post-Fordism

the rigidity of Fordist capitalism (vertical integration, power of unions, state intervention), reaching its peak in the 1960s

flexible accumulation (from David Harvey, 1990, The Condition of Postmodernity):
"Flexible accumulation rests on flexibility with respect to labour processes, labour 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. It has entrained rapid shifts in the patterning of
uneven development, both between sectors and geographical regions.... It has also entrained a new round of what I shall call 'time-space compression' ... In the capitalist world -- the time horizons of both private and public decision-making have shrunk, while satellite communication and declining transport costs have made it increasingly possible to spread those decisions immediately over an ever wider and variegated space."
-decentralization
-just-in-time logistics (the Japanese model)
-outsourcing
-flexible labor
-empowering workers
-risks involved
-decreasing alienation
 

but are the benefits shared widely?

Daniel Bell (in The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, 1973) claimed that in post-industrial societies Marx's theory of surplus value has been superseded by a 'knowledge theory of value'. By implication it is knowledge rather than labour which yields profit, and high rewards will go only to members of the knowledge elite, which increasingly means those with specialized technical abilities.

what about low-wage service workers?

(from The Economist)

post-Fordism and the decline of the nation-state?

SATURN: A different kind of company.  A Different kind of car.

1. beyond Fordist production:
    UAW
    Vision Caucus
    Memorandum of Agreement
  
    teams: shopfloor, management, even new car launch
    empowering workers, but also greater risks (compensation)
    personal narratives: escaping factory drudgery, worker-as-hero
    language: "team member" "self-actualizing subjects" "empowerment"
    -but also: self-control, peer discipline, etc. (the dirty work of management)
    -Members for a Democratic Union and changes to the Memorandum of Agreement
   
    Saturn Ads

2. Post-Fordist consumption:
-more customization: niche markets, targeting more precise consumer demographics
lifestyle advertising
-authenticity, utility