Privatized Production, Socialized Consumption? Old Producer Power Behind the New Consumer Sovereignty

Abstract

The scepticism of economists—mainstream and heterodox—towards "new economy" ideas goes beyond the indignation of long-established traditions being told to rewrite their basic rules. With its emphasis on trade through interand intra-corporate networks, the "new economy" presents a model of exchange very different from that used by mainstream (neoclassical) economics. Its assurance of equality within the network, like neoclassical economists' equality before the market, is attained only by ignoring the power imbalances built into the new network forms. The enhanced "consumer sovereignty" associated with recent technological change, deregulation and trade integration is shown to be just as open to market power abuses as were consumers in the traditional economy. Rather than representing a break with the past, recent structural changes in highincome economies are argued to continue a long-running trend for consumption and production to be spatially and temporally separated, so that the individual pleasures of the first can counterbalance the collective pressures of the second. Producers remain in control of most supply chains, and the intensification and deskilling of consumption reinforces rather than reverses these same processes in production, by promoting longer work hours and closer pay-performance links.