Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 07:25:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Taylorism: A Neutral Technique for The Most Efficient Production?



Couple of small points, Rob:

Ford's "sweatshop" in the days of Taylorism paid twice the rate of any
comparable employment. This was the famous $5 a day that alarmed all the
big capitalists of his era. Incidentally it led to his losing a major
lawsuit filed against him by the Dodge Bros., who were stockholders in
Ford Motor Co.: thaey claimed he awsn't watching their equity interest by
exploitationg the workers enough. Ford was an awful place to work, but it
paid very well as industrial jobs went. This was the idea underlying
Fordism, after all. Accordingly, Ford MC was only  asweatshop in the
physical and spiritual sense. In the financial sense it was not.

Lwnin's Taylorism has to be understood against the background of the
appalling disorganization of Russian industry in his day (and indeed in
ours). One can understand the need for a system to rationalize it and
improve its efficiency without necessarily endorsing the choice of
alternatives. Actually it probably would have been better for Soviet
industry had it been effectively Taylorized. As it was, Soviet industrial
orgnaization developed into the the system in which "They pretend to pay
us and we pretend to work." Small-s soviet democracy would have been a
better choice.

I want to make clear that while I do think that a great deal of what went
wrong in Russia wenr wrong before Stalin, I do not think that Lenin was a
little Stalin or that the Stalinist system was merely a natural
development of Bolshevik policies. The old Bolshies were undemocratic and
authoritarian, but they and their way of doing things had to be wiped out
by a colossal amount of brute force for Stalinism to develop. It was
qualitatively different and much worse.

Rob misrepresents Lenin's testiment. "Rude" does not exactly translate
Lenin's famous epithet: "utterly barbaric, completely uncivilized, savage"
are better translations. Lenin wasn't concerned about a lack of good
manners but about a fundamental moral flaw. That's why he wanted Stalin
_fired_ from the GS job. It seems to me that he had the brute's number.
And recall that this was in '24, before S had shown himself to be a mass
murderer and a tyrant. It tells you something about the difference between
Stalinism and "Leninism," to give the system of the early and mid '20s a
name it never gave itself, that he couldn't never well have beena  tyrant
and mass murderer under it. None of this should be construed as
apologetics for Bolshevism. But if we criticize it we should do so for its
own failings and not Stalinism's.

--Justin


On Sat, 6 Dec 1997, Rob Schaap wrote:

> And that which is immanent in monopoly capitalism - precisely because it is
> organised along 'scientific' lines - is as immanent in any system based on
> 'scientifically' organised production.   It's all in the antihuman
> scientism that underpinned SU practices as much as it did Ford's sweatshop.
> 
> So, to build on Justin's comments - possibly to misrepresent the thrust of
> 'em completely: Lenin himself should be read in historical context.  He was
> an uncritical Taylorist - most up-to-date intellectuals were in those days.
> It is my suspicion that all that went wrong in Stalin's SU can not be
> placed at Joe's door alone.  A lot of it was in place before the brute got
> himself ensconced at the centre.  And remember, Lenin's only problem with
> Joe was that he was rude.




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