Essay Series #4: FORDISM
I: The Fordist Age
America
first! The early phase of the 1920s was a peculiarly ironic age for America.
From 1922 to 1924 the United States protected itself against foreign
commodities and – a people composed of immigrants- against immigration (Beaud).
American growth during the 1920s was able to take
place largely on the basis of American resources and for American markets.
The United States experienced monumental growth during
the 1920s. And for this, the American working class bore the major part of the
burden. From 1913 to 1919 the real wages of the workers declined and even
though the eight-hour workday had been mandated, it was far from being
universal. Excessive fatigue had been noticed in workers and the number of
injuries on the work floor kept on increasing consistently with the number of
fatal injuries progressing in tandem.
During the late 1920s in America, rulings by the court
had blocked the application of labor laws which had been voted for (including
Child labor laws) and there was apparently an increasing trend of yellow unions
controlled by company management. Another kind of a ‘soft approach’ was taken
by the management which included provisions like profit sharing and paternalism
including schools, canteens, housing, medical assistance, and vacations ‘granted’
by the management which could have been retracted anytime. This led to a fall
in the membership of other mainstream trade unions comprising of militant
socialists as well as anarchists.
It was precisely in this context that some employers
organized the scientific organization of work (Taylorism) and Assembly-line
Work (Fordism).
We
shall now begin by addressing some of the definitional concerns of Fordism. In
simple terms- Fordism was a system of economic production and social
reproduction. ‘Fordism’ refers to the mode of industrial organization which
came to characterize advanced capitalist economies from the early twentieth
century which reached its height in the post-World War-II boom. It also had its
counterpart in developed ‘communist’ economies during this period, at least in
terms of the technical organization of mass industrial production. As a mode of
accumulation however, Fordism can be seen as distinctly capitalist. (Tonkiss)
One
of the basic and most distinctive features of Fordism was that mechanized
production overshadowed craft production through the advent of assembly lines.
This is what Piore and Sabel have called the First industrial divide- the shift
from manual or craft production to mechanized production which reached its apex
in advanced capitalist economies around the mid-twentieth century.
This
Fordist period was marked by the increasingly intensive concentration of the
American Corporation. By 1930, 200 of the largest companies controlled half of
all non banking wealth. The different aspects of rationalization of production
was first put to work in precisely these companies like- Bethlehem Steel,
Republic Steel, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Du Pont, General Electric and
Westinghouse, Allied Chemical & Dye, and Union Carbide & Carbon.
The
major instruments or processes that characterized the Fordist age were:
Mechanization, Standardization, Work Planning, and Assembly Line manufacturing
and the organization of offices as noted by Michel Beaud.
One
of the most important takeaways from the Fordist lesson is that it was not
merely a new means of organizing work but was in a single movement both a new
means of producing the capitalist commodity and a new model for realizing the
value thus created. Mass consumption was seen as the driving force of the
Fordist age which resulted in the standards of living of the working classes
reaching to almost the levels of the middle strata.
Under
the very specific style of work organization of Henry Ford, devices which were
never heard or seen before were used to deliver unprecedented results. Each
worker occupied a static position from which he could not move because
‘walking’ as Ford noted ‘was not a remunerative activity’. Instead the
inevitable movement of component parts’ assembly was facilitated by an
ever-moving conveyor belt and each worker carried out only one (sometimes two
or three) repetitive action.
The
majority of the workers working under the Fordist regime were either
‘unskilled’ or skilled in only one or two activities, the ‘skilling’ of which
could be easily achieved in a span of two days.
Two
other important technical features of the assembly line were that it divided
the work to the smallest possible extent and imposed a certain degree of rigid
and uniform speed of production. The direct result of these innovations is
sometimes claimed to be the manifold increase in productivity in mass-scale
productions (productivity increased by a factor of five).
Another
revolutionary method adopted by Ford was increasing the wages in the automobile
industry from $2 or $3 a day to $5 a day. It was pragmatically a kind of
effective cost cheapening in a Schumpeterian sense. More importantly, its
effect was immediate and unambiguous. Absenteeism and turnover fell sharply and
long lines of potential workers, waiting to be employed by Ford started forming
outside its factories. Production also rose substantially as a result. Ford
himself had written afterward –“The payment of five dollars a day for an eight
hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made and the
six-dollar day is cheaper than the five”. (Beaud)
The
genius of Ford’s insight however lies in the understanding of what we might
call the ‘consumption multiplier’ today, and that too, years before Keynes
general theory could become popularly accepted in mainstream economics. Ford’s
major aim was to ‘allow’ his workers to reach higher levels of consumption than
before and also of creating ‘sturdy children’ through increased consumption,
who could in the future form a steady and healthy labor force in the factories.
In Ford’s words
“I
believe in the first place, that all other considerations aside, our own sales
depend in a measure upon the wages we pay. If we can distribute high wages,
then that money is going to be spent and it will serve to make storekeepers and
distributors and manufacturers and workers in other lines more prosperous and
their prosperity will be reflected in our sales”.
Thus
Ford had effectively embarked on a crusade to ensure higher living standards of
the workers who in his words ‘deserved’ to be entitled with the wage scheme of
five dollars a day. And indeed, we can
observe empirically, that the quantity of standardized commodities present in
the average working household had increased manifold from the five dollar a day
wage scheme.
As
Michel Beaud notes, “There was at this time, then, the exploitation of a part
of the working class using pre-1914 methods (low wages, brutal methods of
management and regimentation, the factory system and the sweating system); but
there was also mass production, the rational organization of work, and a policy
of high wages for a certain group among the workers, and consequently mass
consumption reached by a fraction of the working class: these were the bases
for the “prosperity” in the United States during the 1920s. One of the
observations of the Fordist method of production was that even though the
duration of the working day declined, the productivity of the workers
increased. In simpler words, the employers got more out of the workers in
limited time. Using Marx’s categories, Michel Aglietta (1979) analyses this
effect as a shift from the production of absolute surplus value extracted via
lower wages and longer working hours to relative surplus value, achieved by
increasing labour productivity (Tonkiss).
Another
major shift under Fordism can be observed by understanding the fact that before
Fordism, the system of mass production of standardized goods was generally
carried out for typically capital goods and not consumer goods. However under
the era of Fordism the system of mass-standardized production was extended over
to consumer goods as well. This shift marks the understanding of the class of
industrial owners of the importance of demand side considerations in business.
The target group of these mass-produced standardized goods became the masses,
the workers, the general populace and not other industrial establishments. As a
result, standardization of consumer goods could have been observed as a general
phenomenon under the Fordist regime. Moreover the economies of scale generally
observed in Fordist factories brought down the production costs of finished
goods which were formerly considered as luxury such as the motor car, which
became the face of the Fordist revolution. This decline in production costs
translated into a decline in the selling prices combined with higher standards
of living of the workers resulted in the motor car becoming a commodity owned
by the ‘common working man’.
A
certain kind of push was delivered to the generalization of the Fordist model
of production after the Second World War, because reconstruction on a large
scale required the use of standardized mass-mechanized production with the
additional benefits of economies of scale thus generated. The emphasis on
rationalization through efficiency maximization and zero ‘wastage’ (in whatever
sense of the word wastage was contextualized) proved to be well suited for
industries that generated the most profits like cars, ship-building, steel,
construction and petro-chemicals.
The
more or less stable period of post war growth allowed for a settlement to be
reached between capital and labour with the State generally being the overseer
of the supposed contract. Fordism gradually became embedded in the advanced
capitalist countries of the world; the Fordist wage settlement became crucial
to the larger stability of the socioeconomic system. The Fordist era was an era
of a newly emerging consumerist dream. The connotations of America being the
frontrunner of consumerism in the world originated from particularly this era.
Thus Fordism, in this context is a shorthand term for an economic system where
mass production both fuels, and in turn is fuelled by, mass consumption.
A
further boost to domestic, American Fordism was given by the liberalization of
trade across nations, as managed by GATT, marking the post-war ‘recovery’ phase
of international, advanced capitalist economies. One could make the point that
the reproduction of capitalism from America to other nations brought with
itself a certain kind of hegemonic cultural apparatus along with the usual
technical aspect of it as characterized by mere technological transfers. This
Fordist cultural apparatus thus became an important shaping tool in other
advanced capitalist economies as well, though for obvious reasons, to a lesser
extent than in America.
II: The socio-politics.
One
of the key figures on whose insight we must depend on while embarking on our
quest of analyzing Fordism is Antonio Gramsci[1]. One
of the most detailed critiques of the Fordist regime of accumulation comes from
his landmark piece of writing “Prison Notebooks”. It is Gramsci who gives us
the precedent of thinking about Fordism as not merely a means of organizing
work on the factory level but a comprehensively structured regime shaping
economic as well as social relations outside the realm of factory
production. It suggests that the forms
in which economies produce goods and services is closely tied to the ways in
which they reproduce social relations, institutions and norms (Tonkiss).
A more or less vivid picture of how
Fordism governed the sphere of life beyond mere factory production can be very
well seen from what Gramsci believed that the modern industry demanded “a
rigorous discipline of the sexual instincts (at the level of the nervous
system) and with it a strengthening of the ‘family’. . . and of the
regulation and stability of sexual relations.”[2]
Gramsci very strongly argued that the history of industrialism has been a
continual struggle against the element of ‘animality’ in man. He argues that
newly increasing and more complex forms of collective life are the necessary
consequence of the progressive development of industrialism and improvements in
factors of production.
With every new wave of organizational
and structural change in the method of production and technical disturbance
reveals a deeper level of subjugation of the ‘primitive human animality’
according to Gramsci. The selection of the ‘men’ suited and entitled to the new
‘luxuries’ of continually changing systems of production has always been brutal
often eliminating the non-conforming ‘socially weak’ classes or individuals,
dispossessing them of even rudimentary
access to forces of production and pushing them further downwards the ladder of
distribution. Gramsci writes that the institution of heterosexual
relationships, forming the base of the social structure of America had
undergone disequilibrium (purely numerical as well as psychosocial) during the
inter-War as well as the post-War period since the majority of men were
spending their lives on the war-front and the trenches. The advent of
Taylorism, Fordism and other Rationalizing Forms of organization of production,
according to Gramsci, further exacerbated this disequilibrium of the
heterosexual family structure by imposing a constraint-based need of the
‘strong family’ with ‘high moral values’ (however the morality be defined by
the industrialists). In order to analyze this point through the lens of class
antagonism, Gramsci writes interestingly
“It is worth insisting
on the fact that in the sexual field the most depraving and ‘regressive’
ideological factor is the enlightened and libertarian conception proper to
those classes which are not tightly bound to productive work and spread by them
among the working classes.”[3]
Therefore
Gramsci has termed this social structure of subjugation of sexual tension under
the Fordist regime as “totalitarian social hypocrisy”[4].
He
terms it totalitarian because he believes that the popular classes were
compelled to practise ‘virtue’ as defined by the capitalist class, because
ultimately, their sustenance depended on it. And one can clearly see the social
hypocrisy in the fact that even though the working class was compelled to
practise ‘virtue’, those who preached seldom themselves did. Moreover, Gramsci
comments that such a social structure, as existing under Fordism will succumb
to its own tensions and contradictions resulting in a crisis as well as a
possible end to the Fordist method.
Gramsci’s
criticism of Fordism derived almost entirely from the system’s implementation
in a class society. In capitalism, the remaking of industrial man necessitated
by modern techniques of production could only ever half-succeed, as it would
always be imposed on workers coercively from the outside. Gramsci argued that
Fordism could only be completed when the working class took power, and adapted
itself by conscious choice to Fordism’s requirements.[5]
Antonio Gramsci was also however highly
ebullient of this new wave of the Fordist revolution[6]. He
believed that such an advance could not even be completed under capitalism and
that only under socialism could such an impulse consummate.
Critics critical of Gramsci’s enthusiasm
for a so-called Socialist Fordism, argue that the concerns for efficiency might
have become the sole criterion for Gramsci to evaluate social change. They
argue that while a Marxian theoretician should have emphasized on technology
making socialism a reality, Gramsci performed an unfortunate inversion of
calling forth for socialism only as a means of unleashing the full potential of
technology.
The
Production process under Fordism was broken down or fragmented to the smallest
of movements. Each such function was performed by the worker whose physical as
well as mental well being underwent changes through such simplified and
mind-numbingly routinised work. It is one thing to analyze Fordism as a system
of so called pure economics and technicality on one level and another thing to
analyze the consequences of such a system on the psyche and the biopolitics of
the proletarian classes.
In
Ford’s particular case, Gramsci writes “it was relatively easy to rationalize
production and labour by a skilful combination of force (destruction of working
class trade unionism on a territorial basis) and persuasion (high wages,
various social benefits, extremely subtle ideological and political propaganda)
(Tonkiss).
Another
important line of argument substantiating the claim that Fordism was not merely
a technique of production is the fact that some people argue that the intention
of the Fordist regime of production went beyond just ensuring a disciplined and
loyal workforce. It was, more consequentially responsible for driving a rift
between the working class and widening the differences between workers employed
by Ford and other workers. More importantly, not just across the working class
but also among the workers of Ford, not everyone was treated or remunerated
equally. There were particularly three kinds of workers that Ford employed who
were not entitled to the five dollar a day wage. These categories were- workers
having less than six months’ tenure, workers less than 21 years of age, and
women. And hence, one could argue that a major socio-political consequence of
this kind of division was that among the workers who belonged to the five
dollar a day as wage category, a false sense of entitlement, a shallow sense of
climbing up the societal ladder started creeping in. They thought of their
right to the five dollar a day wage as a badge of honor for being worthy in
some sense thus further fuelling a baseless sense of superiority towards
themselves and a similar sense of inferiority towards workers under Ford being
remunerated less than five dollars a day and also towards other workers working
elsewhere. Thus, in a significant sense, this measure of discriminatory
remuneration was able to divide up the working class segment which could be effectively
translated into weaker labor union movements due to a fragmented working class.
The
ways in which this Fordist regime tried to extend its control beyond the
confinements of the factory were plenty. But one of the most notable among them
was the almost explicitly stated and effectively enforced necessity of ‘good
morals’. These morals included “Cleanliness and discretion”, the rules of no
smoking, no drinking, no gambling, no frequenting the bars. It is easy to see
how the extension of the control of capital over labor moved beyond the factory
into the social domain as Heilbroner had also pointed out. The morals outlined
above can easily be seen to have set forth so that the productivity of the
workers remain intact and be constantly beneficial to the employer. But because
of their general appeal, these ‘morals’ were easy to be liked and became
popular in the guise of preaching for a stable family and a consequently a
stable, good, Christian nation. The five dollar day was thus, an instrument of control
and in a way of ‘breaking in’ the workers.
Fran
Tonkiss notes that “‘Fordism’ in this way refers not simply to what happens
inside the factory, but to the larger setting of work, consumption, and the
socialization of both workers and consumers”. A unique characteristic under the
Fordist regime (and subsequently under various other post-Fordist regimes) of
production and accumulation was that the division of labour became further
enhanced leading to a re-division within the working class. This unique characteristic
was a neat class division between the management which comprised of workers
with relatively ‘higher skills’ and the industrial workers comprising mainly of
‘semi-skilled’ workers. The management, though technically being a part of the
working class, was seen as that front of the capitalist class that linked the
industry-owners and the industrial-workers. This created a rift between the
common Laboring class, further becoming an obstacle in the formation of bonds
of solidarity of the working class as a whole on the antagonistic front of
class struggle and confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Viewed
from the point of view of the regulation school, Fordism appears less as a mere
system of mass production and more as a total way of life, as emphasized by
David Harvey. Gramsci has effectively linked the phenomenon of Fordism to a
term which he calls ‘Americanism’, which represents a larger culture and
becomes a certain kind of ideology in itself in a very Althusserian sense[7].
Gramsci believes that in an extended sense, the Fordist apparatus wanted to
create ‘a new type of worker and man, based on a form of work that was
inseparable from a specific mode of living, and of thinking and feeling life”.
Thus Hegemony, in this form, according to Gramsci, was born in the factory.
(Tonkiss).
III: Fordism’s end?
David
Harvey provides a symbolic date, the year of 1973 (the year of the oil crisis)
as the beginning of the end of Fordism. As reasons for the apparent ‘collapse’
go, one could safely argue that there was a presence of both internal as well
as external pressures with forces working towards restoration of the old class
powers which were dampened by the policies during the ‘golden age of
capitalism’.
One
of the primary factors contributing to the crisis of Fordism was the rise of
the multinationals. Multinationals had existed earlier also but gradually a
system of critiquing the coherence of domestic markets had been put forth by
these firms. And Domestic markets were the core consumer base of the entire
Fordist technical as well as cultural apparatus. Once the logic of catering
with the main of serving the domestic markets solely, started to disappear, the
system of production started losing relevance (at least in opinions manufactured
by the multinational agents by then).
Fran
Tonkiss argues that the economic problems of the 1970s in part were due to the
rigidity of mass production systems which were slow or simply unable to adapt
to changing economic and social conditions. It might be said that Fordist
production got better and better at what it did but simply proved unable to do
much else.
The
advent of a new technological wave of computers, robotics, electronics and
semi-conductors revolutionized the way production was going to be carried on
requiring fewer human workers and creating a paradigmatic shift in the patterns
of demand of industrial workers. This led to growing unemployment which further
exacerbated the growing recessionary tendencies, creating further falling aggregate
consumption expenditure. Moreover, the problem of over-supply at home was made
worse by increasing foreign competition and somehow the most viable way for the
industrialist class to escape this unanticipated accumulation of inventory was
to diversify their products and which, therefore needed to do away with the
sclerotic system of Fordist mass production.
The
problems of Stagflation created another shift in the school of economic thought
which translated into far-reaching political consequences in primarily the
advanced capitalist economies and subsequently in the other economies. This was
an age of de-regulation and moving away from the conventional Keynesian wisdom
of that time. Welfare states were started to being looked down upon and
policies with even a modicum of resemblance to anything ‘socialist’ became the
anathema of the influential circles of economic academia as well as
policy-making.
As
Tonkiss argues-
“The early lines of post-Fordism then were visible in
the weakening of corporatist consensus-especially the exit of capital not only
from three way bargaining but from any primary attachment to domestic
investment; the internationalization of corporate investment, ownership and
operations, and the rolling back of state intervention into the economy”.
The
gradual disintegration of Fordism and newer modes of neoliberal accumulation
thus have shaped the political economic realm of today.
During
the peak of the Fordist regime, Detroit was made the mecca of Fordism. But the
end of Fordism brought about a disastrous capital flight in the city of Detroit[8]. One
could very well, after seeing the case of Detroit, write an obituary of Fordism
but it becomes important to take along the lessons brought about by it and
still ask the questions which contend the end of a Fordist era.
Some
critics argue that the post-Fordist era has given rise to a large and growing
precariat class. Precariat is a class which is typically the proletariat
workforce characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability of their employment[9].
While other critics argue that the usage of the term precariat is disorienting
and misguided arguing that it is an odd form of determinism when one makes the
claim that the newer labor classes become necessarily more precarious under
post-fordist regimes than under industrial employment.
Rather than a
“post-Fordist” framework that sees the very real and dangerous shifts underway
as the natural outgrowth of a new phase of capitalism, it might be helpful
to consider the ways in which the current situation resembles a return to
pre-Fordism.[10]
REFERENCES
1.
Tonkiss,
Fran: Contemporary Economic Sociology: Globalization, Production,
Inequality, Routledge, 2006 (India reprint 2008).
2.
Beaud,
Michel: A History of Capitalism, 1500-2000, Aakar books.
[2]
http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Antonio%20Gramsci/prison_notebooks/reader/q22-10.htm
(Accessed on 11/3/2020)
[3]
http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Antonio%20Gramsci/prison_notebooks/reader/q22-10.htm
(Accessed on 11/3/2020)
[4]
http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Antonio%20Gramsci/prison_notebooks/reader/q22-10.htm
(Accessed on 11/3/2020)
[8]
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/detroit-revival-inequality-dan-gilbert-hudsons
(Accessed on 9/3/2020)
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