Named after Henry Ford, it refers to both a model of production (namely the assembly line) and a social phenomenon characterized by rising wages and falling commodity prices. Fordâs originality was not that he developed a means of increasing industrial productivity (something Taylorâs scientific management theories had already demonstrated), but that he used the increase in productivity he leveraged by these means to reduce the cost of his cars and make them more widely affordable. He recognized that mass production was not viable without mass consumption, and that to have mass consumption he needed to create consumers, which he did by raising wages well above the standard of the times. Higher wages came at a price, though: workers were expected to submit themselves completely to the needs of the assembly-line machine---they had to work at its constant, relentless pace, performing highly routinized actions that excluded all possibility of creativity or even skill. Not only that, they were also expected to comply with Fordâs moral code, which centred on the family and frowned upon all sexual activity outside marriage. He even sent social workers to visit his employeesâ families to teach them how to spend their money wisely. Ultimately, Ford was not just an industrialist, but a powerful utopianist intent upon creating a new society. It was this that attracted Italian critic Gramsci, Antonio, who popularized the term âFordismâ and gave it its present meaning as a metaphor for a state-managed but industry-led transformation of society in which high wages and job security are traded for compliance with the needs of a mass-production and mass-consumption economy. Further Reading: D. Harvey The Condition of Postmodernity (1989).