The Myth of Management (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

'We are a happy team here, I treat my workers as human beings and they appreciate that’

Many managers in industry and commerce today, when pushed to explain their rôle, will define management very simply and starkly as: “Getting other people to do what we want them to.” Implicit in this is the idea that most people would not be doing the things managers want them to if they had a free choice. It is not difficult to understand why.

If you have ever had to get up at some unearthly hour of the morning, and journey to work simply to face the prospect of eight hours or more as the victim of an “efficient” system, you will know why. You have little control over what goes on, your time perspective is short, you are a passive instrument of production, you are dependent on those who have authority over you, and so on. Basically you are an adult being forced to behave as a child.

You might think that under these circumstances capitalist bosses and owners would have a difficult time persuading people to work for them, specially as the workers are not producing to fulfil sensible needs but just to supply markets. In one way you would be right; but capitalism has forceful ways of getting people to act against their best interests and produce wealth that will be accumulated to further ensnare workers in wage-slavery. For a start, working people under capitalism need wages to buy the necessities of life. In addition, advertizing implores and persuades everyone to buy more of this and that; with the result that every worker hopes to find a job that pays as much as possible and offers “advancement”, i.'e. the prospect of competing against other workers to somehow get more than they.

Research

Once a worker is engaged, how does capitalism ensure that it gets the maximum possible out of him? This is where management comes in. Capitalism, in order to produce and grow, has no alternative but to devote much attention to management to control workforces and persuade workers to take part in the corporate madness. On the surface it may look as if it has been successful: the majority of workers are persuaded most of the time to behave in a way that is profitable for the enterprise and to accept that managers have “the right” — as trained specialists — to control the machinery and the lives of those who work at it.

In developing the “craft” of management a great amount of effort has been expended, particularly in the universities; today no self-respecting university is without its Management Studies department. Here, students are trained and research is carried out to discover newer and more promising ways to achieve management’s end. It is enlightening to know that the Russians have been among other capitalist countries who have fallen over themselves to gain the latest information on management methods from the gurus at the universities in Britain and America.

Historically, the “Scientific Management” principles of F. W. Taylor in the early 1900s can be seen as among the first efforts by industrial capitalists to control workers otherwise than by force and the fear of dismissal. Essentially, these principles maintained that if firms selected their workers, trained them in the most efficient ways, and appeared to be rewarding them accordingly, the workers would behave in a way that was satisfactory to the management. (The wage-worker’s satisfaction would come from the supposition that he received high earnings.) This view of industrial man has become known as the “Rational-Economic” view and has given rise to work-study, personnel selection and systematic training techniques in industry.

What is a Human Being ?

It rapidly became apparent that this view was inadequate, and soon another factor in the industrial situation was named by researchers in the United States of America. It was discovered from the deservedly famous Hawthorne researches of Elton Mayo and others that there was a social factor to take into account in the workplace. Workers left to congregate did so in what were termed “informal groups”; in these they operated norms of behaviour and restricted production — not always in the best interests of the management and owners but in their own interests as workers. The management teaching which emanated from these researches became known as the “Human Relations” school, and was concerned to show that leadership at work was very important in order to get workers’ behaviour to coincide with the wishes of management.

This doctrine was very acceptable to capitalists, not only because of its timely appearance but because it seemed to fit in with Christian ethics and thereby reinforced management’s responsibility to control the enterprise. It has given rise to innumerable supervisory management courses, and the theatricals of treating workers as “real people” to give them motivation to produce for the benefit of the owners. In the immortal words of an unnamed industrial supervisor: “We are a happy team here, I treat my workers as human beings and they appreciate that.”

After the Second World War, in the developed capitalist countries there was a tremendous upsurge of study in the “social sciences” of psychology, sociology, social anthropology, political science, etc. To gain money for research in the USA, researchers removed the tainted word “social” and substituted “behavioral”. This name-change had the tempting implication of learning how to predict, control and manipulate the behaviour of human beings. Needless to say, plenty of money was then forthcoming to pursue these “sciences” and to feed resulting information to management so that it would be utilized to increase industrial stability and efficiency.

Inventing a Meaning

Management studies “discovered” what Marx had known long before: that man looked for meaning in his work, and the chance to develop and mature. Bureaucracies and other traditional forms of organization took away the likelihood of finding meaning except in the top echelons of the hierarchy. It was said also that bureaucracies produced immature behaviour and conflict among themselves because of the workings of internal politics and career structure. Therefore people were looking for their satisfaction outside the workplace and becoming apathetic and non-involved towards work. Management badly needed an ideology to cope with these problems. Lo and behold, it was produced in the guise of “Organization Development”.

“Organization Development” is the requirement for a firm to keep pace with technical and social changes inside and outside itself. It makes use of such trendy techniques as “participative management”, “job enrichment”, etc. What it means for management is seeking the commitment of the work-force by devising and designing jobs which offer people a challenge, and offer the worker more positive opportunities to “fulfil himself as an individual” at work. The supporting logic is that given these opportunities the individual will gain more satisfaction at work; his defences, brought into action to combat the immature manner in which he had to behave at work formerly, would be eroded — and consequently organizational effectiveness would be increased.

It is precisely this logic and ideology that is behind the much-publicized reorganization of production at Volvo in Sweden into teams of workers producing whole cars themselves, not on assembly lines but in what are termed “villages”. Volvo’s boss has been quoted as saying that if the experiment fails and output falls, the whole system can soon be re-transformed to the assembly line. So much for concern with “human satisfaction” !

Scientific Management was rape but Organization Development, with its techniques of “participation” and “enrichment”, is seduction. The end result is the same, a violated human being and society.

Why it will not Work

The Behavioural Science techniques have been and are being used by management to meet the continual difficulty of getting people to accept wage-slavery. It is the latest fad in a long line of panaceas for the problems of the capitalist system. We may take for granted that it will be as unsuccessful as all the other rearguard actions of capitalism and will not for long dupe workers into believing it is in their interests to acquiesce. The dilemma for management is that responsibility given to a person or group means a loss of managerial control. Therefore, management could not go far in creating true enrichment and participation without undermining its own control of the means of production. They will not do that.

All these attempts then have failed and will fail to deliver the goods. From the capitalists’ point of view, people remain “unmanageable” — but the capitalist class must go on seeking ways to manage, training people for leadership (and presumably followership).

It may appear that managers themselves have a vested interest in the continuance of capitalism because it gives apparent power and status. It should be remembered that they too are workers, anxious to be hired and liable to be fired. While perhaps lording-it over their “workforces”, they are themselves just as much aware of their own insecurity: they share the same problems. From that point of view the so-called leader is likely to be conscious that leadership is a myth.

Socialists do everything possible to destroy that myth and the necessity for people to be “managed”. The idea of management and leadership is an industrial as well as a political fallacy. In a Socialist society people will be able to decide democratically how labour is to be applied for the common good. The need for management is obsolete in such a society. No wages or status, but democratic decision-making and free access to goods and services. Who needs managers ?

D. G. Bishop

The Profit-Sharing Snare. Co-partnership Schemes Exposed. (1930)

From the October 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The economics of cheapness.

Great Britain is losing her hold over the world market. That means producing firms are finding it harder to compete successfully against producers abroad. Every scheme is being tried to regain lost trade and to increase the quantity of goods sold. Industry to-day is carried on for the profit of the owners, and more trade, therefore, means more profit.

The most effective way to capture markets is to sell cheaper than your rivals. How can goods be sold at a lower price? Modern industry answers—”Reduce the time taken to produce them.” That is how the modern cry of Rationalisation pays tribute to the economics of Karl Marx.

Marx showed that the average amount of time taken under prevailing conditions to produce an article determined its value. So in order to sell cheaper, the manufacturers to-day use every possible method to lessen the time necessary to produce their wares.

Piece-work rates, bonus systems and other profit-sharing-schemes are adopted to arouse the worker to greater effort; to produce quicker; and to save waste. This enables the employer to produce more cheaply, whilst the workers are told they will share in the increased profits.

The “Pace-maker” and his function.

The cotton trade to-day is in decline, and these speeding-up methods are being pushed in Lancashire to enable the employers to ensure their profits. The Manchester Guardian recently had an article suggesting piece-work and bonus systems as a remedy. The fixing of piece-work rates, however, we are told by the writer, is difficult, as it means getting “pace-makers,” or sloggers who can lead the rest by turning out more goods. The standards of price per piece can be fixed more profitably for the employers if really rapid workers are employed as “time setters” to cut down the time required to turn out each job. Thus the Taylor system in all its variations of efficiency is offered as a cure for “Lancashire ills.” Its adoption will certainly raise the employers’ profits, but will simply mean in practice that fewer workers are required to do the same amount of work. Any apparent increase in wages by sharing in the profits is only in actual practice a reduction of wages in relation to the increased amount of work performed. The employer’s share is that his profits are increased vastly. The worker is paid a fraction more than before for turning out a much larger product. The sole result is that the increased efforts of the workers reduce the “share” of the total product given back to the workers as wages. That is why prominent employers are so much in favour of these piece-work and profit sharing systems.

One feature of all these piece price and premium bonus ideas was noted by the Manchester Guardian writer; that is the policy of firms cutting down the piece rate once they find efficiency going up and adding to the workers’ wage. So almost as fast as the workers’ output is increased by slogging, the unit price comes down and the workers are back again to subsistence wages. Once the workers raise output it becomes the average standard for all to comply with in order to get the basic wage.

The Co-partnership fraud. 

Many leading employers have recently boomed another artful dodge to ensnare the workers into working in harmony with the employers. Co-partnership or shareholding by employees is the stale device which is being revived. The Economic League—that body of employers’ friends—issue many leaflets praising co-partnership as the way to social peace and workers’ prosperity.

One of the great examples of this scheme is the South Metropolitan Gas Works, who smashed their employees’ strike on the profit-sharing issue, and afterwards raised hours from 8 to 12 per day. This firm boasts that since “allowing” employees to own shares the efficiency has increased, the price of gas has fallen, and better still— profits have risen considerably. In this firm the profit-sharing scheme was made compulsory, so that all workers would take a “greater interest in their work.” It worked out in practice that fewer men were required to do the same amount of work and the tiny “share” of the workers in dividend at the end of the year proved that the owners had really shared in the added wages due to the workers for their increased efforts and output.

The workers get the "leavings."

Lord Leverhulme, of the Soap Trust, was a great believer in co-partnership. But on his death we found from the published will that he owned the entire two millions of ordinary shares himself. Not much co-partnership there ! And by “allowing” some workers to have special “employees’ shares,” receiving interest after the ordinary shareholders, Lord Leverhulme was able to pile up millions in profit. In his book on the “Six Hour Day,” he points out that he always insisted that the co-partner workers must share in the losses as well as profits. This policy was calculated to teach the workers the importance of helping the firm to make profits.

All co-partnership and similar schemes are put forward to kill any organised efforts by the workers to increase their share of the wealth produced. Under the spell of the “divi.” or bonus, the worker is to be enticed away from the struggle to push up his wages or in any way reduce the employers’ surplus.

The Co-partners get the sack.

Cadbury’s and Rowntree’s are examples of “good” firms with profit-sharing policies. Recent efforts on the part of these companies to hold or increase their trade led them to use more machinery to reduce the labour costs. A reduction of workers employed resulted, and Rowntree appealed through the press for employers to give his superseded men a job. After all the work and efforts of the employees in these firms working hard to produce profits they were replaced by machines ! The co-partners were out of work ! Do you need more evidence of the function of bonus systems and co-partnership ?

The fruits of profit sharing.

In the Ministry of Labour Gazette (July, 1930) appears a complete survey of all profit-sharing and co-partnership schemes operating during 1929. These schemes numbered 495, and were participated in by 260,000 employees out of 531,000 employed in these firms. The report tells us that “in all industries taken together nearly one half of the schemes started have come to an end.” We are also informed that “a considerable number of the schemes admit employees to participation in the profits only to the extent that they are able and willing to deposit savings with the firm or purchase shares.”

A famous firm practising co-partnership is the Eastman Kodak Co. Listen to Mr. George Eastman’s testimony of the profit­ able results to the firm :—

“In 1919 several thousand pounds’ worth of shares were distributed to our employees. One result was that after handing over to the workers one-third of my shares, the value of the remaining holdings soon climbed a third higher than the previous total. That was not the purpose in distributing the shares, but the result shows the business value of the act. Since the shares were distributed the market value has gone up over 150 per cent. Part of this increase in value unquestionably has been due to the wide distribution among workers and officials.”—(Co-partnership, Dec., 1927.)

The Chemical combine.

Sir Alfred Mond (now Lord Melchett) is one of the chief apostles of the co-partnership device. He boasted at the annual meeting of the Imperial Chemical Industries, 1929, that 53,000 employees held shares, totalling about 850,000 shares. (This is about 17 shares each.) They are allowed to buy ordinary shares at market prices less 2/6 per share, and preference shares at the fixed price of 21/6 each. He “trusts” his employees not to sell their shares. Why so many employees put their savings into “their firm’s” shares is easily understood, as it is thought to be a means of being kept on or possibly useful in promotion. How little the workers own in the mighty Imperial Chemical Industries can be seen when it is found that the capital of this combine is over 76 millions. The co-partners have no control over “their” jobs nor any control over the business. What are a few shares owned by each worker against the huge amount owned by such Directors of the firm as Lord Melchett, Lord Birkenhead, Lord Colwyn, Sir Max Muspratt, Henry Mond, Marquess of Reading, Lord Weir, etc. ?

Longer hours for co-partners.

How little Lord Melchett is interested in workers’ conditions can be seen by his efforts in Parliament to get a longer working day for miners. The Amalgamated Anthracite Collieries (owned by Imperial Chemicals) controls 12 coal concerns, and has paid huge dividends in recent years.

Who really owns most of the capital can be seen by its share-list, where dozens of shareholders own 10,000 shares and upwards each, and prominent holders like Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds own £395,000 in shares. Lady Buckland, the well-known miner, owns £395,000 in shares in company with two other aristocrats.

Is this an example of the widespread diffusion of capital that the Economic League and Mond refer to ?

How co-partnership rivets the employees to the firm which holds their “savings” can be seen from Mond’s speech at a co­ partnership luncheon :—

“What is the effect of making them shareholders? We saw some of it in the last General Strike. Not one workman in Brunner, Mond’s left his job ! while many were heard to observe that they did not intend to jeopardise their dividends at the dictates of any outside person. In the business with which I am connected we have been free from Labour disputes for fifty years.”

Lord Melchett is very reticent about the wages paid by his alkali works, mines and every other of the 50 concerns amalgamated into his trust. But the Chemical Workers’ Union are continually protesting’ against the “low” wages paid in that industry practically controlled by the combine.

The workmen co-partners have no control of the share market. Should they want to sell their shares just now what will they get? £1 ordinary shares have fallen from 45/- last year to 19/- to-day. And the 10/- deferred shares have fallen to 5/- each. (Observer, August 3rd, 1930).

The right "spirit" for slaves.

Perhaps there is no better indication of Lord Melchett’s policy than the following- :

“After all, there is no more competitive spirit than that displayed by the British people. If you put them into a football match they will kill themselves every Saturday afternoon for nothing. Why not introduce the same spirit into industry?”—(Co-partnership, Dec., 1927.)

This is from his speech at the same co-partnership luncheon. How tragically true ! that is the spirit of industry—killing themselves for nothing !

Some of the conditions of the Imperial Chemical’s co-partners’ scheme are interesting :

“The scheme is an investment one, and while no absolute restriction is placed upon the workers, they will not be expected to speculate with their shares. The directors reserve the right to refuse to allot further shares to a worker who does not enter into the right spirit of the scheme.

The maximum individual allotment will be such number of shares as can he purchased by an expenditure of a sum not exceeding 20 per cent. of the annual wages or salary of the employee. To this 20 per cent. an additional 1 per cent, for each year of service above five may be added.”—(Co-partnership, Dec., 1927.)

The conditions are, of course, laid down by the firm ! The worker must enter into “the right spirit,” and he must not buy (even if he could afford it) too many shares. Perhaps he might then give up working and, like the real “partners,” live upon profits !

The purpose behind Imperial Chemicals “profit sharing” can be gleaned from the following paragraph : —

“This departure from the normal method of dealing with manual workers is described in the current issue of the Imperial Chemical Industries Magazine as an “experiment,” the continuance of which must depend on its economic result. The creation of the Staff Grade will involve a heavy initial cost which must be balanced by compensating increase of efficiency.—(Co-partnership, Sept., 1928.)

Lion and lamb shall unite!

Another well-known “Co-partnership” firm is the Brush Electrical Engineering Co. The Chairman of that concern, speaking of the results of co-partnership in his firm, says : —

“The scheme also gives us confidence of being able to maintain a fairly satisfactory dividend on the share capital, and it enables us to satisfy our customers that good service deserves a fair and adequate, though not excessive, reward for the shareholders and the staff of workers, both mental and manual.”—(Co-partnership, Sep., 1928.)

The same employer, speaking at the annual meeting of his firm this year, explained some of his principles thus : —

1. Greater economy by elimination of waste.
2. Higher efficiency by elimination of inefficient machinery and methods.
3. Larger output to neutralise low prices by removal of Trade Union restrictions.”—(Co-partnership, June, 1930.)

The last principle is striking, in view of the fact that the supporters of the movement, as the above magazine shows, are prominent Labour leaders, like Citrine, Ben Turner, E. F. Wise, E. L. Poulton (General Secretary of Boot and Shoe Workers). This last leader spoke at the Co-partnership Conference, May 10th, this year, and he served up this slop :—

“If the co-partnership principles are properly adopted, we shall soon get out of the slough in which we find ourselves at the present time.”

The financial steam roller.

One prominent co-partner advocate is Angus Watson, of the Newcastle firm selling Skipper Sardines. His firm was recently bought out by the monster international trust, Unilever, Ltd. Angus Watson resigned as Director, and commented very bitterly on the effects of combination of firms and rationalisation. The worker who had played his part building up the firm’s assets was ruthlessly pushed out by machinery and the power of capital. What can copartnership do in face of the modern International Trust?

Edward Cadbury, the cocoa manufacturer, admits our indictment. Speaking at the Quaker Employers’ Conference :—

“He said they would all agree that the workman ought to have some voice in the management, but at present there was no way in which he could be given any effective control in large scale industry; stressing the words ‘effective control’.”—(Co-partnership, Sept., 1928.)

Reviewing the Life of Lord Leverhulme, by his son, the same paper says :—

“Lord Leverhulme’s ideas did not extend to giving any share of the control to the workers. In his particular case he did not see the reason, and perhaps there was not the demand.”

All the evidence we have produced shows that copartnership and profit-sharing schemes are merely another method of inducing the workers to continue a system in which the real control and ownership is in the hands of the employers and in which all the work must be carried on by the workers.

C.

Exhibition Review: Modern Times (2006)

Exhibition Review from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard 

‘Modernism 1914-1939: Designing a New World’, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, until 23rd July, £9 adults.

This is an engaging, varied and well structured exhibition put together by the V & A, focusing on ‘modernist’ approaches to architecture, art and the application of science between the wars. The exhibits, ranging from paintings and posters, through to recreated designs and excerpts from film shows like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Chaplin’s Modern Times, are suitably and accurately described throughout, generally being set in an appropriate theoretical context.

Although modernism was a varied and dynamic movement, its central themes were an important part of early twentieth century life. In particular, the search for human improvement (if not perfectibility) through the application of the scientific method, rationalist approaches to problem solving and the consideration for human progress that permeated art and architecture, were important milestones in the history of capitalism. With modernism, they probably reached their fullest expression so far.

Some sections examine the link between modernism and concepts of social and political utopia, particularly those emanating from the workers’ movement, and others invite consideration of how authoritarian regimes in Russia, Germany and Italy either enthusiastically used – or reticently accommodated themselves to – modernist precepts.

The work of modernist artists such as Mondrian and architects such as Le Corbusier are stunning and prominently featured, along with subsequent applications of their work. Indeed, it is evident (and telling) just how often the design innovations and imaginative approaches of such individuals were limited or distorted by a social and economic system with its own imperatives and strictures, from giant ‘social housing’ projects to the commercialisation of art.

Not everything that came out of modernism was commendable by any means – the ‘Taylorism’ of the modernist factory production line being a particularly mixed blessing. But it is interesting to imagine how a socialist society – which could have been far more closely aligned to the general modernist approach – might have utilised and applied modernist ideas and techniques for the benefit of humanity. In fact, it is difficult for a socialist to take a tour of the exhibition without thinking this at almost every turn.

By the early twentieth century, the capitalist system had developed a worldwide division of labour and sufficient productive capacity for a socialist society built on abundance to be viable as a possible alternative to it. In this sense, capitalism had become politically obsolete. But at a social and technological level, modernism in this period represented both the struggle to transcend and improve capitalism at the same time, to ensure that forward-thinking, scientific and structured methods were applied for the improvement of society. In the absence of socialist revolution, this took the form (even if by default) of trying to renew or perfect commodity society for the perceived needs of humanity.

In many respects, this represented the apogee of conscious, coherent planning and scientific application within capitalism. Thereafter, it influenced post-war reconstruction before being buried by the eclecticism, anti-rationalism and general scepticism towards grand projects for human advancement typified by the anti-scientific backlash of ‘postmodernism’.

Today, postmodernism represents the incoherence and chaos of a capitalist society that has spurned systematic attempts at social improvement, being a product of the commodification and isolation of everyday life, with the attendant breakdown of social relationships and coherence this has involved.

For all its faults, modernism represented a hope for a brighter future through the search for collective human improvement by scientific, rationalist methods and planning. In rejecting this, postmodernism has since confirmed capitalism’s inability to progress in a sustained and coherent manner, and is symbolic of its general descent into impotent micro-politics, disorder and the intellectual void.

Dave Perrin

Marx in modern times (1979)

Book Review from the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labor and Monopoly Capital, by Harry Braverman. Monthly Review Press, 1974. (£3.25)

Labor and Monopoly Capital is a most remarkable book, providing the answer to the criticisms, alleged refutations and revisions of Marxism.

Carrying on from Marx’s own description of the transformation of the labour process by manufacture in Volume I of Capital (manufacture begins when the tool is driven by a machine) Braverman gives the first detailed historical study of the continuation of the process in its hot bed, the United States of America.

Our author, by the way, is in the best tradition of the worker-writer. Unlike Professors of Sociology, who do nothing but lecture students and conduct “surveys” (ask people their opinions of themselves) Harry Braverman is a skilled coppersmith who spent seven years or so working as a craftsman in the shipyards. While this does not necessarily make him right, it does make him interesting! He knows what he writes about, from books and from life.

He explains that the way to increase relative surplus value is to break down the labour process into the tiniest possible detail, transferring from the productive worker the last vestige of any kind of decision about size, shape, weight, material to the “office”. The worker can now be watched and timed, every moment being closely studied and recorded. This is the famous Taylor system of scientific management. Braverman recounts from Taylor’s own book The Principles of Scientific Management how he raised the handling of pig iron at the Bethlehem Steel Company from 12½ to 47 tons per man per day, with a 60 per cent increase in wages. They studied the men intently before selecting the first victim, “a little Dutchman”. The following dialogue ensued: 

“You see that pile of pig iron?”
“Yes”
“Well, if you are a high priced man you will load that pig iron on that car for $1.85 [the standard rate was $1.15]. “You will do exactly as this man tells you. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk—you walk; when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. And you do it straight through the day. But no back-talk — understand!”

As Braverman explains, this is the origin of the system of time and motion study now universal in capitalist production. True, now electronic timers, stroboscopic cameras, microphones, television cameras have been added, but the principle is the same (shades of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times).

Increasing Misery

Consequently Braverman is able to show pretty convincingly that Marx’s view regarding the increasing misery, dubbed the “weak point” of his system by so many latter-day critics, is not wrong, but absolutely right in America in 1979. The classic example is the Model T Ford car. With the invention of the now universal conveyor chain assembly line system, Ford was producing by 1925 as many cars in a day as he had in a year.

  But the new technology proved increasingly unpopular. The men walked out in droves; they could pick and choose. So great was labour’s distaste for the new system, that when the company wanted 100 men, it had to hire 963.

The Legend of Henry Ford, page 149.

However, once the conveyor belt system had spread to other plants the workers could not pick and choose: they were shackled to the assembly line.

Perhaps the author’s greatest achievement, in addition to showing the degradation of the craftsman to an automaton, is his shattering debunking of that sacred cow of American sociology, the “white collar worker”. How many gallons of ink, scores of surveys, dozens of graphs, have analysed the status of the so-called Management Sector?

From official sources, Braverman shows how the “white collar” worker in America today is actually paid below the wage rates of “blue collar” workers. The explanation given is that those very same methods of scientific management (Taylorism) have now invaded the office. The process of dividing all mental effort from the craftsman’s work has attacked the managers and their staffs.

  If one ascribes to the millions of present day clerical workers-the “middle class” of a long vanished clerical stratum of early capitalism, the result can only be a drastic misconception of modern society. Yet this is exactly the practice of academic sociology and popular journalism.
  [In the office] the productive processes of society disappear in a stream of paper, moreover, which is processed in a continuous flow line like that of a cannery, the meat packing line or the car assembly conveyor, by workers organised in much the same way.
  Time and motion study reveal just as startling results in the ordinary details of clerical work as they do in the factory . . . since every motion involves consumption of physical energy, why should not analysis result in the discovery of a mass of useful effort in clerical work, just as it does in the factory.
(Lee Galloway, Office Work, its Principles and Practice)

Braverman quotes from the Guide to Office Clerical Time Standards of the Systems and Procedures Association of America such gems as

           

          Chair Activity                   Minutes

Get up from chair                 .033
Sit down in chair                 .033
Turn in chair                         .009
Move in chair to adjoin desk .080

Similar times are given for cut with scissors, rubber stamping, collating, gather, lay aside, handle, punch, staple, and so on.

New Division of Labour

With the invention of the Hollerith punched card system a means of reading and interpreting simple data without direct human participation was available. Information is now stored by electric impulses, with the result that the magnetic disc-pack can store 29 million characters. These can be transferred to or from a computer at the rate of 186,000 characters a second. The computer introduces a new division of labour, the largest single new occupation being that of key punch operator.

  Mrs. Duncan described all key punch girls as nervous wrecks. Mrs. Calvin reported the same kind of tension. “If you tap one of them on the shoulder when she is working, she’ll fly through the ceiling. Although the girls do not quit, they stay home frequently and keep supplies of tranquillisers and aspirins at their desk”; they felt they were doing a factory job, “frozen” to their desk like an assembly line.

(Automation in the Office, Hoos)

The vice president of an insurance company, pointing to a room tilled with key punch operators, remarked “All they need is a chain”. Said one operator: “This job is no different from a factory job, except that I don’t gel paid as much”.

Typists' Pool Eliminated

With the use of the modern word processor the typists pool is eliminated. The other functions of the secretary are taken over by an “administrative support centre”, which handles filing, phone answering and postings. Thus Lewis Corey could write “a typical large office is now nothing but a white collar factory.”

  The problem of the so-called employees, or white collar workers, which so bothered early generations of Marxists, and which was hailed by the anti-Marxists as proof of the falsity of the ‘proletarianisation’ theses, has thus been unambiguously clarified by the polarisation of office employment, and the growth at one pole of an immense mass of wage workers. The apparent trend to a large non-proletarian ‘middle class’ has resolved itself into the creation of a large proletariat in a new form.

This is a book in which the problems of the so-called middle class, ‘‘increased misery", polarisation, automation, are dealt with on strictly Marxian lines . It has the further merit of being written in clear, limpid style of easy flowing English.

Horatio

The Passing Show: Details (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Details

The system which exists today in Russia is clearly capitalism. All the classic features of capitalism are there — commodity production, wage-labour, employment (which couldn't exist without employers and employed), currency, the coercive forces of the state, and so on. Naturally, the historical background of the development of capitalism in Russia, and the immediate circumstances in which capitalism came into being there, meant that some minor details of capitalism in Russia differ from details in those countries where capitalism had a longer and slower development. In particular, the very speed with which the old system collapsed, and the new one was introduced, demanded that the state itself, the central committee of the capitalist class, should play a much larger part in the establishment of the new order than it had done in western Europe and North America. Of course, since that time state capitalism has been more and more introduced into the older-established capitalist states; but it has not yet, and one does not know if it ever will, come to play such a part in Western capitalism as it does in the capitalist systems established in Russia, China, India, the African states, and so on.

Proposals

However, even in these comparatively minor details, there is coming to be less and less difference between Russian and Western capitalism. Not only are state planning and control playing a larger part in western capitalism; other changes are being mooted in Russia itself. As The Times said on October 3rd, “Proposals are at present under discussion in Russia to link the remuneration of workers to the profits made by their enterprises in relation to the investments made in them.” Since these and other proposals have aroused controversy, Pravda has recently printed what it calls "a previously unpublished version of a document dictated by Lenin in 1918.”

Raising labour productivity

“Lenin argued that political victory over the capitalists had been won and the struggle was passing to the economic sphere. Those who had formerly sought to sabotage the Bolshevik cause were now (in 1918) offering their services to the new state. It was of the utmost importance to take advantage of these offers and harness to the communist cause the best methods and systems of capitalism. “He proposed that highly paid experts be hired from the United States and elsewhere as consultants and managers. Bourgeois staff and also their methods of labour organization could be used if they helped to raise production. The old world had created systems of labour organization which were diabolical methods for exploiting the worker. At the same time these systems are ‘the last word in the scientific organization of production' and should be copied in the Soviet Union where they would lose their noxious character.

“An example was the system of Mr. Mr. F. W. Taylor, the American engineer who perfected “scientific management”—on which present day time-and-motion studies and “work study” are to a large extent based. “We must apply Taylor’s system and American scientific methods of raising labour productivity throughout Russia,” Lenin wrote, for under Soviet conditions it would lead to a shortening of working hours and an improvement in conditions of work.” The Times 3/10/62

Latest methods

All Lenin was calling for was what could have been expected from any leader of a new capitalist revolution: the application of the latest and best methods (best, that is, from the capitalists’ point of view) which had been evolved in the older capitalist states. As might have been foreseen, when Lenin attempted to square all this with his own statements that the Bolsheviks were really introducing Socialism in Russia, common sense was thrown overboard. Pravda even quotes him as saying that “Socialism has to be learnt to a great extent from the leaders of the trusts, Socialism has to be learnt from the major organizers of capitalism.”

As to that, one can only say that all you can learn from the major organizers of capitalism is how to organize capitalism; and all you can learn from the leaders of trusts is how to lead trusts.

These statements, quoted by Pravda from the greatest figure of the Russian revolution, must surely go far to convince anyone who is still open to reason that Russia is capitalist.

Contrast

On the back of The Times recently there were some photographs of scenes in Peru, and the text beside them read “Peru is a land of contrast and anomaly. It is a rich country where there are also austerity and poverty.”

No wonder there is a saying that the onlooker sees most of the game. The writer of the text saw clearly the social position in Peru. Perhaps if he lived in Peru, he would see just as clearly the “contrast and anomaly,” the riches and poverty side by side, which exist in Britain.

Hard work

Not long ago there was an advert in the daily press from a man who claimed he had amassed £300,000 “through hard work.” As it stands, no one could take exception to the statement. It would be impossible for anyone to amass three hundred thousand pounds without a great deal of hard work.

In fact, only one question remains unanswered.

Whose hard work was it?

Alwyn Edgar

Television work and play (1980)

From the February 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

A quite remarkable letter from a viewer was published in the Radio Times recently. A Mr. Howell wrote a crushing exposure of a series of three BBC television programmes on “The Right to Work”:

   The first programme gave a glossy ‘To-morrow’s World’ treatment to the potential of the micro processors, with interviewers and presenters blissfully unaware of the contradictions. We heard how service industries would expand, and then saw computers taking the place of room service . . . We heard how leisure would become a big money- spinner, and next day found that those who have the leisure will be on the dole-or social security.
  Let us turn from the fact that the planners of those programmes did not know any answers to the questions of the effects of the introduction of the new technology: and look at the final programme which showed that they did not even know the questions to be asked.

Radio Times, 29.9.79.

And what was the response of the BBC Horizon programme producer, Michael Blakstad, and editor of the “Right to Work” programme? A pathetic confession that they understand nothing about it:

I cannot but agree that we need to re-examine the real meaning of “work”. We took an enormous subject and we drew no conclusions.

ibid.

In other words, Mr. Howell was right and they admit they don’t know what they are talking about. Perhaps the Socialist Standard can help.

Obviously the first job is to define “work”. What is here in question is not work as understood in physics, which is a straight, simple mathematical relation. “Work” in sociology is rather more complex. Here we are dealing not with inanimate objects but the effort of human beings. This is our first fundamental distinction, for it is obvious that many animals work and as Fourier, the French Utopian, pointed out, obviously derive the greatest happiness and joy in doing so. Bees, ants, spiders and birds build hives, nests and webs, while beavers build dams and termites actually raise reinforced structures.

Here we are indebted, once again, to Karl Marx for pointing out the basic difference between the work of chimpanzees who have been induced to join sticks or build ladders to reach food, or rats to push coloured buttons, or even angle worms to thread a maze, and that of human beings. Harry Braverman, the American author, quotes from Marx (the very first page of Capital, volume I) in Labour and Monopoly Capital:

We pre-suppose Labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of the bees is this: that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour process we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at the commencement . . . he realises a purpose of his own . . .  to which he subordinates his will.

This above all, is the distinguishing feature of human work; the result of conceptual thought, and a pronounced enlargement of that part of the brain (the parietal) possessed by no other animal, making humans independent of the animal’s captor—Instinct. It produces articulate speech which can communicate and transmit knowledge, making a general social culture inevitable. It is this ability to imagine—to create the subjective image—which characterises the greatest scientists and artists.

“In recent times” writes Braverman, “the artistic mind has often grasped this special feature of human activity, better than the technical mind.” Quoting Paul Valery:

  Man does not merge into the materials of his undertaking, but proceeds from the material to his mental picture, from his mind to his model.
  Art, indeed, consists in the conception of the result to be produced, before its realisation in the material writes Aristotle.
  Men, who made tools of a standard type, must have formed in their minds images of the ends to which they laboured. Human culture is the outcome of this capacity for human thought Professor Oakley, Skill As a Human Possession.

This gives us the key to the understanding of the basis of the organisation of the capitalist production system; the division of labour or the breaking down of a process into its simplest possible parts, thus depriving the work of its natural essence-its imagination, its creativity.

Thus John Ruskin wrote:

We have much studied, and perfected, of late, the great civilised invention of the division of labour, only we give it a false name. It is not the labour that is divided, but MEN, divided into mere segments, broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little intelligence that is left of a man is not enough to make a pin, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin. The Stones of Venice.

The division of labour has always existed (for instance, in child-bearing) but its application to the capitalist system

is the breakdown of the processes involved in the making of the product into manifold operations performed by different workers.

Braverman, p. 73.

Labour power has become a commodity. Its uses are no longer according to the needs of that who sells it—but of employers seeking to expand their capital. The most common mode of cheapening labour-power . . .  is to break it up into its simplest elements.

ibid.

This explains the technology of capitalist society. In the words of Frederick Taylor the inventor of American “Scientific Management”

All possible brainwork should be removed from the shop and centred in the planning—or lay-out department.

Scientific Management.

Now we are on the track of the explanation of the system at the Lordstown plant of General Motors in Ohio, USA ‘the most advanced in the world’, where each worker on the assembly line gets 36 seconds “to complete work on one car and get ready for the next”. See this, from the Guide to Office Clerical Standards of the Systems Association of America:

                                               

                                                      Minutes

Open file drawer                             .04

Folder: open/dose flaps                   .04

Open center drawer                         .026

Close side                                        .015

Work “as an activity that alters natural materials to improve their usefulness” is transformed by capitalism into hated toil, converting the toilers into robot automatons repeating the simplest mechanical operations thousands of times. It is this which has induced some writers to predict a future where 15 per cent will be the all-powerful technicians with the ‘know-how’, 15 per cent managers who understand the general process, and 35 per cent general unskilled labourers, button-pushers and key-punchers, leaving 35 per cent of the workforce permanently unemployed, because redundant.

Each form of society produces the technology it requires. In capitalist society every machine, each process, which reduces the necessity for initiative or creativity, is welcomed, every elimination of personality introduced. The reason that the “experts” invited by the BBC proved utterly incapable of defining the nature of the problem is because they do not understand capitalism.

There is no solution but the abolition of capitalist technology itself. Knowing the main incentive for the fragmentation of the labour process under capitalism, enables us to extrapolate the nature of work in socialist society. The general guiding principles will obviously be the integration and synthesis of the mental (imaginative or planning) side with the actual operation, by the same people. Once again we turn to the creative artist for a description of labour in a socialist society:

In Socialist society all unintellectual labour, all monotonous dull labour, all labour that deals with unpleasant things and involves dreadful conditions will be done by machinery; and just as trees grow while the countryman is asleep, so while humanity is enjoying itself in cultured leisure, machinery will be doing the necessary and unpleasant work.

again

Every man must be free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion must be exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others; and by work I simply mean activity of any kind.

The Soul of Man under Socialism, Oscar Wilde.

In socialism work will become the ultimate form of art.

Art, Labour and Socialism, William Morris.

For the worker, the craft satisfaction that arises from conscious and purposeful mastery of the labour process, will be combined with the marvels of science and the ingenuity of engineering. An age in which every one will be able to benefit from this combination.”

H. Braverman, ibid.

The forecasts of some fanciful writers that in Socialist society everybody will be a lotus-eating sybarite, cossetted by robots, have minimal validity. In the words of Marx, work will be “darned serious” in Socialist society.

   The exchange of living labour for objectivised labour is the ultimate development of the value relation and of production resting on Value. But to the degree that large industry develops; the creation of the real wealth comes to depend less on labour-time—whose effectiveness is out of all proportion to the direct labour-time spent in their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and the progress of technology . . .  Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process, rather the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself.
   No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing as middle link between the object and himself . . .  he steps to the side of the productive process, instead of being its chief actor.
   In this transformation it is the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation stone of production and of wealth.
   As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour-time ceases to be its measure, and exchange-value ceases to be the measure of use- value.
    Production based on exchange value breaks down. The free development of individualities, not the reduction of necessary labour time to create surplus labour, but the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic scientific development of individuals in the time set free.
    The measure of wealth is then NOT labour time, but disposable time.

Die Grundrisse, Karl Marx, p. 709.

Divison of labour under capitalism will be transformed into multiplication (repeated additions) in socialism. Humans will become scientific, technical creative artists of production and will make their historic leap “from Necessity into Freedom”.

Horatio

The new technology (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1968 the bread and butter version of tire ICL 1901 series central processor, with a 32K core store and peripherals consisting of a teletype, line printer and paper tape reader/punch, occupied the volume of three large wardrobes. It cost about £200,000. The current PET personal microprocessor, with a similar store, calculating facility and input/ output rates, occupies the volume of a small suitcase. It costs £700.

This reduction in the size of computer hardware has been achieved by the use of solid state and silicone chip components for the manufacture of microprocessors. The size reduction over eleven years has been 300 times, while the price reduction has been 285 times. Were the rate of development to remain the same for the next eleven years, the equivalent microprocessor would not be risible to the naked eye and there would not exist a currency unit small enough to enable you to buy one.

Semiconductor crystals

How is it done? A silicon chip bears comparison with a mainframe computer, in which rows of shelves are slotted to take a set of circuit boards with their snap-in connections. Similar microcircuitry allows many miniature boards to be stacked together like tiny playing cards and the whole to be bonded onto a connecting chassis which looks like a centipede.

The raw material for these tiny boards is the abundantly available raw silica, which is ground up and from which pure silica crystals are grown in conditions of controlled temperature and humidity. From these blocks of crystal the chip bases are sawn off about 10,000ths of an inch thick, lapped, polished and passed through a diffusion oven which dopes them with gaseous impurities, raising them from conductors to semiconductors of electricity. These bases are then chemically sensitised to light, the microphotographically reduced circuits are exposed upon them and a chemical bath then develops those circuits and simulated components in them. Many are stacked together, sealed onto a connecting chassis with ceramic or plastic and are ready for dropping into standard holes in processors, pocket calculators or TV ball games. The whole of this process is one continuous flow automatic system, with computer control of chip specification by programmed variation. It is very big business indeed.

Profit power

What effects might these microprocessors have on capitalist society? Well, the RAIR black box is the size of a trunk, has double the capacity of the ICL 1901. a 64K memory facility and 2 million word diskette storage. It can handle 3 programming languages and costs £2,300. So for less than the price of a car a medium sized capitalist can make his wages department redundant. Or, with the PET personal computer above a small capitalist, with a payroll package at a total of £800, can dispense with one clerk and employ a programmer/operator for half a day a week or do it himself.

The likely results of all this are an increase of profits in the small non-computer production industries, the encouraging of mergers between firms engaged in microprocessor production from chips bought in, and a concentration of capital in the chip production combines.

Silicon Euphoria

But beware of the many half-baked descriptions of predicted futures which are appearing in popular science journals and books; where workers’ homes are to have everything from vacuum cleaners and cookers to washing machines, controlled and executed by chip-based technology. Capitalism always sells its new technology this way. In the aftermath of the atom bomb strike on Japan blathering pundits assured everyone that in the nuclear age which had just dawned, electricity would be free for all and abundant leisure time our natural heritage. The North Sea gas strikes of the early sixties were thought by some to have begun an age of free energy, as the cost of the raw gas would fall below that which made it economic to meter. As an antidote to all this the director of one of the firms which covers the microprocessor domestic market pointed out recently that that market has levelled off at around 2 per cent of the total. This might well be its final position.

The rest of the microprocessor market is split up into educational hardware, in the form of teaching aids, videos and so on. This is likely to remain a cautious market as a result of the cuts in government spending. A peculiar group of users are those in large companies who cannot get time on the mainframe computer at their head office and so are having microprocessors installed on their desks. But the largest part of the market is made up of the small or medium sized business concern —anything from small factories and larger shops to freelance accountants and lawyers.

Silicon hysteria

Beware also of half-baked predicted futures which have the whole of capitalist production under automated microprocessor control. Interestingly, the current sale of chip-based equipment in the USA has a theoretical capacity to displace 40,000 workers a month—equivalent to half a million new unemployed each year. Twenty years ago, when the introduction of mechanical and hydraulic transfer automation was at its height, the potential displacement of workers in the engineering industry was also put at 40,000 a month. Experts theorised before a Congressional committee that capitalism would develop a 4-tier workforce focussed around the automation process:

• 10 per cent would be performing menial tasks which it was uneconomic to mechanise;
• 10 per cent would be technicians or mechanics servicing the auto equipment;
• 15 per cent would be highly trained personnel occupied with the design and policy formation for the automatic processes;
• 65 per cent would be unable to assimilate training or find menial jobs and would be unemployed permanently. (This last includes 7 per cent who are the capitalist class). The target date for the achievement of this stable mechanised state was 1975.

Technological fatalism

What are we to make of all this? The lock-out at The Times printing works has been about staffing, changed working conditions and subsequent redundancies following the introduction of chip-based processor controlled typesetting and correcting equipment. Historically we might welcome the new technology as another example of capitalism’s abundant productive potential. which could be used to make free access easier in a socialist world, while attributing to capitalism the social conflicts arising.

Extending a remark of Marx, we may say that the hand mill and hoe give you slavery: the water wheel and mill give you feudalism: the steam engine gives you capitalism: and the computer gives you socialism. But beware of technological determinism; the last phrase means that computers establish the abundant information potential of capitalism's technology, making free access more feasible. Neither computers nor automation determine the direction which capitalism must take; only profitability does that and technological complexity can act to reduce profitability. But microprocessors may make more workers want to realise the potential through a political solution.

Technological freedom

This attitude has come under a lot of fire of recent years. David Dickson’s book Alternative Technology (Fontana 1976) is one long argument against the technicists who see social developments arising spontaneously out of technical change. In opposition to this Dickson argues that technology is not neutral and will not carry over from one society to another.

To take an example: at the beginning of this century the design and dimensions of the capstan lathe were various. When the followers of F. W. Taylor — of scientific management fame—came to extend his work to the more complex engineering tasks, they still favoured the short, heavily built and docile workers who had been most ready in the past to obey detailed instructions without question. The application of the principles of time and motion study, with detailed breaking down of jobs into operations, brought increased output to capstan work. Yet further productive increases came when new capstans were designed with an eye to such studies. The turret spokes were extended to fall to the grasp of the ideal worker; the handwheels were clustered around his left grasp, with the resistance favourable for speedy setting. Likewise with the speed and gear levers. Such has remained the design of the capstan today. The result is that if you are tall, have sensitive hands and are not strong, the capstan is a trial to operate; to retain mastery of the wheels and levers you have to stand back from the machine, putting the workface and the tool just beyond observation. So you have to lean forward all of the time.

The general point aimed at by Dickson is that machines are progressively refined for the purpose of producing commodities and the generation of surplus value. This suggests that a total redesigning of the machinery of production, greater in its scope than the complete metrication of all dimensions, would be necessary before these machines could produce only use values. Especially is this so if the population in a socialist society must be happy in its work. Dickson, like any other leftie, wants to see this “socialisation" of the means of production before socialism—hence his call for alternative technologies now.

Technical squints

How do we relate this material to the new technology? Continuous through-flow production of chips in Taiwan requires that the dies which preform the dual in-line packages are periodically inspected. As there are thousands of these and they are used thousands of times a day, lines of girls using microscopes form the inspection department. The throughput of dies is nicely adjusted to the point where the average girl suffers from myopia after 3 years, which is the average working life of a Taiwan girl between school and marriage. The argument now goes that mixed up with the production and use of silicon chips are numerous such examples, all equally destructive of human ability.

These human abuses accrue to technical innovations because they serve the purpose of maximising surplus value. Without the capitalist system there would be no such driving necessity—something which may be illustrated by examples which are obviously candidates for the administration technology of a socialist society.

There is a hand-held computer terminal on the market which is the size of a pocket calculator and can be used for recording stock levels and inputting new orders. The data is collected when each terminal is plugged into the central processor. Variations upon this system are the use of light pens in the reading of bar codes printed on stock, with automatic reordering according to preprogrammed instructions. Both systems may soon be available with on-line radio transmission of data, from terminal to processor, by means of a set the size of a handbag. This would give a socialist world the facility of instant knowledge of the world stock of any item. However. as Dickson and his like would point out, this would involve many people in walking past rows of shelves making what were to them meaningless movements with light pens, and the programming requirements would force millions to learn Boolean algebra, symbolic logic and the programming languages, poring for days over elaborate print-out material de-bugging the new programmes. Much of this would be tedious work at best.

Academic nostrums

For Dickson and his kind the function of high technology is to promote the interest of the capitalist class. In more high-flown terminology — technology acts to support and propagate the legitimating ideology of capitalism. Or simply — technology and social relations reinforce each other. The ways and means are legion and this links up with another academic debate, that over the establishment of factory discipline during the industrial revolution. Marx observed that it is pointless to introduce labour-saving machinery unless the workforce can be controlled in a way which ensures that they will operate it at maximum efficiency. Such technical arrangements as bring this about will reflect the hierarchical organisation and control of capitalist society. The charge of Dickson now becomes that those who welcome the new technology are just reflecting the ideology of capitalism for which bigger, more and most are desirable irrespective of who controls the production flow.

Conflict into harmony

The answer of the socialist is still the only one. For no amount of soft technology would make the nuclear rockets less explosive. Nor could state and charity subsidised cottage industries for the unemployed be a substitute for those who will grapple for a solution to the social problems of the world. Such technological conflicts as there will be in a socialist world will serve to ensure that social policies are kept under constant review. For only in a total democracy, run by socialists whose successful attempt to change the world had established the social interest as the ruling idea of the time, could effect be given to the constant review of policies.

When the effects of capitalist designed technology seemed too brutalising as with the capstan; or when production seemed too much regulated by microprocessors and beyond the understanding of all, then would be the time to scrap the technology—old or new. How much of such brutalising work or bewilderment the population will tolerate before retooling is not a question which can be decided theoretically; it must await a trial. For that socialist society must be established.

B.K. McNeeney