File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 142


Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 19:15:41 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Taylorism: A Neutral Technique for The Most Efficient Production?



We might add to this the fact that Marxism has a very rich tradition of
analysos of what's wrong with the labor process going well beyond the fact
that productive assets are privately own.ed. In a sense Marxism began with
the concern about alienation; see the fourfold discussion of Alienated
Labor in the Paris Manuscripts, only one aspect of which refers to the
seperation of the worker from the means of production. Marx never
abandoned this perspective. He deepened and developed it. Most of Capital
I can be read as an analysis of the inner workings of the labor process.

I think that Louis P sort of misses the point by taking up the issue of
Soviet labor in the late 1920s. The real crunch was in the early 20s, with
the destruction of worker control at the opoint of production, the
militarization of the trade unions and the destriction of the independence
of the workers' soviets. The standard Bolshevik excuse was that all this
was exigecy of war. The Stalinists ran a similar line in destroying
worker's control in the Spanish Republic in 1936-39. It can be plausibly
argued taht these were terrible mistakes from the point of view of
efficiency as well as of socialism.

Louis also misrepresents the situation of Soviet labor under Stalinism. He
hints that workers were "driven" by the Stakanovites, who in fact had no
authority. Even their achievements were not used to set production norms
tahrw ere enforced. To the extent taht they were used to set production
norms, the results were fudged tomajke it seem as if they were being
achieved. Soviet workers never worked hard except during WWII and the
Civil War. 

Incidentally workers were in far less danger from the GPU/NKVD than party
members, engineers, or specialists. The figures are highly contested, but
all analyses agree that ordinary workers didn't have much to worry about
in general if they kept their mouths shut. This is not, obviosuly, an
advertisement for the Terror. It's just a fact about it. 

--jks

On Thu, 4 Dec 1997, Louis Proyect wrote:

> Leo's post is entirely ahistorical and hardly worth commenting on.
> Braverman's critique was of capitalist society in the 1960s. Trying to
> extrapolate this to a country under siege is pointless. One might as well
> urge Cuba not to grow tobacco because it is an addictive product. Leo's
> problem, I'm afraid, is the same that it has always been. He is not a
> revolutionary socialist. What would "radical democracy" have looked like in
> the 1920s Soviet Union? It cannot even be imagined. The worst problem that
> Soviet workers faced from the late 20s onward was not regimentation on the
> assembly-line. It was rather that they were driven like dogs, with
> Stakhanovites and secret police all about them. And when they objected,
> they were jailed or murdered. Let's put things in their proper perspective.
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 
> > (It is by no means insignificant that the name
> >Taylorism gave to itself was 'scientific management'.) Part of it was a
> >unduly circumscribed and limited notion of class struggle, the main goal of
> >which was to gain control of the means of production -- with no real in-depth
> >analaysis of how production was organized beyond the fact that it was
> >privately owned. These lacunae must be understood and confronted if the
> >Marxist tradition is to succesfully deal with these issues today.
> >
> >Leo Casey
> >
> >
> >
> >     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---





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