly, a review of the major propositions for such a transformation, especially the competing claims of Karl Marx and Max Weber and the more contemporary analyses of Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallenstein. Finally, the proposed role of communication and information technologies in social transformation and comparison with competing technological claims.
An initial differentiation between modern and traditional social formations is made by returning to the qualitative definitions provided in section 1.2. It is important to note that these qualitative social structures are meant as a pedagogical aid, an abstract model, and are subject to uneven and combined development, transitory stages etc. Nevertheless, caution is equally raised about underestimating the utility of such an design. The differences between social formations are on a qualitative scale as comparisons of the historical mean points make undoubtably clear. Six dimensions are chosen to analyse strutural content of social formations (means of communication, means of production, institutional base, system differentiation, mode of consciousness, crisis points), which in comparison exist across three dimensions (primitive, traditional, modern). The inclusions of the means of communication on such a level is apparently unique in social theoretical analysis, a point which will be analysed in depth in this section. The key differentiation here between traditional and modern society is the distinction between writing and printing. In terms of the means of production, agriculture is compared to industrialization; in terms of institutional base, the state is compared to the corporation; for system differentiation, (political) rank and (economic) class; and finally, for crisis points, political versus economic causes.
[ This model is clearly derived from Jurgen Habermas' sketch in Legitimation Crisis, pp17-24 and Towards A Rational Society, (Boston, 1970, pp94ff). See also Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives, FP 1968 ]
The two most well known explanations for the transformation from traditional to modern society are found in the works of Karl Marx and Max Weber. According to Marx's analysis, the critical component in the above dimensions is that of the means of system differentiation and the human conflict arising from that differentiation. As the opening lines of The Manifesto of the Communist Party state: "The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle", indicating that successive social formations were the result of the distribution of power and property in every society. By the same token however, these are deeply embedded in the means of production: "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist." This should not be interpreted as a form of technological determinism, but rather one of correlation.
[ Karl Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, French by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1955 [FP 1847] (Chapter Two: Second Observation). Those who misuse the oft-quoted phrase should read also the proceeding and subsequent sentences: "M. Proudhon the economists understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc" and "The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations... Thus the ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products... There is a continual movement of growth in productive forces, of destruction in social relations, of formation in ideas; the only immutable thing is the abstraction of movement - mors immortalis." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ ]
Marx's interpretation of history posits human responsibility for material production and social relations, with historical facticity arising from the interplay of these two activities, with class societies representing the material production of an economic surpluis and social relations with the distribution of that surplus. According to Marx's model, what is defined here as traditional society can be further subdivided into the slave and feudal modes of production (likewise, primitive societies into the delightfully-named periods of 'savagery' and 'barbarism' and modern socities into 'capitalism' and the hypothesized 'socialism'). Because the slavery mode of production lacked the classes within their society necessary for transformation they fell to the outsiders who, on the ruins of these early empires, produced a the class of town-dwelling merchants, guildmasters and bankers who overthrew feudal aristocracy: the bourgeoisie. The rise of the bourgeoisie itself was dependent on the breaking-up of feudal land-divisions in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the enclosures of the commons, the expulsion of agricultural populations and the enforcement of wage-labour by the most brutal legislation. The material condition for this rise was the stagnation of social relations with the material conditions, especially the relative productivity of agriculture compared to population growth.
[ Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I ch27 - ch31 See also the debate between Paul Sweezy (Theory of Capitalist Development, 1942) and Maurice Dobb (Studies in the Devlopment of Capitalism, Routledge, 1963 FP 1946) and Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653, Cambridge University Press, 1993 ]
In comparison to Marx's concentration on the means of production and systematic differentation, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that Max Weber concentrates on the mode of consciousness and their embodiment in institutional structures. By reference to the moral nature of Benjamin Franklin's economic advice, Weber claimed that a new spirit and conciousness in capitalist thinking, something that could not be reduced to a mere desire for wealth (auri sacra fames), which was as old as history itself. Instead, the transformation finds its origins in the supernatural justification for individualistic intervention in world affairs (e.g., Luther's concept of "the calling") and the rejection of faith-based rituals and sacraments as a means for salvation (e.g., Calvin's predestination and puritanism). Unlike other monastic orders in the world, an ascetic of rational work with a mass orientation became the defining features of Protestantism. Whilst Weber did not suggest that only Protestatism was a necessary condition for the rise of capitalism, it was considered an example, or rather the example of a particular religious orientation for the development of a particular type of economic order. [ Max Weber (trans: Talcott Parsons), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Charles Srcibner Sons, 1930 p50-57, pp93-85, pp 104-121 ]
Ironically, the rise of the Protestant Ethic also provided the foundations of its own institutional undoing. As organizations became increasingly concerned with secular and rational interests, the religious-salvation motivation decreased proportionally. Although often founded through charismatic leadership, in order to have any perpetuity in an organizational sense, it was necessary for regulated, stable institutions to develop - the modern bureaucracy. Unlike traditional institutional and systematic relationships of power, obedience is applied to a disembodied regulation or law, which are in turn formed from a rational or expedient basis. The development and application of decisions and rules are always recorded. Only through such an organization is the large scale planning and stability necessary for modernity possible. Yet Weber was also sensitive to dysfunctions that arise through bureaucracy especially it's inability to deal with individual and particular cases and depersonalization, a characteristic which Weber felt would affect any modern society, regardless of whether they had capitalist or socialist property relations. The future was one of a bleak "iron cage" of bureaucracy.
[ Max Weber (trans. Talcott Parsons, A.M. Henderson, The Theory of Economic and Social Organization, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964) ]
In comparison to these two classic sociological interpretations, more contemporary historical inquiries provide an interesting alternative. The epic three volume works apiece by Braudel and Wallenstein provide the foundations to what is now considered the 'world systems theory' of modernity. Braudel starts with the impressive proposition that the global and general rise in population starting from the 15th century was primarily due to climatic changes and that the great discovery of Western Europe was not of the Americas (which, of course, was already populated) but rather of the Atlantic Ocean. With the increased demands for agricultural production increasingly satisfied, the market and monied economy grew, especially through networks of merchants and trading locations and especially the growth of world financial markets, which provides the foundation for the global "world-system". Whilst Braudel's work is largely empirical, phenomenological and devoid of theoretical abstractions, it is also largely considered very Eurocentric alternatively erroneous and dismissive of African and Asian cultures and with minimal references to the role of slavery.
[ Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century Volume 1: The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, Volume 2: The Wheels of Commerce, Volume 3 The Perspective of the World and Immanual Wallerstein The Modern World-System: Volume I: Capitalist Agricultre and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Volume II Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750, and Volume III The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730s-1840s Braudel Vol I, pp49-51, pp406-p410) Gloria Emeagwali, Braudel, Colonialism and the Rise of the West, Comparative Civilizations Review. no. 47. Fall 2002 ISSN 0733-4540) http://www.africahistory.net/braudel.htm ]
Adding to this contribution, Wallerstein notes that the feudal agricultural system either resulted in a stagnation or fall in production during the period of population growth, leading to the development of a change in the division of labour and the scope of trade partially based at best on comparative advantage and partially on monopolies and force. Wallerstein divides the world economy into four broad categories representing their role in the world economic order, core, semi-periphery, periphery and external. Core regions began with in north-western Europe, and were characterised by strong government, bureaucracy, large armies (mercenary and militia), homogenization of the local population and excessive profits through trade and plunder of peripheral regions (the Orient, the Americas). Attempts to convert the new world-systen economic order into a traditional world-empire system of government inevitably failed (e.g., Hapsburg Empire). Interestingly, Russia remained an area largely outside the modern world economy. Wallerstein's differentiation between world-empires (politically equivalent, economically diverse) and world-systems (politically diverse, economically equivalent) suggests a third "world-system", that of a socialist world government where political and economic equivalence is re-established. The concept of a politically and economically diverse model does not constitute, in Wallerstein's view, a system pe se.
[ For the difference between world-systems and world-empires see: Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1976, pp. 229-233. ]
Whilst hitherto sociological theories and historical expositions have contributed enormously to understanding the mechinations and facts in the transition from traditional to modern society, all appear lacking, both in theory and in fact, for the purposes of this inquiry. Marx's emphasis on systematic differentiation and material conditions in dynamic circumstances is extremely useful, but strangely limited in explaining the specific reasons on why Europe and why a particual time in history, other than a rather glib "at a certain stage of their historic development" etc. Likewise, Weber's emphasis on changes to the mode of consciousness do not help explain the failure of prior proto-Protestant groups, or non-Christian groups that had a similar emphases and thus nor does it answer the problem of why Europe - and western Europe in particular - first witnessed the rise of modernity, and why a particular point in time. Any attempt therefore to further explain the causes and correlations in the transition from traditional to modern society must answer these questions - as well as explain why other cultures, empires or religions failed to carry out the transformation.
A tentative proposition is made that the introduction of the moveable type printing press with ideographic type, is an extremely underrated technological innovation in most analyses of this nature. With increasing demand from the newly established universities and a high cost in resources and materials for copied manuscripts, the introduction of movable type print was nothing short of a revolution in the production of knowledge. According to the critically acclaimed research of Febvre and Martin there is little doubt that the first one hundred years of the movable type printing press led to the production of more books than have been previously produced in all of human history, and a process which multiplied over and over again in subsequent centuries. The range of publications introduced a serious "rupture of classification", according to Hobart and Schiffman, where the controlled comfort of conventional thought was shattered by competing and new ideas, assisting initially the rise of religious fundamentalism and conflict within Christian Europe and then to secular humanism as a new means of ordering knowledge gained dominance and finally to mass literacy and mass democracy.
[ Lucien Febvre, Henri-Jean Martin (translated David Gerard), The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1400-1800, verso, 1977 FP 1958, pp216-233. Humanism p248ff Michael E. Hobart, Zachary S. Schiffman, Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy and the Computer Revolution, John Hopkins University Press, pp87-111 ]
The introduction of movable type print explains both the success of the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent state and corporate bureaucracies. Above all, the Reformation was a political act propagated through ideas - Luther's act of posting the 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church was merely the normal means of introducing discussion - but the subsequent battle was fought with the printing press as much as it was with sword and gunpowder. "All Germany caught fire. Pamphelts filled with the thunder of violent prose came out on all sides." With movable type, the capacity to produce multiple copies of revolutionary tracts with minimal evidence was substantially improved. In this sense, the European use of an ideographic type far surpassed the Chinese who maintained a pictographic type. In the latter case, although movable type had been invented several centuries beforehand, by commoner Bi Sheng, block printing was both more suitable and preferable for the monopoly of ideas held by the traditional imperial bureaucracy. In other words, although printing and even modern movable type print had been invented by the Chinese, it seems that systematic change and scientific innovation also required the existence of an adaptable type which allowed for rapid alteration of printed texts. [ Febvre and Martin, p291 ]
The role of moveable type print with a ideographic type also provides an improved explanation for the rise of modern rationality as a mode of consciousness as well a means for political change and bureaucratic planning. The most sophisticated cultural theories (e.g., Max Weber's comparisons noted above, or Pitirim Sorokin's comparisons between "ideational" and "sensate" cultures), hermeneutics or ethnomethodologies are, as Jurgen Habermas bluntly states, "[edit] trivial reconstructions of everyday knowledge". Cultural predilictions themselves, which are represent narrative and thematic devices, do not uniquely yield to universal value standards by which constative, normative and expressive orientations become autonomous value-spheres with complex institutional grounding. Regardless of of traditional-religious modes of consciousness which suggest divergent world evaluations, salvation paths etc., disenchantment, demythologization and rationalization retains the same potentiality regardless of empirical structural correlations. Whilst this suggestion conflicts with many Eurocentric claims of cultural dynamicism, the evidence strongly suggests that scientific and normative innovation occurred after the introduction of a distributable, repliciable and alterable means of communication.
[ Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (Vol II) J. Habermas, TCA Vol 1, pp125-132 [edit] ]
Competing technological claims are also dubious, although many do add to the computational and instrumental capacity of the society. The European sea-going voyages of the late 15th century face similar comparisons with the Chinese, Arabic and Polynesians. The Chinese, who had been using the compass for at least three hundred years prior and, had by the early 15th century, explored a region which included the south-eastern end of the Malay archipelago to Arabia. Whereas Arabic cultural voyages had a comparable scope from the south-eastern coast of Africa to the Malay archipelago again. The Polynesians had managed, albeit with simple ships over a some period of time, travelled a region that encompassed from Mircronesia to Easter Island and from Hawaii to New Zealand. Many of these ships, particularly those of China and Japan, were certainly capable of lengthy deep-sea voyages. The success of the western Europeans in crossing the Atlantic, detroying the indigenious nations and introducing slaves from western Africa, was more due to proximity and need than anything else. Even in this field however, the role of printing was substantial. Columbus' letter of the first voyage was printed simultaneously in Barecelona, Rome, Basel and Paris in 1493, and despite attempts at secrecy, accounts of the Portuguese exploits in the Malay archipelago were published leading to a dramatic surge in geographical publications after 1550. This simply accelerated the implementation of the unusual discoveries to opportunities for trade, colonization and plunder.
Suggestions that gunpowder was the technological determinant also face similar problems. Again, it is well known that the Chinese had been using this technique for military applications possible as early as the 8th century, although its military application was limited due to a lack of availability of saltpeter. So-called "Greek-fire" remains a mystery as the recipe has been lost, yet there is little doubt of its military application, contributing decisively in the 7th century conflict between Byzantium and Arab attackers on Constantinople. Introduced to Europe via the Islamic states, gunpowder was quickly adopted into existing mettallurgical and manufacturing industries, making the mediveal castle walls redundant by the mid-fifteenth century (and contributing significantly to the fall of Constantiople and the ending of the Hundred Years War in favour of the newly armed French). [ James Riddick Partington, A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder, John Hopkins University Press, 1998 [FP: 1960] ]
In fact, consideration of what European society would have been like without the introduction of the movable type printing press with ideographic script clearly suggests the primacy of its role. The Protestant reformation, like other heresies beforehand, would have been isolated within a single region if successful (and probably only then in a peripheral area), or obliterated entirely by the multinational forces of the Papacy. Scientific and technological innovation would have stagnated or even regressed, as addditional resources were required for intensive agriculture due to population increases. Likewise, trade would also stagnate within the European region, especially following the disruption of the Silk Road. The bourgeoisie may have never arisen. Gunpowder would have kept a tight secret by the Papacy, or perhaps some other world-empire which would have slowly taken over (e.g., the Islamic or Orthodox states). The discovery of the New World would remain an oddity and never fully exploited, such as it was when the Vikings made their earlier journeys and colonies would eventually fail due the slow impetus to take control.
All of this is, of course, a preliminary sketch based on a extremely brief overview of the transformations in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. To be sure, a far more expansive elaboration of the role and influence of print media is required, especially relative to significant competing technologies (caravels and navigation, gunpowder and cannons), critical points in class-struggles within the feudal system and the transformation in the mode of consciousness. Nevertheless, this preliminary sketch does provide at least the suggestion that the breaking of religious-imperial dominance, the rapid rise in scientific discoveries, humanist literature and technical treatises, and the propagation of a new world of wealth to exploit - that is, all the other factors in the transition from traditional to modern society, except the means of communication - decisively owe their success to a machine that was capable of producing, altering and replicating the written text unlike any other in prior history.
The debate concerning postmodernity has dominated social theory for the better part of more than twenty years. The precursor to the debate was the success of western liberal democracies from the late 1940s to the early 1970s - an extraordinary period of continious economic growth occurring simultaneously with national liberation movements, many with a Marxist orientation and with at least nominal alignment with the state socialist international blocs, in the previous European colonies. Yet, to Marxist revolutionaries, it was the acquiesence of the working classes in advanced industrial nations to the capitalist system, under the shadow of the debacle of Stalinism and the enforced establishment of compliant regimes in Eastern Europe, that proved critical. As Leon Trotsky remarked: "It is absolutely self-evident that if the international proletariat, as a result of the experience of our entire epoch and the current new war, proves incapable of becoming the master of society, this would signify the foundering of all hope for a socialist revolution, for it is impossible to expect any other more favourable conditions for it."
[ The exception of Yugoslavia is entirely due to the fact that they had a successful indigenous partisan movement under Tito. Leon Trotsky, "The USSR in War" in "In Defense of Marxism", FP 1939 available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1942-dm/ch01.htm ]
Yet this is precisely what happened. On the backs of the enormous defeats of the socialist movement in the 1930s, the tiny revolutionary Trotskyist parties in advanced industrial states underwent a series of sectarian splits to the point where there are now some fourty international organizations that claim lineage to the original Fourth International. With a couple of exceptions (e.g., Sri Lanka) none have had any substantial impact in the mainstream political process. This political isolation was very damaging to those involved in such organizations as the tragic story of Juan Posadas indicates. Yet at the same time, it was Trotskyist organizations who played a significant leadership role in protests against the Viet Nam war, the events of France in May 1968 (particularly the Ligue Communiste R�volutionnaire), and in forming alliances between the working class and the 'new social movements' of "black" civil rights in the United States, feminism, equality for homosexuals, the environmental movement and so forth, although recognition of the diverse influences of "Western Marxism" (e.g., the Frankfurt School, Existentialist Marxism, Eurocommunism) also had profound influences.
[ Juan Posadas was an important leader of the Latin American Trotskyist organizations organizing the Latin American Bureau. In the 1950s he started making extraordinary claims such as UFOs being proof of advanced socialist societies in outer space and for the USSR to engage in a pre-emptive strike against the United States so that socialism could rise from the remains. Matt Salusbury, Trots in Space, The Fortean Times, Issue 176, August 2003 http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/176_trots.shtml ]
In contrast social-democratic organizations perceived that capitalism had sufficiently reformed itself to a point where there was a historic class compromise between capital and labour, especially in the field of employment and social welfare where, due to the economic theory of John Maynard-Keynes, whereby investment problems arising from the liquidity preference - aggregate crisis arising from the individual tendency to hoard money rather than reinvest or spend on consumables - was resolved through demand management. Social democratic theory in the post-war period argued that through economic growth resources would be provided to introduce social reforms without the necessity of confronting capital in a political manner. The fact that this was mediated via state institutions over-extended the states influence to the point of weakness. With the OPEC-induced crises of "stagflation" in the mid-1970s, conventional economic theory quickly switched to the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman and and Frederich von Hayek, a return (and little more) to the failed theories of liberal capitalism. Nevertheless, such policies were adopted by social democratic organizations who today have made no further contribution to social and political theory, and represent nothing but a middle ground of compromise between supply and demand management.
[ John Maynard-Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money Tony Crosland, The Future of Socialism, Johnathan Cape 1956 Tom Clark, The Limits of Social Democracy? Tax and Spend Under Labour 1974-79, Institute for Fiscal Studies Working Paper 01/04, 2001 available at: www.ifs.org.uk/workingpapers/wp0104.pdf ]
Within conservative and liberal social and political theory significant ruptures have recently arisen. For the better part of the entire post-war boom period, pro-capitalist political theory was primarily orientated towards opposition to the rise of communist or national liberation movements which expressed socialist convictions. Whilst democracy and human rights were often heralded in an ideological manner, the overwhelming interest was inevitably the protection and enhancement of private corporate interests. Partially as reaction to the hypocrisy of these actions which were inevitably endorsed by conservatives, and partially influenced by the libertarian and anarchist orientations in the new left, a radical liberalism or libertarian, perspective has become extremely influential, especially in the United States. The libertarian agenda advocates both a radical liberalism in the field of political rights and civil liberties and the application of strict economic principles as if the axiomatic requirements were already facts. In strong contrast, the conservative position still perceives the world as a "clash of civilizations", or more appropriately in contemporary words of Tariq Ali, "a clash of fundamentalisms", where an ideologically stagnated modern imperialism and premodern religious belief.
[ William Blum, Larry Bleidner, Peter Scott, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1985 In particular see The Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, http://www.theihs.org/index.php and David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer, Free Press, 1997 Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity, Verso 2002 ]
Finally, no discussion of an presupposed postmodern condition can be complete without consideration of the collapse of the eastern European state socialist dictatorships. The lack of legitimacy held by eastern European governments had been long held in check by military and police actions (Hungary and Poland 1956, Czechoslavakia and Poland 1968, Poland 1984+) and it is quite clear that many citizens and political leaders (e.g., Imre Nagy, Alexander Dubcek) and political theorists (Gyorgy Lukacs, Lezek Kolakowski) wanted a democratic socialist economic system that also respected political rights and freedoms. At the same time however, the internal trade bloc which isolated eastern Europe from the world economy and the rigidity of centralized planning mechanisms and the problems of relative scarcity, the illusion of ex ante resource allocation and production and the transformation problem, etc. all contributed to a stagnation in economic growth in the east european regimes. Whilst Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts to reform the system through glasnost and perestroika may have worked if they had been given sufficient time, the economic and political crisis caused and immature end to that experiment and an extraordinarily rapid replacement by at more democratic regimes who embarked on a rigorous programme of privitization of state enterprises and adoption of capitalist economic strategies. Evidence exists that the latter has actually caused a substantial increase in the Gini coefficient and a decrease in the standard of living, life expectency etc.
[ Gale Stokes,�The Walls Came Tumbling Down.�Oxford University Press,�1993 ]
It is under these political circumstances that the social-theoretical question of postmodernism comes to question. Initially proposed in literary and aesthetic theory, according to its advocates it stands in contrast to the modernist, Enlightenment project which was conclusively exhausted by Nazism and the rupture of the unity of progress and reason. IN contrast, postmodern aesthetics includes cultural diversity in setting, existentialism and nihilim as themes, and indeterminancy and poetic license in style. In social theory, it was ironically first raised by Jurgen Habermas for exploratory purposes, "a historically new principle of organization and not a different name for the suprising vigor of an aged capitalism", by which is referenced Daniel Bell's post-industrial society. It is indentified by Habermas as being a social formation that, like primitive social formations, is not differentiated by political rank or economic classes. In the exhaustive, yet surprisingly concise examination of crisis tendencies in advanced industrial states in general and advanced capitalist states in particular, one is left with the vague indication that Habermas' ideal of a postmodern society is one bound only by the rational consensus of free acting subjects - a communication community [kommunicationgemeinschaft], established either by systematic self-adaption or revolution, but in either circumstance, to expose "the stress limits of advanced capitalism to conspicious tests" for the purpose of "old European human dignity"
[ Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p17, ibid p143 ]
In response to Legitimation Crisis, Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, opposes "the Enlightenment narrative", "the rule of consensus". For Lyotard, the postmodern actor has incredulity not only to the social system but to any alternatives as well. In a theoretical sense, this position is built on the edifaces of poststructuralism and deconstructionalism and the abandoment of Marxist orientations especially by French intellectuals in the 1970s and U.S. intellectuals in the 1980s and 1990s. In such circumstances, knowledge has become a utililtarian commodity, simultaneous to the computerisation of society. The state and corporation cannot consider humanist and liberal notions of legitimation, as financial backers are only interested in the goal of power and increased power, which anti-democratic technocrats are all too willing to assist. Finally, Lyotard balks at presenting an alternative to the system; "there is no question here of proposing a 'pure' alternative to the system; an attempt at an alternative would end up resembling the system it was meant to replace". Postmodern advocates are at pains to emphasize that this does not represent a rejection of political action per se, but rather an advocacy of radical democracy and the politics of new social movements in preference to class politics (e.g., Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe)
[ The Postmodern Condition, p66 Andrew Ross (ed). Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism, University of Minnesota Press, 1989 ]
Similarities between Habermas' thesis of "a modernity at variance with itself" and the claims of the postmodernists do exist. Both recognise that the current political and economic system is departing from any pretence of democratic inclusion and both recognise that this has led to a loss of loyalty to the system. But whereas Habermas sees this a practical problem that beckons analysis and the proposition of a solution within the ideals of modernity, the postmodernists reject not only the prospect of the revived ideals of modernity, but also the prospect of solutions. Within a descriptive framework of the postmodern condition, the political strategy is opposition to universal claims and the negotiation of marginal influence in the name of justice. However it is possible to include elements of both sides of the debate. From Habermas, both the critical analysis and a practical orientation can be included. From Lyotard, the descriptive framework and behavioural analysis of the postmodern institutions and actors. In combining both studies the provisional content of postmodern social structures is included, partially arising from the descriptive framework of postmodernists and a partially as a practical solution to the crisis points of late modernity as analysed by Habermas. Both an explanation of the crises and the social structure content is required.
[ See for example: Stanley Raffel; Habermas, Lyotard and the Concept of Justice, Palgrave Macmillan, 1992 ]
Crises arise as consequences of modern growth and as a consequence of the system itself. Industrial development threatens the ecological balance, the systematic colonisation of life processes threatens the anthropological balance, and the capacity of military technology threatens the international balance. Crises specific to the operation of modern systems relate to the economic system, the political system and the cultural lifeworld. In terms of the economic system failures occur when economic axioms are not established, or the political system cannot compensate for the tendency for the fall in the rate of profit. In the political system, administrative rationality is threatened by the competing interests of sectional interests and the development of structures foreign to the system. In late modernity, and earlier in state socialist nations, economics crises are transferred to the political system. However as noted above, the political system faces generates its own crises arising from this transferal in the output of economic steering performances and social security. This leads to an crises in the input to the political system from the cultural lifeworld, that is, of mass loyalty. This legitimation crisis arises with a class (or rank, in the state socialist nations) bias, as powerful sectional interests force the political system to allocate resources inappropriately (business welfare, bureaucratic privileges) with equivalent attempts to force the mass of society to conform to system imperatives.
But social motivation is generated in the cultural lifeworld, not the systems of political economy. If a political system has lost mass loyalty, attempts to generate motivation are doomed to failure. At this level the system can only respond by the direct threats by political mechanisms, or indirect threats by economic means – an attempt to administrate life to the requirements of the system. Whilst there is no theoretical limit on how successful such authoritarianism can become and still achieve 'forced motivation', there is an equivalent risk of authoritarian rebellion, whether in the form of criminal responses, conscious revolutionary or reactionary activity, or the rise of socially pathological behaviour. Whilst there is still at least the formal existence of democratic decision making processes political participation need not be restricted to elites. In theory it can still be accessible to all members of a society. The fact that it is not accessible at all, or is heavily biased according to social differentiation has led to increased 'retreatism' from involvement in the system. Yet such a retreat by the disenfranchised only occurs in the absence of alternatives. A strong skepticism by actors in the postmodern environment must not be mistaken for either a refusual or incapacity to engage politically, nor must it be used by intellectuals as an excuse not to generate alternatives.
Of course, if a postmodern social formation is to be taken as a serious proposition rather than some form of libertarian sophistry in the rejection of metanarratives then propositions for qualitative changes to modernity according to the previously described social structures must be offered. As a tentative suggestion, the Internet may represent a qualitatively new means of communication compared to the modernist printed document, with recognized precursos technologies in other electronic communications and information media (film, radio, the telephone, television). Likewise, in the realm of the means of production, the possibility of a radical reduction of the contribution of variable capital, or labour, in the production process with the widespread incorporation of computerisation and robotics. With regards to a mode of consciousness, which ultimately must be a moral and normative orientation, its seems plausible to hypothesize a communicative mode which is both an elaboration from secularism but also transcends the modern propensity towards individualism. In terms of crisis points, as if it already needs to be re-stated, the fundamental problem with modern growth, regardless of the political and economic theme, is that where the stress limits of the global system are reached; the environment itself.
Finally, the question of system differentiation and institutional base. Most socialist critics of postmodernism are apparently quite correct to suggest that the historic class compromise was only a temporary feature of capitalism, and the prediliction of the capitalist class - as owners of the means of production - is to reduce their private costs, including reducing the wages and welfare bill. If a hypothesized postmodern society is going to make any sense whatsever then this historically temporary means of systematic differentiation must be overcome by a democratic one, just as the political hierarchy of traditional (and indeed, some modern) systems has been largely overcome. One such socialist alternative has been suggested by Alec Nove who, with extremely discerning and harsh criticism of the assumptions of Marxist economics and their application in eastern Europe, proposes a socialism based mainly on democratic management. This of course, is but one contribution to the debate, but the main criteria proposed - which is fundamentally an economically sound one - is that there must not be a class of individuals who derive unearned income in excess of the provision of needs (welfare). Whilst Nove includes both rents and capital gains in this equation, doubts can be expressed in the latter. Libertarian capitalism and libertarian socialism do not necessarily need to be incommensurable - democratic management of a industry can co-exist operate with venture capital, which views profits as its own reward rather than as ownership. [ Alec Nove, The Economic of Feasible Socialism, George Allen and Unwin, 1983 p197-230 ]
If the economic system is democraticized in such a manner, is there any need of further societial differentiation? The inquiries in this study suggest that actually there is, although such a differentiation could be more thoroughly meritocratic with no rights of inheritability, and need not provide any substantial political or economic reward other than its own title; qualifications as instituted through the education system. It is, of course, utterly inappropriate for an educational subsystem to be determined either by political democracy or the financial capital. Whereas commercial corporations and economic classes may have, albeit questionably, been the appropriate means of societal differentiation in the quest to establish a global world-system now that one exists it becomes not just a fetter to further development, but a real danger to maintaining the ecological system as a whole. The necessity exists for the human species - and increasingly the possibility of a human species in control of its own nature - to become a community of scholars and technicians dedicated to the open production of knowledge and the sustainable satisfaction of needs and desires.
Whether one prefers to equate the preliminary sketch given above and the prior "predictions" as "postmodernism", or another example in the constant revolutionary experience that is modernity, or whether it is a libertarian democracy, which synthesizes libertarian capitalist and libertarian socialist perspectives, or whether it equates with Lenin's equation that "communism equals electrification plus soviet power", is largely irrelevant. The content itself is more important - a highly decentralized system of civil administration, a federation of such states with universal moral regulations, a social system whose new feature is the independence of the education system, advanced personal liberties, democraticized political and economic institutions, and with social welfare derived from natural resource rents. With universal access to all citizens of the society to the means of communication and information and with people dedicated to realizing the potential global crisis and acting with a new, communicative mode of consciousness - one which has sufficient virtue to be able to prepare the species for its own self-transformation. Such a possibility is phrased not in some unimaginable far distant future, but within the immediacy and potentiality of the next hundred years. To give it a name - to show that there there can alternative to the system: Isocracy.
[ A comparison can be made here between the advice of both Fustel de Coulanges and Thucydides who, in suggesting a means that a privileged elite could be protected from the unruly demands of democracy recommended isonomy, or an equal ethical order. The proposition of isocracy is an institutional and systematic elaboration on such an ethical orientation. See William B. Allen, Let The Advice Be Good: A Defense of Madison's Democratic Nationalism, University Press of America, 1993 www.msu.edu/~allenwi/monographs/ Let_the_Advice_Be_Good.pdf ]
Last update April 30, 2004