Across the Industrial Divide: A Review Article

Abstract

Western society could have chosen another way of advance, one based on the craftsman's autonomy and flexibility. Instead, at one juncture of history, it took a path of mass production that would find its apotheosis in the American industrial system. That system is now mired in stagnation and deterioration. Prosperity can be regained either by fundamentally transforming the international economy or by reviving and returning to an earlier craft tradition, made new by coupling worker autonomy with sophisticated technology in a system of flexible specialization. Such is the argument of authors Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel in Second Industrial Divide. Power and interest, we are told, determines the choice of technology: The possibilities that are realized depend on the distribution of power and wealth: those who control the resources and the returns from investment choose from among the available technologies the one most favorable to their interests (p. 38). But in the tale the authors tell, it is not power or interest but the force of an idea (a technological paradigm) and the logic of its unfolding that explains the character of industrial cum development. mass production paradigm would seem (for its substantive content is never clearly specified) to rest on two pillars. One pillar is specialization, which was the crux of Adam Smith's theory of productivity, production,