braverman scientific management

Chapter 4 Scientific Management The classical economists were the first to approach the problems of the organization oflabor within capitalist relations ofproduction from a theoretical point ofview. They may thus be called the first management experts, and their work was continued in the latter part ofthe Industrial Revolution by such men as Andrew Ure and Charles Babbage. Between these men and the next step, the comprehensive formulation of management theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there lies a gap ofmore than halfa century during which there was an enormous growth in the size ofenterprises, the beginnings ofthe monopolistic organization ofindustry, and the purposive and systematic application of science to production. The scientific management movement initiated by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the last decades of the nineteenth century was brought into being by these forces. Logically, Taylorism belongs to the chain of development of management methods and the organization of labor, and not to the development oftechnology, in which its role was minor. * Scientific management, so-called, is an attempt to apply the methods of science to the increasingly complex problems ofthe control oflabor in rapidly growing capitalist enterprises. It lacks the characteristics of a true science because its assumptions reflect nothing more than the outlook ofthe capitalist with regard to the conditions of production. It starts, despite occasional protestations to the contrary, not from the human point of view but from the capitalist point of view, from the point of view of the management of a refractory work force in a setting of antagonistic social relations. It does not attempt to discover and confront the cause of this condition, but accepts it as an inexorable given, a "natural" condition. It investigates not labor in general, but the adaptation of labor to the needs of capital. It enters the workplace not as the representative of science, but as the representative of management masquerading in the trappings of science. A comprehensive and detailed outline of the principles of Taylorism is essential to our narrative, not because of the things for which it is popularly * It is important to grasp this point, because from it flows the universal application of Taylorism to work in its various forms and stages of development, regardless ofthe nature ofthe technology employed. Scientific management, says Peter F. Drucker, "was not concerned with technology. Indeed, it took tools and techniques largely as given."l 59 I .....I 60 Labor and Monopoly Capital known----stopwatch, speed-up, etc.--but because behind these commonplaces there lies a theory which is nothing less than the explicit verbalization ofthe capitalist mode ofproduction. But before I begin this presentation, a number ofintroductory remarks are required to clarify the role ofthe Taylor school in the development ofmanagement theory. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the scientific management movement in the shaping of the modem corporation and indeed all institutions ofcapitalist society which carry on labor processes. The popular notion that Taylorism has been "superseded" by later schools of industrial psychology or "human relations," that it "failed"--because ofTaylor's amateurish and naive views of human motivation or because it brought about a storm oflabor opposition or because Taylor and various successors antagonized workers and sometimes management as well--or that it is "outmoded" because certain Taylorian specifics like functional foremanship or his incentive-pay schemes have been discarded for more sophisticated methods: all these represent a woeful misreading of the actual dynamics of the development of management. Taylor dealt with the fundamentals of the organization of the labor process and ofcontrol over it. The later schools ofHugo Miinsterberg, Elton Mayo, and others of this type dealt primarily with the adjustment of the worker to the ongoing production process as that process was designed by the industrial engineer. The successors to Taylor are to be found in engineering and work design, and in top management; the successors to Miinsterberg and Mayo are to be found in personnel departments and schools of industrial psychology and sociology. Work itself is organized according to Taylorian principles, while personnel departments and academics have busied themselves with the selection, training, manipulation, pacification, and adjustment of "manpower" to suit the work processes so organized. Taylorism dominates the world of production; the practitioners of "human relations" and "industrial psychology" are the maintenance crew for the human machinery. If Taylorism does not exist as a separate school today, that is because, apart from the bad odor of the name, it is no longer the property of a faction, since its fundamental teachings have become the bedrock of all work design.* Peter F. Drucker, who has the advantage of * "As a separate movement," says George Soule, "it virtually disappeared in the great depression ofthe 1930 '8, but by that time knowledge ofit had become widespread in industry and its methods and philosophy were commonplaces in many schools of engineering and business management.,,2 In other words, Taylorism is "outmoded" or "superseded" only in the sense that a sect which has become generalized and broadly accepted disappears as a sect. Scientific Management 61 considerable direct experience as a management consultant, is emphatic on thisscore: Personnel Administration and Human Relations are the things talked about and written about whenever the management of worker and work is being discussed. They are the things the Personnel Department concerns itself with. But they are not the concepts that underlie the actual management of worker and work in American industry. This concept is Scientific Management. Scientific Management focuses on the work. Its core is the organized study ofwork, the ofwork into its simplest elements and the systematic improvement of the worker's performance of each of these elements. Scientific Management has both basic concepts and easily applicable tools and techniques. And it has no difficulty proving the contribution it makes; its results in the form ofhigher output are visible and readily measurable. Indeed, Scientific Management is all but a systematic philosophy ofworker and work. Altogether it may well be the most powerful as well as the most contribution America has made to Western thought since the Federalist Papers? The use ofexperimental methods in the study ofwork did not begin with Taylor; in fact, the self-use ofsuch methods by the craftsman is part ofthe very practice ofa craft. But the study ofwork by or on behalf ofthose who manage it rather than those who perform it seems to have come to the fore only with the capitalist epoch; indeed, very little basis for it could have existed before. The earliest references to the study of work correspond to the beginnings of the capitalist era: such a reference, for example, is found in the History 0/the Royal Society a/London, and dates from the middle ofthe seventeenth century. We have already mentioned the classical economists. Charles Babbage, who not only wrote penetrating discussions ofthe organization ofthe labor process in his day, but applied the same concept to the division of mental labor, and who devised an early calculating "engine," was probably the most direct forerunner ofTaylor, who must have been familiar with Babbage's work even though he never referred to it. France had a long tradition of attempting the scientific study ofwork, starting with Louis XIV's minister Colbert; including military engineers like Vauban and Belidor and especially Coulomb, whose physiological studies ofexertion in labor are famous, through Marey, who used smoked paper cylinders to make a graphic record of work phenomena; and culminating in Henri Fayol, a contemporary ofTaylor, who in his General and Industrial Management attempted a set of principles aimed at securing total enterprise control by way of a systematic approach to administrations.4 The publication of management manuals, the discussions of the problems of management, and the increasingly sophisticated approach taken in practice in the second half ofthe nineteenth century lend support to the conclusion ofthe historians of the scientific management movement that Taylor was the 62 Labor and Monopoly Capital culmination of a pre-existing trend: "What Taylor did was not to invent something quite new, but to synthesize and present as a reasonably coherent whole ideas which had been germinating and gathering force in Great Britain and the United States throughout the nineteenth century. He gave to a disconnected series ofinitiatives and experiments a philosophy and a titie."s Taylor has little in common with those physiologists or psychologists who have attempted, before or after him, to gather information about human capacities in a spirit of scientific interest. Such records and estimates as he did produce are crude in the extreme, and this has made it easy for such critics as Georges Friedmann to poke holes in his various "experiments" (most ofwhich were not intended as experiments at all, but as forcible and hyperbolic demonstrations). Friedmann treats Taylorism as though it were a "science ofwork," where in reality it is intended to be a science ofthe management ofothers 'work under capitalist conditions. 6 It is not the "best way" to do work "in general" that Taylor was seeking, as Friedmann seems to assume, but an answer to the specific problem of how best to control alienated labor--that is to say, labor power that is bought and sold. The second distinctive feature of Taylor's thought was his concept of control. Control has been the essential feature of management throughout its history, but with Taylor it assumed unprecedented dimensions. The stages of management control over labor before Taylor had included, progressively: the gathering together ofthe workers in a workshop and the dictation ofthe length of the working day; the supervision of workers to ensure diligent, intense, or uninterrupted application; the enforcement of rules against distractions (talking, smoking, leaving the workplace, etc.) that were thought to interfere with application; the setting of production minimums; etc. A worker is under management control when subjected to these rules, orto any oftheir extensions and variations. But Taylor raised the concept ofcontrol to an entirely new plane when he asserted as an absolute necessity for adequate management the dictation to the worker ofthe precise manner in which work is to be performed. That management had the right to "control" labor was generally assumed before Taylor, but in practice this right usually meant only the general setting of tasks, with little direct interference in the worker's mode of performing them. Taylor's contribution was to overturn this practice and replace it by its opposite. Management, he insisted, could be only a limited and frustrated undertaking so long as it left to the worker any decision about the work. His "system" was simply a means for management to achieve control ofthe actual mode of performance of every labor activity, from the simplest to the most complicated. To this end, he pioneered a far greater revolution in the division of labor than any that had gone before. Taylor created a simple line ofreasoning and advanced it with a logic and clarity, a naive openness, and an evangelical zeal which soon won him a strong Scientific Management 63 following among capitalists and managers. His work began in the 1880s but it was notll11til the I 890s that he began to lecture, read papers, and publish results. His own engineering training was limited, but his grasp of shop practice was superior, since he had served a four-year combination apprenticeship in two trades, those ofpattemmaker and machinist. The spread ofthe Taylor approach was not limited to the United States and Britain; within a short time it became popular in all industrial countries. In France it was called, in the absence of a suitable word for management, "1' organisation scientifique du travail" (later changed, when the reaction against Taylorism set in, to "1 'organisation rationnelle du travail"). In Germany it was known simply as rationalization; the German corporations were probably ahead of everyone else in the practice of this technique, even before World War 1.7 Taylor was the scion ofa well-to-do Philadelphia family. After preparing for Harvard at Exeter he suddenly dropped out, apparently in rebellion against his father, who was directing Taylor toward his own profession, the law. He then took the step, extraordinary for anyone of his class, of starting a craft apprenticeship in a firm whose owners were social acquaintances of his parents. When he had completed his apprenticeship, he took ajob at common labor in the Midvale Steel Works, also owned by friends of his family and technologically one of the most advanced companies in the steel industry. Within a few months he had passed through jobs as clerk and joumeyman machinist, and was appointed gang boss in charge ofthe lathe department. In his psychic makeup, Taylor was an exaggerated example ofthe obsessive-compulsive personality: from his youth he had counted his steps, measured the time for his various activities, and analyzed his motions in a search for "efficiency." Even when he had risen to importance and fame, he was still something of a figure of fun, and his appearance on the shop floor produced smiles. The picture ofhis personality that emerges from a study recently done by Sudhir Kakar justifies calling him, at the very least, a neurotic crank.8 These traits fitted him perfectly for his role as the prophet of modem capitalist management, since that which is neurotic in the individual in capitalism, normal and socially desirable for the functioning of society. Shortly after Taylor became gang boss, he entered upon a struggle with the machinists under him. Because this struggle was a classic instance ofthe manner in which the antagonistic relations of production express themselves in the workplace, not only in Taylor's time butbefore and after, and since Taylor drew from this experience the conclusions that were to shape his subsequent thinking, it is necessary to quote at length here from his description of the events.* The following account, one of several he gave ofthe battle, is taken * Extracts ofconsiderable length from Taylor's several writings will appear in this chapter. This is because Taylor is still the most useful source for any study of scientific management. In the storms ofopposition that followed Taylorism, few ventured to put 64 Labor and Monopoly Capital from his testimony, a quarter-century later, before a Special Committee ofthe U.S. House of Representatives: Now, the machine shop ofthe Midvale Steel Works was a piecework shop. All the work practically was done on pieccwork, and it ran night and day-five nights in the week and six days. Two scts of men came on, one to run the machines at night and the other to run them in the We who were the workmen of that shop had the quantity output carefully agreed upon for everything that was turned out in the shop. We limited the output to about, I should think, one-third ofwhat we could very well have done. Wc felt justified in doing this, owing to the piecework system-that is, owing to the necessity for soldiering under the piecework system-which I pointed out yesterday. As soon as I became gang boss the men who were working under me and who, of course, knew that I was onto the whole game of soldiering or deliberately restricting output, came to me at once and said, "Now, Fred, you are not going to be a damn piecework are you?" I said, "If you fellows mean you arc afraid I am going to try to get a larger output from these lathes," I said, "Yes; I do propose to get more work out." I said, "You must remember I have been square with you fellows up to now and worked with you. I have not broken a single rate. I have been on your side of the fence. But now I have accepted ajob under the management ofthis company and I am on the other side ofthe fence, and I will tell you perfectly frankly that I am going to try to get a bigger output from those lathes." They answered, "Then, you are going to be a damned I said, "Well, ifyou fellows put it that way, all right." They said, "We warn you, Fred, ifyou try to bust any ofthese rates, we will have you over the fence in six weeks." I said, "That is all right; I will tell you fellows again frankly that I propose to try to get a bigger output offthese machines." Now, that was the beginning of a piecework fight that lasted for nearly three years, as I remember it--two or three years--in which I was doing everything in my power to increase the output ofthe shop, while the men were absolutely determined that the output should not be increased. Anyone who has been such a fight knows and dreads the meanness ofit and the bitterness of it. I believe that if I had been an older man--a man of more experience-I the case so baldly as did Taylor, in his naive assumption that all reasonable people, including workers, would see the supreme rationality of his argument and accede to it. What he avows openly are the now-unacknowledged private assumptions of management. On the other hand, most of the academic commentators on Taylor are of limited usefulness, since everything that is so clear in Taylor becomes blurred or misunderstood. Kakar's book is a useful exception, despite his conventional conclusion that "with Taylor's ends there is no quarrel." Scientific Management 65 should have hardly gone into such a fight as this--deliberately attempting to force the men to do something they did not propose to do. We fought on the management's side with all the usual methods, and the workmen fought on their side with all their usual methods. I began by going to the management and telling them perfectly plainly, even before I accepted the gang boss-ship, what would happen. I said, "Now these men will show you, and show you conclusively, that, in the first place, I know nothing about my business; and that in the second place, I am a liar, and you are being fooled, and they will bring any amount of evidence to prove these facts beyond a shadow of a doubt." I said to the management, "The only thing I ask you, and I must have your firm promise, is that when I say a thing is so you will take my word against the word of any 20 men or any 50 men in the shop:' I "If you won't do that, I won't lift my finger toward increasing the output of this shop." They agreed to it and stuck to it, although many times they were on the verge ofbelieving I was both incompetent and untruthful. Now, I think it perhaps desirable to show the way in which that fight was conducted. I began, of course, by directing some one man to do more work than he had done before, and then I got on the lathe myself and showed him that it could be done. In spite of this, he went ahead and tumed out exactly the same old output and refused to adopt better methods or to work quicker until finally I laid him offand got another man inhis place. This new man--I could not blame him in the least under the circumstances--tumed right around and joined the other fellows and refused to do any more work than the rest. After trying this policy for a while and failing to get any results I said distinctly to the fellows, "Now, I am a mechanic; I am a machinist. I do not want to take the next step, bccause it will be contrary to what you and I look upon as our interest as machinists, but I will take it ifyou fellows won't compromise with me and get more work off of these lathes, but I warn you if! have to take this step it will be a durned mean one." I took it. I hunted up some especially intelligent laborers who were competent men, but who had not had the opportunity of learning a trade, and I deliberately taught these men how to run a lathe and how to work right and fast. Evcry one of these laborers promised me, "Now, if you will teach me the machinist's trade, when I learn to run a lathe I will do a fair day's work," and every solitary man, when I had taught them their trade, one after another turned right around and joined the rest of the fellows and refused to work one bit faster. That looked as if I were up against a stone wall, and for a time I was up against a stone wall. I did not blame even these laborers in my heart, my sympathy was with them all ofthe time, but I am telling you the facts as they then existed in the machine shops ofthis country, and in truth, as they still exist. ...j 66 Labor and Monopoly Capital When 1 had trained enough ofthese laborers so that they could run the lathes, 1 went to them and said, "Now, you men to whom I have taught a trade are in a totally different position from the machinists who were running these lathes before you came here. one of you agreed to do a certain thing for me if I taught you a trade, and now not one ofyou will keep his word. I did not break my word with you, but every one ofyou has broken his word with me. Now, I have not any mercy on you; I have not the slightest hesitation in treating you entirely differently from the machinists." I said, "I know that very heavy social pressure has been put upon you outside the works to keep you from carrying out your agreement with me, and it is very difficult for you to stand out against this pressure, but you ought not to have made your bargain with me ifyou did not intend to keep your end of it. Now, I am going to cut your rate in two tomorrow and you are going to work for half price from now on. But all you will have to do is to turn out a fair day's work and you can earn better wages than you have been earning." These men, of course, went to the management, and protested that I was a tyrant, and a nigger driver, and for a long time they stood right by the rest of the men in the shop and refused to increase their output a particle. Finally, they all ofa sudden gave right in and did a fair day's work. I want to call your attention, gentlemen, to the bitterness that was stirred up in this fight before the men finally gave in, to the meanness of it, and the contemptible conditions that exist under the old piecework system, and to show you what it leads to. In this contest, after my first fighting blood which was stirred up through strenuous opposition had subsided, I did not have any bitterness against any particular man or men. My anger and hard feelings were stirred up against the system; not against the men. Practically all ofthose men were my friends, and many of them are still my friends.* As soon as I began to be successful in forcing the men to do a fair day's work, they played what is usually the winning card. I knew that it was corning. I had predicted to the owners of the company what would happen when we began to win, and had warned them that they must stand by me; so that I had the backing of the company in taking effective steps to checkmate the final move of the men. Every time I broke a rate or forced one ofthe new men whom I had trained to work at a reasonable and proper speed, some one of the machini~s would deliberately break some part ofhis machine as an object lesson to fmonstrate to the management that a fool foreman was driving the men to overload their machines until they broke. Almost every day ingenious accidents were planned, and these happened to machines in different parts of the shop, and were, of course, always laid to the fool foreman who was driving the men and the machines beyond their proper limit. * This particular bit ofmythomania was typical ofthe man; there was apparently no truth to it. Kakar calls it "characteristic ofthe obsessional personality.,,9 Scientific Management 67 Fortunately, I had told the manage~ent in advance that this would happen, so they backed me up fully. When they began breaking their machines, I said to the men, "All right; from this time on, any accident that happens in this shop, every time you break any part of a machine you will have to pay part of the cost ofrepairing it or else quit. I don't care ifthe rooffalls in and breaks your machine, you will pay all the same." Every time a man broke anything I fmed him and then turned the money over to the mutual benefit association, so that in the end it came back to the men. But I fined them, right or wrong. They could always show every time an accident happened that it was not their fault and that it was an impossible thing for them not to break their machine under the circumstances. Finally, when they found that these tactics did not produce the desired effect on the management, they got sick and tired of being fined, their opposition broke down, and they promised to do a fair day's work. After that we were good friends, but it took three years of hard fighting to bring this about. 10 The issue here turned on the work content of a day's labor power, which Taylor defines in the phrase "a fair day's work." To this tenn he gave a crude physiological interpretation: all the work a worker can do without injury to his health, at a pace that can be sustained throughout a working lifetime. (In practice, he tended to define this level of activity at an extreme limit, choosing a pace that only a few could maintain, and then only under strain.) Why a "fair day's work" should be defined as a physiological maximum is never made clear. In attempting to give concrete meaning to the abstraction "fairness," it would make just as much if not more sense to express a fuir day's work as the amount oflabor necessary to add to the product a value equal to the worker's pay; under such conditions, of course, profit would be impossible. The phrase "a fair day's work" must therefore be regarded as inherently meaningless, and filled with such content as the adversaries in the purchase-sale relationship try to give it. Taylor set as his objective the maximum or "optimum" that can be obtained from a day's labor power. "On the part ofthe men," he said in his first book, "the greatest obstacle to the attainment ofthis standard is the slow pace which they adopt, orthe loafing or 'soldiering,' marking time, as it is called." In each of his later expositions of his system, he begins with this same point, underscoring it heavily. I I The causes ofthis soldiering he breaks into two parts: "This loafing or soldiering proceeds from two causes. First, from the natural instinct and tendency of men to take it easy, which may be called natural , soldiering. Second, from more intricate second thought and reasoning caused by their relations with other men, which may be called systematic soldiering." The first of these he quickly puts aside, to concentrate on the second: "The natural laziness ofmen is serious, but by far the greatest evil from which both workmen and employers are suffering is the systematic soldiering which is almost universal under all the ordinary schemes of management and which 68 Labor and Monopoly Capital results from a careful study on the part of the workmen ofwhat they think will promote their best interests." The greater part of systematic soldiering ... is done by the men with the deliberate object ofkeeping thcir employers ignorant ofhow fast work can be done. So universal is soldiering for this purpose, that hardly a competent workman can be found in a large establishmcnt, whether he works by the day or on piece work, contract work or under any of the ordinary systems of compensating labor, who does not devote a considerable part of his time to studying just how slowly he can work and still eonvince his employer that he is going at a good paee. The causes for this are, briefly, that practieally all employers determine upon a maximum sum which they feel it is right for each oftheir classes ofemployes to earn per day, whether their men work by the day or piece. 12 That the pay of labor is a socially determined figure, relatively independent of productivity, among employers of similar types of labor power in any given period was thus known to Taylor. Workers who produce twice or three times as much as they did the day before do not thereby double or triple their pay, but may be given a small incremental advantage over their fellows, an advantage which disappears as their level of production becomes generalized. The contest over the size of the portion of the day's labor power to be embodied in each product is thus relatively independent of the level of pay, which responds chiefly to market, social, and historical factors. The worker learns this from repeated experiences, whether working under day or piece rates: "It is, however," says Taylor, "under piece work that the art ofsystematic soldiering is thoroughly developed. After a workman has had the price per piece ofthe work he is doing lowered two or three times as a result ofhis having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely to entirely lose sight ofhis employer's side ofthe case and to become imbued with a grim determination to have no more cuts ifsoldiering can prevent it.,,13 To this it should be added that even where a piecework or "incentive" system allows the worker to increase his pay, the contest is not thereby ended but only exacerbated, because the output records now determine the setting and revision of pay rates. Taylor always took the view that workers, by acting in this fashion, were behaving rationally and with an adequate view oftheir own best interests. He claimed, in another account of his Midvale battle, that he conceded as much even in the midst ofthe struggle: "His workman friends came to him [Taylor] continually and asked him, in a personal, friendly way, whether he would advise them, for their own best interest, to tum out more work. And, as a truthful man, he had to tell them that ifhe were in their place he would fight against turning out any more work, just as they were doing, because under the Scientific Management 69 piece-work system they would be allowed to earn no more wages than they had been earning, and yet they would be made to work harder.,,14 * The conclusions which Taylor drew from the baptism by fire he received in the Midvale struggle may be summarized as follows: Workers who are controlled only by general orders and discipline are not adequately controlled, because they retain their grip on the actual processes of labor. So long as they control the labor process itself, they will thwart efforts to realize to the full the potential inherent in their labor power. To change this situation, control over the labor process must pass into the hands ofmanagement, not only in a formal sense but by the control and dictation ofeach step ofthe process, including its mode ofperformance. In pursuit ofthis end, no pains are too great, no efforts excessive, because the results will repay all efforts and expenses lavished on this demanding and costly endeavor. ** * In this respect, the later industrial sociologists took a step backward from Taylor. Rather than face the fact of a conflict of interests, they interpreted the behavior of workers in refusing to work harder and earn more under piece rates as "irrational" and "noneconomic" behavior, in contrast to that of management, which always behaved rationally. And this despite the fact that, in the observations made at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric from which the "human relations" school emerged, the "lowest producer in the room ranked first in intelligence and third in dexterity; the highest producer in the room was seventh in dexterity and lowest in inteIligence.,,15 Atleast one economist, William M. Leiserson, has given a proper judgment on workers' rationality in this connection: "... the same conditions that lead businessmen to curtail production when prices are falling, and to cut wages when labor efficiency is increasing, cause workers to limit output and reduce efficiency when wages are increasing .... Ifthe workers' reasoning is wrong, then business economics as it is mught by employers and the business practices ofmodern industry generally must be equally wrong. ,,16 The Hawthorne investigators thought, and their followers still think, that the Western Electric workers were "irrational" or motivated by "group" or "social" or other "emotional" considerations in holding their output down, despite the fact that these very Hawthorne investigations were brought to an end by the Western Electric layoffs in the Great Depression ofthc 1930s, thus demonstrating just how rational the workers' fears were. One of the most interesting inquiries into this subjcct was done in the late 1940s by a sociologist at the University of Chicago who took a job in a factory. He studied intensively eighty-four workers, and found among them only nine "rate busters," who were "social isolates" not only on the job but off; eight ofthe nine were Republicans while the shop was 70 percent Democratic, and all were from farm or middle-class backfjounds while the rest ofthe shop was predominantly working-class in family history." 7 ** Clearly, this last conclusion depends on Adam Smith's well-known principle that the division oflabor is limited by the extent of the market, and Taylorism cannot become generalized in any industry or applicable in particular situations until the scale ofproduction is adequate to support the efforts and costs involved in "rationalizing" it. It is for this reason above all that Taylorism coincides with the growth of prodUction and its concentration in ever larger corporate units in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries. 70 Labor and Monopoly Capital The fonns of management that existed prior to Taylorism, which Taylor called "ordinary management," he deemed altogether inadequate to meet these demands. His descriptions of ordinary management bear the marks of the propagandist and proselytizer: exaggeration, simplification, and schematization. But his point is clear: Now, in the best ofthe ordinary types ofmanagement, the managers recognize frankly that the ... workmen, included in the twenty or thirty trades, who are under them, possess this mass oftraditional knowledge, a large part ofwhich is not in the possession ofmanagement. The management, of course, includes foremen and superintendents, who themselves have been first-class workers at their trades. And yet these foremen and superintendents know, better than any one else, that their own knowledge and personal skill falls far short of the combined knowledge and dexterity of all the workmen under them. The most experienced managers frankly place before their workmen the problem of doing the work in the best and most economical way. They recognize the task before them as that of inducing each workman to use his best endeavors, his hardest work, all his traditional knowledge, his skill, his ingenuity, and his good-will-in a word, his "initiative," so as to yield the largest possible return to his employer. IS As we have already seen from Taylor's belief in the universal prevalence and in fact inevitability of "soldiering," he did not recommend reliance upon the "initiative" of workers. Such a course, he felt, leads to the surrender of control: "As was usual then, and in fact as is still usual in most ofthe shops in this country, the shop was really run by the workmen and not by the bosses. The workmen together had carefully planned just how fast each job should be done." In his Midvale battle, Taylor pointed out, he had located the source of the trouble in the "ignorance ofthe management as to what really constitutes a proper day's work for a workman." He had "fully realized that, although he was foreman ofthe shop, the combined knowledge and skill of the workmen who were under him was certainly ten times as great as his own.,,19 This, then, was the source of the trouble and the starting point of scientific management. We may illustrate the Taylorian solution to this dilemma in the same manner that Taylor often did: by using his story ofhis work for the Bethlehem Steel Company in supervising the moving of pig iron by hand. This story has the advantage of being the most detailed and circumstantial he set down, and also of dealing with a type of work so simple that anyone can visualize it without special technical preparation. We extract it here from Taylor's The Principles ~rScienti/'ic Management: One of the first pieces of work undertaken by us, when the writer started to introduce scientific management into the Bethlehem Steel Company, was to handle pig iron on task work. The opening of the Spanish War found some Scientific Management 71 tons of pig iron placed in small piles in an open field adjoining the works. Prices for pig iron had been so low that it could not be sold at a profit, and therefore had been stored. With the opening of the Spanish War the price of pig iron rose, and this large accumulation of iron was sold. This gave us a good opportunity to show the workmen, as well as the owners and managers of the works, on a fairly large scale the advantages of task work over the old-fashioned day work and piece work, in doing a very elementary class of work. The Bethlehem Steel Company had five blast furnaces, the product ofwhich had been handled by a pig-iron gang for many years. This gang, at this time, consisted of about 75 men. They were good, average pig-iron handlers, were under an excellent foreman who himself had been a pig-iron handler, and the work was done, on the whole, about as fast and as cheaply as it was anywhere else at that time. A railroad switch was run out into the field, right along the edge ofthe piles of pig iron. An inclined plank was placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank and dropped it on the end ofthe car. We found that this gang were loading on the average about 121/2 long tons per man per day. We were surprised to find, after studying the matter, that a first-class pig-iron handler ought to handle between 47 and 48 long tons per day, instead of 121/2 tons. This task seemed to us so very large that we were obliged to go over our work several times before we were absolutely sure that we were right. Once we were sure, however, that 47 tons was a proper day's work for a first-class pig-iron handler, the task which faced us as managers under the modem scientific plan was clearly before us. It was our duty to see that the 80,000 tons ofpig iron was loaded on to the cars at the rate of47 tons per man per day, in place of 121;2 tons, at which rate the work was then being done. And it was further our duty to see that this work was done without bringing on a strike among the men, without any quarrel with the men, and to see that the men were happier and better contented when loading at the new rate of 47 tons than they were when loading at the old rate of 121/2 tons. Our first step was the scientific selection of the workman. In dealing with workmen under this type ofmanagement, it is an inflexible rule to talk to and deal with only one man at a time, since each workman has his own special abilities and limitations, and since we are not dealing with men in masses, but are trying to develop each individual man to his highest state ofefficiency and prosperity. OUf first step was to find the proper workman to begin with. We therefore carefully watched and studied these 75 men for three or four days, at the end of which time we had picked out four men who appeared to be physically able to handle pig iron at the rate of47 tons per day. A careful was then made ofeach ofthese men. We looked up their history as far back as 72 Labor and Monopolv practicable and thorough inquiries were made as to the character, habits, and the ambition ofeach ofthem. Finally we selected one from among the four as the most likely man to start with. He was a little Pennsylvania Dutchman who had been observed to trot back home for a mile or so after his work in the evening, about as fresh as he was when he came trotting down to work in the moming. We found that upon wages of$1.15 a day he had succeeded a small plot of ground, and that he was engaged in putting up the walls of a little house for himself in the morning before starting to work and at night after leaving. He also had the reputation of being exceedingly "close," that is, of placing a very high value on a dollar. As one man whom we talked to about him said, "A penny looks about the size ofa cart-wheel to him." This man we will call Schmidt. The task before us, then, narrowed itself down to getting Schmidt to handle 47 tons of pig iron per day and making him glad to do it. This was done as follows. Schmidt was called out from among the gang ofpig-iron handlers and talked to somewhat in this way: "Schmidt, are you a high-priced man?" "Vell, I don't know vat you mean." "Oh yes, you do. What I want to know is whether you are a high-priced man or not." "Vell, I don't know vat you mean." "Oh, come now, you answer my questions. What I want to find out is whether you are a high-priced man or one ofthese cheap fellows here. What I want to find out is whether you want to earn $1.85 a day or whether you are satisfied with $1.I 5, just the same as all those cheap fellows are getting." "Did I vant $1.85 a day? Vas dot a high-priced man? Yell, yes, I vas a high-priced man." "Oh, you're aggravating me. Of course you want $1.85 a one wants it! You know perfectly well that that has very little to a high-priced man. For goodness' sake answer my questions, and don't waste any more ofmy time. Now come over here. You see that pile ofpig iron?" "Yes~'" "You see that car?" "Yes." "Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will load that pig iron on that car to-morrow for $1.85. Now do wake up and answer my question. Tell me whether you are a high-priced man or not." "Vell-did I got $1.85 forloading dot pig iron on dot car to-morrow?" "Yes, of course you do, and you get $1.85 for loading a pile like that every day right through the year. That is what a high-priced man does, and vou know it just as well as I do." Scientific Management 73 "VeIl, dot's all right. I could load dot pig iron on the car to-morrow for $1.85, and I get it every day, don't I?" "Certainly you d~ertainly you do." den, I vas a high-priced man." hold on, hold on. You know as well as I do that a high-priced man has to do as he's told from morning till You have seen this man here before, haven't you?" "No, I never saw him." "Well, ifyou are a high-priced man, you will do exactly as this man tells you to-morrow, from morning till night. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. You do that right straight through the day. And what's more, no back talk. Now a high-priced man does just what he's told to do, and no back talk. Do you understand that? When this man tells you to walk, you walk; when he tells you to sit down, you sit down, and you don't talk back at him. Now you come on to work here to-morrow morning and I'll know before night whether you are really a high-priced man or not." This seems to be rather rough talk. And indeed it would be if applied to an educated mechanic, or even an intelligent laborer. With a man of the mentally sluggish type of Schmidt it is appropriate and not unkind, since it is effective in fixing his attention on the high wages which he wants and away from what, if it were called to his attention, he probably would consider impossibly hard work .... Schmidt started to work, and all day long, and at regular intervals, was told by the man who stood over him with a watch, "Now pick up a pig and walk. Now sit down and rest. Now walk--now rest," etc. He worked when he was told to work, and rested when he was told to rest, and at half-oast five in the afternoon had his tons loaded on the car. And he practically never failed to work at this pace and do the task that was set him during the three years that the writer was at Bethlehem. And throughout this time he averaged a little more than $1.85 per day, whereas before he had never received over $1.15 per day, which was the ruling rate of wages at that time in Bethlehem. That is, he received 60 per cent. higher wages than were paid to other men who were not working on task work. One man after another was picked out and trained to handle pig iron at the rate of 47I;z tons per day until all of the pig iron was handled at this rate, and the men were receiving 60 per cent. more wages than other workmen around them,zo * The merit ofthis tale is its clarity in illustrating the pivot upon which all modem management turns: the control over work through the control over the * Daniel Bell has recorded this event as follows: "But it was in 1899 that Taylor achieved fame when he taught a Dutchman named Schmidt to shovel forty-seven tons 74 Labor and Monopoly Capital decisions that are made in the course ofwork. Since, in the case of pig-iron handling, the only decisions to be made were those having to do with a time sequence, Taylor simply dictated that timing and the results at the end of the day added up to his planned day-task. As to the use of money as motivation, while this element has a usefulness in the ftrst stages of a new mode ofwork, employers do not, when they have once found a way to compel a more rapid pace of work, continue to pay a 60 percent differential for common labor, or for any other job. Taylor was to discover (and to complain) that management treated his "scientific incentives" like any other piece rate, cutting them mercilessly so long as the labor market permitted, so that workers pushed to the Taylorian intensity found themselves getting little, or nothing, more than the going rate for the area, while other employers---under pressure of this competitive threat-forced their own workers to the higher intensities of labor.* Taylor liked to pretend that his work standards were not beyond human capabilities exercised without undue strain, but as he himself made clear, this pretense could be maintained only on the understanding that unusual physical specimens were selected for each ofhis jobs: instead of twelve and a half tons of pig iron a day. Every detail of the man's job was specified: the size of the shovel, the bite into the pile, the weight of the scoop, the distance to walk, the arc of the swing, and the rest periods that Schmidt should take. By systematically varying each factor, Taylor got the optimum amount ofbarrow load?! In the face of so much circumstantial detail, one hesitates to inquire whether Professor Bell can imagine handling a 92-pound pig of iron on a shovel, let alone what sort ofan "arc ofthe swing" one could manage, or how a "barrow" would handle a whole "scoop" of them. The point here is not that anyone may be tripped up by the use of secondary sources, or get his stories mixed, or have never seen a pig of iron; the point is that sociologists, with few exceptions, deem it proper to write about occupations, work, skills, etc. without even bare familiarity. The result is what one would get from a school ofiiterary critics who never read the novels, plays, poems they write about, but construct their theories entirely on the basis of responses to questionnaires put to "scientifically selected samples" of readers. Bell's error is only the grandfather of a long line of such misapprehensions, which become truly extraordinary as more complex forms ofwork are dealt with. In this situation, management can--and gleefully doeS:--tell academics it pleases about the evolution of work, skills, etc. * In his classic study of scientific management undertaken in 1915 for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, Robert F. Hoxie pointed out that most rate cutting in shops which had installed a formal system of scientific management took place indirectly, by creating new job classifications at lower rates, etc. He concludes that under scientific management "what amounts to rate cutting seems to be almost of necessity an essential part of its very nature." 22 Scientific Management 75 As to the scientific selection of the men, it is a fact that in this gang of 75 pig-iron handlers only about one man in eight was physically capable of handling 471/2 tons per day. With the very best of intentions, the other seven out ofeight men were physically unable to work at this pace. Now the one man in eight who was able to do this work was in no sense superior to the other men who were working on the gang. He merely happened to be a man ofthe type of the ox,-no rare specimen of humanity, difficult to find and therefore very highly prized. On the contrary, he was a man so stupid that he was unfitted to do most kinds oflaboring work, even. The selection ofthe man, then, does not involve finding some extraordinary individual, but merely picking out from among very ordinary men the few who are especially suited to this type of work. Although in this particular gang only one man in eight was suited to doing the work, we had not the slightest difficulty in getting all the men who were needed--some of them from inside the works and others from the neighboring country-who were exactly suited to the job. 23 * Taylor spent his lifetime in expounding the principles of control enunciated here, and in applying them directly to many other tasks: shoveling loose materials, lumbering, inspecting ball bearings, etc., but particularly to the machinist's trade. He believed that the forms ofcontrol he advocated could be applied not only to simple labor, but to labor in its most complex forms, without exception, and in fact it was in machine shops, bricklaying, and other such sites for the practice ofwell-developed crafts that he and his immediate successors achieved their most striking results. From earliest times to the Industrial Revolution the craft or skilled trade was the basic unit, the elementary cell of the labor process. In each craft, the worker was presumed to be the master ofa body oftraditional knowledge, and methods and procedures were left to his or her discretion. In each such worker reposed the accumulated knowledge of materials and processes by which production was accomplished in the craft. The potter, tanner, smith, weaver, carpenter, baker, miller, glassmaker, cobbler, etc., each representing a branch of the social division of labor, was a repository of human technique for the * Georges Friedmann reports that in 1927 a German physiologist, reviewing the Schmidt experience, calculated that the level of output set by Taylor could not be accepted as a standard because "most workers will succumb under the pressure ofthese labors.24 Yet Taylor persisted in calling it "a pace under which men become happier and thrive.,,25 We should also note that although Taylor called Schmidt "a man of the type of the ox," and Schmidt's stupidity has become part of the folklore of industrial sociology, Taylor himself reported that Schmidt was building his own house, presumably without anyone to tell him when to stand and when to squat. But a belief in the original stupidity ofthe worker is a necessity for management; otherwise it would have to admit that it is engaged in a wholesale enterprise of prizing and fostering stupidity. 76 Labor and Monopoly Capital labor processes of that branch. The worker combined, in mind and body, the concepts and physical dexterities ofthe specialty: technique, understood in this way, is, as has often been observed, the predecessor and progenitor ofscience. The most important and widespread ofall crafts was, and throughout the world remains to this day, that offarmer. The farming family combines its craft with the rude practice of a number of others, including those ofthe smith, mason, carpenter, butcher, miller, and baker, etc. The apprenticeships required in traditional crafts ranged from three to seven years, and for the farmer ofcourse extends beyond this to include most of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. In view of the knowledge to be assimilated, the dexterities to be gained, and the fact that the craftsman, like the professional, was required to master a specialty and become the best judge of the manner of its application to specific production problems, the years of apprenticeship were generally needed and were employed in a learning process that extended well into the journeyman decades. Ofthese trades, that ofthe machinist was in Taylor's day among the most recent, and certainly the most important to modern industry. As I have already pointed out, Taylor was not primarily concerned with the advance of technology (which, as we shall see, offers other means for direct contro lover the labor process). He did make significant contributions to the technical knowledge ofmachine-shop practice (high-speed tool steel, in particular), but these were chiefly by-products of his effort to study this practice with an eye to systematizing and classifying it. His concern was with the control of labor at any given level of technology, and he tackled his own trade with a boldness and energy which astonished his contemporaries and set the pattern for industrial engineers, work designers, and office managers from that day on. And in tackling machine-shop work, he had set himself a prodigious task. The machinist of Taylor's day started with the shop drawing, and turned, milled, bored, drilled, planed, shaped, ground, filed, and otherwise machineand hand-processed the proper stock to the desired shape as specified in the drawing. The range of decisions to be made in the course of the process is-unlike the case of a simple job, such as the handling of pig iron-by its very nature enormous. Even for the lathe alone, disregarding all collateral tasks such as the choice ofstock, handling, centering and chucking the work, layout and measuring, order of cuts, and considering only the operation of turning itself, the range of possibilities is huge. Taylor himself worked with twelve variables, including the hardness ofthe metal, the material ofthe cutting tool, the thickness ofthe shaving, the shape of the cutting tool, the use of a coolant during cutting, the depth of the cut, the frequency ofregrinding cutting tools as they became dulled, the lip and clearance angles ofthe tool, the smoothness of cutting or absence of chatter, the diameter of the stock being turned, the pressure ofthe chip or shaving on the cutting surface ofthe tool, and the speeds, Scientific Management 77 feeds, and pulling power of the machine.26 Each of these variables is subject to broad choice, ranging from a few possibilities in the selection and use of a coolant, to a very great number ofeffective choices in all matters having to do with thickness, shape, depth, duration, speed, etc. Twelve variables, each subject to a large number of choices, will yield in their possible combinations and permutations astronomical figures, as Taylor soon realized. But upon these decisions of the machinist depended not just the accuracy and finish of the product, but also the pace of production. Nothing daunted, Taylor set out to gather into management's hands all the basic information bearing on these processes. He began a series of experiments at the Midvale Steel Company, in the fall of 1880, which lasted twenty-six years, recording the results ofbetween 30,000 and 50,000 tests, and cutting up more than 800,000 pounds ofiron and steel on ten different machine tools reserved for his experimental use. * His greatest difficulty, he reported, was not testing the many variations, but holding eleven variables constant while altering the conditions ofthe twelfth. The data were systematized, correlated, and reduced to practical form in the shape of what he called a "slide rule" which would determine the optimum combination ofchoices for each step in the machining process.28 His machinists thenceforth were required to work in accordance with instructions derived from these experimental data, rather than from their own knowledge, experience, or tradition. This was the Taylor approach in its first systematic application to a complex labor process. Since the principles upon which it is based are fundamental to all advanced work design or industrial engineering today, it is important to examine them in detail. And since Taylor has been virtually alone in giving clear expression to principles which are seldom now publicly acknowledged, it is best to examine them with the aid of Taylor's own forthright formulations. First Principle "The managers assume ... the burden ofgathering together all ofthe traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen and then of '" Friedmann so far forgets this enormous machine-shop project at one point that he says: "This failure to appreciate the psychological factors in work is at least partially explained by the nature of the jobs to which Taylor exclusively confined his observations: handlers ofpig iron, shovel-laborers, and navvies." 27 He was led to this error by his marked tendency to side with the psychological and sociological schools of"human relations" and work adjustment which came after Taylor, and which he always attempts to counterpose to Taylorism, although, as we have pointed out, they operate on different levels. In general, Friedmann, with all his knowledge of work processes, suffers from a confusion of viewpoints, writing sometimes as a socialist concerned about the trends in capitalist work organization, but more often as though the various forms ofcapitalist management and personnel administration represent scrupulous efforts to find a universal answer to problems ofwork. 78 Labor and Monopoly Capital classifying, tabulating, and reducing this know ledge to rules, laws, and formulae...." 29 We have seen the illustrations of this in the cases of the lathe machinist and the pig-iron handler. The great disparity between these activities, and the different orders of knowledge that may be collected about them, illustrate that for Taylor--as for managers today--no task is either so simple or so complex that it may not be studied with the object of collecting in the hands ofmanagement at least as much information as is known by the worker who performs it regularly, and very likely more. This brings to an end the situation in which "Employers derive their knowledge ofhow much of a given class of work can be done in a day from either their own experience, which has frequently grown hazy with age, from casual and unsystematic observation oftheir men, or at best from records which are kept, showing the quickest time in which each job has been done." 30 It enables management to discover and enforce those speedier methods and shortcuts which workers themselves, in the practice of their trades or tasks, learn or improvise, and use at their own discretion only. Such an experimental approach also brings into being new methods such as can be devised only through the means of systematic study. This first principle we may call the dissociation ofthe labor process from the skills ofthe workers. The labor process is to be rendered independent of craft, tradition, and the workers' knowledge. Henceforth it is to depend not at all upon the abilities ofworkers, but entirely upon the practices ofmanagement. Second Principle "All possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centered in the planning or laying-out department. ..." 31 Since this is the key to scientific management, as Taylor well understood, he was especially emphatic on this point and it is important to examine the principle thoroughly. In the human, as we have seen, the essential feature that makes for a labor capacity superior to that of the animal is the combination of execution with a conception ofthe thing to be done. But as human labor becomes a social rather than an individual phenomenon, it is possible-unlike in the instance of animals where the motive force, instinct, is inseparable from action-to divorce conception from execution. This dehumanization ofthe labor process, in which workers are reduced almost to the level of labor in its animal form, while purposeless and unthinkable in the case of the self-organized and self-motivated social labor of a community of producers, becomes crucial for the management ofpurchased labor. For ifthe workers' execution is guided by their own conception, it is not possible, as we have seen, to enforce upon them either the methodological efficiency or the working pace desired by capital. The capitalist therefore learns from the start to take advantage of this aspect of human labor power, and to break the unity of the labor process. Scientific Management 79 This should be called the principle of the separation ofconception from execution, rather than by its more common name of the separation of mental and manual labor (even though it is similar to the latter, and in practice often identical). This is because mental labor, labor done primarily in the brain, is also subjected to the same principle of separation of conception from execution: mental labor is first separated from manual labor and, as we shall see, is then itself subdivided rigorously according to the same rule. The first implication ofthis principle is that Taylor's "science ofwork" is never to be developed by the worker, always by management. This notion, apparently so "natural" and undebatable today, was in fact vigorously discussed in Taylor's day, a fact which shows how far we have traveled along the road of transforming all ideas about the labor process in less than a century, and how completely Taylor'S hotly contested assumptions have entered into the conventional outlook within a short space of time. Taylor confronted this question-why must work be studied by the management and not by the worker himself; why not scientific workmanship rather than scientific management?--:repeatedly, and employed all his ingenuity in devising answers to it, though not always with his customary frankness. In The Principles ofScientific Management, he pointed out that the "older system" of management makes it necessary for each workman to bear almost the entire responsibility for the general plan as well as for each detail ofhis work, and in many cases for his implements as well. In addition to this he must do all of the actual physical labor. The development of a science, on the other hand, involves the establishment of many rules, laws, and formulae which replace the judgment ofthe individual workman and which can be effectively used only after having been systematically recorded, indexed, etc. The practical use of scientific data also calls for a room in which to keep the books, records, etc., and a desk for the planner to work at. Thus an of the planning which under the old system was done by the workman, as a result of his personal experience, must of necessity under the new system be done by the management in accordance with the laws of the because even if the workman was wen suited to the development and use of scientific data, it would be physically impossible for him to work at his machine and at a desk at the same time. It is also clear that in most cases one type ofman is needed to plan ahead and an entirely different type to execute the work.32 The objections having to do with physical arrangements in the workplace are clearly of little importance, and represent the deliberate exaggeration of obstacles which, while they may exist as inconveniences, are hardly insuperable. To refer to the "different type" of worker needed for each job is worse than disingenuous, since these "different types" hardly existed until the division oflabor created them. As Taylor well understood, the possession of craft knowledge made the worker the best starting point for the development ofthe i J 80 Labor and Monopoly Capital science of work; systematization often means, at least at the outset, the gathering of knowledge which workers already possess. But Taylor, secure in his obsession with the immense reasonableness of his proposed arrangement, did not stop at this point. In his testimony before the Special Committee ofthe House of Representatives, pressed and on the defensive, he brought forth still other arguments: I want to make it clear, Mr. Chairman, that work ofthis kind undertaken by the management leads to thc development of a science, while it is next to impossible for the workman to develop a science. There are many workmen who are intellectually just as capable ofdeveloping a science, who have plenty ofbrains, and are just as capable of developing a sciencc as those on the managing side. But the science of doing work of any kind cannot be developed by the workman. Why? Because he has neither the timc nor the money to do it. The development ofthe science ofdoing any kind ofwork always required the work of two men, one man who actually does the work which is to be studied and another man who observes closely thc first man while he works and studies the time problems and the motion problems connected with this work. No workman has either the time or the money to burn in making experiments of this sort. If he is working for himself no one will pay him while he studies the motions ofsome one else. The management must and ought to pay for all such work. So that for the workman, the development of a science becomes impossible, not because the workman is not intellectually capable ofdeveloping it, but he has neither the time nor the money to do it and he realizes that 33 this is a question for the management to handle. Taylor here argues that the systematic study ofwork and the fruits of this study belong to management for the very same reason that machines, factory buildings, etc., belong to them; that is, because it costs labor time to conduct such a study, and only the possessors of capital can afford labor time. The possessors of labor time cannot themselves afford to do anything with it but sell it for their means of subsistence. It is true that this is the rule in capitalist relations of production, and Taylor's use of the argument in this case shows with great clarity where the sway of capital leads: Not only is capital the property of the capitalist, but labor itself has become part of capital. Not only do the workers lose control over their instruments of production, but they must now lose control over their own labor and the manner of its performance. This control now falls to those who can "afford" to study it in order to know it better than the workers themselves know their own life activity. But Taylor has not yet completed his argument: "Furthermore," he told the Committee, "if any workman were to find a new and quicker way of doing work, or if he were to develop a new method, you can see at once it becomes to his interest to keep that development to himself, not to teach Scientific Management 81 the other workmen the quicker method. Itis to his interest to do what workmen have done in all times, to keep their trade secrets for themselves and their friends. That is the old idea oftrade secrets. The workman kept his knowledge to himselfinstead ofdeveloping a science and teaching itto others andmaking it public property.,,34 Behind this hearkening back to old ideas of "guild secrets" is Taylor's persistent and fundamental notion that the improvement ofwork methods by workers brings few benefits to management. Elsewhere in his testimony, in discussing the work of his associate, Frank Gilbreth, who spent many years studying bricklaying methods, he candidly admits that not only could the "science of bricklaying" be developed by workers, but that it undoubtedly had been: "Now, I have not the slightest doubt that during the last 4,000 years all the methods that Mr. Gilbreth developed have many, many times suggested themselves to the minds of bricklayers." But because knowledge possessed by workers is not useful to capital, Taylor begins his list of the desiderata of scientific management: "First. The development-by the management, not the workmen--of the science of bricklaying.,,35 Workers, he explains, are not going to put into execution any system or any method which harms them and their workmates: "Would they be likely," he says, referring to the pig-iron job, "to get rid of seven men out of eight from their own gang and retain only the eighth man? No!,,36 Finally, Taylor understood the Babbage principle better than anyone ofhis time, and it was always uppennost in his calculations. The purpose of work study was never, in his mind, to enhance the ability ofthe worker, to concentrate in the worker a greater share of scientific knowledge, to ensure that as technique rose, the worker would rise with it. Rather, the purpose was to cheapen the worker by decreasing his training and enlarging his output. In his early book, Shop Management, he said frankly that the "full possibilities" of his system "will not have been realized until almost all ofthe machines in the shop are run by men who are ofsmaller calibre and attainments, and who are therefore cheaper than those required under the old system.'.37 Therefore, both in order to ensure management control and to cheapen the worker, conception and execution must be rendered separate spheres ofwork, and for this purpose the study ofwork processes must be reserved to management and kept from the workers, to whom its results are communicated only in the fonn of simplified job tasks governed by simplified instructions which it is thenceforth their duty to follow unthinkingly and without comprehension ofthe underlying technical reasoning or data. Third Principle The essential idea of"the ordinary types ofmanagement," Taylor said, "is that each workman has become more skilled in his own trade than it is possible for J____________~___' 82 Labor and Monopoly Capital anyone in the management to be, and that, therefore, the details of how the work shall best be done must be left to him." But, by contrast: "Perhaps the most prominent single element in modem scientific management is the task idea. The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work. ... This task specifies not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it. ... Scientific management consists very largely in preparing for and carrying out these tasks.,,38 In this principle it is not the written instruction card that is important.* Taylor had no need for such a card with Schmidt, nor did he use one in many other instances. Rather, the essential element is the systematic pre-planning and pre-calculation ofall elements ofthe labor process, which now no longer exists as a process in the imagination ofthe worker but only as a process in the imagination of a special management staff. Thus, if the first principle is the gathering and development of knowledge of labor processes, and the second is the concentration of this knowledge as the exclusive province of management--together with its essential converse, the absence of such knowledge among the workers-then the third is the use ofthis monopoly over knowledge to control each step ofthe labor process and its mode ofexecution. As capitalist industrial, office, and market practices developed in accordance with this principle, it eventually became part of accepted routine and custom, all the more so as the increasingly scientific character of most processes, which grew in complexity while the worker was not allowed to partake ofthis growth, made itever more difficult for the workers to nnderstand the processes in which they functioned. But in the beginning, as Taylor well .. This despite the fact that for a time written instruction cards were a fetish among managers. The vogue for such cards passed as work tasks became so simplified and repetitious as to render the cards in most cases unnecessary. But the concept behind them remains: it is the concept of the direct action of management to determine the process, with the worker functioning as the mediating and closely govemed instrument. This is the significance of Lillian Gilbreth's definition of the instruction card as "a self-producer of a predetermined product.,,39 The worker as producer is ignored; management becomes the producer, and its plans and instructions bring the product into existence. This same instruction card inspired in Alfred Marshall, however, the curious opinion that from it, workers could learn how production is carried on: such a card, "whenever it comes into the hands of a thoughtful man, may suggest to him something of the purposes and methods of those who have constructed it.'>40 The worker, in Marshall's notion, having given up technical knowledge ofthe craft, is now to pick up the far more complex technical knowledge ofmodem industry from his task card, as a paleontologist reconstructs the entire animal from a fragment of a bone! Scientific Management 83 understood, an abrupt psychological wrench was required. * We have seen in the simple Schmidt case the means employed, both in the selection of a single worker as a starting point and in the way in which he was reoriented to the new conditions of work. In the more complex conditions of the machine shop, Taylor gave this part ofthe responsibility to the foremen. It is essential, he said of the gang bosses, to "nerve and brace them up to the point of insisting that the workmen shall carry out the orders exactly as specified on the instruction cards. This is a difficult task at first, as the workmen have been accustomed for years to do the details of the work to suit themselves, and many of them are intimate friends ofthe bosses and believe they know quite as much about their business as the latter.'.41 Modem management came into being on the basis ofthese principles. It arose as theoretical construct and as systematic practice, moreover, in the very period during which the transformation of labor from processes based on skill to processes based upon science was attaining its most rapid tempo. Its role was to render conscious and systematic, the formerly unconscious tendency of capitalist production. It was to ensure that as craft declined, the worker would sink to the level of general and undifferentiated labor power, adaptable to a large range ofsimple tasks, while as science grew, itwould be concentrated in the hands of management.