Workers and Revolutionaries at the Twilight of Fordism: The Breakdown of Industrial Relations in the Automobile Plants of Detroit and Turin, 1967–1973

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Correspondence to: Dipartimento Studi Storici, Universita´ di Palermo, Piazza Bologni 8‐90133 Palermo, Italy. Email: [email protected] Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis Sugrue Thomas The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996 [Google Scholar]; Thompson, Whose Detroit? Thompson Heather, A Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press 2001 [Google Scholar] Coriat, L'atelier et le robot Coriat Benjamin L'ate´lier et le robot: essai sur le fordisme et la production de masse a` l'age de l'e´letronique Paris: Christian Bourgois 1990 [Google Scholar], 20. Robert Boyer and Yves Saillard defined a regime of accumulation as ‘the social and economic patterns that enable accumulation to occur in the long term between two structural crises’, in Boyer and Saillard, Re´gulation Theory Boyer R Saillard Y eds Re´gulation Theory. The State of Art London: Routledge 2002 [Google Scholar], 36. The re´gulation scholars have the merit of having elaborated an analysis of how Fordism has ‘regulated’ capitalism development in the twentieth century. The founding work of this school is Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation Aglietta Michel A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US experience London: New Left Books 1979 [Google Scholar]; but since then there have been several contributions to this line of thought, in particular from French scholars: see Lipietz, ‘Reflection on a Tale.’ For a critical survey of this theory I direct the reader to Boyer, The Regulation School Boyer R The Regulation School: A Critical Introduction New York: Columbia University Press 1990 [Google Scholar]; Jessop, ‘Regulation Theories in Retrospect and Prospect;’ Jessop, Bob. 1990. ‘Regulation Theories in Retrospect and Prospect.’, Economy and Society, 19(no. 2): 153–216. [Google Scholar] Tickell and Peck, ‘Accumulation, Regulation and the Geographies of Post‐Fordism.’ Tickell, A and Peck, JA. 1992. ‘Accumulation, Regulation and the Geographies of Post‐Fordism: Missing Links in Regulationist Research.’, Progress in Human Geography, 16(no. 2): 190–218. [Google Scholar] I draw the terms ‘core’ and later ‘periphery’ from and use the concept of ‘world system’ with reference to Wallerstein's classic The Modern World‐System Wallerstein Immanuel The Modern World‐System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World‐Economy in the Sixteenth Century New York: Academic Press 1974 [Google Scholar]. I believe that the world‐system model provides a useful framework to examine the relevance of metropolitan areas such as Detroit and Turin to the world economy and explain why they became poles of attraction for both capital and workers. However, by using these concepts I do not automatically subscribe to every aspects of that theory. A discussion on the limits of Wallerstein's world system, especially its mechanicist nature, is out of place here, but can be found in Van der Linden, ‘Global Labor History,’ Marcel, Van der Linden. 2001. ‘Global Labor History and the “Modern World System”: Thoughts at the Twenty‐Fifth Anniversary of the Fernard Braudel Center.’, International Review of Social History, 46: 423–59. [Google Scholar] 423–59. I borrow these terms from O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State O'Connor James, R The Fiscal Crisis of the State New York 1973 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. But this is also the case for the second‐generation southern migrants in Turin, according to two sociological studies of generational mobility: Ceravolo et al., ‘Migrazioni e integrazione sociale;’ Ceravolo F Eve M Meraviglia C ‘Migrazioni e integrazione sociale: un percorso a stadi.’ In L'Italia delle disuguaglianze edited by Bianco M Rome: Carocci 2001 [Google Scholar] Negri, ‘I nuovi torinesi.’ Negri Nicola ‘I nuovi torinesi: immigrazione, mobilita` e struttura sociale.’