Taylorisme og Fordisme er lig med Amerikanisme: Europæiske industri- og moderniseringsstrategier i mellemkrigstiden

Michael F. Wagner: Taylorism and Fordism equal Americanism European industrial and modernisation strategies in the inter-war years. At the end of the First World War, a number of European countries faced great challenges to get their economies back on their feet again. In particular, the defeated Germany and post-revolutionary Russia fought to get their economies functioning once more. Many looked towards America, whose industrial might had played a decisive role in the outcome of the war. Firstly, scientific management methods in industry such as Taylorism attracted peoples’ attention. Then Henry Ford’s ideas on the mass production of cars on assembly lines, otherwise known as Fordism, took hold of the imagination. These ideas, known collectively as Americanism, were understood, discussed and adopted during the inter-war years as a strategy for modernisation by such disparate ideologies as liberalism, socialism, fascism and communism.

In Germany, progressive industrialists led the Americanisation debate in the 1920s. After the Nazi takeover of power, Fordism and the Ford Motor Company’s German factories played a major role in military rearmament. In the Soviet Union, focus shifted quickly from Taylorism to Fordism and during the NEP (New Economic Policy) period between 1921 and 1928, the Soviet regime began the mass import of Fordson tractors and cars. With the transition to the first 5-Year Plan in 1928, the strategy changed from importing new technology to self-sufficiency and domestic production of tractors and cars. Ford Motor Company then began exporting complete assembly line factories to the enforced industrialisation programme in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the
Politbureau began copying Fordson tractors in its own factories in what turned out to be an ill-fated project. The American tractors came to play a central political role in the forced collectivisation of Russian agriculture. Henry Ford was idolised in Russia and Fordism became almost a kind of state religion. During the inter-war period, Americanism became converted to a Europeanised ideology of different varieties, as a hybrid combination of America and Europe. Americanised Europe.