Fordism And The Industrial Revolution

In the early twentieth century production of goods moved from small scale to mass production. Increased technology and mechanization made possible to produce goods on a large scale. The most well-known organization Ford Motor company introduced ‘Fordism’ a new type of mass production. Ford's factories required a well-organized and deskilled workforce, keen and capable to perform repetitive tasks on the assembly line.

According to Harvey, Fordism, so named for Henry Ford identified “Mass production meant mass consumption” (Harvey, 126).Ford believed that providing sufficient income and leisure time to worker will produce high productive assembly-line system. Ford once wanted to revive the market in great depression by increasing wages of worker

but it failed rather he had to lay off workers and also cut wages. Businesses try to find a ready source of less expensive, flexible labor in the form of subcontractors, part time workers, and temporary help. Unions lost power. Harvey labels “flexible accumulation,” a condition that represent Post modernity. Hervey describes flexible accommodation as reorganization of the capitalist mode of production under a new regime. He traces some changes to accelerating citing increased international competition for major Fordist countries; decreasing product and profits increasing inflation and raised social between inside and outside production jobs. Flexible accommodation has several effects such as restructuring of labor market into more flexible forms, cutting down traditional jobs in favor of “periphery” and second “periphery”
A number of inclinations which prevailed during the 1960s brought the Fordism regime to a situation of crisis by the early 1970s. Harvey suggests that the varied causes of this crisis can be summed up by the word 'rigidity' (Harvey, 142). The rigidities involved in labor markets and contracts, standardized mass production, state welfare schemes, fixed exchange rates and other heavily regulated aspects of global economic relations, all became, by the end of the 1960s, constraints on further capitalist growth rather than the stimuli to it that they had initially been.
According to Harvey, the Fordism model began to break down in the 1970's when it began to overproduce, resulting in the massive lay-off of workers, and effectively reducing the demand for products. The resulting crisis of inflation shaken the Fordism system to such an extent that the post-Fordism system of "flexible accumulation" emerged. This regime, according to Harvey, "rests on flexibility with respect to labor processes, labor markets, products, and patterns of consumption. It is characterized by the emergence of entirely new sectors of production, new ways of providing financial services, new markets, and above all, greatly intensified rates of commercial, technological, and organizational innovation." (p.147)

We can give an example would be Traditionalists to Modernity.Traditionalist wanted to live the simple life, and wanted to have a wife and kids, and mostly farm. Modernists were typically younger people, and wanted more excitement in life. This is when flappers, or women wearing short dresses and dancing, were invented. Traditionalists were people who had deep respect for long-held cultural and religious values. For them, these values were anchors that provided order and stability to society. Modernists were people who embraced new ideas, styles, and social trends. For them, traditional values were chains that restricted both individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness.