Reviews: The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency,Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring New Pathways for Change,Materials Matter—Towards a Sustainable Materials Policy,Taking History to Heart: The Power of the past in Building Social Movements,Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity

This phenomenon is well described in Samuel Haber's classic, Efficiency and Uplift. Scientific Management in the Progressive Era (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964). There are several analogous works of our time with their own rhetorical labels such as “common sense management” and “reengineering.” (See Hammer Michael and Champy James , Reengineering the Corporation. A Manifesto for Business Revolution , New York, Harper Business, 1993. Also, Howard Philip K. , The Death of Common Sense. How Law is Suffocating America. New York, Random House, 1994.) These books have a similar tone, as if opposing management's idea of efficiency is intrinsically wrong.

Braverman Harry . Labor and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974.

Taylor Frederick W. , Scientific Management. Comprising Shop Management, the Principles of Scientific Management, and Testimony Before the Special House Committee. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947. (Original copyrights, 1911 by FWT; 1939 by Louise M.S. Taylor).

Braverman Harry . Labor and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 112–118, 1974.

Marx Karl . Capital. Vol 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. New York: International Publishers, 1967 (translated from the First German Edition, Hamburg: 1867).

As a personal note, my own undergraduate major was industrial engineering (U. Calif. Berkeley, 1965) and it was as common for textbooks then to praise Taylor as it was to ignore injuries. For example, one did not find references to “injury,” “accident,” or “workman's compensation,” in the indexes of these books.

Drucker Peter , writer and management consultant, said, “What is today called ‘automation’ is conceptually a logical extension of Taylor's scientific management.” This is quoted in Noble David F. , Forces of Production. A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.

In this context, it is ironic to hear managers and others talk about and talk to robots in anthropomorphic terms: “Cute little fella,” etc.

Dos Passos John . U.S.A. Part III. The Big Money. New York: Modern Library. Copyrights, John Dos Passos. p. 54, 1930–37.

Lenin VI . Selected Works, Vol 2. New York: International Publishers, p. 664, 1967.

This appeal to natural order is the same rationalization keeping women in their place, keeping slaves as slaves, and in this case, keeping workers under control. Needless to say, it is hardly a novel or creative concept in Western culture.