Fordism: Rise, Fall, Impact, and Legacy
The Fall of Fordism
- The uniformity of the wage rate (eliminating bonus pay) and repetitive detail operations led to the abandonment of the Ford model.
- Increased unionization of workers, particularly around the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
The Solution: Reduced Working Hours
The reduction of working hours from 9 to 8 hours, surprisingly, increased production levels at an accelerated pace. The “high wage” became a necessity for the new process of accumulation. It was believed that later generations would not be physically and spiritually qualified to enter the industry if conditions did not improve.
Post-War Growth of Fordism
After the Second World War, and due to economic problems, state-supported policies facilitated the achievement of mass production. This reconstituted the workforce.
During the “golden years,” the state, with the market as a regulator of the economy, established wage contracts tied to productivity gains. These contracts regulated class relations after the crisis of the Fordist pact in 1929. Capital created a situation where the working class’s fight for fair wages became an engine of growth for capital itself.
Imperialism and Fordism
The period from 1870 to 1914 is associated with countries seeking to expand their markets. This expansion took two forms:
- Direct Occupation: This involved the actual occupation of a foreign territory by a minority, requiring the use of direct force. The entire military, political, and administrative apparatus of the occupying power was used for domination, often involving theft, looting, and the exploitation of native labor.
- Informal Rule: This was defined by the economic control of developed or industrialized countries over undeveloped ones.
The Age of Empire
- This era was paradoxically a time of peace and progress, yet also of significant social instability. It was characterized by bourgeois luxury existing alongside hunger and poverty in the working class.
- Political power was concentrated in the aristocracy, although some concessions were made. However, the industrial bourgeoisie did not always achieve commensurate political influence.
Key Changes in the Fordist Workshop
Fordism required that parts be identical for use on the conveyor. The Fordist workshop was divided into sections, each responsible for a specific part. This enabled the transition from a “universal machine” (designed to perform various operations, handled by workers with a wide range of operative skills) to a “specialized machine” (performing a single operation, handled by a skilled worker). This marked the birth of the rationalized factory.
Improvements Upon Taylorism
- Elimination of Downtime: Ford aimed to eliminate the “pores” of the working day, where the worker was not actively productive, thus increasing the effective duration of the workday.
- Integration of Ford’s Work and Taylorism: While workers initially retained some skills under Taylorism, the assembly line eliminated the need for these skills.
- Elimination of “Laziness”: Taylor focused on eliminating the idleness of workers, while Ford also targeted the “laziness of materials.”
Consequences of Fordism
- Increased mechanization due to competition among capitalists to increase labor productivity.
- The creation of a “panoptic” surveillance principle, as the online production increased the visibility of the work process. This increased the rate of profit, either through increased productivity or reduced downtime.
- New rules were generated as productivity increases enhanced the extraction of surplus labor.
- Generalized mass production of standardized products increased work efficiency, leading to capital increases and avoiding stagnation of the costs of goods or their parts, reducing the “laziness of materials.”
- Increased profits due to reduced production costs, resulting from a decrease in the necessary work time.
The Meaning of Salary Under Fordism
Under Fordism, salary (the incentive from capitalists to workers) became directly related to the amount of work needed for the worker’s own reproduction.
Reasons for Increased Salary
Ford increased the daily wage from an average of $2.30 to $5 (though this was not universally applied and required high moral character, with controls on how workers spent their wages, and more than 6 months of seniority). The reasons included:
- The need to recruit labor, as there was a low supply compared to the growing demand in the automotive industry.
- Retention of workers due to increasingly hostile working conditions.