{"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":"210 / 211","pdf_page":118,"physical_index":118,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4a187d7d90f40a25c4a16b1f27be981a78c63371b1bcf93606c82a9228d80bd0"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"Nor is this all. Since corporations must exhibit financial statements to the outside world for the purpose of raising capital, and since various other needs for such public disclosure exist—such as bank credit, settlement of accounts with outside parties as required under contracts with them, etc.—still another means of establishing the truth of records is provided. This is the independent audit by an accounting firm which makes it a \"profession\" to investigate records either when called upon or on a continuing basis, and to “certify\" their results. The dishonesty presumed of all corporations is offset by the special function of such auditors, who are supposed to make a profession of honesty, although this is not usually the case either. At any rate, this brings into existence still another set of records and another species of duplicatory clerical work. And to this may be added much of the work of government regulatory and tax offices which deal with the same material from still other standpoints.\n\nThus the value-form of commodities separates itself out from the physical form as a vast paper empire which under capitalism becomes as real as the physical world, and which swallows ever increasing amounts of labor. This is the world in which value is kept track of, and in which surplus value is transferred, struggled over, and allocated. A society which is based upon the value-form surrenders more and more ofits working population to the complex ramifications of the claims to ownership of value. Although there is no way of calculating it or testing the proposition, it is likely that the greatest part of the rapid increase of clerical labor is due to this; certainly there is no doubt that the demands of marketing, together with the demands of value accounting, consume the bulk of clerical time.\n\nWith the rapid growth of offices in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the change of office work from something merely incidental to management into a labor process in its own right, the need to systematize and control it began to be felt. When this work was carried on in offices which contained only a few desks separated by a railing from the proprietor, it was, in effect, self-supervising, and required only the usual prudent safeguards against embezzlement, etc. In industrial enterprises, clerical expenses were small and incidental to production expenses. In commercial and financial offices, these expenses were also small and incidental before the era of mass merchandising, “consumer\" banking, and group insurance. None of these enterprises could yet feel that its success was significantly dependent upon the efficiency of the clerical labor process.\n\nAs this situation changed, the intimate associations, the atmosphere of mutual obligation, and the degree of loyalty which characterized the small office became transformed from a prime desideratum into a positive liability, and management began to cut those ties and substitute the impersonal discipline of a so-called modern organization. To be sure, in doing so it was careful throughout this transitional period to retain as long as it could the feelings of obligation and loyalty it had traditionally fostered; but its own special commitments to its office staff were severed, one by one, as the office grew. The characteristic feature of this era was the ending of the reign of the bookkeeper and the rise of the office manager as the prime functionary and representative of higher management. Office managership, a product of the monopoly period of capitalism, developed as a specialized branch of management, with its own schools, professional associations, textbooks and manuals, periodicals, standards, and methods.\n\nIn the context of the times in which it took place, this naturally meant the application of scientific management methods to the office. By the first decades ofthe present century, the effort was well under way. In 1917, a volume entitled Scientific Office Management, and subtitled A report on the results of applications of the Taylor System of Scientific Management to offices, supplemented with a discussion of how to obtain the most important of these results, was published in New York, Chicago, and London. Its author, William Henry Leffingwell, had begun to use the Taylor system ten years earlier, and had accumulated considerable experience in offices like those of the Curtis Publishing Company. The following year Lee Galloway, for many years professor at New York University, published his standard work, Office Management: Its Principles and Practice. In these volumes, among others, the program of office management is clearly set forth: the purpose of the office is control over the enterprise, and the purpose of office management is control over the office. Thus Galloway:\n\nThe larger . . . business offices grow, the more difficult and important become the problems of management. Orders must be given to employees by the managers, and reports of work performed must be recorded. Inspectors, superintendents, foremen, senior clerks, and office managers increase in numbertheir function being to keep the employees and machines working harmoniously. At first one of these supervisors can give instructions verbally and keep the details in his memory, but as the subdivisions of work increase the necessity grows for continual communication between the various ranks of authority. Letters and memos, production orders and work tickets, speaking tubes and telautographs, cost statistics and controlling accounts, time clocks and messenger boys, multiply to keep pace with the growing complexity of 13 business and to save the time of executives and workmen alike.\n\n210\n\nLabor and Monopoly Capital\n\nClerical Workers\n\n211","previous_page":117,"next_page":119}