Question

What were the roots of crisis of fordism in 1960-1970 and what were the solutions?

Answer 1

Fordism is the basis of modern economic and social systems in industrialized, standardized mass production and mass consumption. The concept is named for Henry Ford. It is used in social, economic, and management theory about production, working conditions, consumption, and related phenomena, especially regarding the 20th century.

The principles, coupled with a technological revolution during Henry Ford's time, allowed for his revolutionary form of labor to flourish. His assembly line was revolutionary though not original as it had previously been used at slaughterhouses. His most original contribution to the modern world was breaking down complex tasks into simpler ones, with the help of specialised tools. Simpler tasks created interchangeable parts that could be used the same every time. That allowed for a very adaptable flexibility, creating an assembly line that could change its constituent components to meet the needs of the product being assembled. In reality, the assembly line had already been around before Ford although not in quite the same effectiveness as he would create. His real accomplishment was recognizing the potential by breaking it all down into its components, only to build it back up again in a more effective and productive combination, thereby producing an optimum method for the real world.

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 1970s, 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.

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 substantivealternatives, such 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: (1) a focus on the transformative role of new technologies and practices regarding material and immaterial production, especially new information and communication technologies and their role in facilitating a new, more flexible, networked global economy; (2) a focus on the leading economic sectors that enable a transition from mass industrial production to postindustrial production; and (3) a focus on how major crisis tendencies of Fordism are resolved through the consolidation of a new and stable series of economic and extra-economic institutions and forms of governance that facilitate the rise and consolidation of profitable new processes, products, and markets. However, even decades after the crisis of Fordism emerged in the mid-1970s, 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.