{"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":"94 / 95","pdf_page":60,"physical_index":60,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"691cbfdd4a8d907a60ec10b3493dac6aa850dd4e206a3abf60072e2b35d3f419"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"The destruction of craftsmanship during the period of the rise of scientific management did not go unnoticed by workers. Indeed, as a rule workers are far more conscious of such a loss while it is being effected than after it has taken place and the new conditions of production have become generalized. Taylorism raised a storm of opposition among the trade unions during the early part of this century; what is most noteworthy about this early opposition is that it was concentrated not upon the trappings of the Taylor system, such as the stopwatch and motion study, but upon its essential effort to strip the workers of craft knowledge and autonomous control and confront them with a fully thought-out labor process in which they function as cogs and levers. In an editorial which appeared in the International Molders Journal, we read:\n\nThe one great asset of the wage worker has been his craftsmanship. We think of craftsmanship ordinarily as the ability to manipulate skillfully the tools and materials of a craft or trade. But true craftsmanship is much more than this. The really essential element in it is not manual skill and dexterity but something stored up in the mind of the worker. This something is partly the intimate knowledge of the character and uses of the tools, materials and processes of the craft which tradition and experience have given the worker. But beyond this and above this, it is the knowledge which enables him to understand and overcome the constantly arising difficulties that grow out of variations not only in the tools and materials, but in the conditions under which the work must be done.\n\nThe editorial goes on to point to the separation of “craft knowledge” from “craft skill\" in “an ever-widening area and with an ever-increasing acceleration,\" and describes as the most dangerous form of this separation\n\nthe gathering up of all this scattered craft knowledge, systematizing it and concentrating it in the hands of the employer and then doling it out again only in the form of minute instructions, giving to each worker only the knowledge needed for the performance of a particular relatively minute task. This process, it is evident, separates skill and knowledge even in their narrow relationship. When it is completed, the worker is no longer a craftsman in any sense, but is an animated tool of the management. 20\n\nA half-century of commentary on scientific management has not succeeded in producing a better formulation of the matter.\\*\n\nNotes\n\n94\n\nLabor and Monopoly Capital\n\nEffects of Scientific Management\n\n95\n\n\\* In this connection, see also Friedmann's Industrial Society, where he summarizes \"the first reactions of workers\" to Taylorism in the United States, England, Germany, and France.21","previous_page":59,"next_page":61}