ABSTRACT
Henry Ford is probably the single most famous business leader of all time. Over the course of the past hundred years he has been admired and reviled in almost equal proportions. To some, he was the paragon of American entrepreneurial genius, who revolutionised American culture and lifestyles by bringing cheap motoring to the masses, beginning America’s long love affair with the automobile. To others, he was the instigator of a dehumanising, deskilling system of mass production which has oppressed the lives of millions around the world. His admirers included Vladimir Ilich Lenin, who instructed Pravda to serialise his books; his detractors included Aldous Huxley, whose characters in the novel Brave New World pray to ‘Our Ford’ rather than ‘Our Lord’.
