Conclusion: Global Continuity and Local Transformations

The hypothesis here has been that some observers have too easily confused the end of the boom years, the crisis of capital accumulation and the emergence of new forms of production. To be sure, any attempt to escape from crisis creates new solutions to old problems, and can thus even displace or modify old issues. But is that sufficient grounds for believing the old order or old forms of organisation to have ruptured? To talk of rupture, we would need to talk of salaried employment being replaced by other forms of work, or that the methods of sharing the social surplus were being radically transformed, or perhaps that the division and organisation of work were not governed by the same, almost military, style of command.