Post-Fordism

Post-Fordism is a thesis of neo-Marxist regulation theory. In Marxist thought the economic system determines the political system. Capitalism determines a specific form of liberal state, but that state will change when capitalism falters—as it must do, according to Marxists, because of its internal contradictions. In regulation theory, capitalism tends toward crises but also has means of avoiding them through internal change. There are two elements in this story. Regimes of accumulation are the systems of production and consumption, while modes of regulation are the legal systems and conventions of society that accompany them.

In the 1980s, the regulation school identified a change in the regime of accumulation. Regulationists argued that Fordist modes of production were changing to post-Fordist modes. The Fordist mode (taking its name from Henry Ford, who first introduced the moving production line) relates to the mass production of consumer products. Mass production transformed society, particularly in the postwar years, as it brought to consumers all sorts of products from washing machines to telephones, from televisions to cars. Fordist techniques required masses of workers in large factories carrying out soul-destroying and menial tasks. The goods produced from this process, however, satisfied materialistic consumers and hid the underlying structures of inequality and power in society.

However, as the public became satiated with consumer products and a more educated workforce demanded higher remuneration and better work conditions, capitalism started to face a crisis. The response, in part made possible by new technological advances, first in the form of robotization within factories and then through computer and information technology, transformed the workplace. Mass-produced goods no longer required such large workforces; moreover, these technological advances also enabled greater specialization of products. First, higher levels of unemployment and then new service industries [Page 497]changed the nature of production. Manufacturing processes changed as firms contracted out and franchised noncore and then core aspects of their production. Mass production and consumption were changed to flexible specialization. Through advertising, business led consumers to demand more specialized products, and started to target groups of consumers rather than trying to sell the same product to everyone.

These changes in regimes of accumulation also led to changes in the mode of regulation. In part, government itself changed. The post-Fordist production methods in capitalist enterprises changed the forms of government itself. Large line bureaucracies were transformed into new agencies. Government privatized its activities and contracted out core activities to companies—to manage their information technology, tax collection, road maintenance, housing, prisons, schools, and so on. With these new work practices came new contracts for employees, job security even in the state sector was reduced, and a new underclass created that could no longer find employment now that Fordist production lines had been closed. The new politics was no longer concerned with class issues of redistribution but directed toward regulation and managing risk.

The regulationists' story is one of capitalism transforming itself in order to maintain the traditional status and power hierarchies. One of the criticisms of post-Fordist theory is a traditional critique of Marxism: that it is not falsifiable, as any change in society is described as a new means by which capitalism can reign triumphant. It has also been accused of exaggerating the degree to which production processes have changed and of concentrating too much upon specific examples. Post-Fordism as a theory had its heyday in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, though the types of processes it describes have continued to develop in the new century.

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