Fordism
Fordism is an industrial engineering and manufacturing system that serves as the basis of modern social and labor-economic systems that support industrialized, standardized mass production and mass consumption. The concept is named after Henry Ford. It is used in social, economic, and management theory about production, working conditions, consumption, and related phenomena, especially regarding the 20th century.[1] It describes an ideology of advanced capitalism centered around the American socioeconomic systems in place in the post-war economic boom.
The period after Fordism has been termed Post-Fordist and Neo-Fordist. The former implies that global capitalism has made a clean break from Fordism, including overcoming its inconsistencies, but the latter implies that elements of the Fordist ROA continued to exist. The Regulation School preferred the term After-Fordism (or the French Après-Fordisme) to denote that what comes after Fordism was or is not clear.[17]
In Post-Fordist economies:[17]
Cultural references[edit]
The mass-produced robots in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. have been described as representing "the traumatic transformation of modern society by the First World War and the Fordist assembly line."[19]
A religion based on the worship of Henry Ford is a central feature of the technocracy in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where the principles of mass production are applied to the generation of people as well as to industry.[20][21]