In the long dark days of Thatcherism, in the days when Keynesian social democracy had been buried in the ideological avalanche set in motion by the New Right, when the local socialism of the glc had been abolished by Thatcherite fiat, and when the Left political economy of the aes had been abandoned by all but its most purblind adherents, there were those who sought to understand the nature and source of the power wielded by the forces of darkness and, in the light of that understanding, set democratic socialist political economy upon new theoretical and prescriptive foundations. The most intellectually sophisticated and ambitious of such attempts was that which has sometimes been referred to as post-Fordist and sometimes as “flec spec” socialism, and which was articulated with a particular conviction and energy in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Central to it was a new periodization of the history of capitalism into pre-Fordist, Fordist and post-Fordist epochs. The pre-Fordist regime need not detain us. As to the differentiae specificae of Fordism, these were, first, the organization of production to permit long runs of standard products aimed at a mass market. This involved the application of the principles of Taylorist scientific management to an extended subdivision of labour, together with the utilization of a dedicated technology requiring an uninterrupted output of basic products for its efficient and profitable application. This organization of labour was also one that entailed a strict division between the conception and execution of tasks, necessitating, in consequence, rigidly hierarchical command structures.