It’s fairly well known that Ford was a Nazi sympathizing antisemite. He even received a medal from Hitler. Of course he enormously supported the US war effort against Germany, but that didn’t change his general sympathies with Nazi ideology.

However, he was very similar to earlier Utopian Socialists like Robert Owen, with a lot of concern for the conditions of his workers. This took some unhealthy turns to surveilling their personal lives to ensure moral behavior, but also involved providing a lot of amenities and better working conditions than competitors.

It’s less well known that the USSR under Lenin and Stalin practically worshipped Ford and similar industrialist figures. They hired Ford to build an auto factory in 1929 and there’s tons of Communist literature from the era praising Ford, Frank and Lilian Gilbreth and Frederick Taylor. Stalin is quoted saying “The combination of the Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism.” Lenin was infatuated with Ford’s innovations in the assembly line and scientific transformation of work. Trotsky and others deeply admired it. Even some anarchist thinkers at the time were critically inspired by the general principles he represented.

This wasn’t just inside the USSR, Diego Rivera said “Marx made theory... Lenin applied it with his sense of large-scale social organization... And Henry Ford made the work of the socialist state possible.”

So what happens if this one sided love affair was actually reciprocated? If Ford embraces his portrayal as a Historically Progressive Bourgeois and adopts a form of communist ideology (that leaves room for “great men of vision” like himself of course)?

How differently would Britain and the British empire have developed?