Drawing upon a wide range of historical sources, Chris Nyland argues that the Taylorist system of work organisation has been too hastily dismissed by Marxist and other commentators from the left. The author thus suggests that socialists should re-evaluate the potentialities of scientific management, and hat the techniques of planning and systematic work scheduling for the benefit of the working class.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Baily, Martin Neil (1981) ‘Productivity and the Services of Capital and Labor’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, no. 1, pp. 1–65.
2.
Baily, Martin Neil (1984) ‘Will Productivity Growth Recover? Has it done so already?’, The American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May, pp. 231–241.
3.
Braverman, Harry (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Monthly Review Press, New York.
4.
Chandler, Alfred D. & Redlich, Fritz (1966) ‘Recent Developments in American Business Administration and their Conceptualization’, in Stanley Choen & Forest G. Hill (eds), American Economic History, pp. 539–562.
5.
Chase, Stuart (1932) A New Deal, Macmillan, New York.
6.
Clague, Ewan (1926) ‘Index of Productivity of Labor in the Steel, Automobile, Shoe and Paper Industries’, Monthly Labor Review, vol. 23, no. 1, July, pp. 1–19.
7.
Cole, G. D. H. (1929) The Next Ten Years, Macmillan, London.
8.
Committee on Elimination of Waste (1921) Waste in Industry, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Washington.
9.
Committee on Recent Economic Changes (1929) Recent Economic Changes, McGraw-Hill Book Col, New York.
10.
Denison, Edward F. (1980) ‘The Contribution of Capital to Economic Growth’, The American Economic Review, vol. 70, no. 2, pp. 220–224.
11.
Douglas, Paul H. & Hackman, Joseph (1939) ‘The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938’, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 53, pp. 491–515 and vol. 54, pp. 29–55.
12.
Durand, Edward Dana (1930) American Industry and Commerce, Ginn and Company, Boston.
13.
Dent, Arthur George (1935) Management Planning and Control, Gee, London.
14.
Edwards, Richard (1979) Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century, Basic Books, New York.
15.
Elger, Tony (1979) Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century, Basic Books, New York.
16.
Elger, Tony (1979) ‘Valorisation and Deskilling: A Critique of Braverman’, Capital & Class7, Spring, pp. 58–99.
17.
Gillman, Joseph M. (1957) The Falling Rate of Profit: Marx's Law and its Significance to Twentieth-Century Capitalism, Dennis Dobson, London.
18.
Gorbachev, Mikhail (1986) Political Report of the Central Committee to the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Novosti Press, Moscow, 1986.
19.
Gramsci, Antonio (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Quentin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Lawrence & Wishart, London.
20.
Haber, Samuel (1964) Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era 1890-1920, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
21.
Hansen, F. R. (1985) The Breakdown of Capitalism, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
22.
Harrison, John (1982) ‘The Profit Squeeze, Unemployment and Policy: A Marxist Approach’, in Angus Maddison & Bote S. Wilpstra, Unemployment. The European Perspective, Croom Helm, London.
23.
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1964) Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
24.
Hobson, J. A. (1930) Rationalisation and Unemployment, George Allen and Unwin, London.
25.
Holt, Charles F. (1977) ‘Who Benefited from the Prosperity of the Twenties’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 14, pp. 277–289.
26.
Jacoby, Sandford M. (1983) ‘Union-Management Cooperation in the United States: Lessons from the 1920s’, Industrial and Labour Relations Review, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 18–33.
27.
Jevons, Stanley H. (1931) ‘The Second Industrial Revolution’, The Economic Journal, vol. 41, pp. 1–18.
28.
Kelly, John E. (1982) Scientific Management, Job Redesign and Work Performance, Academic Press, London.
29.
Keynes, John Maynard (1932) ‘The World's Economic Outlook’, The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 149, pp. 521–526.
30.
Lebowitz, Michael (1982) ‘The General and the Specific in Marx's Theory of Crisis’, Studies in Political Economy, no. 7, pp. 5–25.
31.
Litterer, Joseph A. (1963) ‘Systematic Management: Design for Organizational Recoupling in American Manufacturing Firms’, Business History Review, vol. 37, Winter, pp. 369–391.
32.
McKelvey, Jean Trepp (1952) AFL Attitudes toward Production 1900-1932, Cornell University, New York.
33.
Marshall, Alfred (1927) Industry and Trade, Macmillan, London.
34.
Marx, Karl (1976) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, Penguin Books.
35.
Meiksins, Peter F. (1984) ‘Scientific Management and Class Relations: A Dissenting View’, Theory and Society, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 177–209.
36.
Metcalf, Evan B. (1975) ‘Secretary Hoover and the Emergence of Macroeconomic Management’, Business History Review, vol. 49, no. 1, Spring, pp. 60–80.
37.
Nadworny, Milton J. (1955) Scientific Management and the Unions 1900-1932: A Historical Analysis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
38.
Nordhaus, William D. (1974) ‘The Falling Share of Profits’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, no. 1, pp. 169–217.
39.
Nyland, Chris (1988) Worktime and Rationalisation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
40.
Palloix, C. (1976) ‘The Labour Process: From Fordism to Neo-Fordism’, in Conference of Socialist Economists, The Labour Process and Class Strategies, Stage One Books, London.
41.
Person, H. S. (ed.) (1929) Scientific Management in American Industry(Taylor Society), Haper and Bros., New York.
42.
Reich, Robert B. (1983) The Next American Frontier, Times Books, New York.
43.
Rostow, W. W. (1983) The Barbaric Counter-Revolution, Cause and Cure, University of Texas Press, Austin.
44.
Sachs, Jeffery D. (1974) ‘Real Wages and Unemployment in the OECD Countries’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, no. 1, pp. 255–289.
45.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. (1957) The Crisis of the Old Order, Heinemann, London.
46.
Sheldon, O. (1928) ‘The Significance of Rationalization’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 6, pp. 264–269.
47.
Soule, George (1932) A Planned Society, Macmillan, New York.
48.
Soule, George (1962) Prosperity Decade, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
49.
Taylor, Frederick Winslow (1903) ‘Shop Management’, Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, vol. 24, pp. 1337–1480.
50.
Thomas, Woodlief (1928) ‘The Economic Significance of the Increased Efficiency of American Industry’, American Economic Review Supplement, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 122–138.
51.
Tugwell, Rexford Guy (1927) Industry's Coming of Age, Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York.
52.
Tugwell, Rexford Guy (1932) ‘The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez Faire’, The American Economic Review Supplement, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 75–92.
53.
Urwick, L. (1930) The Meaning of Rationalisation, Nisbet and Co. Ltd, London.
54.
Veblen, Thorstein (1921) The Engineers and the Price System, Viking Press, New York.
55.
Wells, David A. (1889) Recent Economic Changes, D. Appleton & Co., New York.
