{"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":"xvii","pdf_page":7,"physical_index":7,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"cdf4ebb2fb1b1a49dac7c5b3fde4b7f07443a7ad8ffd07173382154d919faecc"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"Ure identified the same overall tendency toward diminishing skill requirements for the great bulk of workers in his Philosophy of Manufactures (1835). Ure explained that “the division, or rather adaptation of labour to the different talents of men, is little thought of in factory employment\": with the introduction of machinery, processes formerly conducted by “the cunning workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds\" are placed under the “charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating, that a child may superintend it.\" The whole tendency of manufacturing industry, according to Ure, was, if not “to supersede human labour altogether,\" at least “to diminish its cost, by substituting the industry of women and children for that of men; or that of ordinary labourers, for trained artisans. ,>19\n\nThese criticisms of the Smithian theory of the division of labor by the early proponents of capitalist management were subsequently incorporated by Marx into his critique of capitalist political economy, in which he argued that the key to understanding the development of the detailed division of labor under capitalism was to be found not in Smith's learning by doing, demanding ever greater technical specialization as a means of enhancing the skill levels of workers, but in the opposite principle enunciated by Babbage and Ure in the early nineteenth century: reducing labor costs through the systematic degradation of human labor.20 “Babbage's principle,\" Braverman wrote, \"eventually becomes the underlying force governing all forms of work in capitalist society, no matter in what setting or at what hierarchical level.\"1\n\nWhile these tendencies of the capitalist division of labor were already evident in the nineteenth century, it was not until the maturation of monopoly capitalism in the twentieth century that they came to be applied systematically. The development of the division of labor, as Adam Smith observed, was dependent on the extent of the market and the scale of production. Its full development was therefore impracticable for the small family firm that still predominated in the nineteenth century. With the rise of the giant corporation in the late nineteenth century, however, all of this changed. It is in this context that one has to understand the rise to prominence of Frederick Winslow Taylor and scientific management, or Taylorism, in the early twentieth century.\n\nTaylorism was summarized by Braverman in the form of three distinct principles: “dissociation of the labor process from the skills of the workers, “separation of conception from execution,\" and “use of this monopoly over knowledge to control each step ofthe labor process and its mode of execution.\" Although Taylor claimed wage increases were integral to his system, so too were reduced employers’ labor costs, to be accomplished by eliminating jobs and saving labor time. “Taylor,\" Braverman wrote, “understood the Babbage principle better than anyone of his time, and it was always uppermost in his calculations. . . . In his early book, Shop Management, he said frankly that the full possibilities’ of his system ‘will not have been realized until almost all of the machines in the shop are run by men who are of smaller calibre and attainments, and who are therefore cheaper than those required under the old system.' 22 In the end, thus, the Babbage principle and Taylor's scientific management led to the same result. Taylor's distinctive contribution was to articulate a full-scale managerial imperative for increased job control, to be implemented primarily through deskilling. Hence, within Taylorism, Braverman maintained, \"lies a theory which is nothing less than the explicit verbalization of the capitalist mode of production.\"23\n\nThe essential elements of the capitalist division of labor, Marx and Braverman each insisted, could be analyzed prior to the consideration of machinery. Taylor likewise abstracted from machinery in his analysis of scientific management. Once labor has been simplified, the substitution of machines for labor becomes increasingly possible. Moreover, in carrying out such substitutions, management is at least as interested in the capacity of certain types of machinery to centralize their control over the labor process as it is in the productivity of labor. The particular production technology introduced into the work process under capitalism is therefore designed to maximize managerial control. Capitalism is characterized by “the incessant drive to enlarge and perfect machinery on the one hand, and to diminish the worker on the other.\"24\n\nThere was, however, nothing inevitable about such a process, according to Braverman. The development of modern technology itself often reunified processes that had previously been divided by the division of labor, completely undermining Adam Smith's original justification for the detailed division of labor, and generating the possibility of creating a more rewarding work environment for socialized labor. Ironically, the best illustration of this was to be found in the further evolution of the very pin manufacturing process that Smith had originally discussed. Pins, as Braverman pointed out, were no longer produced by workers divided into discrete tasks. Rather,\n\nThe entire process is re-unified in a single machine which transforms great coils of wire into millions of pins each day already papered and ready for sale Now go back and read Adam Smith's arguments for the division of labor, arguments having to do with the dexterity gained in the constant application to one operation of a hand process over and over again and so on. You will notice that this modern technology has made a complete hash of these arguments. Not one remains with any force today. The re-unified process in which the execution of all the steps is built into the working mechanism of a single machine would seem now to render it suitable for a collective of associated producers, none of whom need spend all of their lives at any single function and all of whom can participate in the engineering, design, improvement, repair and operation of these ever more productive machines. Such a system would entail no loss of production, and it would represent the re-unification of the craft in 25 a body of workers far superior to the old craftsworkers.\n\nxvi Labor and Monopoly Capital\n\nNew Introduction\n\nxvii","previous_page":6,"next_page":8}