Ford’s five-dollar day centered workers as consumers, not just laborers

Evidence

Capitalism evolves in response to the needs of people in a time and place. Henry Ford was clear on this point: “Mass production begins in the perception of a public need.” At a time when the Detroit automobile manufacturers were preoccupied with luxury vehicles, Ford stood alone in his recognition of a nation of newly modernizing individuals—farmers, wage earners, and shopkeepers—who had little and wanted much, but at a price they could afford. Their “demand” issued from the same conditions of existence that summoned Ford and his men as they discovered the transformational power of a new logic of standardized, high-volume, low-unit-cost production. Ford’s famous “five-dollar day” was emblematic of a systemic logic of reciprocity. In paying assembly-line workers higher wages than anyone had yet imagined, he recognized that the whole enterprise of mass production rested upon a thriving population of mass consumers. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 97

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the Ford-mirror lens of Ch.1 (previously established); the reciprocity logic anticipates the later argument about surveillance capitalism abandoning reciprocal market exchange. — connects to: US unions traded bargaining power for collaboration with Fordist production — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 798

Broader Connections

• US unions traded bargaining power for collaboration with Fordist production #qualifies (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 798