discussion of Blade Runner, Harvey’s analysis of Wings of Desire also succeeds in relatingthe film’s concern with fragmentation, history and identity to the social conditions objectively produced by flexible accumulation.
After having laid the groundwork in the second part on the historical transformation of twentieth century capitalism Harvey is indeed able to show how transformation is reflected upon in the cultural sphere, but instead of engaging in more specific analyses of specific branches of culture or individual works of art in order to show precisely how economic factors determine postmodern culture, Harvey attempts to buttress his claims about postmodernism with a broad historical argument about the economic determination of culture throughout the modern period. This more ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful attempt, leads him away from the interesting correlation between postmodernism and flexible accumulation that he sets up in the first two sections of the book. In his attempt to show that the remarkable correlation between economic and cultural transformation that seems to exist in the postmodern epoch has existed throughout the modern age Harvey makes a series of arguments that do not hold up under closer scrutiny.
He attempts, for example, to link the rise of cultural “modernism” to the first crisis of capitalist accumulation in 1848 and to the first experience of non-linear “explosive” time on the barricades in Paris during the revolution of 1848. The concept of modernism he invokes in this context is clumsier than the one he uses in the first section, where he is careful to differentiate between various stages in the development of modernism. The placement of the onset of “modernism” in 1848 seems rather arbitrary; did not the early romantics in England and Germany develop the themes of fragmentation, irony, and non-linearity? How can Harvey account for the return of the linear temporal narrative as the structuring element of the late nineteenth century realist novel?
Whereas Harvey fails to demonstrate convincingly the specificity cultural response to the economic-political crisis of 1848, he fails to identify the economic roots of the unprecedented flourishing of modernism between the years 1910-1915. There had been no major economic crises in the West since 1893, and until the beginning of the first world war, capitalism seemed to be functioning better than ever. Even the majority of the world’s largest socialist party, the SPD in Germany, were convinced that reform within, not revolution against capitalism was the best way to achieve their goals. Harvey does point to the development of Fordism during this period, but as he himself argues, Fordism did not establish itself as the dominant mode of production in the West until the second world war. In short, Harvey’s attempt to generalize historically the correlation between postmodernism and flexible accumulation leads him to make broad claims that he cannot support.
The second main weakness in Harvey’s account of the relationship between economics and culture is that the relationship he posits between the two is too simplistic, too unmediated. While Harvey is by no means a vulgar Marxist, who posits a mechanical relationship between base and superstructure, many of the generalizations he makes bring him dangerously close to this undialectical position. He claims, for example, that he sees no difference in principle between the vast range of speculative and equally unpredictable activities undertaken by entrepreneurs (new products, new marketing strategems, new technologies, new locations, etc.) and the equally speculative development of cultural, political, legal and ideological values and institutions under capitalism. Statements such as these reduce culture to nothing more than a reflex of the economy, i.e. to a commodity which is produced just like any other. Harvey’s repeated use of the metaphor of the mirror to describe culture in capitalism also reflect his view that culture is “in the last instance” determined by economic conditions. It is a platitude to claim that one cannot understand a work of art or other cultural product without reference to the historical-material context in which it is produced. Even the most abstract pieces of art are “determined” in some way by material conditions. The more interesting question that must be posed, and which it is the job of the interpreter to answer, is the precise nature of this determination, which differs widely from case to case. To argue that this determination is not mediated by subjective factors, i.e. by the needs, desires, freedom, ideals, etc. of those who produced the art work, as Harvey sometimes seems to do, is to fall back into a rigid historical determinism which leads to absurd and unacceptable conclusions. Was Harvey’s book nothing more than a commodity whose production was somehow dictated by the current state of flexible accumulation? This is not, of course the position that Harvey himself adopts, but by downplaying the subjective factors involved in cultural and artistic production, sometimes to the point of eliminating them altogether, Harvey borders on a theoretical position which, if thought through to the end, could lead to such absurd concrete conclusions.