This paper is an attempt to unravel the post-Fordist debate. This recurrent debate about the future of capitalism intensities during periods of crisis and transition. Three different perspectives on post-Fordism are identified and explored, each one evolving out of a particular tradition within classical political economy and stressing different driving forces in the historical development of capitalism. An underlying theme within the paper is the existence of significantly contrasting views about the openness of the new phase of capitalist development: disagreement over whether post-Fordism is primarily about the inevitable diffusion of a new and pervasive disciplining of labour or the formation of strategic initiatives and the making of history.