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.The state in late capitalism therefore not only plays the central role in theallocation of surplus value and social capital through military expenditure and thecreation of the welfare system, it also intervenes directly to alleviate the crisistendencies of the traditional industrial cycle.It does so principally through fiscaland monetary policy, by issuing massive quantities of credit both directly, throughgovernment bonds and contracts, and indirectly, through the underwritingcapacities of a central national bank.The proliferation of public and private debt onan unprecedented scale lies behind the steadily rising accumulation of the earlyphase of late capitalism.Large-scale credit allows accelerated expansion to continuebeyond the limits of private and corporate property and profit, thus reducing thechances of any damaging slowdown or stagnation in the development of the forcesof production.Just as importantly, credit guarantees liquidity (that is, means ofpayment) which, were it not available, would probably result in an old-fashionedcrisis of realisation.The  hypertrophic expansion of the services sector identified byMike Davis is clearly a part of this development but cannot be taken in isolation fromthe rise of advertising, marketing and the wholesale mass-mediatisation of moderncapitalist societies.This reflects the institutionalisation of debt-based consumptionand the industrialisation of the cultural apparatus which is increasingly linked to thepromotion and dissemination of commodities through notions of lifestyle, taste andidentity.With the issuing of ever more units of money to represent the same amountof total social value, inflation takes on the role played by cyclical recession inprevious stages of capitalism, that of securing the devaluation of overaccumulatedcapitals and commodities.But inflation, according to Mandel and Aglietta, concealsthis process, allowing corporations to fix higher prices and to pass the costs ofamortisation (the replacement of obsolete means of production) and realisation(marketing, advertising and the like) on to the consumer, thereby reducing the shareof surplus value eaten away by wage increases.Yet there is an ever present danger that this structurally essential  creepinginflation will mutate into  galloping inflation , bringing with it the destruction ofprofits as well as the desired erosion of wage values and thereby threatening theprocess of commodity production as a whole.Hence the crucial role of the state in22 CAPITAL, CLASS AND TECHNOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTUREregulating the money supply of the most powerful industrial nations.The fact thatin late capitalism the state must take on the role of  ideal total capitalist in order tomitigate the contradictions provoked by the operations of many actual capitalistsshould make us wary of theories of a purely  administrative ,  distributive or managerialist state no longer structured by class antagonisms arising from theproduction of surplus value and the realisation of private profit.Private corporationsincreasingly look to the state to guarantee profits and favourable conditions forexpanded accumulation.However, the enlarged role of the state is at the same timea symptom of capital s increasing difficulty in securing smooth accumulation.Moreover, Mandel notes that such evidently political state intervention on behalfof capital carries with it the risk of alienating wage earners and thus ofdelegitimating the structures and institutions of liberal democracy.3Limits to Late CapitalismThese considerations return us to the notion of crisis and to Mandel s insistence thatthe structural transformations made within late capitalism cannot ultimatelysucceed in eliminating the tendency of the capitalist mode of production towardcrisis.Traditional crises of overproduction and underconsumption may have beendeferred or made less likely by accelerated accumulation, expanded commodityconsumption, credit mechanisms and structural inflation.But these have given riseto the recent phenomenon of  stagflation , a combination of over-capacity and risingcosts in which prices and unemployment increase simultaneously [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]