File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 187


Date: Sat, 06 Dec 1997 11:27:55 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Taylorism & Class Struggle


Leo Casey:

>We also might ask why Gramsci,
>writing at roughly the same time and understanding quite well the dire nature
>of the Russian Revolution, understand Taylorism and Fordism quite
differently?

Trotsky understood the needs of the USSR better than Gramsci did. Gramsci
stated that Trotsky's name was associated with rapid industrialization,
specifically the measures enacted during War Communism and that Trotsky
admired the American industrial model. Fordism, of course, was the name of
this system and Gramsci found this hateful.

The problem is that Gramsci shows very little insight in 1930, when the
article was written, about the original intention of not only Trotsky, but
Lenin himself. None of the original Bolsheviks believed that socialism
could be built in the USSR without victorious revolutions in the West. When
by 1923 it became obvious that Western Europe had stabilized, Lenin began
to draw back from the sort of ambitious industrializing projects projected
just 3 years earlier. A mood of pessimism set in, expressed in the wary
"Better Fewer, but Better". Lenin says, "We, too, lack enough civilization
to enable us to pass straight on to socialism." The last thing that any
Bolsheviks, including Trotsky, were thinking about at this time was
emulating Fordism. 

The NEP reflected this changed mood. What also happened during the NEP,
shortly after Lenin died, was that the pessimism of 1923 transformed itself
into a world-view. Stalin, Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev lost hope in the
possibility of world revolution and began to focus more on the rather
utopian project of building socialism in one country. Trotsky formed a
political opposition which eventually drew support from all the major
Bolsheviks except Stalin.

After Stalin repressed the opposition, he appropriated the external
features of the their program but implemented them in such a way as to
destroy the original meaning. For example, Trotsky advocated a 5 year plan
but  Stalin's initial 5 year plan was accompanied by a general purge of the
ministry of planning, whose experts believed that the plan was untenable.
Taylorism is about rationalism and science in the industrial sphere.
Stalinism represents not rationalism and science, but diktat and
irrationality.

Gramsci was in a poor position to understand all these issues. He was in
prison and did not have access to all of the documents under discussion.
Moreover, his major focus was on the problems of capitalist society not
socialism. His remarks were directed toward "American and Fordism", not
"The USSR and Fordism". His derogatory remarks at Trotsky's expense might
have reflected the sort of prejudice that had begun to seep into Comintern
ranks. Trotsky's excesses during War Communism haunted him during these
hate campaigns, even though War Communism was approved by all of the
Bolshevik leaders.

Finally, it should be pointed out that Gramsci regarded Fordism as an
inevitable process. It is the product of competition. Leo Casey's critique
of Fordism, as I have pointed out, is ahistorical. The competition between
capitalist nations in the 1930s would have necessarily forced the USSR to
adapt to the existing realities. If Hitler is using Fordist techniques to
produce the maximum number of tanks to invade the USSR with, a socialist
leader of the USSR would be forced to respond in kind. In essence War
Communism is not a function of ideology, but existing class relations.

Gramsci, understanding the inevitability of Fordism, explained how is
should be implemented:

"It seems possible to reply that the Ford model is rational, that is, that
it should be generalized; but that a long process is needed for this,
during which a change in social conditions and in the way of life and the
habits of individuals. This, however, cannont take place through coercion
alone, but only through tempering compulsion (self-discipline) with
persuasion. Persuasion should also take the form of high wages, which offer
the possibility of a better standard of living, or more exactly perhaps,
the possibility of realizing a standard of living which is adequate to the
new methods of production and work which demand a particular degree of
expenditure of muscular and nervous energy."

Louis Proyect





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