Worker accommodation to Fordist labor remained a surface adaptation, not internalized consent

Evidence

Yet there has been a sufficient record of sudden eruptions of discontent, even among affluent workers (in, for example, the General Motors plant at Lordstown shortly after it opened, or among the affluent car workers that Goldthorpe studied) to suggest that this may be more of a surface adaptation than a total reconstruction of worker attitudes with respect to assembly-line production. The per­ petual problem of habituating the worker to such routinized, de­ skilled and degraded systems of work, as Braverman (1974) forcefully argues, can never be completely overcome. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 801

Categorization

• XREF: Harvey here stages a critique of Burawoy’s ‘manufacturing consent’ thesis and Goldthorpe’s affluent-worker findings — connects to the labor-process debate (Braverman) and to Gramsci’s ‘Americanism and Fordism’ that Harvey elsewhere deploys. — connects to: US unions traded bargaining power for collaboration with Fordist production — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 798; Industrial habits are imposed historically through brute coercion, not consent; The New Deal inherited Fordist paternalism, racial segmentation, and gendered labor division. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 165 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Industrial habits are imposed historically through brute coercion, not consent #corroborates (0.90)