FORDIST PRODUCTION METHODS-TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT

Fordist Production Methods-Training & Development

Fordist Production Methods-Training & Development

One of the central assertions of Marxist political economy is the rejection of the existence of economic equilibria. Instead, we should understand capitalism as a mode of production that operates on contradictions, containing tendencies toward change, instability, and crisis that periodically necessitate a radical restructuring of the logic of the capitalist mode of production. It is precisely this notion of classical Marxism that the economic regulation school takes seriously. Since capitalism always moves toward crisis, the regulation approach suggests that we can arrive at a fuller understanding of the historical development of capitalism as a heterogeneous structure by transcending analytical approaches that remain singularly focused on economic laws and structures. The writings of the French Regulation School hence emphasize the centrality of the social component of capitalism. The social networks that surround the economic structure of a mode of production fulfill a vital function insofar as they create the social basis for and in turn replicate the conditions of the mode of production. Simply put, capitalism as a crisis-prone structure requires the support of its social dimension in order to regulate itself and produce moments of relative stability. An analysis of capitalism, the regulation approach thus argues, should focus on both capitalism's economic structure (the Regime of Accumulation, hereafter ROA) as well as its accompanying social dimension (the Mode of Regulation, hereafter MOR). This extended model of Marxist political economy presents an invaluable basis for cultural analysis, since it assigns culture a vital function in the dialectical interaction between ROA and MOR, producing and contesting those ideological structures and social forms that both stabilize and ultimately transcend different periods in the history of capitalism. This essay consequently constitutes a beginning exploration of contemporary culture based on this theoretical model. Specifically, I shall explore the consequences of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism for contemporary cultural production. Since the transition to a new economic structure requires a new MOR, that is, new forms of subjectivity and social forms, we can gain valuable insights into the sites of contestation between capitalist structure and its social dimension by examining the ways in which culture represents post-Fordist subjectivity.

Before entering into the analysis of cultural production, however, it seems necessary to establish the terms and basic definition of the analytical model that will inform this inquiry. As indicated above, the model of the regulation approach forms a valuable basis for cultural analysis, since it allows us to understand culture not simply as a mirror of social reality. Rather, culture occupies an active position and is an instrumental part of the ways in which capitalism resolves moments of crisis. Expanding the model of the regulation approach for our purposes, we can locate culture in relation to both social and material dimension in the following manner:

ROA <--> Culture <--> MOR

This means the following: a given economic structure (ROA) requires the support of (and is regulated by) its social dimension ...