Flexible capital’s ephemerality atomizes workers and enables individualism

Evidence

To begin with, the more flexible motion of capital emphasizes the new, the fleeting, the ephemeral, the fugitive, and the contingent in modern life, rather than the more solid values implanted under Fordism. To the degree that collective action was thereby made more difficult - and it was indeed a central aim of the drive for enhanced labour control to render it thus - so rampant indivi­ dualism fits into place as a necessary, though not a sufficient, con­ dition for the transition from Fordism to flexible accumulation. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1049

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core mechanism linking flexible accumulation to cultural postmodernism — the heart of the rival-periodization comparison. — connects to: Standardized production forces a compensating pretence of individualism — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 82; Worker insecurity functions as a deliberate competitive asset for capital — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 232; Flexible production bypassed Fordist rigidity to serve quick-changing markets — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 936 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Worker insecurity functions as a deliberate competitive asset for capital #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 232
• Standardized production forces a compensating pretence of individualism #qualifies (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 82
• Flexible production bypassed Fordist rigidity to serve quick-changing markets #expands (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 936
• Immediacy is the subjective corollary of accelerated capital circulation #exemplifies (0.75) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 82
• Flexible postmodernism couples economic ephemerality with cultural commitments to place and being #qualifies (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2102