Information Technologies and Competitive Restructuring of Capitalism

Abstract

The so-called information revolution has had a strong impact on the restructuring of the Japanese economy after 1973. In particular, it has promoted the reactivation of a competitive capitalist market economy, and formed an economic order favourable to the neoliberal policy tide. To be sure, there are shared aspects with other capitalist countries as well as special features of the Japanese economy in these respects. Continuous economic crisis and the restructuring process in the capitalist world since 1973 is often compared with the great depressions of the late nineteenth century and the 1930s. It can properly be defined as the third great depression in the history of capitalism. While great depressions deliver a heavy blow to capitalist economies, they also foster innovation in industrial technologies on a large scale. This is because serious attempts at survival and recovery are forced upon capitalist firms.