95

CSMC COLLOQUY

Eldridge, J. & Eldridge, L. (1994). Raymond Williams: Making connections. London: Routledge.
Elske, J. (1994). Radical shopping in Los Angeles: Race, media and the sphere of consump-
tion. Media, Culture, and Society, 16 (3): pp. 469-486.
P'lith, S. & Savage, J. (1993). Pearls and swine: The intellectuals and the mass media. New Left
Review, 198, 107-116.
Golding, P. 8c Murdock, G. (1991). Culture, communications and political economy. In J.
Curran & M. Gurevitch (Eds.), Mass media and society (pp. 15-32). London: Edward Arnold.
Cirossberg, L. (1992). We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and postmodern culture.
London: Roudedge.
Hall,S. (1986). Media power and class power. InJ. Curran (Ed.), Bending reality: The state of the
m£dia, (pp. 6—14). London: Pluto Press.
Howkins, A. (1994, July 29). The rhetoric of defeat: The crisis in "cultural studies" and the
return to value-judgments. New Statesman and Society, pp. 36-37.
Miller, T. (1993). The well-tempered self: Citizenship, culture and the postmodern subject. Baltimore,
MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Milner, A. (1993). Cultural materialism. Carlton Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University
Press.
Murdock, G. (1989). Critical inquiry and audience activity. In B. Dervin, L. Grossberg, B.J.
O'Keefe, & E. Wartella (Eds.), Rethinking communication. Volume 2: Paradigm exemplars (pp.
226-249). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Murdock, G. (1993). Authorship and organization. In M. Alvarado, E. Buscombe, 8c R. Collins
(Eds.), The Screen education reader: Cinema, television, cxdture (pp. 123-143). London: Macmil-
lan.
Sanders, C. (1994). A leading indicator. Times Higher Educational Supplement, pp. 17-18.
Tester, K. (1994). Media, culture and morality. London: Roudedge.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press.
Williams, R. (1978). The press we don't deserve. In J. Curran (Eds.), The British press: A
manifesto (pp. 15-28). London: Macmillan.
Williams, R. (1980). Problems in materialism and culture: Selected essays. London: Verso.
Williams, R. (1989). The politics of modernism: Against the new conformatis. London: Verso.

Reply to Grossberg and Carey

NICHOLAS GARNHAM
I am grateful for the range and serious-
ness of these responses. They provide a
real audience, which the original article
never had. Since the article was commis-
sioned, I assumed that the questions I
was asked to address were important to
someone, if only the editors of C5A/C.
But the audience had no face or voice,
In an article as short as mine, the
reification and simplification of which
Grossberg accuses me is, I think, iuevi-
table. But such simplification appears to
COLLOQUY
have led to an equal and opposite simpli-
tication in response. I obviously did not
express myself witb sufficient clarity, be-
cause both Garey and Grossberg continu-
ally slip into a characterization of politi-
cal economy as economistic, purely
economic, and so forth, which I was at
pains, I had thought, to contradict. There
are two core arguments in these re-
sponses: one theoretical, to which Gross-
berg mainly addresses himself; the other
political, which is at the center of Garey s
concerns. 1 will address each in turn.
Ihe problem with Grc:)ssberg's theo-
retical response is that it continues to
misrepresent pcjlitica! econc^my. I agree
that the issue is an adequate theory of
culture and power, and how cme thinks
about the relationship or links between
the different domains of social life—
what Grossberg calls the articulation of
differences. But the question remains:
Do all articulations have equal impor-
tance in terms of the analysis of struc-
tures of domination and their possible
overthrow?
f do not think there is any warrant in
my article for contending that political
economy is not sensitive to national dif-
ferences, what Carey describes as the
necessary ethnocentricity of cultural
studies. I have certainly been at paitis fbr
many years in my own work to stress the
specificity of national capitalisms. How-
ever, while (irossberg points to cultural
studies' interest in globahzation to refute
my claim that they neglect political eco-
nomic issues, it is difficult to address the
cultural issues of globalization without
some recognition that there are general
political economic processes at work that
transcend the local. Indeed to stress the
local at the expense of these wider pro-
cesses is to he as reductionist as Ciross-
berg accuses pohtical economy ot being.
There is no warrant in my article for
the claim that political economy takes a
"narrow and abstract conception of pro-
duction." Nowhere do I argue that the
relation between production and con-
sumption is either simple or stahle. It
demonstrably is not. I clo not claim that
MARCH I9'i
all producticjn and consumption are that
ot commodities, although I would claim
that such production and consumption
are increasingy dominant—eyen in the
cultural field narrowly detined—and
that they take place in different sites
which are articulated in specific ways. 1 o
take one example pertinent to the argu-
ment, peoples' identities as wage earners
are articulated differently from their
identities as consumers and those differ-
ences are culturally and politically prob-
lematic and important.
Nor is there warrant fbr the claim that
1 regard "consumption (or leisure) as
somehow less important than produc-
tion—perhaps even as trivial," Political
econcjmy is concerned with the articula-
tion of production and consumption at
both macro and micro levels. Of course,
in a market system, producers are fbrced
to respond in determinate ways u>
peoples' needs and desires, just as in
important ways peoples' needs and de-
sires are fbrmed hy what tht production
system makes available. And this articu-
lation will operate differently in differ-
ent realms ot production and consump-
tion.
I have shown in my own work how the
production of commoditied culture dit-
fers trom other areas of pi oducing pre-
cisely because cultural consumption dit-
iers trom other types ot consumption.
Nonetheless, a heirarchical structure of
power is involved. Firsl, because ot their
position within production the resources
available tor c:ultural consumption will
difier, resulting in observable differ-
ences in patterns of cultural consump-
tion—to use Amartya Sen's concept ot a
differential distribution of ctiltural capa-
bilities. I he extent to which tins makes a
difference to the meanings circulated and
to the possibilities of forins of political
mobilization is a matter fbr analysis. But
that it makes no difference is hardly, ni
my view, credible. It is true tbat there
are prohahly no meanings that are 'un-
thinkable" within a system ot commoditv
production. But there are certainly some
meanings that arc thought and others

csMt;
that are not; political economy argues
that this pattern is not entirely random
or culturally determined in the narrow
sense. I would go further and contend
that it is meaningful to talk, as Williams
did, of a structure of feeling related to a
given stage of capitalist development. In
each stage, certain problems become
more pertinent, certain forms of social
relation (or articulation) become more
or less possible and therefore likely. To
take a classic example, in Williams's The
Country and the City, the meaning of na-
ture and its cultural mobilization for po-
litical ends shifts as the mode of produc-
tion shifts from agriculture to urban
manufacturing.
This finally brings me to two major
points of difference with Grossberg. The
first relates to class. Grossberg argues
thai class is a culturally constructed iden-
tity. Well, yes and no. Here 1 think the
old distinction between a class in and for
itself remains useful. There are an objec-
tively analyzable set of material interests,
relations of production, and so on that
provide the material with which individu-
als and groups culturally construct their
own sense of class identity. But the cul-
tural construction does not arise purely
from discourse. It must always in part
derive from the articulation of real mate-
rial differences. Politically the cultural
construction is crucial and it will be ar-
ticulated with other pertinent differ-
ences such as gender and ethnicity. But
a politically informed intervention can-
not simply take the various cultural con-
structions of class at face value. It may be
necessary to try to change that construc-
tion—for instance in the direction of
class solidarity—by helping to rearticu-
late the cultural constructions of class
toward a shared set of material interests
and a strategic set of differences.
Here I need to stress that I do not
apologize for arguing that, at least in
Britain, it is difficult to see the question
of women's position within the labor mar-
ket as anything other than central to
gender politics. In this context in some
sectors there has been a significant shift
97
COLLOQUY
of jobs to women and away from men.
To speak of this shift as taking place at
the expense of white male manual labor
is descriptive, not normative. Nor is it to
deny the fact that women earn signifi-
cantly less than men. But it is to say that
the articulation of gender politics with
class identity and the politics that results
is likely to be different in those communi-
ties where a significant proportion of
households contain unemployed men
with women as the sole wage earners
from those that we might describe as
more traditional working class communi-
ties. Since I believe that, at least in Eu-
rope, the changing nature of employ-
ment and the general impact of increased
job insecurity are already major political
and cultural issues, as well as key ingredi-
ents iu identity formation and in politi-
cal and cultural struggles around iden-
tity (and that these issues can only
become more central), this is no trivial
matter. I certainly do conflate class and
economics (or rather material interests
and relations of production) because this
is how class as an analytical category is
constituted—as opposed to lived, which
is a different issue. It is not that econom-
ics and class are in any sense adequate
descriptions of all structures of power—I
would never make such a crass claim—
but that economics and class continue to
play a more central explanatory role in
the structure of power between races
and genders, than cultural studies and
much identity politics appear willing to
recognize. If, as I believe, race and gen-
der differences are articulated not just
marginally but centrally, to economics
and class, these issues do then, contrary
to Grossberg, say a lot about appropriate
ways of accounting for, or struggling
against, structures of domination orga-
nized around race and gender. To claim
as Grossberg does that ecology, the envi-
ronment, or indeed indigenous people,
are not crucially political economic is-
sues seems almost willful blindness.
But the core of the theoretical dis-
agreement still rests on the question of
determination. I do not think that politi-

cal economy is necessarily either reduc-
tionist or functionalist, as Gt ossberg con-
tinues to claim. Thus the mode of
production is indeed the hottom line
because it sets the terms Ibr individual
and social survival and reproduction. But
this does not lock into place or guaran-
tee anything. The construction of a mode
of production is historically contingent.
It is also unstable in the sense of being
subject to crisis and contradiction, the
sources of which may be either internal
or external. While created through an
analyzable historical process ot struggle
and trial and error, it does nonetheless
have a certain historical stability—like
all social institutions—becatise of the so-
cial investment, (and thus cultural and
psychic investment) made in its construc-
tion and because of the social dangers
which stem from its dissolution. It is also,
as the historians of technology say, path
dependent; the < hoic:e of a particular set
of institutions and practices cumula-
tively blocks off other choices within a
social learning process.
Let me illustrate the nature ot the
determination at work in political
economy with the example ot the Regu-
lation School. It is this version that Gross-
berg vaunts for being non-reductionist,
claiming that, in my crificism of Hall's
use of it in his New limes analysis of
Thatcherism, I misunderstand it.
There certainly have to be necessary
correspondences between the mode of
regulation and the regime of accumula-
tion, in the sense that the mode is histori-
cally constructed in order to support the
ftinctioning of the particular regime of
accumulaticin. But there may be, histori-
cally, a range of possible modes func-
tional fbr a given regime. Indeed it is
arguable that the United States, Western
Europe, and Japan all developed dis-
tinct modes of regulation for their Ford-
ist regimes. This is not functionalistn as
though it were arguing that a crisis in
the regime of accumulation, for instance
Fordism, will necessarily be smoothly re-
solved—a crisis which may originate in
either the regime or the mode—nor is it
VI,\K(.M
functionalism in that a new, nascent re-
gime cjf accumulation has in advance
either a single, or indeed any stable,
necessarily corresponding tuode of regu-
lation, fhis again is historically contin-
gent. In short, 1 dcj not castigate Hal! tor
drawing on the Regulation Schcjol in his
analysis of New 1 imes and 1 hatcherism.
Far from it. It is an extremely fruitful
mode of political economic analysis which
gives tis a useful purchase on contempo-
rary pohticai developments and the cul-
tural shifts that accompany them. But 1
maintain that its use does nol entail a
rejection of any determinate historical
relationship between a regime of accu-
mulation and a mode of regulation. As 1
will argue later, I also think that the fear
of economism and reductionism motwat-
ing this rejection also leads to a faultv
political analysis.
Again, I find no warrant in my article
for the view that false consciousness en-
tails manipulation. It does entail the po-
sition that the "truth"—even if narrowly
defined as socially useful knowledge—is
not immediately accessihie to experi-
etice. Indeed, I think that the overvalida-
tion of "experience " (1 will return to this
in my response to Garey) has been a
problem fbr cultural studies throughout
its history. Why this yiew of false con-
sciousness should be ccjndescending or
ethnocentric I cannot see. Of course, it
may be wrong cjr politically dangerous,
but that needs to be demonstrated.
In short, without some notion of neces-
sary correspondences—which is not
funcfionalism—I don't see how any po-
litical or sociological explanation Is pos-
sible, and politics becomes a matter of
pure yoluntaristic gatnbling. All rela-
tions or articulations are unique and thus
their effects are unpredictable.
Political ecc:)nomy is not, as <irossberg
asserts, a matter of pointing descrip-
tively to waged labor and commodity
exchange, but a matter of thinking
through the consequences ot their perva-
siveness and social centrality for the poli-
tics of culture, fhis may he 'what every
child knows," but there is litrle sign of
 99

CSMC COLLOQUY

this knowledge in the bulk of the cul- proposition that both the nature of the
tural studies with which I am familiar. problem and the possible solutions rest
Let me now turn to the central politi- to a large extent on political economic
cal issues raised by Garey. The first I foundations. Moreover, I also find it dif-
want to get out of the way quickly— ficult to imagine either an analysis of or a
namely, the old chestnut that the acad- political response to the other problems
emy depoliticizes everything it touches, he lists—immigration, population, natu-
including cultural studies, and that there- ral resources, abortion, crime, and ur-
fore the debate between cultural studies ban renewal—which is not primarily po-
and political economy is merely a dis- litical economic rather than narrowly
pute between schoolmen of no relevance cultural.
to the real world of politics. I think that Second, there is a major and very real
Bruce Robbins has dealt effectively and political difference between us. It sounds
cogently with this sort of intellectual mau- fine to talk of democratic insurgency
vais fois in his recent Secular Vocation.*; starting from human conversation, but
and I must say I am surprised at Garey what is this conversation going to be
for resuscitating it. It smacks of the worst about? I would argue that such conversa-
sortofworkerism. Both Garey and I are, tions are and will continue to be—for
for better or worse, academics and intel- very good reasons and to a large extent—
lectuals. We do what we do within the about political economic issues. More-
social division of labor and its political over, Garey also mobilizes a distinction
relevance or effect should be judged on between ordinary people on the one
a case-by-case basis. I will charitably as- hand and intellectuals and politicians on
sume that Garey produced this tired line the other. While having a powerfully
of argument on a bad day—we all have romantic, rhetorical, populist resonance,
them—and pass on to his more wide- this distinction seems to me not only
ranging and substantive political argu- untenable but politically dangerous.
ment. What we see and experience alone does
Garey contends that the real differ- not give us an adequate handle on our
ences between political economy and cul- lives. We all in fact constantly rely on
tural studies are not intellectual but po- "experts." They too are ordinary people.
litical. He then lists a range of issues Thus my evaluation of Raymond Wil-
going back to the Popular Front on which liams's position from which Garey draws
he thinks political economy was on "the his inspiration is much less positive than
wrong side of practically everything." Garey's. Indeed, it is part of the problem
Since he does not say anything substan- rather than the solution. How, from
tive about the nature of those political Williams's perspective, was "the quality
arguments or about which political of ordinary life" to be defended and
economists were on the wrong side and enhanced; how was the principle of com-
why, it is impossible to enter the argu- mon improvement as against individual
ment at that point. advantage to be fostered without ad-
1 he political differences he identifies dressing the central problems of political
appear to come from hoth a misunder- economy? In fact, in Britain the failure
standing and a real intellectual difFer- to address these problems and the belief
e-ncc. First the misunderstanding, which that a politics of culture could be substi-
probably stems from my own loose phras- tuted for them led to the naivete of the
ing. I never intended to argue that un- Mayday manifesto, the inability of the
employment was solely a narrowly eco- Left to respond adequately to Thatcher-
nomic issue or that identity politics could ism, and indeed the New Left's political
be reduced solely to the distribution of marginalization. The problem of the lack
jobs; but I would continue to defend the of contact with popular feelings and aspi-
100
COLi-OQUY
rations identified by Wilhams—^and oth-
ers who thought like him—were very
real ones and the New Left analysis pro-
duced some important political gains in
the tields of gender and ethnic politics.
However, the problem with Williams is
not only that his image of British work-
ing-c:lass culture is highly questionable
and one that British cultural studies has
quite rightly been at pains to decon-
struct. It is also that the actual threat to
this quality of life has come not from the
Fabians, the Labor Party, and state bu-
reaucrats, but from the restructuring of
the global capitalist economy and of Brit-
ain's place within it and from the politi-
cal economic project that has become
known as Thatcherism. If we take Stuart
Hall's work as an example, the cultural
studies analysis of Thatcherism seems
both politically unhelpful and in certain
impcjrtant respects just plain wrong.
While there was an attempt to underpin
a poHtical economic project with a cul-
tural politics of authoritarian populism
supported by the mass media, it is much
less clear that this was either successful
or necessary. The project of Thatcher-
ism was the attempt by a British eco-
nomic and political elite to solve a prob-
lem of political economy, namely
Britain's low rates of productivity and
resulting relative impoverishment, an
economic process that was undermining
the political and cultural consensus
around the Fordist mode of welfare regu-
lation. The subsequent decline of Thatch-
erism has been the result not of a successful
counter-cultural politics to authoritarian
REFERENCE
Robbins, R. (1993), Secular vocations. London: Verso.
MARCH 1995
populism, but from this project's failure
in economic terms.
Moreover, what evidence one can draw
from voting patterns and opinion polls
seems to show that Thatcherism was
never deeply entrenched culturally or
ideologically. What political hold it re-
tained rested on its continuing ability to
deliver a growing standard of living to a
sufficient portion of the working popula-
tion and the failure of the Left to de-
velop a credible alternative economic
project. Those of a cultural studies per-
suasion may wish that issues of race and
gender were more central to British elec-
toral politics, but these issues continue to
pale into insignificance compared with
those of taxation and employment. If
defense of the National Health Service is
a defense of the philosophy of the mini-
mum standard (an unworthy sneer from
Williams at the very real achievements of
social democracy), then in spite of
Thatcherism a majority of the British
working class remains obstinate in this
defense. Defending the culture of min-
ing communities is no substitute politi-
cally for a credible alternative industrial
and energy policy. In short, so far at
least as Britain is concerned, if what
Carey calls ordinary people are the test,
the politics of culture has signally failed
it. Ironically, although I do not have the
space to develop the argument here, its
failure has been even more striking on
its own chosen ground of culture itself.
But, of course, let the conversation
continue across as wide a civic and civil
discourse as possible.