Talk:Fordism/Archive 1

Thomas Hughes bias
This article and some related ones (such as Taylorism) seem overly biased towards Thomas Hughes' views.

Development of the assembly line
I was always told the Ford perfected the Assembly Line, but he didn't develop it. Ransom Eli Olds had a form of it when he was making cars, and forms of it were even present during the industrial revolution.
 * Eli Whitney is popularly credited with interchangeable parts. Not all autos had this when Ford began production, though many did.  Several of his employees invented the assembly line to the best of my knowledge (see Ford Piquette Avenue Plant) -- this is the first reference to moving product through the process that I am aware of. Paulmeisel 01:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * According to Hobsbawm (Industry and Empire, Penguin, 1968, p.176), "The government enterprises working for the British Navy had, however, evolved perhaps the first working assembly-line in the famous biscuit-bakery at Deptford in the early nineteenth century. ... The very earliest experiments in continuous production lines go back to the ingenious Yankee technicians of the late eighteenth century, such as Oliver Evans (1755-1819), who constructed an entirely automatic flour-mill and invented the conveyor belt, though it was not untill the 1890s that the technique was seriously developed in the Chicago meat-packing industry and elsewhere, and not until the ealry 1900s that it reached maturity in Henry Ford's motor works." Just thought I'd share... bobanny 04:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Comparing Taylorism & Fordism articles
Are the authors of both Taylorism and Fordism one and the same? This excerpt appears in both articles but under two different headings: Scientific management and the Soviet Union and Fordism and the Soviet Union.

Historian Thomas Hughes (Hughes 2004) has ... The combination of the Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism. (Hughes 2004, 251).

Plagiarism (self or otherwise)?

Fordism

The term Fordism is often described as the system in which assembly line mass production fed the ultra hungry demands of a consumption world. Fordism is much more than just a blueprint for mass production however. Fordism both revolutionized how products would be made and economies function, as well as help fight many of America’s threats on many different fronts.

When people think about mass production and mass consumption economies they often think of the man Henry ford. Up until the industrial revolution the economy had really been agriculturally based. The introduction of machines changed all that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry Ford did not invent these new machines but he did exploit them better than anybody else. Until of course everyone started copying Fords blueprint for success. Fordism created an economic market of mass production instead of the previous craft production. This transition gave rise to the giant organizations built by minute divisions of labor and functional specialization (Thompson). Fords main triumph in the world of new ideas was the assembly line although he did barrow the idea from a slaughter house in Cincinnati. The assembly line allowed the company to standardize every single product and labor process there was. All of the parts and components were the same for every car on that assembly line as well as the way they were put together. The real engine behind the assembly line however was not the machines but rather the people working on the assembly line. Men who worked on the assembly line did one job the whole day. It was a repetitive task that was not very glamorous which we will talk more about later. This did allow for productivity to go through the roof. The Ford Model-T Plant in Highland Park, Michigan was the first plant to implement the moving assembly line in 1914. The effects increased labor productivity by ten times. The new productivity was passed along to the consumer in lower prices for a new automobile. In 1910 the price of a car was $780 which could only be afforded by the rich and very well off. Thanks to Fordism however the price for a new automobile went down to $360 by 1914 (Thompson). This was one of Henry Ford’s biggest dreams, to manufacture a car that the common man could afford to buy. Another key to success was Fords hands on, “only us” approach. The Ford Company brought nothing in from the outside including raw materials which they produced. The company was also a multilayered hierarchy in which every single detail and reason to do something came down from the top. This vertical integration required a very large amount of middle management, specialists, and everyday assembly line workers. This top down direct supervision made it much simpler to get the raw materials and components through the production process. This also allowed Henry Ford to have total control of everything. That was especially important to a man who did not necessarily trust accounting and financial services of the time (Baca).

The one word that best describes the fordism style of mass production would be control. Every single job and function had to be simplified as much as possible. If you tightened bolts on the assembly line that was all you did all day every day. The workers were pretty much just as simple as the machines they were running. This type of process meant there had to be huge numbers of assembly line workers as well as many middle management and staff specialists to help coordinate those below them. The middle managers were really the ones who set strategies by their evaluation of data and allocation of resources on the assemble line. They just passed their opinions up the chain of command were it got the final approval. To the average observer the task of being an assembly line worker sounds relatively easy. After all how hard is it to do just one single job over and over again? In actuality however this was one of the hardest jobs to perform at that time. The physical demands that had to be met by an assembly line worker in a mass production factory were very high. More important than the physical demands however were the levels of concentration that each employee had to have. Since the assembly line never stopped (literally non-stop 24 hours a day and seven days a week.) the worker could not afford to miss a beat. This would be incredible hard to do due to the fact that the job was so boring. A long repetitiveness will make even the most diligent worker bored out of his mind after a while. Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci once described the job of an assembly line worker as “monotonous, degrading, and life draining work process” (Rupert). It should be no surprise to learn then that there was an incredibly high turnover rate in the labor force. An almost 400% turnover rate at the end of 1913 (Thompson). To deal with this incredibly high turnover rate, Ford and many other mass producers ended up increasing the wages of its employees. Eventually the job of an assembly line worker was one of the highest paying labor jobs in the world. Many of the mass production company employees formed unions that guaranteed a respectable living wage. The employees eventually received super competitive wages through their unions that were unseen in the early 1900’s. These incredibly high wages for unskilled workers all depended on their political power however. After World War 2 the blue collar assembly line worker was the biggest group in every major developed nation. Labor unions were so organized and driven that they were a political force all on their own. This is demonstrated by all of the policy and laws that were written at the time. Almost all which were geared to helping protect the unskilled labor worker. Most of these laws are still around to day in the form of the welfare state. Any time you hear a politician talk about social security, unemployment benefits, workers compensation, he is referring to things that came out of what the mass production labor force fought for in the 1950’s (Baca). This is a great example of how something as simple as assemble line mass production can lead to debate and dramatic changes in both social and political landscapes not just in America but other countries as well. You could say that it’s the law of unintended consequences.

Henry Ford may have indeed invented the concept of Fordism but he did not perfect it. That distinction goes to the people at Fords rival, General Motors. General Motors did use assembly line mass production but they did not see the use in having top management having to micromanage every single detail like Ford did. Instead General Motors created a decentralized administrative control force that made each arm of GM whether it is Chevrolet or Buick or any other, its own product market. The top executives at General Motors did not have to micromanage things because they just put the responsibility into the hands of the division managers (Thompson). If sales were down or any other problem was happening at a division the executives would simply get a new division manager to run things. If things went especially well at a certain division the managers would usually be promoted to bigger positions. This kind of reward based system usually ensured that there would always be dedicated, hard working managers.

We said earlier that the concept of Fordism helped America on many different fronts. We have already talked about some of the social and economic victories that Fordism helped define and win. Fordism and mass production must also be considered when talking about the wars America has fought and its role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. When America was forced into WW1 and WW2 the fact that we could mass produce the tools we needed in so fast a way is a main reason for our success. Keep in mind however that Germany also re-armed using the same blueprint invented by Henry Ford. However America stood alone in its ability to produce arms, jeeps, tanks and anything else the war effort needed. In many factories the products that were originally made were substituted for whatever the war effort called for. The government would simply tell Ford or GM to stop making cars and start making jeeps. The infrastructure of American factories and assembly lines contributed greatly to our victories in those wars. Mass production was also the main catalyst in bringing the countries of Europe and Japan out of the ruble of post WW2. They were also important during the Cold War. The success of the unskilled laborer in receiving super competitive wages was an important point in showing the advantages of capitalism over communism (Rupert).

The concept of Fordism is greatly diminished in today’s world. It still exists somewhat in the automotive business but not many other places. It has been replaced by the more profitable Just-In-Time approach to manufacturing. One must appreciate however the long-lasting effects of assembly line mass production and the impact it has had on the rest of the world.

See also Talk:Henry_Ford/Archive_3#Taylorism
See also Talk:Henry_Ford/Archive_3 for information on this topic. — ¾-10 20:32, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Most of the section entitled Fordism in America (not including the correction about Old's contribution to the development of the assembly line) was copied from "Fordism & PostFordism," which I posted to the web in 1997 [[Media:http://www.willamette.edu/~fthompso/MgmtCon/Fordism_%26_Postfordism.html]]. This material is dated, although I think not entirely without insight. An edited version of this draft was published as an entry in the Encyclopedia of Political Economy: Fred Thompson. Fordism and PostFordism, Encyclopedia of Political Economy. Routledge: London, 1998: 404-407. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.104.161.234 (talk) 23:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV?
The entire post-Fordist section is questionable, partly because it makes no mention of desire of customers for customized or "different" vehicles starting immediately after WWII - a recognized trend in the auto industry -- and because it makes a lot of interesting assumptions about why Fordism failed in the United States. Alternatives such as Volvo's switch from Fordist production to team-based production in the 1960s/70s and the reasons for its success are ignored. Union power before the 1960s is ignored even though the CIO came to power long before then. There is no factual support for any of this armchair theorizing. Davert (talk) 14:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Out of date?
It seems that this article has quite a few parts which indicate that it was written in the 90's and perhaps should be updated. Take, for example, "The 1970s-1990s have been a period of slower growth and increasing income inequality. (...)"

Clarity suggestion
The following sentence could use some clarity (syntactically and otherwise).

"Third, it is organized not around groups of similar machinery, but machines arranged in the correct sequence required manufacturing a product."

I believe the author may have been trying to describe the way Ford structured the sequencing of specialized machines so that each could contribute to the manufacturing of a product in a linear fashion. This is my first Wikipedia posting, hope my etiquette is appropriate. --Sdiianni (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Non-Marxist Scholars
Wow, such a differentiation. Didn't know most of them were Marxist. Is Wikipedia now Marxist? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.55.54.38 (talk) 15:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, of course you're right that the way the article is currently written, it seems to put Marxist theory at center stage instead of off to one side a bit, where it belongs in the great balance of life. True. HOWEVER, what is the reason for that, or the answer to it? Is it that Wikipedia is some kind of unitary sentient entity that chooses to be biased? Not at all. Rather, it's that Wikipedia only has the content that any particular people have volunteered to contribute so far. Whoever wrote a lot of this article so far was apparently way into Marxism. So what? If you see that other pieces of content are still missing, i.e., yet to be contributed, then (1) the reason why is blindingly self-evident and has nothing to do with intention but rather only with vacuum; and (2) either volunteer to add them yourself, or there's not much room to complain. It gets tiresome seeing people acting like Wikipedia is some kind of unitary sentient entity that chooses to be biased. It is merely a microcosm of the rest of life, which is to say, a vast vacuum of ignorance with only such knowledge added as anyone has bothered to assemble thus far. If more knowledge is wanted, then someone needs to bother to gather it and add it. Complaints like this are like walking into a brand new, mostly empty building where the only guy who's shown up so far has brought pizza in his lunchbox. And your cognitive leap is to say, "Wow, this inanimate building must obviously have some sort of pro-pizza or anti-sandwich soul." I'm sorry if this sounds snotty, but I find a huge amount of cognitive error in such snide comments, from many people (I'm not just singling you out). It's so easy to make a sarcastic comment and try to sound like you're smarter than everyone else. Whether you actually are or not. — ¾-10 02:33, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Copy violation
This diff introduced the copyviolation of fthompson's Fordism and Postfordism Fifelfoo (talk) 04:49, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That notice has been up that long? Time to either knock it out or remove the notice. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 04:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

High level "expert" review
I was invited by an editor to provide a high level review. I am a labour historian of the mid twentieth century. I am not a Fordism theorist, but I hang out with some of the trendy kids who do post-Operismo Post-Fordism. I also have an extensive background in Marxist historiography, and theorisation of mid twentieth century industrial societies (East and West). I do labour history at the union / shop level, concentrating on mid-twentieth century archives and document collections.

I'm going to approach this as a series of problems with the article, which can lead to improvements. The central problem is the quality and diversity of sources in use. Foner 2006 shouldn't be used at all: it is a textbook. The sourcing basis doesn't follow the material available in the scholarly discourse, but rather justifies a triumphalist account of 20th century production. In addition the lede declares rather strongly that Fordism is a capitalist economy. This is a bit perverse (Soviet Fordism?), and also it is rather too strong; it obscures the actual practice of the Ford Motor Co., and also obscures the labour process called Fordism. (It simplifies the concept of Regimes of Accumulation too far as well). While some of us believe the Fordist analysis is the true and definitive analysis of 20th century labour processes or accumulation, there are other competing views (Lenin's Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism for one is still quite popular) Lets work outwards from the topic:

Fordism is:
 * A method of industrial shop production, mostly famously implemented in the Ford Motor plant. Source basis: Business histories of Ford Co., Union histories of Automotive Unions.
 * Main article: History of Ford Motor Company
 * A generalised relationship of shop floor labour process seen in industrial capitalism and industrial actually-existing socialism during the 20th century; the organisation of the workplace, the working class and the corporation for the same. Source basis: Gramsci, Lenin, Labour Process Theory texts, Johnson-Forest, Operismo, etc.
 * A "regime of accumulation" that connects consumer culture, social-democracy, trade unionism, a labour process, and a system of monolithic productive industrial corporations. Source basis: Regulation Theory, Operismo, Johnson-Forest, LPT
 * Individual country studies supporting the generalisation of labour process and the regime of accumulation stuff:
 * US (because of Ford)
 * Soviet Union (because of Lenin)
 * Italy (due to Operismo)
 * France (due to regulation)
 * The thesis to of Post-Fordism is the antithesis.
 * Break down of the Fordist labour process (entirely? as the dominant labour process?)
 * Due to revolutionary action by mass workers
 * Due to capitalism evolving, etc.
 * Break down of the Fordist regime of accumulation (entirely? as the dominant roa?)
 * Main article: Post-Fordism
 * Criticism of the Fordist thesis
 * Failure of the deskilling thesis of Braverman in practice
 * etc.

The guts of this article are the theoretical assertions, made predominantly by Marxists, about a labour process unique to the 20th century, comprising deskilled standardised industrial machine production in the context of fractionally diversified payment schema, and a pay structure defined by the potential of workers to access a consumer commodity economy—AND—the theoretical assertion of the regime of accumulation and social relations that has as its productive component the previous.

There are plenty of scholarly resources for this work. For example, CDDC Digital Fordism Blacksburg, Virginia: Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, Virginia Tech, last accessed 2011. contains a variety of chapters, and reprints of other scholarly chapters, on Fordism. Then, of course, there's the variety of scholarly papers available and easily searchable from Google. It is more or less vitally important to deal with Operismo, and thus Turin. It is more or less vitally important to deal with the example of the Soviet mass workplace.

Finally, some asides. The language in the article needs a lot of work, "These principles combined with a technological revolution... allowed for his revolutionary form of labour to flourish." and I'll sell you a wonderful box of soap that cleans anything. "The Great Depression blurred the utopian vision of American technocracy, but World War II and its aftermath have revived the ideal." World War II and its aftermath acting as a collective noun with agency (and resurrection powers!). In an article about Marxist theory it pays to avoid reification at the level of the language, unless the theorist you're describing actually did reify something in the opinion of scholars.

There isn't enough discussion of the Long Boom, or its breakdown. There's way too much time spent on Post-Fordism.

This review was a peer-review style prompt aiming to point the article towards what it would need to be to be a FAC on the content and source quality level. I hope it assists editors with long term planning about the article's future! While it seems I've been deeply critical, I've outlined the difference between the article as it is, and the article as it would be as a FAC. The article as it is is much better than many social science theoretical construct articles, and provides an adequate, but not an excellent, account for the general reader. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:04, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow, so much to think about here. I introduced the simplistic "kind of capitalism" in the lede, mainly because I thought the article should start off by telling us what kind of a thing Fordism is. I was thinking of the Aglietta-Lipietz-Jessop periodisation of roa (actually I prefer the Lipietz "development model") in capitalism. Of course the Soviet case is important to mention from the start, not least because Gramsci's essay is a commentary on Soviet Taylorism (an intervention in the debate?). The conceptual relationship between Taylorism and Fordism needs to be elaborated. I completely agree that there is too much on Post-Fordism, since readers can find that article with one click. I suppose we can make progress by referring to some good accounts one by one. I seem to recall that there is a summary by Jessop, and one by Boyer. Did you have any other suggestions for sources that really can't be ignored? Many thanks. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Its better to say that it is a kind of capitalism than to not summarise its relationship to economics at all! If I were too Operismo I'd say that it is a kind of social composition of capital, reflected in a composition of the working class.  One of the problems is that there are a large number of mutually compatible social science theories here, with nuanced differences.  Regulation school theories put more emphasis on social structure.  Operismo, J-F, on the working class as a subject.  Braverman on the working class as an object.  [This http://www.e-elgar.co.uk/bookentry_main.lasso?id=1598] seems to be a really useful text, but it is £270, not in any Australian library, and it seems to be a collection of previously published articles (ie: search via table of contents in a real journal store). Fifelfoo (talk) 01:39, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Reasons behind higher wages
Item 3 states that Ford gave higher wages so the workers could afford to purchase the product that is made. However, that is at odds with what Ford himself said about the wage hikes (source):

"There was...no charity involved.... We wanted to pay these wages so that business would be on a lasting foundation. We were building for the future. A low wage business is always insecure. The payment of $5 a day for an eight­hour day was one of the finest cost­cutting moves we ever made."

So Ford stated that the wage increases were a cost cutting technique. This is very different than saying he raised wages to afford his workers a higher standard of living.

I haven't been able to access the source, "The Automobile Industry and Its Workers: Between Fordism and Flexibility" because it is not available onlilne. But given Ford's statements I find it hard to believe it was motivated by anything other than the bottom line of his business.

Mbleslie (talk) 02:12, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Primary sources aren't reliable for history or social theory articles. I would encourage you to read the secondary literature. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:22, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between what Ford himself did, and what happened in Fordism. Fordism is a system in the whole economy. Car workers buy clothes, clothing workers buy cars, a system with both mass production and mass consumption. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:53, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

An article of use
This article may be of some use to editors in writing this, and Post Fordism,
 * Mathews, John. "From Post-industrialism to Post-Fordism" Meanjin, Vol. 48, No. 1, Autumn 1989: 139-152. Fifelfoo (talk) 14:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Herouvim, John. Post-Fordism and Pragmatic Politics [online]. Meanjin, Vol. 48, No. 3, Spring 1989: 583-590. Fifelfoo (talk) 14:13, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Questionable statement
Nowhere else have I seen "higher wages" as an advantage of Fordism. The whole point was to drive wages DOWN by making employees replaceable cogs in a machine. You can see that Ford had, by far, the highest turnover in the auto industry if you research it. In addition, the "generous" $5/day wage was highly restricted in its application. If nobody objects I would like to remove the references to raising wages which is definitively NOT a part of Fordism. Davert (talk) 15:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The idea that Ford increased wages so his employees could "buy cars" is wrong, he did it to reduce horrible absenteeism and turnover which was 400% per year. (After the wage increase it decreased to about 100%.) Employees still needed training, which was a great cost when they lasted an average of 13 weeks. Also the idea that this wage increase was somehow meaningful to Ford sales is refuted by the simple numbers: there were only "thousands" of workers, but the plant produced "millions" of cars. The article (and picture caption) gets this wrong, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.187.79.181 (talk) 13:49, 3 September 2012 (UTC)