B (3:21)

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Um, thank you for that. So you've been kind of all over the place doing half of the research in Germany and then in the archives in Detroit, which is really fascinating. And I'm kind of always curious about the archival process. Um, were there any specific challenges to using more corporate archives, especially with GM or anything that was like, interesting about that archival process?

A (3:44)

Well, I will say the archival process was interesting because each individual archive was its own particular challenge. For example, I had a very easy time with the Ford archives. I didn't mention going there. And the reason why was because I didn't need to. The actual archive was closed. And yet when I emailed the archivists, they ultimately told me that they can just send me everything they have about issues of automation and technological displacement and so on. And for that reason, it was the easiest data collection I've ever had. They just sent me a compressed file that had everything I needed. And it was, it was great material. Compare that to the Volkswagen archive, where I was not allowed to take pictures of anything. I could not save anything directly. All I could do was visually see the documents that were all written in German, by the way, which I had, which I, you know, I needed to. To learn a lot of German in order to use the archives at all. But basically, and there's no Internet, so all, all that together, having to write down as much as I could, I was allowed to. I was allowed to use my laptop to type, but that's about. That's. That's really the only technological tool I had. But otherwise it was very. To put. To put. To make it very simple. It. The. The Volkswagen archives were a challenge because there was much limited. My, My. The tools I could use to. To dig into the archives are much more limited compared to GM or IG Mattel, where I was actually allowed to take pictures of documents or screenshot documents, that sort of thing. So there was really. There was a range of different experiences with archival work. Some were very easy access, some were more difficult access. And I do, I do believe that the corporate archives, especially with Volkswagen, they were more tightly guarded. As for reasons you would expect that the corporations don't want. Don't the corporations have no incentive to give access to. Of their records to researchers. What they do give is what is ultimately out of the goodness of their heart, so to speak. They're not obligated to do this, but. But I am very grateful that they, that they still give access anyway.

B (6:15)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think I've. I've heard that a lot. And there's always the unique challenges to all of the different types of archives. So, like, state archives kind of have their own thing, and colonial archives and corporate archives, they all have their own challenge of like, wait, what is making this narrative that I'm getting out of this? And I think the corporate archives are always interesting because there is a level of if they don't want some info to be out there, you just will never access it. So, yeah, it's definitely always interesting thinking about the challenges that kind of shape that process. But diving into the book a little bit, would you mind describing your argument and your framing and kind of your approach? You do this really wonderful, very structured introduction, and I kind of feel like I would botch it. So I think that's all you.

A (7:06)

No, totally. So. So one of the first points is that in the discussion of the future of work and automation that has appeared in recent decades, there is, there's a lot of discussion about, you know, here, here's what could happen to jobs if, you know, say, AI or robots take over jobs. But it's, it's, it's at a very general level that doesn't talk about specific social contexts very often. And so one of my main approaches is to say, well, what, how, how does automation and technological displacement occur within specific social con. Contexts where there are specific arrangements of business, labor and government that are going to inevitably shape in one way or another the development and deployment of technologies and ultimately of automation. And so sort of my, my theoretical approaches to this one, I draw from the work of David Harvey, who discusses his concept of value regimes, which is how I sort of frame the United States versus Germany as two separate value regimes. And the general idea with value regimes is that capitalism, according to Harvey, who's of course drawing upon Karl Marx, says that value is flowing. Like what defines capitalism is that value is flowing in motion in, in four different phases, as he describes it, and in terms of production, realization, distribution and reinvestment. And that the capital system is defined both by being a system where value is flowing within these four phases, but is also doing so one, trying to accumulate more and more capital over time, always trying to expand, always trying to grow. But also the concept of value regimes is meant to signify how the specific ways that this flow happens this, this val. This flow of value in motion happens ultimately is dependent upon the historical and institutional context in which it exists. That being business gov, business, labor and government all are going to shape this particular flow. You can think of this in terms of, you know, government tax systems, the relative power of labor, whether they're unionized or not, what sort of business strategies are used. There's a ton of different questions that you can ask in terms of, you know, what is the value regime of the United States? What is the value regime of. Of Germany? But I also take drawing from historian Moishe Bostone, who discusses the historical dynamics of capitalism and specifically how these historical dynamics constitute a form of unfreedom, a form of social domination, which to which of course is. Is one of the main concepts that I develop throughout the book. And it is admittedly a very complicated concept that I would say to give a full explanation would say, well, maybe reading the book or read. Or reading Postone would. Would really help with that. But I would say probably one of the most easiest ways that I sort of discuss it is basically saying that because we are all embedded within the capitalist system, we are all put under pressures of certain imperatives and constraints that specifically in my research looks like how companies and workers and the governments that sort of oversee all this need to conform to certain productivity standards and that these productivity standards themselves represent certain forms of imperatives and constraints that put. To put pressure on these businesses to develop within certain directions. Specifically being. Being able to improve productivity continuously and in certain directions, always moving forward, always increase, you know, decreasing the amount of time that it takes to make a particular commodity. In this case, the. One of the major, the major measures that I talk about in the book is, you know, at the hours per vehicle or. Yeah, hours per vehicle that it takes to, to build a vehicle from start to finish. And then finally. And then my final framework is from sociologist Nicholas Luman, who this, you know, he, he. He does not come from a Marxist framework, but he does in my view, really help sort of understand what is social about social domination. And what I mean by this is, is that our communications with one another push us toward it, push us in certain directions, push us to, to make certain decisions, such as when companies such as General Motors or Volkswagen praise themselves or put out, you know, put out statements about how productive their, their, their factories are or how, you know, how amazing their, their vehicles are and so on. So my final influence is the sociologist Nicholas Luman, who with his social systems theory, posits that communication is what defines the Social and for me, I use this as a means to sort of flesh out what postone means by social domination or how we can sort of flesh out what social domination is. And the way I use this concept is basically to say that through communication, especially communications that, that push productivity numbers as a positive, as the, the less time it takes to build a vehicle, the better, the more modern, the more so, the superior, the higher quality. The vehicle has all these basic components and that communication of those, of those, of those statistics, of those, you know, basically of praising the vehicle and so on, what that allows them to do is indirectly reinforces the productivity standards by saying that if you are going to compete with us, you need to reach our standard of productivity to achieve similar levels of quality, similar levels of productivity, similar levels of, of having the most innovative products. And so there is a sense in which there is a link between communication, a link between social systems communicating with one another and reinforcing the social domination of socially necessary labor time, or what I call in postone call social domination.

B (14:04)

That's definitely really interesting to think of. And I'm starting to make some connections in my mind of Germany's long kind of tradition with manufacturing and engineering quality and the quality of what they were producing kind of at the, I don't know, what would it be the late 19th century, early 20th century. And then also in the US with Fordism and just rapidly increasing the speed in which goods could be produced specifically like the. Oh my gosh, I'm drawing a blank automotive production and these like, kind of like metal based in these, not just goods for the household but actual industrial and larger scale goods. I don't know, I'm not articulating that very well, but I think I'm drawing those conclusions on the US And Germany in this slight comparison of both having this kind of moment of manufacturing and engineering quality. But why did you choose to explore the US And Germany as a subject for this, this, this research topic? And then what about these two countries kind of provides this effective framework to approach this study of capitalism?

A (15:26)

Right. So my, my first inspiration actually came from my dissertation chair, Harry F. Doms, who from the beginning really encourages all of his students to, to basically have a comparative perspective at all times. And the easiest way and the most effective way of doing so is to have intimate experience with more than one country. He, to give his own story, he was, you know, born in Germany, had had his master's up to his master's in Germany, but then got his PhD in the United States and then taught in the United States for, for several decades. And so he has intimate, familiar familia with Germany and the US and that has positively influenced his research. I was inspired in the same sort of way to want first of all to have a comparative perspective. But Germany and the US are special because. Well, first of all they were important for this topic because they both started their auto industries around the same time. That's, that's, that's an important point. But also the way that both auto industries developed over the course of the 20th century is quite distinctive because Germany started out just as the US did as a. Trying to focus more on quality over quantity and having it so that, you know, every. As I discussed in the first historical chapter, every piece needed to be fitted together and the parts were non identical. And that took a lot of time to build each individual car which did make it more expensive but also, you know, could make it of higher quality at the same time. Fordism in the US really took the US in a very different direction, which is why the chapter is called Fork in the Road. They started out in a similar spot, but then because of their, because of different decisions that, that that automakers within each country made, they did diverge in ways that had impacts for decades and decades. The US was able to, to motorize much, much faster than Germany. And we're talking in terms of millions and millions of vehicles built in the 1910s and 1920s in the United States versus tens of thousands built in Germany during that same time period. And the point that I want to make, probably one of the most important points is that differences in productivity were, was it was a huge factor to drive this divergence. The fact that Fordism and that Henry Ford was keen on trying to improve productivity and in as many ways as possible and the ways, the specific ways they did that, such as through deskilling the workforce using single purpose machines rather than general purpose machines, introducing the assembly line. All of these things had the net effect of huge increases in productivity that the German auto industry both was not able to replicate, but also were unwilling to replicate because the German workers were much more powerful in their. They were unlike the US they were unionized first of all. But they were also much more powerful within in terms of maintaining skills, maintaining knowledge that the company didn't have. We can talk about the separation of the set like the Fordism separated the knowledge from the worker and that allowed for more control and being able to effectively push the worker to do more. When you had low skilled workers versus in Germany, the high skilled workers were able to maintain their skills and they were not divorced from them in the same way as they were in the US and that not only caused there to, it not only allowed for the German workers to have more control over their labor and but it also allowed for the German system to exist at a much slower sort of pace of productivity development. Now, I do make the point specifically that the Germans, the German system still improved productivity. That was, this was not a static system. They were not completely, they were not frozen in time, so to speak. They did improve productivity over the course of the early teens, 1910s, 1920s, but they absolutely were not growing at the same rate by, by a large more order of magnitude compared to the US and so to sort of, you know, loop back around to, to the question, that starting point of that fork in the road that I described in the first chapter did have a large effect on the trajectory of both industries to the point that if you want to compare different forms of capitalism, you know, you can say the American, the way I put it, is this, this, this exceptional capitalism or America, you know, drawing from American exceptionalism literatures to say that the US capitalism is, is exceptional in certain ways versus the social market economy in Germany. These are two varieties of capitalism that choose to address challenges in quite different ways. And because of this early history and how it's sort of evolved, we can, we can very easily see how they chose to, in various ways, address challenges in very distinct ways. I know, I'm sorry, that was, that was maybe a little, maybe too broad at the end, but.

B (21:26)

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A (21:59)

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B (22:30)

At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way. You're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way@newbalance.com running. So I guess while you were kind of describing these differences between this, this fork in the road, how you term it in your book, it started to make me think about the labor conditions and kind of changing labor demographics in the US And Germany at this time. So when Fordism is kind of starting to boom in the Ford plants and kind of the American Midwest manufacturing is starting to boom, there's a lot of immigration to the U.S. but then there's also a lot of internal migration in the US Just because of the opportunities in the American Midwest. And I guess I feel like I should be more familiar, but I'm not really sure of what was going on with Germany's labor at the time and if possibly the difference in the quantity and I don't know quantity and skill and labor expectations like what people were expecting to be paid and how they were expecting to be treated in both the U.S. and Germany, kind of how that differed and how that also might account for this fork in the road. Especially with you mentioned Germany was unionized whereas the US wasn't. And I kind of feel like a lot of those factors of immigration and migration are probably kind of central to these histories.

A (24:20)

Yeah, that is absolutely true. Now of course in the early history of Germany there was a lot less internal or I should say, I guess inter European migration comparatively. Obviously it's all relative. But the, but German, non German, let's say this way, the entry of non German workers really accelerated after World War II with the 1950s and 1960s where there was because Germany, it took Germany until the mid century to fully adopt Fordism and seriously catch up to the US they call it the American challenge. And taking seriously the American challenge. And one of the main strategies they did use to address the American, excuse me, the American challenge was to bring in immigrant labor, especially in the book I discussed specifically Volkswagen and bringing in Italian workers. And the way that that worked at that time was the Italian workers would primarily work the lower paid, more onerous, less prestigious, less jobs that, that required less education and so on. Whereas the native born German workers were more likely to be working the more high skilled jobs. And the way that, that, the way that that system ultimately played out was that when the German auto industry faced a crisis in the early 1970s, especially in Volkswagen, there was the Beetle crisis where the Beetle itself was starting to sort of slow down in terms of sales Both in Germany and internationally, especially in the US that was when the company decided that these guest workers from Italy were no longer needed and their, you know, tens of thousands of them were basically sent back to, to, to Italy for the sake of maintaining the core German workforce. And I will say that this was one of the points that actually surprised me because one of my main theses going into the dissertation or going into the book was the presumption that the history of Germany would consistently be more oriented towards social justice or more oriented towards a more humanist approach to solving labor problems than the U.S. and while there are many instances where that was true, there were also many instances where Germany appeared to betray their, the higher standards that they put themselves towards in terms of claims to social justice and to humanism. And the treatment of the Italian guest workers is one example of that. And there are other examples that I, that I can get into that I discuss later on in the book. But, but ultimately that's, that's one point.

B (27:36)

Yeah, thank you for that. So I guess I kind of want to shift to this a little bit how you structure your book and your approach in this study. But are there any specific moments of transformation in this history? And if so, kind of what are those and how are those moments reflective of a broader historical condition or context?

A (28:00)

Right. So I would describe this not necessarily in terms of moments, but movements in each chapter was strategically chosen specifically to highlight these movements, these, these transformations. So, you know, the first, the first chapter as I've already described, is basically detailing this fork in the road and how the, the choice between embracing mass production or maintaining craft production and the, the long term effects of, of doing that within the first couple decades of the 20th century. The second chapter has another movement that, you know, the, the, the Great Depression and ultimately World War II really disrupted the trajectory that both countries were on up until that point. The, the way that I frame it is that both countries experience their own form of state rationalization. The US experienced state rationalization in the form of the New Deal, in the form of unionization. The UAW was able, was able to successfully unionize General Motors and Ford and Chrysler by the end of the 1940s, whereas in Germany there was the rise of the National Socialist, the Nazi state, which not many might know, but the Nazis were actually very interested in modernization and motorization of the country. And while in many ways they failed in the sense that they were not able to get, they were not able to complete their Volkswagen project and actually start selling the Beetle within, with, within the Third Reich they were able to greatly improve their, their productivity and their ability in their, their production of cars in general compared to the past. But in order to do so, they needed one to finally enforce Fordism and finally embrace Fordism completely, even at the protest of the workers, because they, they subjugated the workers, but also introducing, you know, concentration camp labor, slave labor to do the assembly line work that ordinary Germans were not willing to do. And so this was an enforce, this was an enforced rationalization coming from the state. And that's two very different, that's another movement, that's two very different types of movements. The 1950s and 1960s was defined as another sort of movement in the sense that Germany was catching up in terms of, in terms of embracing Fordism and starting to seriously compete with the US in ways that had not in the past versus the US Enjoying its heyday of being able to be dominant within the global auto industry and sort of enjoying the high points of that which seem on the surface like a prosperity. But as I detail, as, as the, as the chapter title shows, it is both prosperity but also automation hysteria. Because the workers, the businesses and the government were all concerned with automation. Because while, while, yes, they were at, they were in their prime, they were at the top because of the historical dynamics of capitalism which I discussed throughout the book, and because of the constant need to improve productivity that, that ultimately, even, even in times of seeing prosperity generates automation and generates technological displacement that needs to be dealt with even at, even at the high points. I, I don't know. I, I, I, I, I don't know if I want to describe all five chapters, but yeah, that's fair.

B (32:00)

Okay, so I guess I'm also kind of wondering, and this is a little bit more broad with just your argument with the book in the scope of the book, but what about the automotive industry, so important to industrial development and economic transformation?

A (32:16)

Right. So what's interesting about the auto industry is how many, how, how many times throughout history it has been singled out as important. And we can even say today with Trump's tariffs on the auto industry, in particular, the 25 auto tariffs that he implemented, that is, that is one part of a much longer history that's, that's, that's just the most recent example of a long history of the auto industry being special within whatever country that it's, that it's in, whether it's, you know, whether it's going back to the beginning of the auto industry where, where, you know, there's a reason why it's called Fordism. And it's not called something else. Mass, you know, mass production. Fordism is called Fordism because Henry Ford and the. The use of all the technologies that he was using at that time really defined. Defined a moment, defined a. A whole. A whole way of life of both mass production and ultimately mass consumption. And we should not forget that that was defi. That was. That was at least not that. Not that everything originated in the auto industry, but it was most popularized and most heavily used in the auto industry. If we're talking about the. The. Actually, I think I lost my train of thought. The. What was the question again? Actually.

B (33:45)

Yeah, no, it's okay. I was just wondering what about the automotive industry is so. Oh, yeah, the industrial development. Yeah.

A (33:53)

Right. And then. And so the auto industry in general, we can say, is not just about the direct workers who are. Who get, you know, who receive value for their work, but also the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of indirect workers who support that. And also just the fact that transportation is so integral to globalization, how improvements in transportation technologies speed up the rest, speed up so many other processes in society, whether it's movement of people, movement of things, especially, you know, movement of. Of goods, that make capitalism possible. All of these things ultimately give the auto industry much more importance because it is so central to so many other developments that took place not only in the 20th century, but also continue on to today. I don't know. I kind of feel like that wasn't the best answer, but.

B (34:59)

No, no, that was great. I definitely understand what you're saying. Yeah. And I feel like so often the automotive industry is looked at as just cars, but it's also. It's the capacity to produce engines. So, like, there's this one book, really great one, that came out a few years ago, and it's not a direct argument. So, like, don't quote this completely, but there's kind of this sense that the ability to produce cars is also then, like, beneficial during wartime. So when you look at, like, Fordism or all of the Ford plants and like most of the automotive industry in the U.S. switching to support the war effort in World War II, and then in the Soviet Union, they had kind of, like their equivalent of River Rouge, and that one was then converted to military production, that one is always interesting to me because it's like, why would they even need to produce cars in the first place? There wasn't a huge market for them in the Soviet Union at that time. So for them to build that plant is kind of an interesting, Interesting moment of Industrial development in the Soviet Union. It's getting a little far away from the scope of this book. But I can definitely understand why just capacity to produce and capacity to manufacture I think is definitely very closely tied to development and economic transformation and capitalism too. So I guess you also mentioned this kind of long history that really encapsulates the history of or your study of automotion, labor and industrial development. How do you use this kind of long deray approach and why is it effective in this study?

A (36:51)

Right. So why the longer is important ultimately is because the. Let's see. So ultimately it's because I. My approach is to not miss the forest for the trees, so to speak, to be able to take the. The long drive towards increasing productivity and the long drive towards automating more and more labor processes as a through line throughout this history that should not be lost for the nitty gritty, you know, sales one year versus another year. Or Toyota opens a factory in the US and Germany, you know, closes their Volkswagen plant in Pennsylvania in the, in the 80s. Like the nitty gritty history can be in danger of causing us to or allowing us to miss some of these long term dynamics that are influencing so many decisions that are made. A good example of this would be the transition from Fordism to lean production that I talk about in the last couple chapters of the book. Some might take Fordism and lean production as two completely different systems that in some ways might be seen as. And evolution of one another, but also might see. Be seen as counterposed. Whereas my approach is to see how Fordism pushes the envelope of socially necessary labor time and pushes productivity norms forward. And lean production did the same thing but in slightly different, used different means to achieve the same objective of improving productivity. And when you look at this long Duray approach of the drive toward productivity rather than saying, rather than, let's say, discussing, you know, discussing whether the assembly line is important or not or discussing whether teamwork is important or not. Those are obviously important questions as well. But if we focus too much on those nitty gritty questions, we can lose how we can lose the underlying drive that pushes all these developments forward and ultimately where they're oriented towards. Because so much of. One of the main themes that I approach in this book is the fact that so many decisions that were ultimately made, sometimes they may coincide with other objectives. For example, the push toward ergonomics. There are many instances where yes, ergonomics is something that helps human workers and can benefit people, but at the same time, so many of the specific ergonomic decisions that were made also improve productivity at the same time. And that fact is something we should not miss because it's not just a movement. Our decisions are not just made for their own sake or for the sake of benefiting humanity. But, but a vast majority of the decisions that are made are often made in convergence with the interests of capital or the interests of pushing productivity forward, which ultimately feeds into the interests of capital. Does that make sense?

B (40:21)

Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. And I do think that approach and kind of your explanation for why it's so effective here is definitely very important to consider and not focusing on specific moments of exceptionalism, but this broader, broader kind of transition or like slow movement towards greater productivity or, or to put.

A (40:43)

It slightly differently, it's not that these, it's, it's not that these moments or these specific developments are not important, but they, but their importance needs to be placed into context of the broader historical dynamics of capitalism. And too often that's what's missed.

B (40:59)

Sure, yeah, yeah, definitely. So how might readers and listeners think differently about the history of industrial production after reading this study?

A (41:10)

Yeah, so one of my main themes is being able to understand the history of automation and technological displacement within, within the context of the convergence and divergence of how these, these dynamics play out within certain historical and social contexts. What I mean by that is, is that there were forces of convergence that pushed the automakers to develop productivity in certain ways to push them towards, you know, in the, in, in the first half of the 20th century, pushing them towards adopting Fordism as the social, as the productivity standard versus lean production in the second half of the 20th century, in the 21st century, pushing in that direction. So those are forces of convergence. At the same time, there are forces of divergence that also exist and that push in sometimes the. At least in either opposing directions or modifying directions. So the best example here would be in the 70s and 80s, the movements within the German auto industry to say, yes, let's improve productivity, but let's also improve worker education and worker qualifications and have what they called the new production concepts come to the fore where workers are much more in control of the machines or divergence in the sense of responding to crises of automation and technological displacement or even just downturns in the market in general with, with the idea that we are going to support the workers and, you know, for example, only not. Not lay anyone off for economic reasons, but allow for generous retirement packages, early retirement packages, allowing for voluntary dismissal with generous severance packages. You know, these were divergences in terms of response to crises that at the same time were needed because of this underlying historical dynamic, these forces of convergence that were pushing them towards making decisions that, where they needed to improve productivity anyway. They needed to improve productivity. They needed to, they, they ultimately needed to respond to the, to the challenges of improving productivity. But they were, but because of their value regimes, because of their constellations of business, labor and government, they were ultimately making different decisions that represent forces of divergence as well.

B (43:57)

Sure, yeah, that definitely makes sense. And yeah, that is a really good way to kind of summarize the important takeaway of this, this study. So thank you for that. What are you working on now? You said that this is your, your first book. This was your dissertation turned into a manuscript. So congratulations on getting that into print. But what are your next steps? Are you working on another project or.

A (44:23)

Yeah, yeah. So at the center for Transportation Research, I have been working most recently on electric vehicle adoption and manufacturing. So the way I would basically describe my current research agenda is the electric vehicle transition from the local to the global level. I've, I've done projects locally in Knoxville, Tennessee, interviewing people, but I've also looked at sort of the global development especially you know, the United States, Norway, China and obviously I'm always keeping my eye on Germany, of course, but also not just about the adoption, but manufacturing and how the manufacturing and manufacturing interests especially mediate adoption. Probably the best, the biggest example, very briefly is just the fact that because of geopolitical and globally and global competitive concerns, the US does not allow Chinese EVs into the market. And so the sort of untangling some of these dynamics is what I've been working on most recently. But I will say as one final point, I have, I have applied for, for the Fulbright and, and hopefully other scholarships that will hopefully allow me to do more comparative work between the US and Germany in the future and, and bring and basically explore the EV transition in both countries. That's sort of my main, my five year plan, so to speak.

B (45:55)

That's fascinating. Thank you for that. For our listeners, Driving Productivity, Automation, labor and Industrial Development in the United States and Germany by Anthony Knowles, published by Brill in 2025, is available wherever you get your books. Anthony, thank you so much again for being on the show today. I really enjoyed chatting with you and just our conversation.

A (46:15)

Thank you so much. I'm happy to be.