What is fordism and what does it have to with manufacturing

If you drive cars or live in the United States you have most likely heard of Henry Ford, Henry Ford was a very successful business man in the automobile industry. Henry Ford was able to improve mass production methods and he actually developed the assembly line, which all helped to improve our manufacturing techniques. Because of the improvements that Henry Ford made for manufacturing he was able to produce and sell around ten million automobiles for a decent price, the reason that the price was so low was because of the improvements he made to the entire manufacturing process. Without the improvements the cost of making the automobiles would have been higher, which means that the overall price would have gone up so fewer people could have afforded the automobile. As it was Henry Ford made automobiles affordable for all types of people.

In 1910 a new phrase was coined after Henry Ford, the new phrase was "fordism". Fordism is an economic philosophy that prosperity and high corporate profits could be achieved through paying the workers high wages. By paying the factory workers higher wages they would be able to afford to buy the products that they are manufacturing. The more people that can afford to buy the products that are being manufactured the better the manufacturing companies will do, which means they will be successful and the companies will increase their profits. The great thing about this concept was that it actually worked; Henry Ford was the proof of that because of how successful he was with selling his automobiles.

The practice of fordism began in the United States; it was even in effect during the Depression because many Americans thought that keeping the wages high would reverse the downturn of the economy. While the Depression did extend for a period of time, eventually America pulled out of it with the help of World War II, but since America was able to pull out of the Depression hope was revived in the theory of fordism. Although fordism began in the United States it soon spread to other countries, but not until after the United States was able to pull itself out of the Depression and hope was revived in the theory. Europe was one of the first countries to adopt fordism after the Depression. An Italian Marxist by the name of Antonio Gramsci thought that fordism meant routine and intensified labor that would help promote production, this do not necessarily focus on the higher wages, but both countries felt that fordism would help the countries manufacturing process.

Before Western Europe adopted fordism to help their manufacturing they practiced something called talyorism, which is related to fordism. Fordism is also related Keynesianism. Marxists who adopted fordism used it as a term for a "form of production", Marxists in all countries soon adopted this new theory because it consisted of domestic mass production and stabilizing economic policies that provided national demand and social stability by paying higher wages and offering other economic policies.

Fordism has a lot to do with manufacturing because during the period following World War II all western countries experienced a long cycle of mass production and mass consumption. What this meant for manufacturing companies was that they were constantly producing goods for the consumers to buy and the consumers were buying them as fast as they could. Fordism helped manufacturing companies by providing standard ways of mass producing certain items by using a moving assembly line, what this meant is that they could manufacture more goods in a shorter period of time.

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