The Mondragón Model as Post-Fordist Discourse: Considerations on the Production of Post-Fordism

Abstract

This article is intended as a contribution to the ethnography of contemporary capitalism. I analyze the case of the Mondragón cooperative model and consider what its international fame tells us about the regime of post-Fordism. I explore the constitution of the Mondragón model through the singular discourse of labor–management cooperation. I show how the model is produced by the discursive practices of omission and decontextualization. Mondragón can only be constructed as an alternative to and critique of capitalism if (1) workers’ experiences are erased; (2) politics are marginalized; and (3) the cooperatives are de-territorialized from the global economic context. By providing the missing contexts, I offer a competing narrative, portraying cooperation as a class-interested discourse that undermines workers’ power. My account of how the Mondragón model was produced is a revealing case of the production of global capitalist discourses in a period of economic and ideological shifts to post-Fordism.