{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","uuid":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","normalized_title":"laborandmonopolycapitalthedegradationofworkinthetwentiethcentury","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","isbns":["0853459401"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Labor%20and%20Monopoly%20Capital%20The%20Degradation%20of%20Work%20in%20the%20Twentieth%20Century","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/search"},"page":{"printed_page":141,"pdf_page":83,"physical_index":83,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"c872ea60e60fd29d2c70238f19b358befa59393d2dc8211240319dd21abb7486"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"140 Labor and Monopoly Capital\n\nControl in this form, and in other forms that are developing out of it, is by no means limited to metal-cutting machinery; the principle has general applicability in many crafts. In this connection, the evolution of boiler shop and other heavy plate construction work is of interest. In these trades the best-paid craft has long been that of layout. The layout man takes off the blueprint the specifications of each part and inscribes them on the plate stock, along with directions for flame-cutting or shearing, punching or drilling, bending or rolling, etc. It was at one point noted that the layout man spent a certain amount of his time simply marking his layout with close-spaced center-punched marks. In those shops that had enough work to warrant a subdivision of tasks in the layout department, this task was taken from the layout mechanic and vested in “markers,\" at a far lower pay rate. Then, in the 1950s, a method was devised for drawing each piece, in the drafting room, to accurate scale on a transparency which could be projected on the steel from a slide projector mounted high above the layout trestles. Now the layout man became nothing more than a marker himself; after he had adjusted the focus so that a single dimension was correct, he had no more to do than mark. But with numerical control, the steel can go straight to the flame-cutting tables, where the cutting torch is guided by the control tape, so that not only is the work of layout eliminated—or rather transferred to the office—but so is the so-called semi-skill of the flame cutter.\n\nIn the same way, in sheetmetal shops numerically controllea macmues are now used for cutting required shapes (with “nibbling\" tools, multiple-tool turrets, etc.) without the necessity of shop layout or skilled sheetmetal workers. One furniture manufacturer makes kitchen cabinets and bedroom furniture out of vinyl-clad particle board by numerical control, using a so-called mitre-fold process. The boards are cut in such a way that they fold to make complete units and are held together by the “wood-grained vinyl covering\"; folded and glued, each “unit\" is complete. It takes just one hour of labor to assemble each piece of this furniture, one-third the time taken by woodworkers (our source leaves to the imagination of the reader the quality and appearance of these surpassingly modern products).21 And it remains only to be noted that the process of making an engineering drawing has itself been found to be readily susceptible to the same attack, so that there now exist drafting machines which draw plans from tape under numerical control. In each of these cases, the public unveiling of the new devices is accompanied by much self-congratulation and by philanthropic phrases about the lightening of the toil of the worker, the ease with which laborious tasks are accomplished, and so forth. Few write so plainly about the way in which functions are distributed, and the effect this is having upon the world of work, as did Thilliez, the engineer who introduced numerical control into the Renault plants, in his 1967 technical book, La Commande numérique des machines:\n\nBut in addition the technique of numerical control implies an effect which might be called extraordinary, on the level of the philosophy of the organization of the enterprise. It separates the intellectual work from the work of execution, just as has for a long time been the case with the fabrication of long runs on special purpose machines, and this separation allows the execution of both functions under the technical conditions best adapted to a superior organization, thus in the final accounting most profitable.22\n\nSuch a separation of “intellectual work from the work of execution\" is indeed a “technical condition\" best adapted to a hierarchical organization, best adapted to control of both the hand and the brain worker, best adapted to profitability, best adapted to everything but the needs of the people. These needs, however, are, in the word of the economists, “externalities,\" a notion that is absolutely incomprehensible from the human point of view, but from the capitalist point of view is perfectly clear and precise, since it simply means external to the balance sheet.\n\nWhile the forms of utilization of machinery—the manner in which labor is organized and deployed around itare dictated by the tendencies of the capitalist mode of production, the drive to mechanize is itself dictated by the effort to increase the productivity of labor. But the increasing productivity of labor is neither sought nor utilized by capitalism from the point of view of the satisfaction of human needs. Rather, powered by the needs of the capital accumulation process, it becomes a frenzied drive which approaches the level of a generalized social insanity. Never is any level of productivity regarded as sufficient. In the automobile industry, a constantly diminishing number of workers produces, decade by decade, a growing number of increasingly degraded products which, as they are placed upon the streets and highways, poison and disrupt the entire social atmosphere—while at the same time the cities where motor vehicles are produced become centers of degraded labor on the one hand and permanent unemployment on the other. It is a measure of the manner in which capitalist standards have diverged from human standards that this situation is seen as representing a high degree of “economic efficiency.\"\n\nMachinery\n\n141\n\nbeen brought into a shop, the union has been able successfully to insist that the entire job, including programming and coding, be handled by the machinist. In many other cases, the pay scale of the machinist has been maintained or even increased by the union after the introduction of nurerical control, even though he has become no more than an operator. But such pay maintenance is bound to have a temporary character, and is really an agreement, whether formal or not, to “red circle\" these jobs, as this is known in negotiating language; that is, to safeguard the pay of the incumbents. Management is thus sometimes forced to be content to wait until the historical process of devaluation of the worker's skill takes effect over the long run, and the relative pay scale falls to its expected level, since the only alternative to such patience is, in many cases, a bitter battle with the union.","previous_page":null,"next_page":null}