The left’s failure was lacking an alternative modernity, not Fordism’s end.

Evidence

What could be observed was something different: namely a gradual degradation of modernism itself, as it had become increasingly commodified and integrated into the circuits of post-war capital. The sources of this decline, however, were to be traced in the first instance, not so much to larger economic changes, or any immanent aesthetic logic, as more directly to the political history of the time. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 216 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The sharp recession of 1 973, exacerbated by the oil shock evidently shook the capitalist world out of the suffocating torpor of ‘stag­ flation’ (stagnant output of goods and high inflation of prices), and set in motion a whole set of processes that undermined the Fordist compromise. The 1970s and 1980s have consequently been a troubled period of economic restructunng and social and political readjust­ ment (figure 2.8). In the social space created by all this flux and uncertainty, a series of novel experiments in the realms of industrial organization as well as in political and social life have begun to take shape. These experiments may represent the early stirrings of the passage to an entirely new regime of accumulation, coupled with a quite different system of political and social regulation. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 864 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modernism’s decline stems from political defeats rather than economic change — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 216; The 1973 recession undermined Fordism and birthed a new accumulation regime — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 864; The failure was lacking a post-Fordist left vision, not Fordism ending. (+1 more)

Related

• The Fordist regime collapsed with the 1973 recession (similarity 0.85)
• The 1973 recession undermined Fordism and birthed a new accumulation regime (similarity 0.84)
• Fordist modernity stabilized its economy to enable change while flexible postmodernism reverses this (similarity 0.82)
• Flexible accumulation coexists with entrenched Fordist production rather than replacing it. (similarity 0.81)
• Fordism reorganized society and culture, not just production. (similarity 0.81)
• Modernism’s decline stems from political defeats rather than economic change (similarity 0.81)
• The October 1979 interest rate shock initiated the shift to post-Fordism (similarity 0.81)
• The New Left’s cultural-political self-conception drove postmodernism’s turn to aesthetics. (similarity 0.78)
• Fordism required active nation-state economic management. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Modernism’s decline stems from political defeats rather than economic change #corroborates (0.78) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 216
• The 1973 recession undermined Fordism and birthed a new accumulation regime #corroborates (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 864