Henry Ford pioneered assembly line manufacturing. Fordism refers to economic and social systems based on mass production and mass consumption.
See Article History Fordism, a specific stage of economic development in the 20th century. Fordism is a term widely used to describe 1 the system of mass production that was pioneered in the early 20th century by the Ford Motor Company or 2 the typical postwar Fordism sociology of economic growth and its associated political and social order in advanced capitalism.
From origins to crisis Henry Ford helped popularize the first meaning in the s, and Fordism came to signify modernity in general. For example, writing in prison in the interwar period, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci discussed the economic, political, and social obstacles to the transfer of Americanism and Fordism to continental Europe and highlighted its potential transformative power when controlled by workers rather than conservative forces.
In its second meaning, Fordism has been analyzed along four dimensions. First, as an industrial paradigmit involves mass production of standardized goods on a moving assembly line using dedicated machinery and semiskilled labour.
Second, as a national accumulation or growth regime, it involves a virtuous cycle of mass production and mass consumption. Third, as a mode of regulation, Fordism comprises 1 an institutionalized compromise between organized labour and big business whereby workers accept management prerogatives in return for rising wages, 2 monopolistic competition between large firms based on cost-plus pricing and advertising, 3 centralized financial capital, deficit finance, and credit-based mass consumption, 4 state intervention to secure full employment and establish a welfare stateand 5 the embedding of national economies in a liberal international economic order.
Fourth, as a form of social life, Fordism is characterized by mass media, mass transport, and mass politics. The Fordist mode of growth became dominant in advanced capitalism during postwar reconstruction and is often credited with facilitating the long postwar boom.
During the s, however, its underlying crisis tendencies became more evident.
The growth potential of mass production was gradually exhausted, and there was intensified working-class resistance to its alienating working conditions; the market for mass consumer durables became saturated; a declining profit rate coincided with stagflation; a fiscal crisis developed; internationalization made state economic management less effective; clients began to reject standardized, bureaucratic treatment in the welfare state; and American economic dominance and political hegemony were threatened by European and East Asian expansion.
These phenomena prompted a wide-ranging search for solutions to the crisis of Fordism, either by restoring its typical growth dynamics to produce a neo-Fordist regime or by developing a new post-Fordist accumulation regime and mode of regulation.
Post-Fordism The term post-Fordism is used to describe both a relatively durable form of economic organization that happened to emerge after Fordism and a new form of economic organization that actually resolves the crisis tendencies of Fordism.
In neither case does the term as such have any real positive content. This is why some theorists propose substantive alternativessuch as Toyotism, Fujitsuism, Sonyism, and Gatesism or, again, informational capitalism, the knowledge-based economy, and the network economy.
Social scientists adopted three main approaches to identifying the post-Fordist regime: However, even decades after the crisis of Fordism emerged in the mids, debates continue about whether a stable post-Fordist order has emerged and, indeed, whether Fordist stability was a parenthesis in an otherwise disorderly, crisis-prone capitalist system.
Those who believe that a stable post-Fordism has already emerged or, at least, is feasible see its key features as: These features of post-Fordism are unevenly developed, and there are important continuities with Fordist conditions even in the advanced capitalist economies.
Post-Fordism can also assume different forms in different contexts.Abstract. Fordism refers to the system of mass production and consumption characteristic of highly developed economies during the ss. Under Fordism, mass consumption combined with mass production to produce sustained economic growth and widespread material advancement.
Fordism is an expression that became into existence between the s and the s and still maintained its popularity after World War II. Fordism can be defined in three contexts.
Fordism (Sociology) Words Jan 7th, 8 Pages Fordism is a system that arose during the last decades of the 19th Century through to .
Post-Fordism is the dominant system of economic production, consumption and associated socio-economic phenomena, in most industrialized countries since the late 20th century. Where as Fordism is a term widely used to describe (1) the system of mas.
Post-Fordism is the dominant system of economic production, consumption, and associated socio-economic phenomena in most industrialized countries since the late 20th century. It is contrasted with Fordism, International Sociology.
13 (1): 95– Definition of Fordism: A manufacturing philosophy that aims to achieve higher productivity by standardizing the output, using conveyor assembly lines, and breaking the work into small deskilled tasks.