Towards a Post-Fordist Order?

In: Review of international political economy: RIPE, Band 2, Heft 1, S. 185-196

Abstract

A review essay on books by: Robert Boyer & Jean-Pierre Durand, L'Apres-Fordisme ([Post-Fordism] Paris: Syros, 1993); Jean-Pierre Durand (Ed), Vers un nouveau modele productif ([Toward a New Model of Production] Paris: Syros, 1993); & Alain Lipietz, Towards a New Economic Order. Post-Fordism, Ecology and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989 [see listings in IRPS No. 81]). Boyer & Durand examine the role of state interventionism & the character of the new productivism of emerging world order. The principles, organization, & wage relations of the new productive model are described. Its development requires new types of collective/state action, eg, development of transport & telecommunications infrastructures, synergies between public research & industry, & strategies of technology transfer. The Durand volume also examines the new productive order, but with skepticism. The development of flexible mass production & the transformation of the principles of Taylorism/Fordism have occurred, but the transformation is uneven, watered down, & not qualitatively new. Refinement rather than replacement of principles is the key process at work in the economic order. Lipietz examines the postwar economic model, analyzes the strengths & weaknesses of the emerging liberal productivism, & presents a compromise economic order based on three elements; (1) a new wages pact characterized by worker involvment, productivity & quality, full employment, & increased free time; (2) development of the welfare state into the welfare community & establishment of self-managed community work schemes; & (3) the internationalist demand for a new multilateral world order. 1 Figure. D. Generoli