FREE ESSAY ON FORDISM AND TAYLORISM WERE SPECIFICALLY MODERN MODES OF ORGANISING LABOUR. DISCUSS WITH REFERENCE TO GRAMSCI.

FORDISM AND TAYLORISM WERE SPECIFICALLY MODERN MODES OF ORGANISING LABOUR. DISCUSS WITH REFERENCE TO GRAMSCI.

CLT:301
MODERN TIMES 
LONG ESSAY
Fordism and Taylorism were specifically modern modes of organising labour. Discuss with
reference to Gramsci.
To begin to comprehend this statement it is first necessary to understand what is meant
by 'modern'. For Marshall Berman, Marx gives the definitive vision of the modern
environment (Berman, 1982, 21) in the Communist Manifesto: 
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of
production, and with them the relations of production, and with them all the relations of
society.... Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch
from all earlier ones. (Marx in Berman, 1982, 21)
The statement claims that Fordism and Taylorism were specifically modern modes of
organising labour which immediately suggests that this is all they were. Putting this in
the context of Marx's statement would mean that the two 'isms' only effected the
relations of production while leaving both the instruments of production and social
relations unaffected. 
In this essay I will examine if Fordism and Taylorism were indeed modern modes of
organising labour but more importantly whether, as Antonio Gramsci suggests, they had
more striking and far reaching implications in modern social relations as well as in the
changes and implementations of science. 
Were all the principles found in Fordism and Taylorism first conceived of in the modern
era? Some principles can, in fact, be seen in other instances throughout history. The
Chinese philosopher Mencius (372-289BC) dealt with concept models and systems familiar
now under the term of production management techniques. He indicated the advantages of
the division of labour. Records indicate that the ancient Greeks understood the
advantages of, and practised, uniform work methods. They employed work songs to develop a
rhythm, in order to achieve a smooth, less fatiguing tempo, to improve productivity which
we can compare to Taylor's efficiency of motion principles which were used to the same
effect.
The division of labour was recognized by Plato (427-347BC) well before Adam Smith. He
wrote in The Republic, A man whose work is confined to such limited task must necessarily
excel at it. In 1436 a Spanish visitor to the Arsenal of Venice reported witnessing a
primitive assembly line, 500 years before Henry Ford. It should be remembered that these
are isolated incidents which only show that the advantages of an efficient, well managed
labour force were understood well before the advent of Fordism and Taylorism. It was not
until Taylorism that scientific methodology was used to perfect these labour processes
and not until Fordism that these principles were implemented on a large scale and for a
sustained period of time.
Braverman explains how the use of experimental methods in the study of work did not begin
with Taylor but with craftsmen who used such methods with their own crafts. However to
compare the craftsmen's methods to Taylor's would be to miss the point. Taylorism was the
study of work by, or on behalf of, those who manage the work rather than those who
perform it and in this form the study of work has only come to the fore with the
capitalist epoch. 
I have referred on several occasions to Taylor's principles and to his time and motion
studies. I will now explain what these were and why they embody modernity, as well as
analysing the more general principles of scientific management and Gramsci's
understanding of its implications.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 1856 into a wealthy Philadelphian family and did
something almost unthinkable for members of his social status, he went to work as a
machinist and eventually as a foreman in factories owned by family friends. He
immediately realised that the methods of work in the factories were highly inefficient.
Taylor's problem with the labour processes in the factories had to do with the actual way
worker performed their tasks; their movements and the amount of energy they expended.
After becoming a foreman Taylor began using a stopwatch to measure tasks and to find ways
of reducing the time in which they were performed as well as finding ways for workers to
expend less energy by limiting their movements and making them move in particular ways.
Techniques were discovered which shaved a significant amount of time and energy from the
production process. One of the best ways of doing this, he discovered was by the division
of labour. The advantages of this system of labour had already been pointed out by Adam
Smith and Babbage. Instead of a single skilled labourer producing the whole product the
division of labour meant the production process would be separated, by the management,
into a series different tasks each one given to a separate worker. This meant that
unskilled workers could be used in almost all the labour processes and all this without
making them work longer hours.
There are two vital links that can be made here between Taylor's study of time and motion
and modernity. Firstly it would not have been possible for Taylor to conduct his study to
any great extent without standardised time, which came to the fore with modernity. The
introduction of the stop watch into the factory was important because it meant people
were measured against mechanical time rather than the more natural time. Secondly the
qualitative and quantitative shift in peoples experience during the period of modernity,
which Georg Simmel describes in The Metropolis and Modern Life, can be seen by the fact
that all Taylor's principles had the specific purpose of increasing productivity. 
Gramsci also points to the shift to quantity rather than quality where he argues that
only quantity is consistent with production; quality is usually unique, as in art, and
cannot be reproduced; whereas quantity can be reproduced, hence it is appropriate for
mass production and mass consumption by the working classes (Gramsci, 1929, 307-8).
Apart from the inefficiency Taylor was shocked by the practice of skilled workers
purposely working slowly, which he called 'soldiering'. Taylor condemned the piece-work
system of labour which he claimed necessitated soldiering among workers and he split
soldiering into two distinct types: 'natural soldiering' and 'systematic soldiering'. The
first was caused by the natural instinct and tendency of men to take it easy (Taylor in
Braverman, 1974, 67) which he dismisses quickly to move onto the second form. Systematic
soldiering, which Taylor describes as great evil is done by the men with the deliberate
object of keeping their employers ignorant of how fast work can be done(Taylor in
Braverman, 1974, 68). With his time and motion studies Taylor discovered that by
exploiting the labourer's labour power to its maximum far more could be produced so he
attempted to implement his methods to increase productivity in his workforce who were not
cooperative in the least since they disliked Taylors new methods and felt they would be
working harder with no compensation. His pressure on the workers eventually manifested
itself as Luddism on their part: some one of the machinists would deliberately break some
part of the machine(Braverman, 1974,66). This he combatted by increasing wages for those
who produced enough by his high standards. The huge increase in income from the larger
productivity would easily allow the capitalist to increase the wages of his workforce. 
Taylor's studies became known as scientific management. Braverman splits Taylor's
scientific management into three principles: the disassociation of the labour process
from the skills of the worker, the separation of conception from execution and the use of
this monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labour process (Braverman, 1974,
pages:78,80,82).
Scientific management spelled the end for the craftsman since now it was not necessary
for a worker to have any real understanding of his work, all that was needed was complete
adherence to the management; to follow their instructions exactly. Gramsci picks up on
this point of the disassociation of the labour process from the skills of the worker and
suggests that this was the purpose of American society: 
developing in the worker to the highest degree automatic and mechanical attitudes,
breaking up the old psycho-physical nexus of qualified professional work, which demands a
certain active participation of intelligence, fantasy and initiative on the part of the
worker, and reducing productive operations exclusively to the mechanical, physical
aspect. But these things, in reality, are not original or novel: they represent simply
the most recent phase of a long process which began with industrialism itself. This phase
is more intense than preceding phases, and manifests itself in more brutal forms, but it
is a phase which will itself be superseded by the creation of a psycho-physical nexus of
a new type, both different from its predecessors and undoubtedly superior. A forced
selection will ineluctably take place; a part of the old working class will be pitilessly
eliminated from the world of labour, and perhaps from the world tout court(Gramsci, 1929,
302-3).
In this quote Gramsci explains the more far reaching implications of Taylor's labour
processes, which he claims was not exclusive to the modern era but had begun with
industrialism. The part of the old working class which would be eliminated, according to
Gramsci, is the skilled manual labourer or craftsman. Although this had to some extent
occurred well before Taylorism, scientific management put the final nail in the coffin.
With the loss of the craftsman, the advent of the assembly line and the division of
labour, knowledge for production techniques passed from the worker to the management as
did the power such knowledge held. Management held the monopoly over knoledge, workers
became detached from their work were no longer required to understand what they were
doing, reducing them, as Gramsci explains, to the mechanical, physical aspect. and this
was indeed Taylors main aim: to create a factory which worked like a well oiled machine,
the labourers vital cogs or machines themselves, working at a constant optimum speed
which produced with great efficiency. And the management? High above, sitting at desks
seeking new production techniques and ways to increase productivity and efficiency and
cut costs even more.
The gap between management and labour therefore grew vastly when the management took
control of organising the labour proccess. No longer was the skilled worker irreplacable.
Now one worker was much the same as another, in fact the less skilled the worker the
better in Taylorist factories.
In Taylor's work we see the beginning of a trend which was later taken up by Ford to a
much greater degree. While working for the Bethelehem Steel Company as a task managers
for workers who carried heavy loads of pig iron from one place to another he began to
take interest in a Dutchman he calls Schmidt and particularly in the fact that this man,
after working for nine hours carrying pig iron, went to a plot of land and continued to
work there building a small house. It was obvious for Taylor therefore that Schmidt had
not used up all his energy when handling pig iron and could, concievably, be pressed to
work harder and more efficiently. By increasing Schmidt's wages from $1.15 to $1.85
(which gave him sufficient incentive to work as Taylor instructed) and making him work
exactly as he was told, Taylor succeeded in making him carry forty seven and a half tons
of iron a day as opposed to twelve and a half which was averaged before. In one step
Taylor managed to get five times the work at a very low cost, $1.85 rather than $5.75
which it would have cost him to hire five men at twelve and a half tons a man. 
For Taylor the level of output produced by Schmidt was a pace under which men become
happier and thrive(Taylor in Braverman, 1974, 75) however Georges Friedmann a German
physiologists calculated that it could not be set as a standard for workers because most
workers will succumb under the pressures of these labours(Friedmann in Braverman, 1974,
75). 
I mention this story not because Taylor managed to increase productivity in his worker by
paying a higher wage, which in itself is a very important point which I shall come back
to later, but because Taylor took an interest in what his workers were doing outside the
workplace. This is something Ford turned his attention to and which Gramsci examines
closely for its social implications. Before beginning with Gramsci's views on Ford's
initiatives I will briefly explain the principles of Fordism.
Fordism is the application of Taylorism; it is the way in which greater productivity is
achieved; not only does it develop efficiency in manufacturing, but it creates a new
model of social organization from which everything irrational or unnecessary is
discarded. The assembly line is an industrial arrangement of machines, equipment, and
workers for continuous flow of workpieces in mass-production operations. It is designed
by determining the sequences of operations for manufacture of each product component as
well as the final product. Each movement of material is made as simple and short as
possible with no cross flow or backtracking. Work assignments, numbers of machines, and
production rates are programmed so that all operations performed along the line are
compatible. 
Ford's assembly line initiatives were a revolution in the labour process, however his
profit-sharing scheme, introduced in Detroit in 1913, shows a thoughtful attempt to mould
every aspect of the lives of his workers to his company's advantage i.e. to ensure they
were working as close to their optimum efficiency as possible. This he attempted by
minimising any outside (outside of the workplace that is) strains and stresses which
would conceivably effect the workers performance in the workplace. 
Of course workers would not willingly allow their employers to interfere in their private
lives since they would not even willingly work in an assembly line which was very
unpopular and led to workers leaving Ford factories in droves to seek similarly paid
employment in factories with less strenuous, more traditional methods of production. Ford
therefore made sure the incentives were high enough to obtain their compliance in both
these matters so that workers became eager to keep their jobs regardless of how hard they
were pushed and therefore stop them leaving which was costing his company and radically
reducing the efficiency of his factories. He aimed for a stable, consistent workforce.
Gramsci better explains why increased wages are necessary in the Fordist mode of
production:
Adaptation to the new methods of production and work cannot take place simply through
social compulsion.... Coercion has therefore to be ingeniously combined with persuasion
and consent. This effect can be achieved, in forms proper to the society in question, by
higher remuneration such as to permit a particular living standard which can maintain and
restore the strength that has been worn down by the new form of toil.(Gramsci, 1929,
310). 
He does say previously, however, that higher wages are a double edged weapon because they
give workers the income to spend on vices, such as alchohol and unchecked sexual
activity, two of Fords main concerns for his workers. Both these 'vices' placed undue
stresses on Ford's workers which meant they produced less in the factory, according to
Ford. 
Gramsci argues that Fordism requires that sexual instincts of the working class be
regulated, and the institition best suited for this is the family in which regular and
mechanical sex occurs, but not irregular pursuit of sexual passion:
It seems clear that the new industrialism wants monogamy: it wants the man as worker not
to squander his nervous energies in the disorderly and stimulating pursuit of occasional
sexual satisfaction. The employee who goes to work after a night of 'excess' is no good
for his work. The exaltation of passion cannot be reconciled with the timed movements of
productive motions connected with the most perfected automatism. This complex of direct
and indirect repression and coercion exercised on the masses will undoubtedly produce
results and a new form of sexual union will emerge whose fundamental characteristic would
apparently have to be monogamy and relative stability. (Gramsci, 1929, 303-6)
Gramsci goes on to note the moral gap Fordism is creating between the bourgousie and the
working class. Bourgeois, especially its women, freely pursue sex and prostitution; their
daily lives do not require regimentation; in contrast, this does not occur in the working
class where regimentation in Taylorized work is required.
The gap also grows with regards to alchohol. Ford did not allow alchohol to be consumed
by his workers because of fears I have already mentioned. This idea of alcohol being a
great evil on the working class spread throughout America hence prohibition. According to
Gramsci prohibition was required in the working classes in order that excessive drinking
did not interfere with the discipline required in work; in contrast, the upper classes
ignored prohibition as they could afford the expensive supplies of alcohol provided by
the bootleggers. He argued that: 
Someone who works for a wage, with fixed hours, does not have time to dedicate himself to
the pursuit of drink or to sport or evading the law. and that,
struggle against alcohol...becomes a function of the state. because he calls alcohol the
most dangerous agent of destruction of labouring power (Gramsci, 1929, 302-4). 
What did workers have to do to become members of Ford's profit-share scheme? To receive
the extra wages workers were expected to improve their living conditions, to keep their
houses clean and comfortable and to ensure they lived in a healthy, well-ventilated and
well-lit environment(Doray, 1988, 190) and about one hundred investigators were
responsible for collecting information about the morality, respectability, habits and
opinions of applicants over a period of years.
It should be clearly understood that Ford's puritanical initiatives had nothing to do
with saving their souls. Indeed Gramsci picks up on this point:
It is certain that they are not concerned with the humanity or the spirituality of the
worker, which are immediately smashed. This humanity and spirituality cannot be realised
except in the world of production and work and in productive creation... Puritanical
initiatives simply have the purpose of preserving, outside of work, a certain
psycho-physical equilibrium which prevents the physiological collapse of the worker,
exhausted by the new method of production...American industrialists are concerned to
maintain the continuity of the physical and muscular-nervous efficiency of the worker. It
is their interests to have a stable, skilled labour force, a permanently well-adjusted
complex, because the human complex (the collective worker) of an enterprise is also a
machine which cannot, without considerable loss, be taken to pieces too often and renewed
with single new parts (Gramsci, 1929, 303).
I have discussed many aspects of Taylorism and Fordism in this essay and I have argued
that they were far more than just modern modes of organising labour. I have argued that
while aspects of these have been seen prior to modernity many of the aspects were
specific to the modern era, although Gramsci claims that they began with industrialism
itself. I have argued that social and class relations were significantly effected and how
workers began to be seen as machines rather than humans. I have also talked of Ford's
initiatives to make work rule whole life of the worker and of Gramsci's opinions on the
subject, how it was a whole new way of organising society.
However much more could still have been discussed. I have brushed over the changes these
methods of production made in relation to science and also the effect the loss of the
craftsman had on society, science and particularly culture. And of course I have not
mentioned the totalitarian regimes of Nazism and Stalinism which used aspects Taylorism
and Fordism with ruthless disregard for humanity. Taylorism and Fordism were far more
than just modern methods of organising labour and this has to be remebered to help us
understand the modern era as well as today. 
Bibliography
Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air, 1982, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Braverman, Harry, Labour and Monopoly Capital, 1974, Monthly Review Press, New York.
Doray, Bernard (translation by David Macey), From Taylorism to Fordism: a Rational
Madness, 1988, Free Association Books, London.
Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks, 1929-32, in Course Reader.
Simmel, Georg, The Metropolis and Modern Life, 1903, in Course Reader.
http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/index.html
Bibliography
Bibliography
Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air, 1982, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Braverman, Harry, Labour and Monopoly Capital, 1974, Monthly Review Press, New York.
Doray, Bernard (translation by David Macey), From Taylorism to Fordism: a Rational
Madness, 1988, Free Association Books, London.
Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks, 1929-32, in Course Reader.
Simmel, Georg, The Metropolis and Modern Life, 1903
http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/index.html