re comments on my Rethinking labor process theoryPaul,
Hope these additional comments clarify the earlier replies.
** Steve Gabosch (1/12/04): finds contradictory tendencies similar to those I outline in his experience at Boeing. He suggests that the 'socialization' argument might offer a new perspective for the union movement.
Thanks so much for this, Steve! A story might be relevant. One of the experiences that set me on this path in my research dates to my time as a researcher in France in the late 1970s. At the time, important sectors of the union movement were developing a critique of the capitalist division of labor very much along the neo-Marxist lines my paper describes. (Braverman was a common reference. Similar arguments were heard on the left wing of the union movements in Germany, Italy, and the UK.) Since the French unions were rather strong in the service sector, we heard a lot from them about how computerization (under capitalism) inevitably led to a deskilling of office jobs, just as it had led to the deskilling of factory jobs.
I recall vividly the frustration with this analysis that was expressed by union activists I knew in the insurance industry. These activists felt that the progressive wing of the union movement was totally discrediting itself with this deskilling analysis, since everyone who actually worked in the insurance industry had already concluded that computerization was having a hugely positive effect on most workers' well-being: eliminating a lot of truly mind-numbing form-filling-and-filing jobs, and encouraging the emergence of broader, "case management" job-designs where a single worker could handle many facets of a client's problem rather than passing it along the office-world equivalent of an assembly-line for processing by a series of ultra-specialized office workers. Yes, there was a risk of some relatively low-skilled workers losing their jobs, and even some highly skilled positions might be lost or "restructured," but these represented but a small number in comparison with the much larger number of workers for whom technological change and the associated work reorganization was largely positive.
I was struck then that the unions -- esp. the most progressive ones -- were incapable of articulating a "progressive" position that simultaneously embraced the positive effects of (capitalist) automation on the majority of workers and defended the rights of the minority of workers who were "losers" in this automation process (rights to retraining and reemployment, for example). If workers are going to become the "leading force" in society, and if unions are going to play a role in that, then surely unions will need to articulate some such "progressive" line. To date, I have found very few unions capable of doing that. Perhaps the best of those I've studied are the Australian unions in the 1980s. (See Max Ogden's chapter in a collection I edited: Technology and the Future of Work, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.)
Considering that differential "skilling"(if I may) was one of the more divisive of forces working on the proletariat of the century, it suggests the not very surprising observation that the Neo-Marxism critique of "deskilling" may represent more the consciousness of the professional sectors of the "higher proletariat" than it does the proletariat as a whole. More recently Unions in the European Community, have begun to sit up and take notice of the new developments in labour relations that maintain capital's control of means of production under conditions of extensive, large-scale socialization of forces of production. Interestingly enough it appears that the "shwerpunkt" of their strategy is the "personal contract" that isolates the contracting worker from all agencies that might represent his interests, Report of a Seminar Organized by UNI 7-8th Oct. 1999, http://www.ine.otoe.gr/interrelations/inter_doc/Uni/8.pdf "Personal Contracts and the Trade Union Role" TUC Online (2 Jul 2002) "Unions win ruling in European Court of Human Rights" http://www.tuc.org.uk/law/tuc-5169-f0.cfm Details: (2.7.2002) Press release, CHAMBER JUDGMENT IN THE CASE OF WILSON & THE NUJ, PALMER, WYETH & THE NURMTW, and DOOLAN & OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM issued by the Registrar, http://www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Press/2002/july/WilsonandOthersjudepress.htm, rather than changes in the forces of production (including "deskilling" or rationalization of intellectual work). In my opinion these Unions have read well the changing landscape of the forces of production and relations of production and are building a firm basis for strategies that will make advances on the other issues you raised; the rights of the minority of workers who were "losers" in this automation process and rights to retraining and reemployment, among others.
** Victor (1/12/04) made several points. First, that my account ignores the way that capitalist relations of production give a distinctive "form" to socialization, one he calls "diversification" (by which I understand him to mean fragmentation) -- which serves to "divide and rule" the working class.
There are certainly centrifugal forces at work. But perhaps it's useful to distinguish a few types of such forces:
* Many of these forces operate in what Marxist theory calls the ideological and political "superstructure" (the world of Karl Rove...). Obvious enough.
* Under the pressure of capitalist relations of production, workers in competing firms find that their employment prospects are conditioned by their success in competition against workers in other firms and regions. Thus fragmentation rather than unification. Understood.
a.. Under the pressure of evolving forces of production, workers in a given occupation sometimes find that occupation broken up into more specialized components (some higher-skilled and some lower-skilled. But here, you see, I think capitalist firms must simultaneously ensure the "integration" of this more "differentiated" (i.e. heterogeneous) collective worker. Thus "socialization".
It appears that the history of the socialization of labour can be more or less be divided into stages representing both the changes in the forces of production and the relations between labour and capital throughout the 20th century. I was and still am rather struck with Andy's discussion of the evolution of management policies throughout the century Blunden, A (2003) For Ethical Politic: Part Two: From Political Party to Cultural Politics and favour his Taylorism, Fordism, and Toyotism schema for representing these stages. Taylorism and Fordism certainly worked to diversify the working class and to disestablish working-class unity by building large industrial technical and administrative hierarchies accompanied by elaborate differentiations of status and income. Galloping automation, introduction of qualitatively improved instruments for information management and communications and the closely related rationalization of the intellectual aspects of all labour has rendered these expensive hierarchies (expensive to train - college and university educations and so on - and expensive to maintain) obsolete and is "making them history." It is quite likely that rationalization of intellectual labour and automation of most manual labour will generate a much more homogeneous labouring force than even that of the earliest phases of capitalist industry. Such a change would be reflected in a much more homogeneous relation between labour and capital and would likely be associated with a higher level of proletarian class solidarity than was witnessed in the 20th century.
Second, he points out that I miss the importance of "emotional-social solidarity" in contemporary workplaces, esp. evident in Japan, Deming's views, the 1930s Human Relations School.
This is a terrific point. I have another paper that discusses what I think you're getting at, and you're surely right that it deserves discussion here. The "human relations" school is much maligned (as "cow sociology" arguing for giving cows nicer surroundings so they can be milked more productively...), but, I agree with you, represents something much more ambiguous and more interesting.
In much neo-Marxist work, this "emotional-social solidarity" is presented as if it were merely a matter of securing consent and obscuring exploitation -- i.e. "false consciousness" (M. Burawoy is the main reference on this idea, almost hegemonic in (neo-) Marxist labor sociology.) I think you and I are on the same wavelength (but perhaps not!) in seeing this "subjective" aspect of the labor process not as reflecting only capitalist relations of production, but also (and mainly?) as reflecting the advanced state of the productive forces: modern factories need workers' constructive engagement. First, much production is organized in teams, and these teams require of workers considerable social skills. This team organization is an organizing principle that should be understood as part of the forces of production of modern capitalism. Second, modern production relies on highly automated machines whose functioning often requires more than merely following rules (think of the proactive problem-solving required to use a PC!!). Compare these conditions to the much "coarser" requirements of factory production a century or so ago.
Emotional-social issues are in my view an integral part of all conscious activity. Any consideration of values whether conscious or unconscious involves emotional issues, and there is no way that one can disassociate the issue of values from Historical-Materialist analysis. See Leont'ev, (1978) Marxism and Psychological Science, 5. Activity and Personality, 5.4. Motives, Emotions, and Personality, "Emotions are not subordinated to activity but appear to be its result and the "mechanism" of its movement"
One of the most irritating features of Neo-Marxist theorizing is their profound ignorance of the conditions of the proletariat to which most apparently have only the most ideational of relations. The worker and the organizations that represent him in his relations with capital have as much of an interest in the economic survival of his work place as do its capitalist owners, and the enhancement of emotional-social solidarity involved in the work process reflects both the consciousness of labour and of capital of the advanced state of productive forces rather than confusion on class issues. Frankly, as you may have noted, I have little use in general with the concept of "false consciousness." In general I regard it as an excuse for the failures of incomplete or otherwise faulty analyses to realize the objectives of their makers, period.
Third, you express concerns about "orthodox Marxism" and about my discussion of "technological determinism"
Frankly, I had trouble following your argument here Victor: I wasn't sure I understood. I wonder if you could clarify your argument. Perhaps we should do that off-line so we don't bore the list.
I agree. My thoughts here are still "in process" and though relevant to the discussion, are not well enough developed for public discussion.
Finally, you had concerns about whether my model (worker, tool, organization, object) was indeed one of "production in general" and suggested a different reading of Marx ("human activity > tool > subjects of production > product and then > labor").
Here too I confess that I had difficulty following your argument -- but I'm most eager to pursue the discussion, since there is probably something fishy about my argument if I had to "tweak" Marx's own characterization of the labor process so substantially (in particular, replacing "purposeful activity, the work itself" with "worker"). I may be reading Marx's characterization of the elements of the labor process in too static a way. My approach was based on my reading of Engeström's triangle chart. I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.
Engeström's triangle chart ref is derived from Leont'evs writings on Marxism and Psychology (1877) Activity and Consciousness, (1978) Marxism and Psychological Science, 1. Marxism and Psychological Science, 1.2. The Theory of Consciousness, which has its theoretical sources in Marx's materialist adaptation of Hegel's Philosophy of Consciousness Hegel (1830) Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Preliminaries and Logic, Marx (1845) The German Ideology and (1866) Capital, and some of Lenin's work such as his critique of Positivist interpretations of Marx, Lenin (1908) Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Naturally as a student of Vygotsky, he derives much of the experimental proofs of the general theory of consciousness from Vygotsky and his school Vygotsky (1932) Thought and Language- esp. chaps. 4 and 5. The General Theory of Consciousness (essentially the relation between subject and object as mediated by labour, i.e. the negation of subject by labour, and the negation of the negation by object) is of critical importance to Historical Materialism because as the "General Theory of Consciousness" it is the paradigm for Historical Material analysis of all subjects of conscious thought. It is for this reason that Lenin (couldn't locate the reference but Andy probably know it) emphasized the importance of a sound acquaintance of Hegel's Philosophy of Consciousness for understanding Capital. The role of the "General Theory of Consciousness" as the paradigm for research does NOT make it a catchall for all theories of human activity. If the subject of consciousness under investigation is the labour process (production regarded in isolation from relations and modes of production) then the paradigm of the "General Theory of Consciousness" is used to develop a separate Theory of the Labour-Process Marx (1866) Capital, Part II The Production of Absolute Surplus Value, Chapter VII The Labour Process and the Process of Producing Surplus Value. Now, it appears to me that the subject of your paper is an extension of Marx's investigations of elementary production (Production>Labour>Instruments of Production>Subjects of Production> -note I've changed it a bit-) rather than an elaboration of theories of consciousness (Subject>Labour>Object>) hence my proposal. Would it be presumptuous to suggest that your tweaking of the Engeström model was an intuitive recognition of its limitations as a Theory of Production?
Marx is very explicit about there not being a "General Theory of Production," Marx (1859) Critique of Political Economy, Appendix I. Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange (Circulation), 1. Production A Theory of Production involves not only considerations of the "Forces of Production," but also of the "Relations" and "Modes of Production, Marx (1859) Contributions of a Critique of Political Economy, Preface. and these as well as the forces of production are situated in singular historical-material conditions. It would be most interesting to develop a Theory of Capitalist Production that is based on your convincing presentation of the current state or, better, the probable future state of the Forces of Production in developed capitalist political economies. As I intimated earlier it appears that European Unions are well along the way in realizing such an analysis.
** A final query: The basic story I try to explore is how the experience of socialized production changes the worker's subjective identity. I probably need to develop a more cogent story about exactly how this causal chain really works. Perhaps folks on this list might have some suggestions. So far, I have these elements of a story line:
Leont'ev's paradigm for the relation between action and need, as represented in (1978) Marxism and Psychological Science, 5. Activity and Personality, 5.4. Motives, Emotions, and Personality - especially the section concerning Motives, Emotions, and Personality (Action > Need > Action)- is a good starting point for building theories of particular subjective identities, even if it is not itself a theory. Like "production" and for the same reasons as for "production" there can be no general theory of the formation of particular subjective identities. To build a theory of particular subjective identities and their evolution you must identify the particular subject/s of consciousness (relevant actions if you will) that represent the experiences relevant to the formation of that identity, determine the needs that are likely to be generated by the experiences that "populate" the selected subject of consciousness, and then to derive from the relations between experience and consequent needs the subsequent activities of those whose subjective identities you're investigating. In your paper the subject of consciousness is the productive process, the needs that arise from these are labour, instruments of production and subjects of production, and the active results are the production and reproduction of the productive process, including that of labour, the instruments of production and so on. Determination of how the experience of socialized production changes the worker's subjective identity would involve locating the contradictions that arise between the diverse experience-derived needs and between subjective consciousness and the activities produced by the interaction between experiences and needs. Steve's comments on his personal experiences as well as the recorded interviews cited in your paper provide excellent material for identifying these contradictions and researching their resolution.
Regards,
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Adler
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:29 PM
Subject: re comments on my Rethinking labor process theory
I wanted to thank the folks who responded to my article on Rethinking Labor Process Theory. I think it might be useful to recap (what I understood to be) the main points that came up and to respond briefly:
** Andy Blunden (1/10/04) pointed out that socialization is not just a matter of relations woven among workers in production: commerce (market exchange) also brings together people previously isolated (albeit in a way mediated by the 'cash nexus')
I think this is a terrific point that my paper missed entirely. I've been struck by how much sympathy (empathy is the better word perhaps) for workers in developing countries was created by the anti-sweatshop campaign. The fact that our t-shirts are produced in China or Thailand -- even if they make their way to us via long supply-chains of (sometimes more and sometimes less) independent firms -- does indeed create the possibility of a genuine human, ideational connection between the producers there and the consumers here in the US. The anti-sweatshop movement's successes in turning this business/material connection into a human/empathic one is testimony to the socializing effects of the world market.
I'm assuming Andy would agree that this socialization reaches a qualitatively new level when it enters the sphere of production as distinct from the sphere of circulation. I need to do a better job of positioning the socialization 'trope' relative to the basic concepts of marxist theory.
** Steve Gabosch (1/12/04): finds contradictory tendencies similar to those I outline in his experience at Boeing. He suggests that the 'socialization' argument might offer a new perspective for the union movement.
Thanks so much for this, Steve! A story might be relevant. One of the experiences that set me on this path in my research dates to my time as a researcher in France in the late 1970s. At the time, important sectors of the union movement were developing a critique of the capitalist division of labor very much along the neo-Marxist lines my paper describes. (Braverman was a common reference. Similar arguments were heard on the left-wing of the union movements in Germany, Italy, and the UK.) Since the French unions were rather strong in the service sector, we heard a lot from them about how computerization (under capitalism) inevitably led to a deskilling of office jobs, just as it had led to the deskilling of factory jobs.
I recall vividly the frustration with this analysis that was expressed by union activists I knew in the insurance industry. These activists felt that the progressive wing of the union movement was totally discrediting itself with this deskilling analysis, since everyone who actually worked in the insurance industry had already concluded that computerization was having a hugely positive effect on most workers' well-being: eliminating a lot of truly mind-numbing form-filling-and-filing jobs, and encouraging the emergence of broader, "case management" job-designs where a single worker could handle many facets of a client's problem rather than passing it along the office-world equivalent of an assembly-line for processing by a series of ultra-specialized office workers. Yes, there was a risk of some relatively low-skilled workers losing their jobs, and even some highly skilled positions might be lost or "restructured," but these represented but a small number in comparison with the much larger number of workers for whom technological change and the associated work reorganization was largely positive.
I was struck then that the unions -- esp the most progressive ones -- were incapable of articulating a "progressive" position that simultaneously embraced the positive effects of (capitalist) automation on the majority of workers and defended the rights of the minority of workers who were "losers" in this automation process (rights to retraining and reemployment, for example). If workers are going to become the "leading force" in society, and if unions are going to play a role in that, then surely unions will need to articulate some such "progressive" line. To date, I have found very few unions capable of doing that. Perhaps the best of those I've studied are the Australian unions in the 1980s. (See Max Ogden's chapter in a collection I edited: Technology and the Future of Work, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.)
** Victor (1/12/04) made several points. First, that my account ignores the way that capitalist relations of production give a distinctive "form" to socialization, one he calls "diversification" (by which I understand him to mean fragmentation) -- which serves to "divide and rule" the working class.
There are certainly centrifugal forces at work. But perhaps it's useful to distinguish a few types of such forces:
* Many of these forces operate in what marxist theory calls the ideological and political "superstructure" (the world of Karl Rove...). Obvious enough.
* Under the pressure of capitalist relations of production, workers in competing firms find that their employment prospects are conditioned by their success in competition against workers in other firms and regions. Thus fragmentation rather than unification. Understood.
* Under the pressure of evolving forces of production, workers in a given occupation sometimes find that occupation broken up into more specialized components (some higher-skilled and some lower-skilled. But here, you see, I think capitalist firms must simultaneously ensure the "integration" of this more "differentiated" (i.e. heterogeneous) collective worker. Thus "socialization".
Second, he points out that I miss the importance of "emotional-social solidarity" in contemporary workplaces, esp evident in Japan, Deming's views, the 1930s Human Relations school.
This is a terrific point. I have another paper that discusses what I think you're getting at, and you're surely right that it deserves discussion here. The "human relations" school is much maligned (as "cow sociology" arguing for giving cows nicer surroundings so they can be milked more productively...), but, I agree with you, represents something much more ambiguous and more interesting.
In much neo-Marxist work, this "emotional-social solidarity" is presented as if it were merely a matter of securing consent and obscuring exploitation -- i.e. "false consciousness" (M. Burawoy is the main reference on this idea, almost hegemonic in (neo-) Marxist labor sociology.) I think you and I are on the same wavelength (but perhaps not!) in seeing this "subjective" aspect of the labor process not as reflecting only capitalist relations of production, but also (and mainly?) as reflecting the advanced state of the productive forces: modern factories need workers' constructive engagement. First, much production is organized in teams, and these teams require of workers considerable social skills. This team organization is an organizing principle that should be understood as part of the forces of production of modern capitalism. Second, modern production relies on highly automated machines whose functioning often requires more than merely following rules (think of the proactive problem-solving required to use a PC!!). Compare these conditions to the much "coarser" requirements of factory production a century or so ago.
Third, you express concerns about "orthodox marxism" and about my discussion of "technological determinism"
Frankly, I had trouble following your argument here Victor: I wasn't sure I understood. I wonder if you could clarify your argument. Perhaps we should do that off-line so we don't bore the list.
Finally, you had concerns about whether my model (worker, tool, organization, object) was indeed one of "production in general" and suggested a different reading of Marx ("human activity > tool > subjects of production > product and then > labor").
Here too I confess that I had difficulty following your argument -- but I'm most eager to pursue the discussion, since there is probably something fishy about my argument if I had to "tweak" Marx's own characterization of the labor process so substantially (in particular, replacing "purposeful activity, the work itself" with "worker"). I may be reading Marx's characterization of the elements of the labor process in too static a way. My approach was based on my reading of Engestrom's triangle chart. I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.
** A final query: The basic story I try to explore is how the experience of socialized production changes the worker's subjective identity. I probably need to develop a more cogent story about exactly how this causal chain really works. Perhaps folks on this list might have some suggestions. So far, I have these elements of a story-line:
* I have found Norbert Elias' work on manners, civility and civilization very useful here -- it is profoundly (beautifully) (paleo-) Marxist, linking changes in the broader economic landscape with changes in manners and in the nature of people's self-understanding. I wonder if others on this list have found Elias' work useful. But it seems to me Elias is too descriptive and insufficiently theoretical on exactly how changes in social context reshapes subjective identities (the mechanisms linking the two).
* I have been inspired by Vygostky's thesis that "Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships" -- I wonder if it is possible to use Vygotsky to strengthen my account of how "more directly social" identities (seen as a "higher mental function") emerge in the workers' subjectivity as a result of their involvement in a more socialized production process.
* And I have also found Mike Cole's discussion of "prolepsis" useful: can "social production" be said to function as "implicature", proleptically drawing the worker into a more directly social self-understanding?
Thanks again for such thoughtful and challenging comments!
Paul
-- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Prof. Paul S. Adler, Management and Organization Dept, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0808 USC office tel: (213) 740-0748 Home office tel: (818) 981-0115 Home office fax: (818) 981-0116 Email: padler@usc.edu List of publications and course outlines at: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~padler/ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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