Fordism

toc //The term// **"Fordism**" //was coined from industrial processes pioneered by Henry Ford.//

=General information=

Form of production that prevailed in post war western society. Significant improvement of mass production methods and development of the assembly line.
 * Most employees in the fordist structure were able to purchase the product they produced
 * Improved mass production methods and developed (with several employees) the assembly line method of manufacturing early in the 20th century
 * This linear assembly process, or assembly line, allowed relatively unskilled laborers to add simple parts to a product
 * Fordism often considered to be a period in economic history, starting around 1914 and ending in 1973. It thus coincides with modernism and its end marks the beginning of postmodernism.
 * The Ford model was based on the centralized mass-assembly production of standardized products. Ford's factories required a disciplined and deskilled workforce, willing and able to perform repetitive tasks on the assembly line. F. W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management published in 1911 had already described how labor productivity could be radically increased by breaking down each labor process into component motions and organizing them according to rigorous standards of time and motion.
 * Cold War ideology played a crucial role in the political stabilization of Fordist institutions in the US, providing the common ground on which de-radicalized industrial labor unions could be incorporated as junior partners in a coalition of globally-oriented social forces which worked together to rebuild the "free world" along liberal capitalist lines and to resist the encroachment of a presumed Communist menace globally and at home. Institutionalized Fordism, in turn, enabled the US to contribute almost half of world industrial production in the immediate postwar years, and thus provided the economic dynamism necessary to spark reconstruction of the major capitalist countries after World War II, and to support the emergence of both the consumer society and the military-industrial complex in the postwar US.
 * Fordist model began to break down in the 1970's when it began to overproduce, resulting in the massive lay-off of workers, and effectively reducing the demand for products.
 * 1945- mid 1970’s, characterized by standardization and uniformity
 * The prominence of nation states
 * Welfare provision for national citizens
 * Mass production-Which fitted with increasing mass consumption
 * Centrality to life of class as a distinguisher of lifestyle, politics, education and more.
 * Related Link: Post-Fordism
 * Signals a break with this, evidencing global connectivity, more intense competing which spans national borders,
 * Free market orthodoxy,
 * Customization of products and services,
 * Replacement of class with more individuated lifestyle choices