Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century

The second precondition is considerably more difficult to satisfy. It may be described simply by saying that while social conditions have been changing rapidly over the past half century, and the working class along with them, the class struggle has been in a state of relative quiescence in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan—the countries of developed capitalism for which the analysis must be made. We are therefore lacking in concrete experience, for the most part, of the sort which will indicate the forms and laws of struggle which will predominate in the new social conditions which characterize the epoch of monopoly capitalalthough we do have some interesting indications from the sixties, of which the French events of 1968 are perhaps the most suggestive. Those who have been wrestling with this problem since the thirties best realize how, in the absence of further concrete experience, discussion tends to degenerate into cliche, apologia, and the repetition of old formulas, and how difficult it has become to say anything new or fresh about it.

It seems to me that a fruitful discussion of the working class as a class conscious of and struggling in behalf of its own interests will begin to revive as two conditions begin to be satisfied: first, as a clear picture of the class in its present conditions of existence is formed by patient and realistic investigation; and second, as experience begins to accumulate of the sort which will teach us to better understand the state of mind and modes of struggle of this class.

I would like to make one further comment, having to do with my own attitude on this subject, since there seem to be some questions as well as some misconceptions on this score. Some readers have concluded, chiefly on the evidence of my description of a process of “degradation oflabor,"that I myself am “pessimistic" about the future of working-class consciousness. But if readers will take the trouble to compare, they will find that the wording which I have used to describe the effects of the capitalist mode of production on the physical, moral, and mental constitution of the working population differs from Marx's only in being milder. A new study by Steven Marcus of Engels's classic first work, which in many ways set the tone for Marx, notes that "The descriptive or characterizing term used with the greatest frequency throughout The Condition of the Working Class consists of variations of the word demoralize'—demoralized, demoralizing, demoralization and so on."\*

But neither Marx nor Engels considered themselves “"pessimists" on that account; on the contrary, they found in this unremitting assault of capital upon the humanity of labor the precondition for revolt.

This therefore I regard as a specious clue to my own state of mind; there is, moreover, no need for mind reading, since I have a clear conviction and no hesitancy in stating it. I have every confidence in the revolutionary potential of the working classes of the so-called developed capitalist countries. Capitalism will not, over the long run, leave any choice to these classes, but will force upon them the fulfillment of the task which they alone can perform. This presupposes an enormous intensification of the pressures which have only just begun to bear upon the working class, but I think there is no question that it will happen. I have long tended to agree with those who think it will still be a long time in coming. But time is a social and historical concept, not a purely chronological one. When I look at the great changes that have occurred during the past ten or fifteen years, I believe I see this time passing rather more quickly than I used to think would be the case, In any event, historical time is difficult to forecast, and may be measured out in generations; it sets its own pace and not a pace to satisfy our wishes. But pass it will, whether rapidly or slowly, and bring in its train those explosive developments which for the past few decades have appeared limited to “other” parts of the world.

314 Labor and Monopoly Capital

Appendix 1

315

\* Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class (New York: Random House, 1976), 133.

Appendix 2

The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century

The following talk, given by Harry Braverman in the spring of 1975 at the West Virginia Institute of Technology, is his last known recorded presentation before his death on August 2, 1976. It was slightly edited for posthumous publication by Monthly Review in 1982 (vol. 34., no. 1).

My topic this evening is the “degradation of work in the twentieth century," and there is one firm generalization with which we may beginthat is, that humanity is a working species. Our relationship with nature is not merely one of food-gathering or seeking shelter in the crevices provided ready-made by nature. Rather humanity takes the materials provided by nature and alters them into objects more useful to itself. Humanity works in order to live, to provide itself with the means and provisions of life. Thus even though men and women often have occasion to complain of work as a constraint laid upon the species, there is never any doubt that work as a species characteristic is as natural to human life as grazing or hunting are to other species. But it would be the greatest of all possible mistakes to take any simple truisms of this sort, whether in the form of Biblical laments or biological and evolutionary constraints, as the direct basis for an analysis of work in modern society. Between biology and sociology, civilization—with all of its social relations and institutions intervenes. In capitalist society, which is the society in which we live, work is organized in institutions that have long since separated us from simple production for our own use and indeed have as a basis for their activity something very different from any kind of production for use.

The purpose of a capitalist enterprise, as we know it, is to use the surplus that may be extracted from the process of production. Thus while humans work to provide for their needs, in capitalist society nobody works who does not at the same time provide for the needs of capital. It is only by creating a surplus for the corporations that we obtain permission to create necessities for ourselves. In capitalist society this is rule number one, or if you like you might call it Catch-22. Whatever you call it, it is the underlying law of the system.

Now it's true that there have been other forms in which ruling groups extracted a surplus for themselves from the working population. In slave societies the masters directly appropriated the labor of others. In feudal societies the rulers took from the produce of others what they themselves required under rules that obligated the peasantry to surrender to the manorial lord a portion of their product or of their labor. Thus it has been said of feudalism that the nobility defended all, the clergy prayed for all, and the commoners fed all. But in capitalist society the manner in which a surplus is extracted is very special and has had during the past two hundred years the most extraordinary consequences. The foremost of these is that the capitalists have taken into their own hands the direct control over all processes of labor and production; and this in itself constitutes an enormous change from anything that has existed in previous societies. In previous societies the work of artisans or of that immense mass of the population then engaged in crop or animal husbandry as farmers, peasants, and serfs was as a rule conducted autonomously. So far as the direct processes of labor are concerned, the artisans or peasants worked according to traditional methods generally under their own control. It is only under capitalist conditions that the masters take over the entire process, repeatedly reshape and reorganize it to suit their own needs, and parcel it out as tasks to workers for whom the process as a whole is now lost.

Labor that has been subjected to these conditions is sometimes referred to as alienated labor. Now this is a vague phrase, and its vagueness has increased with its popularity. Indeed, we may suspect that its present popularity in official sociology and popular journalism is dependent upon its vagueness. In their usage its connection with the specific conditions of capitalist social relations and capitalist production has all but disappeared, and alienated labor is understood to mean merely the worker who suffers from a feeling of distress, a malaise, a bellyache about his or her work. But the term may still be useful if its significant content is restored and clearly understood.

It must be understood first of all in accordance with the prime definition of the verb to alienate, that is, to transfer ownership to another. The ownership of the tools and instruments of production is in capitalist society alienated, that is, transferred to others. The ownership of the product is alienated in the same sense. The same applies to the ownership of the proceeds from the sale of the product, and finally the process of production too is alienated. It too is transferred to alien control and becomes the property of others. In the end, everything about the productive process becomes alien to the worker in the sense that everything is outside his or her interests, claim, and controlthe wage becomes the sole equity of the worker in the job.

Thus in capitalist society production is carried on in an atmosphere of hostility or indifference by a mass of workers who have lost all stake in or concern for the process, and this in turn makes necessary certain extraordinary means of control and management. It is thus that management for the first time comes into existence and is brought into the world by capitalist society. This necessitates ever more extraordinary means of control and management as well as an ever more alienating reorganization of the work of production, so that we have here an alienation which feeds on itself and becomes ever deeper until it emerges as a profound antagonism between those who work and those who manage them. In this situation it is not at all surprising that work is seen as a curse—what is surprising is only that it is tolerated at all. The manner in which this step-by-step alienation of the process of production from the worker has developed historically is too large a subject to be dealt with in any short presentation. Suffice it to say that it existed only in exceptional instances in ancient and medieval societies; that it grew rapidly in the workshops of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries during the rise of early capitalism, that it became generalized in the workshops and factories of the nineteenth century, and that it has become virtually universal in the factories, mills, warehouses, offices, farms, wholesale and retail establishments, hospitals, offices of public administration, and even to some extent in the schools of the twentieth century in the countries of fully developed capitalism.

Appendix 2 317

316

Now once capitalists take control of the process of production, they seek out every means whereby the output of the worker will be increased so that an ever larger surplus may remain with them. At first this was accomplished by prolonging the working day, but in more recent times intensive methods have replaced extensive ones. This means the reduction of the labor time required in the production process, and it means also the cheapening of labor power. How is labor power cheapened? There are a variety of ways. By far the most important in modern production is the breakdown of complex processes into simple tasks that are performed by workers whose knowledge is virtually nil, whose so-called training is brief, and who may thereby be treated as interchangeable parts. In this way the requirements of production are satisfied not through small pools of highly skilled labor in each craft but by labor of the simplest sort. The consequence is that for most jobs the whole of society becomes a labor pool upon which to draw, and this helps to keep the value of labor power at the level of subsistence for the individual or below the level of subsistence for the family.

In speaking in this way about the capitalists or the corporate organization of capitalism it is not my intention to assault them personally as conscienceless or to malign them. Taken as a class they are no doubt, like all of us, only what society makes of them. But this is precisely the point—we must deal not with the capitalist as a person but with the way the capitalist mode of production operates and the conduct it enforces upon the capitalists themselves. After Henry Ford introduced the moving conveyor (between 1912 and 1914) as the means of sub-assembly and final assembly of automobiles, none of the hundreds of automobile firms then in existence could hope to continue long in business without adopting this process. From the moment the first food-retailing organization adopted self-service methods of shelving and checking out commodities in its stores, no food-retailing organization could hope to prosper or perhaps even to survive without these methods. Or, to take as an instance a process that is just now getting underway, every office manager now understands that since the means have become available to segregate secretarial work in specialized production units connected to executive offices by modern telephonic and recording equipment, no office employing a large number of scattered secretaries can long afford to neglect this innovation; and many are beginning to reorganize secretarial work as the office equivalent of factory production work.

Thus the tendency of the capitalist mode of production from its earliest days some 200 or 250 years ago to the present, when this tendency has become a headlong rush, is the incessant breakdown of labor processes into simplified operations taught to workers as tasks. This leads to the conversion of the greatest possible mass of labor into work of the most elementary form, labor from which all conceptual elements have been removed and along with them most of the skill, knowledge, and understanding of production processes. Thus the more complex the process becomes, the less the worker understands. The more science is incorporated into technology, the less science the worker possesses; and the more machinery that has been developed as an aid to labor, the more labor becomes a servant of machinery.

Although there is a general impression, which is fostered by official academic and journalistic opinion, that all of this is happening because of the rise of scientific technology and the development of machinery, this process of degradation of work is not really dependent upon technology at all. It will be remembered that this mode of the organization of labor arose in the workshops of early capitalism at a time when modern technology did not exist. One need only read Adam Smith's description of the division of labor in pin manufacture to see that the key to the matter is the organization of labor. In modern industry the worst examples of the division of labor are still found chiefly in those processes which exist in the gap left open by technology, those things which cannot be mechanized or cannot be economically mechanized by the capitalists at the prevailing rates of pay. Let us just remind ourselves that one of the most abominable forms of labor, the one in fact that is often mistakenly taken as an instance of the horrors of modern machinery, the assembly line, is just such a case—it has little or nothing to do with machinery since it is a hand process of the crudest sort, its technological feature being merely a primitive device for hauling the work past the worker. Even this device is dispensable, and dispensed with, in the case of smaller and lighter units of production which can be pushed along the work tables to the next station. As a rule, however, the powered endless belt or chain conveyor is favored by management not just as an aid to labor, but chiefly because it enables management to control the pace of production.

Appendix 2 319

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Modern technology in fact has a powerful tendency to break down ancient divisions of labor by re-unifying production processes. Adam Smith's pins, for example, are no longer made by a worker who straightens the wire, another who cuts the length, a third who fashions the heads, a fourth who affixes them to the pins, a fifth who points the pins, a sixth who tins or whitens, another who inserts them into the paper, and so on. The 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 a body of workers far superior to the old craftsworkers. Workers can now become masters of the technology of their process on an engineering level and can apportion among themselves in an equitable way the various tasks connected with this form of production that has become so effortless and automatic.

The division of labor in a capitalist society, however, has to do with many other things besides the pace of production, which in most cases would not be injured if it were wiped out. It has to do, as Charles Babbage pointed out in the early nineteenth century, with differential pay rates, which dictate that the ignorance of the great masses of the workers and the concentration of all engineering knowledge in a few specialists are desirable and, in fact, essential conditions rather than, as it would seem from a human point of view, an abomination. Thus the capitalist mode of production enforces upon new processes devised by technology an ever deeper division of labor no matter how many possibilities for the opposite are opened by machinery. In this way two worlds of work are created: the world in which a very few managers and engineers grasp the process as a whole as their special monopoly, and the world of scheduling clerks, inventory clerks, timekeepers, machine tenders, machine repairers, stock chasers, forklift operators, warehouse attendants, and so on, each of whom performs simple labor in service to a complex machine and each of whom is expected to make a working life of from forty to fifty years out of these scraps of duties, none of which can engage the interests or capacities of a mature human or even of a child for more than a few weeks or a few months, after which they become sheer and mindless drudgery. Thus we may say that while production has become collective and the individual worker has been incorporated into the collective body of workers, this is a body the brain of which has been lobotomized, or worse, removed entirely. Its very brain has been separated from its body, having been appropriated by modern management as a means of controlling and cheapening labor power and labor processes.

We have briefly considered the production process. Let us turn now to its outcome. Let me say at once what cannot be denied and what is in fact capitalism's chief historic role. This unremitting drive on the part of the capitalists to extract an ever greater surplus from the working population, a drive in which the immense powers of science and technology have been enlisted in the service of the accumulation of capital, this drive has brought about an extraordinary development of the human powers of production. The productivity oflabor and hence the surplus which it makes available for further expansion have risen most remarkably in the developed capitalist countries. The owners of the corporations never tire of reminding us that they require great surpluses if they are to constantly enlarge the scale of production, and this is quite true. No change of social system can do away with it as a technical fact. If production is to grow, a portion of the product must be reinvested in the process of production rather than be consumed at once. This we may treat as a natural law, but it is no natural law that this surplus must become and remain the property of a tiny ruling class. This is rather a law of capitalism, and as a result of its workings there has been an immense accumulation of property at one pole of society, greater than at any time in human history.

How about the working population, by which I mean that portion of the population excluding the managers and the proprietors of industry and even excluding those somewhat privileged intermediate strata in professional occupations and in middle management who today make up what might be called a new middle class? The remaining mass, which I have called the working population but which one might call labor or the working class, this remaining mass which constitutes perhaps three quarters of all employment in the United States, is described in the census and in Labor Department statistics under six headings: craftsworkers, operative and kindred workers, laborers, clerical workers, service workers, and sales workers. Here we find close to 60 million out of the approximately 80 million persons, including owners, counted by the census of 1970 as among the working population, and here too we find those jobs characteristically of the sort which I have been describing. Now earlier in this talk I noted that the reduction of the typical job to the level of a few simplified tasks is one of the chief means of cheapening labor power, and I added that this helps to keep the value of labor power at the level of subsistence for the individual or below the level of subsistence for the family.

Appendix 2 321

320

Labor and Monopoly Capital

Lest this be thought an exaggeration, let me now substantiate it with estimates based upon the pay scales for workers in all of these six classifications in 1971, and official estimates of the cost of maintaining a family of four above the poverty line in that same yearand it's worth noting that the situation since then can only have gotten worse, not only because of the economic crisis, but also because during these four years inflation has outstripped wages, thus lowering real wages. Some 80 percent of service workers and workers in retail trades did not receive enough pay to support a family of four above the poverty level. The same is true of at least 75 percent of all clerical workers and laborers, both of whom are paid on about the same level, the laborers maybe a little higher than clerical workers. It is also true of close to 70 percent of all operatives and kindred workers. Only craftsworkers earn in their majority enough to lift a family of four out of the officially defined poverty category, and even in this grouping the wages of 40 percent, if used to support a family of four, were below the poverty level.

Now, one result of these earnings levels is that very large numbers of families do live below the poverty level; that a big majority of families is not put in that position is due only to multiple job-holding within the same family. This we know. But what I am trying to highlight is the startling fact that a pretty large majority of the jobs in the economy have now been transformed by the workings of the capitalist division of labor into the kinds of work one usually thinks of as second jobs, the mythical pin-money jobs which women and teenagers are supposed to be the only ones to take to supplement the major family income. The result is that most of the people, whether they are supplementary earners or heads of households, now occupy such so-called second jobs with their pitiful and demeaning duties and meager pay. That this is so is due not only to the kind of division of labor we have been discussing, but also to the occupational and industrial shifts which have resulted from the accumulation of capital in the United States. 1auvn 1

Let me try to make this clear. In striving to economize on labor time, the corporation is also striving to reduce the number of workers required for a given quantity or output, or—and this comes to much the same thingto produce a rapidly growing output without a proportional growth in the number of workers. To use Marx's memorable way of putting it, unlike the generals who win their wars by recruiting armies, the captains ofindustry win their wars by discharging armies. The practical consequences of this can be seen in any analysis of United States employment in the manufacturing industries over any reasonable period of time. Thus in the United States between 1947 and 1964, a seventeen-year period, the output of the textile industries grew by more than 40 percent but employment was cut by one third. Other industries, such as iron and steel foundries, lumber and wood products, malt liquors, and footwear, showed production increases of from 15 percent to 40 percent in the same period, accompanied by employment drops of 10 percent to 25 percent. The petroleum industry poured out five-sixths more product at the end of the period than at the beginning, but its employment was one-fourth lower. Even the construction industry, which by the nature of its production processes is notably resistant to technological change, doubled its output while adding only 50 percent to its labor force. Only the most rapidly growing industries showed substantial increases in employment. Thus electrical machinery and motor freights added respectively 50 percent and 70 percent to their employment, but in the process they roughly tripled their output. The aluminum industry more than doubled its employment, but this was the result of a quadrupled output. An extreme case is that of air transport, which enlarged its output some eight times while increasing employment by only one and one-third times.

Now, the figures that I have been giving you deal only with a seventeenyear period; but, taking a much longer-term view, you can very clearly see the trend by focusing on the changes in manufacturing and related industries like construction. For at least a century these industries occupied close to half of all non-farm employment, usually between 45 percent and 50 percent. But after the 1920 census, about fifty years ago, this began to change; and by the time we come to the most recent census, that of 1970, these industries occupy only one-third of non-farm employment. There has therefore been an immense shift of labor out of the traditional manufacturing, mining and construction, and transportation industries into the very rapidly growing areas of real estate, insurance, finance, services, and wholesale and retail trade. But these rapidly growing fields of industry are precisely the low-wage portions of the economy; while the higher-wage sector is the stagnant or declining portion. None of this is accidental; there are profound structural reasons why the most rapid growth of capital has taken place in the low-wage areas and also in the enlargement of nonproductive as against productive work. In any case, this trend is not a matter for doubt, and it is this trend, along with the rapid growth of the lowest-wage occupations, such as clerical, service, and retail trade, that in good measure accounts for the fact that we live increasingly in an economy of so-called second jobs and that true first jobs in the traditional sense—jobs that are rewarding in themselves and pay enough to support a family—are fewer than ever.

If the captains of industry win their war, as Marx put it, by discharging armies, how do we know that the rapidity of the accumulation of capital will keep up with it and that new products, services, or unproductive industries will develop rapidly enough to absorb all of the labor freed by the capitalist drive for higher productivity? Well, we do not know, and in fact in capitalist society there is always a pool of unused labor power, an industrial reserve army. It has almost always been a very sizable mass in United States industrial history, at least during this century. And it shrinks to a small size only on those rare occasions when the upswings in the business cycle are unusually strong and correspond as well to longer-term upswings in the process of capitalist accumulation, especially during wars.

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Appendix 2

323

Apart from the natural growth of the population, the freeing of workers from their jobs by the continuous revolution in production creates, again to use Marx's words, a disposable industrial reserve army that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost. If we try to verify this from the United States statistics we run up against the difficulty that unemployment figures are kept on very different principles from those embraced by the concept of the industrial reserve army, but these statistics nevertheless have the value attaching to any set of figures that is kept on more or less constant principles over a long period of time. The most striking thing to emerge from an examination of the unemployment statistics from the Second World War to the present is the long-run trend of gradual but persistent enlargement of the pool of officially counted unemployed. There has been throughout this whole period a business cycle, so that the line is a jagged one, but even so it is a line which constantly trends upward. The levels of unemployment, which at the start of the period meant recession, are now regarded as perfectly acceptable prosperity rates. I clipped from yesterday's New York Times an article with the headline “High Joblessness Expected to Persist as a Condition of United States Throughout the Decade." This article points out that although we began immediately after the Second World War aiming for an unemployment rate of 2 percent or 3 percent, we soon gave this up, that the 4 percent unemployment target embraced by President Kennedy in 1962 has been abandoned, and the 5 percent goal of the Nixon administration economists has also lost support. Most economists today, regardless of their political affiliation, believe that 5.5 percent to 6 percent of unemployment is probably the lowest the government can achieve without stirring up virulent inflation again, and even that modest target is a long way from attainment—1979 at the earliest. In other words, the target for unemployment and prosperity nowadays is higher than what was regarded as a recession rate of unemployment only twenty-five years ago.

Now I said a moment ago that these unemployment rates are not the same as the concept of an industrial reserve army, the latter being much larger. This is because the measuring of unemployment is a relatively restrictive count. Let me give you a very graphic instance of this: when the unemployment figures for February of this year were released a month or two ago, they proved to be about 8.3 million, only slightly changed from the 8.2 million counted as unemployed in the previous month of January—but we were told at the same time that employment had fallen by a full half-million persons. How do we explain this paradox? Well, the answer that they give is that in official parlance

almost 600,000 persons had dropped out of the labor force between one month and the next. What does that remarkable statistic mean? It simply means the following: since capitalism does not recognize that every able-bodied adult has either the responsibility or the opportunity to work and contribute to society, the theory is that one cannot distinguish the unemployed from the leisure class except by asking the individual whether he or she had been actively seeking employment during the previous four weeks. Those who cannot show that they have been doing so—and in the largest majority of cases this would mean those who have given up hope of getting a job——are no longer counted as part of the labor force and hence cannot be counted as unemployed. Nothing in official statistics distinguishes them from the housewife who has never worked or from the millionaire in Palm Springs. Thus there is clearly a large mass of non-working people who constitute a reserve army of labor, only a portion of which is counted. Those who rise to the surface in active search of jobs are counted as unemployed; those who sink to the bottom and are forced onto the welfare roll are counted as paupers. The size of this pauperized mass is now between 14 and 15 million persons, and this enormous size was attained back in 1970 and bids fair to go much higher. From all of this we can see that the accumulation of wealth which takes place at one pole of society in the capitalist system is matched at the other pole by an accumulation of misery.

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Appendix 2

325

Boyle, Robert, 109

Bramah, Joseph, 91 productive and unproductive labor and, 284-92

Brech, E. F. L., 62

scientific management and, 59–60, 82–83

Bright, James R., automation study by, 146-53

service labor and, 248, 250–52

socialist development and, 16

Abstract labor, 220

on machine and worker, 124n, 129, 130

Soviet imitation of Western, 8–11, 12

Marx's theory of, 125

Babbage, Charles, 52n, 59, 138, 235

British Journal of Psychiatry, 124

state's role in, 97–100

Administrative Management (magazine), 237,238

on disciplinary function of machinery, 134n

Bureau of Labor Statistics, 155, 164n, 165n, 205, 276, 306

worker's habituation to, 96–104

Capitalist class, 279

Administrators. See Managers

on division of labor, 55–57, 218–19

monopoly capitalism and, 180

Bureau of the Census, U.S., 165n, 180, 249,296–97

AEtna Life Insurance Co., 223-24

Taylor and, 61–62, 81

reserve army of labor and, 264–67

state and enrichment of, 97–98

Baker, Newton, 111n

Agricultural workers, 268 1880-1970, 177

Caplow, Theodore, 244, 301

capitalist organization of work and, 83n

Carlson, Howard C., 234

Agriculture, U.S. Department of, 113

clerical work within, 26, 208, 233–35

Business Week, 136n, 142–43, 198n

Carnegie, Andrew, 112, 215

Air Force, U.S., 136

Carnegie Institute of Technology, 99

Baran, Paul A., 37n, 175, 177, 200 on monopoly capitalism, 176

Cannan, Edwin, 251–52

Alienation, 39 Schmidt on Marx's theory of, 19, 19n

Census Bureau. See Bureau of the Census, U.S.

Barber, Bernard, 109, 160

Canning industry, 182

American Chemical Society, 111n

Belidor (French engineer), 61

Canter, Ralph R., 100n

Census Employment Survey, 275

American Management Association, 230, 233

Capital, 80, 208

Bell, Daniel, 73n

Centers, Richard, 19

accumulation of, 37, 38–40, 133

Bell Telephone Laboratories, 113

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 137n

corpo1 1 and, 179–180, 181

Chandler, Alfred D., 181, 184

Bentham, Jeremy, 110

labor's relation to, 261–62

Chemical industry, 109 German development of, 111–12 mechanization of, 155–56

Berg, Ivar, 305

American Tobacco Company, 99

machinery as dead labor form of, 157–61

Bernal, J. D., 91

Animals, 37–38, 50 human labor and, 31-34

Marx on concentration and centralization of, 179

China, 10

Bernhardt, K. B., 303–4

Bethlehem Steel Company, Taylor at, 70–73

Khrushchev on industrialization in,16

productive labor and, 284–85, 286–87

Apprenticeship, 92 craftsmanship and, 76 German technical education and, 110--11

Bienstock, Herbert, 303

Chinoy, Eli, 101

reserve army of labor and, 268–69, 271

Bierce, Ambrose, 134

Chrysler Corporation, 22

Blank, David M., 167–68

Aptitude tests, 99–100

science and, 107–8, 114

Blauner, Robert, 20, 129, 155

Argyle, Michael, 34n

Cities, 141–42, 182, 189–90, 275 effects of intense urbanization on, 191–95 state spending and, 199

Aristotle, 31n, 36n

Blue-collar workers. See also Manual laborers

Arkwright, Sir Richard, 181

surplus labor and, 177–78

job dissatisfaction among, 21–22, 23–24

Assembly line, 134, 135–36, 298,299–300 at Ford, 101–3

white-collar workers and, 205–6, 225, 301–2

Capital (Marx), 6, 7, 14, 17n, 31, 118n, 125, 251n, 264, 284

modern technology and, 223

Bluestone, Barry, 273n

Blumberg, Paul, 308n

Clark, Colin, 252

Boiler shop, 140

Automation, 231-32

Bright's study of management and, 146-53

Capitalism, 26, 117. See also Industrial capitalism; Mercantile capitalism; Monopoly capitalism

Bookkeeping, 53, 170

Booth, Charles, 241

merchant capitalism and, 45, 207

by modern corporation, 209–10

Clark, William, 182

division of labor and, 51–52, 54, 58

early management and, 41–44

Friedmann on progressive aspect of, 159n

labor power and, 35–40

labor-capital opposition and, 261-62

Class consciousness, defined, 20

Automobile industry, 141–42, 168

Class structure, Marx's analysis of, 7

machinery and, 133, 141–43, 157–61

at Ford, 101-3

Clerical workers, 167, 170, 200, 203–45, 264. See also Office work; White-collar workers

management's essential in, 45

class position of, 240–45

job dissatisfaction and, 22–23

mass clerical work transforming, 207—10

Marx's outline of emergence of, 14–15

key punch operators, 227–33

mechanization of office and, 234–39

scientific-technological revolution and, 264,266

Index

Index 327

Boulton, Matthew, 87n, 203

326

separation of mental and manual labor and, 218–20, 225

Cuba, 10

Edison, Thomas, 112

flattening pay, 103

Curtis Publishing Company, 211, 212

on saving wasted motion, 214n

wages for, 205–6, 253

Customer order, 216

Education, economic impact of enlarged, 304

Ford Motor Company, 147 white-collar classification distinguished from, 204

as government-provided service, 199-201

absenteeism at, 22

Daines, George, 193n

mechanization of skill and, 295, 301–6

early assembly line at, 101-3

women as, 195, 205, 24344

Data-processing. See Computer system

mechanized office work and, 232

Fortune (magazine), 19, 22

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 61

Davis, Jerome, 302n

Fourier, Charles, 32n

Commande numerique des machines, La (Thiliez), 141

workers’ regaining mastery over production process and, 307–9

Davis, Louis E., 100n

France, 61, 63, 110, 111, 169n

Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO), 113

Edwards, Alba, 164n, 297, 301

Commerce, U.S. Department of, Standard Industrial Classification for service work, 252n

Egypt (ancient), 44, 45

union reaction to unemployment in, 275
white-collar women workers in, 90

Delehanty, George E., 165n, 166

Electrical industry, 110, 136

Friedmann, Georges, 94n, 307

Demand and Supply of Scientific Personnel, The (Blank & Stigler), 167

Commons, J. R., 56

Ellul, Jacques, 158n

on Durkheim, 52n

Engels, Frederick, 308n

on planned economies of Soviet type, 10

Computer system, 168–69 key punch operator and, 227–33 mechanization of office and, 226–27

Descriptive History of the Steam Engine (Meikleham), 108

on authority and mastery of nature, 11n on progressive possibilities of automation, 159n

Design procedures, 167-68 "commercial proletariat" and, 290n, 291

Taylor criticized by, 62, 75n, 77n

Conanat, James B., 111n

on labor and human evolution, 34

Dictionary of Occupational Titles (U.S. Department of Labor), 146n

Consciousness, human work and, 31-35
objective and subjective conditions of, 20

Fuchs, Victor R., 271

Division oflabor, 63, 107. See also Labor process

Engineering, 137n emergence of, 91 numerical control applied to, 140–41

Fuhro, William J., 220–21

Construction industry, 143

Furniture production, 144

Cooks, 253–56, 264

Babbage's principle for cheapening labor and, 52–58

Cooper Union, N.Y.C., 93

Engineers, 18, 97n, 279, 282 employed in United States, 18, 166–67 as mass occupation, 167–70

Galloway, Lee, 211–13

Corey, Lewis, 204, 242 conception and execution separated, 34–35, 78-79, 81, 86–87, 118–19, 140-41,218-20

Gantt, Henry L., 112, 118

Exchange relation, 35-36 workers' sale of labor power, 37, 38–40

Gay-Lussac, Joseph-Louis, 111

clerical work and, 207–10

General and Industrial Management (Fayol), 61

department subdivision within, 183 from craft to task to individual operation, 118

monopoly capitalism and, 179–87

General Electric Company, 112, 113–14, 221

early forms of, 43–45

operating executive and, 279–83

Factory system, 207 Hawthorne study of, 100 Marx's analysis of, 7, 157–58 office work and, 218–19

structure of, 183-87

General Motors Corporation, 184

unproductive labor and, 288–89

social and detailed, distinguished, 49-52

Falcon (French inventor), 135

Coulomb (French engineer), 61

Division of Labor in Society, The (Durkheim), 51

Family, 274–75 universal market and, 188–89, 91–95

Assembly Division, time-motion study used by, 123n

Craftsmanship, 91, 206

Dobb, Maurice, 42–43

DELCO research, 113

combined labor process of, 76

Draftsman, 167, 169

Farm laborers (farmers), 76, 242
job classification of, 300–301

Lordstown strike at, 23 destruction of, 79–80, 90, 92–94, 107, 117,137

Drivers, 297–98

Farming, 188-89, 190–91

General Motors Research Corporation, 113

Ford assembly line and, 102

Drucker, Peter F., 27, 60–61

Fayol, Henri, 61

General Tire and Rubber Company, 221

job classification and, 296–97, 300

Duke, James Buchanan, 182

Fetishism, Marx's theory of, 158

scientific knowledge and,92–94, 97

DuPont Corporation, 184

Fiat Motor Company, 23n

Genesis of Modern Management, The (Pollard), 42n

skill and, 307

Durkheim, Emile, 51–52

First National Bank of Richmond, Ind., 26

Germany, 63

Taylor and, 79–80

Crompton, Samuel, 91

Eastern European people's democracies, 10

Food industry, 188–89
industrialization of, 182

increase of commercial and technical workers in, 166, 169n

Crowley, Ambrose, 46

Eastman Kodak Company, 113

Crozier, Michel, 19–20, 90

precooked frozen foods and, 253–56

Edison General Electric Company, 113

Ford, Henry, 135

science incorporated into production in, 110-12

328

Labor and Monopoly Capital

Index 329

scientists come to U.S. from, 114

Hollerith, Herman, 226

state and monopoly capitalism in, 197

Hoos, Ida Russakoff, 229–32

Job dissatisfaction, management and, 25– 27

Occupational Outlook Handbook, 298 99

Gibbs, Willard, 113

Horowitz, Morris A., 146

Mills’ analysis of alienation and, 20

Landes, David S., 44n, 92n, 108n, 114

Giedion, Siegfried, 143

in 1970s, 21–25

House of Representatives, Taylor's testimony before Special Committee of, 64-67,80-81

Langmuir, Irving, 114

Gilbreth, Frank B., 81, 120, 309

Law, early factory work and, 46

Gilbreth, Lillian, 82n, 139, 309

Kakar, Sudhir, 63, 66n

Lebergott, Stanley, 306

Gompers, Samuel, 92–93

Household, industrial capitalism and, 188-89, 190-91

Kautsky, Karl, 14n

Lederer, Emil, 186, 240

Goodrich Company, B. F., 113

Kennedy, M. C., 52, 307n

Leffingwell, William Henry, 47n, 211–15

Gordon, David M., 206n

unpaid labor of women and, 195, 252

Kerr, Clark, 11, 16

Leiserson, William M., 69n

Gough, Ian, 285n, 290n

Hoxie, Robert F.,74n, 91n, 92n

Kettering, Charles F., 113, 114

Lenin, V. I., 11n, 16

Gras, N. S. B., 45

Hunt, William C., 296

Key punch operators, 227–33

Huxley, Thomas, 109 on imperialism and monopoly capitalism, 175

Great Britain, 45–46, 91, 110, 111–12, 142n, 169n, 197, 277

Khrushchev, Nikita, 16

Klaw, Spencer, 137n

scientific management and, 8–9

clerical workers in, 203–4

IBM, 26

Klingender, F. D., 203

Leone, William C., 137n

Mayhew on self-education of weavers in, 93

IG Farben Company, 111

Kraik, J. K. W., 124

Lewis, John L., 103

Imperialism, 7, 175

Krupp Enterprises, 110

Liebig, Justus von, 111

service work in, 251, 251n

Industrial capitalism. See also Capitalism

Lindsey, Robert B., 108–9

skilled and semi-skilled labor in, 299 limited commodity circulation under, 188-91

Labor, animal and human, 31–34

Little Company, Arthur D., 113

Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Marx), 118n

capital's relation to, 261–62

Lockwood, David, 203, 205, 206n, 218n

origin of, 41–44

human evolution and, 34–35

Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company, 99

Guide to Office Clerical Time Standards, A (Systems and Procedures Association of America), 221

Industrial psychology, 60, 96–99

labor power and, 35, 38

Industrial Revolution, 114

Lordstown, Ohio, G.M. strike at, 23, 123n

productive and unproductive, 284–92

Gunders, Henry, 230

science and, 107–9

Lower managerial workers, 18, 263,280–82

Gvishiani, D., 11n

Industrial workers. See also Workers Fuchs' analysis of, 271–73

Industrial Workers of the World, 103

Labor power, 279–80 under capitalism, commodity, 35–40, 42 division of labor and, 56–57 Marx's conception of, 35

Machine shop, numerical control of, 134–39 Taylor study of, 76–77

Hammond, J. L. & Barbara, 87n

Instruction cards, 82–83, 139

Machinery (mechanization), 117–18. See also Technology

Labor process, 7, 60

Harrison, Bennett, 274-76

International Molders Journal, 94

capitalist accumulation, 176–77

as embodied dead labor, 157–59

Harvard Business Review, 147 “Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy" (Marx), 14n

division of labor and, 52–58

evolution of modern, 129–34

Harwood, James, 91n

Ford assembly line and, 101–2

introduced into various industries, 143–45

Hatch Act of 1887, 113

Italy, absenteeism in, 23n

machinery and, 128–34, 141–43

Hawthorne studies, 69n, 99–100 and management control over labor process, 134–35

Jacquard (French inventor), 135

Health, Education, and Welfare, U.S. Department of, Work in America study, 21-22

management control over, 134–35

Japan, state in, 197

office work and, 176, 225–40

numerical control and, 135-41

Jerome, Harry, 294

skill and use of, 146–57, 294, 308–9

Hegel, G. W. F., 110 scientific-technical revolution and, 117-18

surplus labor and, 264–65

Jewitt, Frank B., 113

Henle, Peter, 274

two approaches to study of, 127-29

Herrenstadt, Irwin L., 146

Job changes, 3, 26, 167, 185–86. See also Craftsmanship; Skill

"new working class" and, 17-18

Magdoff, Harry, 6, 270, 270n

Herskovitz, Melville J., 49 separation of conception and execution, 34–35, 78–79, 81, 86–87, 118–19, 141, 218–20,224–25

"upgrading" thesis of skill and, 295 301

proletarianization of office work and, 243-45

Hess, John L., 256

History of the Royal Society of London, 61

Taylor's breaking of workers' control over, 69–70, 74, 78–83

Maintenance workers, 18, 150–54

Hoffman, John, 100n

time and motion study of, 120–25

Labor, U.S. Department of, 170

Hoffmann, August Wilhelm von, 111

Labor theory of value, 35

Management, 90–91, 107, 233–34, 307. See also Lower managerial workers; Scientific management

automation and, 146–53

capitalist organization of labor process

330

Labor and Monopoly Capital

Index 331

and, 118–19

productive process analyzed by, 6–7

women in labor force and, 266–67

163-70

control and, 62-63, 86–87, 134–-35 reserve army oflabor theory of, 264–65, 267-69,277

Monthly Labor Review, 138–39

monopoly capitalism and, 177–78

definition of “to manage" and, 46–47

Moore, Wilbert, 51

"new working class" and, 17–18

Ford assembly line and, 101-2

on science applied to industry, 107

Morris Motors, 163n

1900-1970,262-64

job dissatisfaction and, 25–27

on service work, 248, 251

reserve army of labor and, 269–74

monopoly capitalism and, 180–81, 184, 186-87

on surplus value, 36n

Motion studies. See also Time studies development of, 120–21

"systems analysis" of, 11n service work and, 195–96, 249–50, 252-53

occupational shifts and, 163-70 technology and society relation for, 12–15 for factory and office work, 212–13, 220-24

working class definition and, 17

office work and, 211-15

workers' control and, 308n

origins of, 41–47, 2034

Marxism, 7

MTM Association for Standards and Research, Methods-Time Measurement system, 121

Office Management: Its Principles and Practice (Galloway), 211

secretaries and, 235–39

labor movement's integration and, 8-10

Office work, 203–45

Taylor and absolute power of, 77-83

Maudslay, Henry, 91

Muir (English millwright), 91

continuous flow process in, 216–17

Taylor's criticism of ordinary, 70, 79 80,81

Mayhew, Henry, 93

Münsterberg, Hugo, 60
industrial psychology of, 97–98

as craft during early capitalism, 206–7

Mayo, Elton, 60, 90–91, 99–100

job enrichment for, 25–26

time and motion studies used by, 124–25

McCormick, Cyrus, 182

Musgrave, P. W., 110

mechanization of, 225–40, 242–43

Manual laborers, 18

Meat packing, 144

of nineteenth century, 203–5

job classification of, 295–97

Mechanics Institutes, 92

Nadler, Gerald, 121

proletarianization of, 240–45

separation of conception and execution and, 86, 218–25

Meikleham, Robert Stuart, 108

National Bureau of Economic Research, 167

scientific management applied to, 211—15

Melman, Seymour, 184n wages for, 205–6, 253 separation of mental and manual labor and, 218–20, 225

Mental labor, 218–20, 225

National Lead Company, 99

Marcuse, Herbert, 118

Mercantile capitalism, 43, 291. See also Capitalism

Marey (French engineer), 61

Nature, 117, 133 Engels on mastery of, 11n human labor and, 31–34 skill classification and, 301

“social office” destruction and, 237

Marglin, Stephen A., 16n

Metropolitan Life Company, 99

time and motion studies applied to, 220–24

Marketing, 182–85, 207

"Middle layers" of employment, 279–83

Neo-Marxism, 9-10

On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (Babbage), 55, 219

Marshall, Alfred, 56n, 82n, 112, 142n, 307n

Midvale Steel Works, Taylor and, 63–69, 77

New middle class, 281

Marx, Karl, 9, 16, 27, 34, 44n, 50, 52n, 110, 157, 263,273, 275, 283n

"New working class," 17–18, 19n

Operative workers, 264, 298–99

Mill, J. S., 110

New York City, 189–90, 276

abstract labor theory of, 125

Mills, C. Wright, 19–20, 242

New York State Department of Labor, 300n

wages for, 253

on accumulation of capital, 176–77

alienation theory of, 19, 19n

Modell, Roland, and Stone company, 115n

New York Times, 193n, 256, 274

Organization and Management, A Sociological Analysis of Western Theories (Gvishiani), 11n

on change from manufacture to modern industry, 117

Monopoly Capital (Baran and Sweezy), 175-76

Newhouse, Joseph P., 233

Norton, J. K., 295

Owens-Illinois Company, 221

on concentration and centralization of capital, 179

Monopoly capitalism, 7

Norwood, Ohio, G.M. strike at, 123n

corporation and, 179–87

Numerical control, 135–41

Pancoast, Omar, 295

definition of terms by, 17n

emergence of, 175–76

Parker, S. R., 296n

Engels' theory of authority and, 11n

mass clerical work and, 207–10

Oakley, Kenneth P., 33

Parsons Corporation, John, 136

on fetishism, 158

"middle layers" of employment and, 279-80

O'Carroll, Lloyd T., 139 "Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (Engels), 34

Grundrisse of, 118n

on human and animal labor, 31—32

productive labor and, 252

Occupational Outlook Handbook (U.S. Department of Labor), 298

Payne, Bruce, 123n

labor power concept of, 35

research and, 112–13

Occupational shifts, 7, 119

Perkin, William Henry, 111 state role in, 197–200 machinery analyzed by, 128, 157-58 difficulties in analysis of, 3 surplus labor and, 177–78 on productive and unproductive labor, 284-85,289,290-92

Personnel management, 60, 97n

job classifications and, 295–97

universal market and, 188-96

management and technology effects on

Petroleum industry, 182

Petty, William, 55

332 Labor and Monopoly Capital

Index 333