The Labour Movement and the Emergence of Taylorism

Abstract

'Systematic management' was the logical result of the emergence of mass production factories in the late 19th century. Mass production technology was however at that time limited to some of the indoor mechanical operations of the labour process. With mass production also came concentration of large masses of common labourers which dramatically increased the need for both coordination and more efficient management technically and economically. The most serious challenge to management was the political implications of the massing of non-skilled workers. The habits of work of these categories became rapidly the result of their growing egalitarian class consciousness. Taylorism must first and foremost be seen as the political and ideological reaction of capital to these tendencies. In this article different interpretations of Taylorism are discussed. It is stressed that in order to understand the problems he was trying to solve, one has to envisage the invisible patterns of power in work in the whole labour process and not limit the analysis to minor groups of formally organized workers.