Fordism
Besides production, what about transformations in consumption? Perhaps unsur -
prisingly, transformations in consumption have generally aimed to increase the
consumption of resources and material products, as with the Fordist era, which
brought with it the need for new systems of transportation and a reorganization
of the production process. If the Industrial Revolution laid the foundations for
‘industrial civilization’, then the era of Fordist mass production also brought with
it a requirement for mass consumption of the goods being produced in the factories
of mid twentieth-century America.
3 This mass consumption has come to be ultim -
ately dependent on the provision of cheap energy ‘to power privatized automobile
transport and electrified/heated single-family homes’ (Huber, 2008, p110). The
specific underpinnings of the Fordist model, however, were the twinning of a model
of economic expansion based on mass production: the manu facture of standardized products in huge volumes using special purpose machinery and unskilled
labour with the creation of a consumer base to absorb the fruits of this up-scaling
of production. Higher wages had the by-product of giving workers the means
to become customers, which nurtured a culture of consumption necessary to
reproduce the ‘cycles of production/consumption necessary to sustain the regime
of accumulation’ (Paterson, 2007, p107).
The pursuit of ‘auto-mobility’ and mass car ownership, for example, in the form
of the Volkswagen dream for all German workers to own a car, or President
Hoover’s 1924 election promise to provide ‘a chicken in every pot; two cars in
every garage’ (quoted in Paterson, 2007, p115) helped to cultivate a mass consumer
base for oil (as petrol and its by-products) through individualized transport, even
at the expense of the deliberate destruction of urban infrastructures. Part of this
history involved deliberate campaigning to dismantle and disband rail and other
mass transit public transportation infrastructures in order to force greater reliance
on and demand for cars. Peter Dauvergne shows how entrepreneurs such as Henry
Ford and Alfred Sloan at General Motors ‘vastly expanded markets by reducing
profit margins, lobbying policy makers, advertising new models, designing cars for
obsolescence and destroying alternative forms of transport such as the electric trolley’
(2008, p35). The latter was achieved by the ‘auto-industrial complex’ forming
holding companies to acquire transit firms, demolish trolley lines and then replace
them with GM buses, providing financial and technical assistance to municipalities
to switch from rail to road systems and financing supportive politicians. The state
then played its part in realizing ‘the car’s potential in accelerating accumulation’
(Paterson, 2007, p115) by providing motorway infrastructure and banks provided
the credit and loans to enable debt-fuelled consumption.
In terms of lessons for the current predicament, first the drive to stimulate
increased consumption by states and corporations is notable as a way of addressing
crises of overproduction, cast in the Fordist era and repeated many times since,
and presents a huge challenge for more radical green transformations. The way in
which increased consumer spending and consumption has become the default mode
74 Peter Newell
Besides production, what about transformations in consumption? Perhaps unsur -
prisingly, transformations in consumption have generally aimed to increase the
consumption of resources and material products, as with the Fordist era, which
brought with it the need for new systems of transportation and a reorganization
of the production process. If the Industrial Revolution laid the foundations for
‘industrial civilization’, then the era of Fordist mass production also brought with
it a requirement for mass consumption of the goods being produced in the factories
of mid twentieth-century America.
3 This mass consumption has come to be ultim -
ately dependent on the provision of cheap energy ‘to power privatized automobile
transport and electrified/heated single-family homes’ (Huber, 2008, p110). The
specific underpinnings of the Fordist model, however, were the twinning of a model
of economic expansion based on mass production: the manu facture of standardized products in huge volumes using special purpose machinery and unskilled
labour with the creation of a consumer base to absorb the fruits of this up-scaling
of production. Higher wages had the by-product of giving workers the means
to become customers, which nurtured a culture of consumption necessary to
reproduce the ‘cycles of production/consumption necessary to sustain the regime
of accumulation’ (Paterson, 2007, p107).
The pursuit of ‘auto-mobility’ and mass car ownership, for example, in the form
of the Volkswagen dream for all German workers to own a car, or President
Hoover’s 1924 election promise to provide ‘a chicken in every pot; two cars in
every garage’ (quoted in Paterson, 2007, p115) helped to cultivate a mass consumer
base for oil (as petrol and its by-products) through individualized transport, even
at the expense of the deliberate destruction of urban infrastructures. Part of this
history involved deliberate campaigning to dismantle and disband rail and other
mass transit public transportation infrastructures in order to force greater reliance
on and demand for cars. Peter Dauvergne shows how entrepreneurs such as Henry
Ford and Alfred Sloan at General Motors ‘vastly expanded markets by reducing
profit margins, lobbying policy makers, advertising new models, designing cars for
obsolescence and destroying alternative forms of transport such as the electric trolley’
(2008, p35). The latter was achieved by the ‘auto-industrial complex’ forming
holding companies to acquire transit firms, demolish trolley lines and then replace
them with GM buses, providing financial and technical assistance to municipalities
to switch from rail to road systems and financing supportive politicians. The state
then played its part in realizing ‘the car’s potential in accelerating accumulation’
(Paterson, 2007, p115) by providing motorway infrastructure and banks provided
the credit and loans to enable debt-fuelled consumption.
In terms of lessons for the current predicament, first the drive to stimulate
increased consumption by states and corporations is notable as a way of addressing
crises of overproduction, cast in the Fordist era and repeated many times since,
and presents a huge challenge for more radical green transformations. The way in
which increased consumer spending and consumption has become the default mode
74 Peter Newell