Fordism was once a term of abuse hurled at the factory system by Marxist critics who, rightly, deplored the alienation and anomie that mass production for mass consumption entailed. Has the Fordist factory system and the big box consumerism that goes with it now become our ideal, the highest form of social life our minds can conceive? Social critics also denounced our school system, justifiably, as a mediocre, conformity inducing, alienating, time wasting system that trained kids to sit still, follow directions and move with the herd. The blue model built big-box schools where the children of factory workers could get the standardized social and intellectual training necessary to enable most of them to graduate into the big-box Ford plant and shop in the big-box store. Maybe that was a huge social advance at one time, but is that something to aspire to or be proud of today? Don’t we want to teach our children to do something smarter than move in large groups by the clock and the bell, follow directions and always color between the lines?
So working on an assembly line or a "big-box store", and shopping in "big-box stores" is demeaning, and everything bad that Communists said about them?
One, does he really mean that? Two, is it true? Or is it more true, that big companies like that employed millions, negotiated with workers for a 40-hour workweek, and did not lay claim to 100% of a person's life the way the Communists and other Obama supporters do?
Conformism? That let women stay home and take care of the kids, instead of having to go out and find work and juggle latchkey kids and let them stay at home instead of being "socialized" by left-wing social workers and teachers? "Stultifying" what? Housework? Instead of daywork, and a demanding boss who wants 50 hours' work for 40 hours' pay? That's too tough on her?
What is more true about “Fordism” (which is an Antonio Gramsci term, check out Wikipedia for more) is that it increased the wealth of the world to a point where we stood looking out upon a “land of immeasurable plenty”. Man for the first time in history would be able to truly enjoy the fruits of his labor rather than just eking out a bare existence. Talk about your hope and change! With a little work, leisure time became available to many and poverty and starvation was becoming a thing of the past while the old empires of Europe whose wealth came from the exploitation of “captive” peoples were destined to die. And die they did in World War I, never to recover. And in their death throes they threw up the most evil ideologies ever conceived.
At least, that’s the way I see it. ;-)
The problem with people like Meade is that they think a future (for mankind) can be planned and, of course, they want to do the planning.
He may interpret history differently than I but he has a remarkably clear sight of some of the broad sweeps of that history and how it relates to the present day, IMHO.
Today, we are past “Fordism” as the computer revolution is overtaking the assembly line. What would Gramsci say or, for that matter, what does Meade say? Meade is silent because he doesn’t know, yet he still wants to plan. Telling.