A critique of Fordism

As Nico Pizzolato explains in this article, labour dissent took different forms in Detroit and Turin, but eventually converged towards a similar critique of organized labour and its role in underpinning capitalism. More importantly, in a world with expensive transcontinental travel and not internet, activists in the US and in Italy (as well as France, Germany or the UK) were aware of each other and influenced each others’ positions and political tactics. In this international cauldron of political ideas on the left of organised labour and socialist or communist parties, it is remarkable how it was in Detroit and Turin that the most stringent critique of Fordism, both as a production system and as a political economy, took shape.