New productive forces and the contradictions of contemporary capitalism

Conclusion The analysis that we have put forward is necessarily incomplete without developing its implications for political practice. However, considerations of space prevent us from elaborating on this aspect of our argument here. It is also the case that our ideas on politics are less coherent and developed than the theoretical perspective that we have outlined. This seems inevitable, since political thinking must be a collective project; political programs written by isolated individuals always sound hollow and abstract.Yet there are a few broad political implications of our analysis that are important to state here. The first is that any emancipatory politics in the present must begin with the realities of contemporary society, rather than from Marxist categories that have been rendered obsolete by the passing of accumulationist capitalism. While this point might seem obvious, it bears restating since so much current Marxist writing fails to grasp this idea. Second, while some might read our argument as an optimistic alternative to those theorists (Piccone, Lasch, Jacoby) who despair of the existence of emancipatory possibilities in the present, that is not our intention. For us, optimism and pessimism are not the important categories. In fact, our analysis incorporates the most pessimistic possible scenarios, since continued social stalemate in the face of post-industrial transition can unleash awesomely powerful pressures for individual and social regression. The point is rather that we have sought to develop an analysis that is genuinely dialectical — recognizing in this historical moment the interlocking processes of decay and development.This essay is a further elaboration of themes developed by L. Hirschhorn in a number of articles, see particularly Toward a Political Economy of the Service Society, Working Paper No. 229, Institute for Urban and Regional Development, University of California, Berkeley (IURD): The Social Crisis, Parts I and II, Working Papers No. 251, 252, IURD; Social Services and Disaccumulationist Capitalism, International Journal of Health Services, May, 1979; The Political Economy of Social Service Rationalization, Contemporary Crisis (Winter, 1978).