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Author Topic: Fordist Societies
Trespasser
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1204

posted 03 April 2002 01:00 PM      Profile for Trespasser   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Could anybody go into details? I have only general knowledge of the concept. Age of the life-long employment and non-globalized capitalist production; picture of the mythical Negotiation Table for reps of the Labour, the Management and the State and long-lasting accords; all but working class women stay-at-home moms; Taylorist management of production; White's Organization Man; every household owns TV-set-toaster-dish-washer-fridge-etc paraphernalia. Those are the things that come to my mind when I hear Fordist Societies.

What else. And Ford the Prez or Ford the car-baron? And why Ford? Any features still present?


From: maritimes | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 490

posted 03 April 2002 02:32 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ford the car guy. Interesting you should say this, because I'm reminded of Brave New World which deifies Ford by realigning the calendar to have years before and after Ford.

Why Ford, more generally? He popularized the idea of industrial mass-production and the hitherto-not-quite-fully-applied Taylorist concept of breaking down production into a series of tightly timed steps.

Your thought images seem to come from the once-popular idea that extending such a mechanistic view of the universe onto all of society would produce a humanity regulated by a common rhythm and by a common set of ideas. The closest any country ever got to this, I think, was the 1940s and 1950s in the USA.

[ April 03, 2002: Message edited by: DrConway ]


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Doug
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 44

posted 03 April 2002 02:36 PM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ford the car-baron. The reason is that his company embodied two of the more important elements of 20th century industrial capitalism, the first being the assembly line and the other being the insight that for a large-scale corporation, one's workers are also one's customers.
From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Trespasser
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1204

posted 03 April 2002 03:26 PM      Profile for Trespasser   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
the other being the insight that for a large-scale corporation, one's workers are also one's customers

This is also interesting. Part of the 'common sense' appears to have been the notion of a certain standard of living which the unionized workers had been entitled to. Everyone had a role to play in consumermania...

You two reminded me: mass-scale production and the Age of Consumerism and Advertizing as well.

[ April 03, 2002: Message edited by: Trespasser ]


From: maritimes | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
hfx_ben
recent-rabble-rouser
Babbler # 603

posted 05 April 2002 12:48 AM      Profile for hfx_ben   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here's a shocker ... world advertising budget is something like $250B ... and that ain't in loonies. Talk about entropic economic activity!
From: Edmonton, AB | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged

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