ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the mass production and its geographies. It examines various alternative forms of high-volume production (HVP). The chapter discusses the strands of continuity between pre-existing and new forms of HVP. It also examines the growth of small firms and their territorial concentration in industrial districts within Europe. Industrial restructuring in the steel foundries and the chemical industry as well as ship-building and naval repairs gave rise to a sharp increase in unemployment in the area, which in turn had serious repercussions for the labour market. State involvement did not abolish crisis tendencies within the capitalist mode of production, but rather transformed and internalized them within the state. Mass production increasingly became crisis prone in western Europe from the late 1960s, for three main reasons: contradictions internal to this model of production organization, changes in the international division of labour, and deep systemic crises in the political economy of capitalism.
