ABSTRACT
The hegemon after hegemony? More than war made the United States the world’s unchallenged economic power after World War II. American industrial supremacy dates back much earlier, to the late-nineteenth century when giant industrial enterprises were established with bureaucratized labour management systems and a high-wage system (dubbed ‘Fordism’ by some observers) joining mass consumption with mass production. Already by 1900, American industrial success was threatening an international trading system based on European supremacy in the production and sale of manufactured goods. American supremacy did not last a century. By the 1970s, American companies were searching for a new competitive strategy. Abandoning Fordism and building trust through long-term relationships, they found renewed profi ts in using markets and the threat of job loss to discipline labour. They have largely driven unions, the ultimate protector of the Fordist arrangement of high wages and high productivity, from much of American industry. Instead, the American workplace today is fi lled with scared workers grateful for temporary work and willing to accept low wages and bad treatment from fear of losing their jobs to China.
