CHAPTER 2

AUTOMOBILISM, AMERICANISM AND THE END OF FORDISM

2009 was a critical year for the American automobile industry as the world eco- nomic slump forced a major restructuring of the ‘Big Three’ – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler – and placed the long-term future survival of the industry in jeop- ardy. The Big Three had a combined U.S. market share of 51.8% in December 2007 but as of October 2008, their market share declined by 5.3% to 46.5%. During that same nine-month period, Toyota and Honda increased their U.S. market shares by 3.1% to a combined 28.4%. In 2007, the Big Three sold 18 million autos for $387.5 billion whereas Toyota and Honda sold 12.2 millions autos for $304 billion.1 The globalization of the international automobile marketplace and the emergence of Japanese and South Korean auto-transplants in North America together with the adoption of new flexible production methods suggest that the prospects for renewal of North American auto manufacturing in the face of global competition has come to an unavoidable impasse. These global competition problems are heightened by the role of union labor in the reorganization of the workplace and the technological advances developed by competitors invested in the new hybrids. These are not trivial problems. At a time of economic crisis and rapidly rising it had not escaped the attention of commentators that in the U.S. alone the Big Three directly employed 242,000 people and an estimated 2.5 to 3 million indirectly. In the worst slump in the automarket for 36 years the Big Three tried to recover from their botched attempt in December 2008 to seek an expanded $34 billion bailout and were required to submit extensive restructuring plans and concession commitments from unions and bondholders to an inter-agency task headed up by Timothy Geithner and . The automobile industry is not just an employer of 3 million people; the auto- mobile plays a significant role in American myth and reality, shaping an experience that was 20th century industrialism, defining the American dream and embedding the ideology ‘automobilism’ that puts a premium on the mobility of the individu- alized self in modern society where the ideal is one car per person of driving age. Now three-car garages are no longer sufficient, or at least they were not before the subprime housing crisis – everyone must have a vehicle, Mom, Dad, and each of the children as they come of driving age. Dad might have in addition a truck or pick- up and there might be other means of auto-mobility such as motorbikes, as well. Driving around California one sees automobiles parked behind each other in the

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Figure 5. driveway and before the slump the demand for 5-car garages was rapidly becoming the norm for the middle class. Henry Ford founded the in 1903 experimenting with and institutionalizing the assembly line as an essential part of mass production. The model T was introduced in 1908 and sold for $825 becoming progressively cheaper every year. By 1914 sales were in excess of 250,000. With flagging sales, Ford introduced the Model A in 1927 and sold over four million by 1931. In My life and work, Henry Ford (1922) set forth the principles of his service that defined his brand of welfare capitalism: (1) An absence of fear of the future or of veneration for the past; (2) A disregard of competition; (3) The putting of service before profit; (4) Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high.2 Ford argued ‘We must have production, but it is the spirit behind it that counts most. That kind of production which is a service inevitably follows a real desire to be of service’. He also suggested that: To make the yield of the earth, in all its forms, large enough and dependable enough to serve as the basis for real life – the life which is more than eating and sleeping – is the highest service. That is the real foundation for an economic system. He went on to argue that the problem of production has been solved and the material mode of our life is provided for and he warned: But we are too wrapped up in the things we are doing – we are not enough concerned with the reasons why we do them. Our whole competitive system, our whole creative expression, all the play of our faculties seem to be centred around material production and its by-products of success and wealth. Ford was a notorious anti-Semite (Ford, 1920; Baldwin, 2002) and anti-democrat yet his life and work was emblematic of Americanism; of the search for sources of

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