Life in the Factory

...Heretofore in our discussion, modern technology seemed of secondary or even negligible importance for our problem—the search for a way to humanize work and liberate the worker...

...the former eliminated, the latter terrorized...

...Yet men have long dreamed of such a society...

...Ulysses treated him with all the respect, even love, that a benevolent master bears toward a faithful servant...

...So concludes Georges Friedman, veteran socialist and author of several studies on humanism and work.' Analogous ideas are current in American socialist thought of recent years...

...e The worker is aware of and suffers from this disrespect...

...2 Recognizing the need to rethink these problems, Mills attempts a definition of the essential evil involved in work for the modern worker...

...But there is also the worker who uses his spare time to educate himself, without desiring to "arrive" and with the aim of raising the level of the working class as a whole...

...His behavior generally, and his use of leisure time in particular, are affected...

...And he is devalued...

...But if this is so, it is not the advent of modern technology which has made work inhuman...

...The true craftsman, by contrast, is permitted a certain initiative, the exercise of personal responsibility and the use of his mental powers...

...The Negro himself, when he has been emancipated, fears nothing so much as slipping down to the workingman's status...

...Absorbed by distractions, the worker lives oblivious of that which really concerns him...

...1. Georges Friedman, Oic va le travail 7. Professor Aymard's address "Journee humain...

...It has never been otherwise, and it is not just overnight that the failure of work in this respect has become pronounced...

...Throughout history, even as far back as neolithic times, those who could choose to work (i.e., produce material goods by manual effort) or not, have always elected to abstain...

...Of a different nature is the depend...

...We live in a world where all that is available to man has not only undergone material transformation through human effort, but has been penetrated by significant interpretation...

...For Marx, Mills writes, this ideal would be realized with the abolition of capitalism...

...Bitterness over their debasement may for a time be pushed back into their subconscious depths, but they will ever breed fear in the hearts of those who profit from the established order...

...de Psychologie et d'Histoire du Travail 15-16...

...In fact, if dependence is implied, in labor, labor is inseparable from contempt for labor...

...The need to understand one's total situation, so profoundly anchored in the human being, is corrupted into the idle curiosity of a man "well-rooted in the neighborhood...

...Its concept of teaching every man a trade as well as an understanding of the sciences was not designed to compensate for the inequality of social activity...

...with contemporary intellectual culture, to assimilate the knowledge necessary for an understanding of the problems of his times and for active participation in decision making...

...An increase of literary, artistic or scientific knowledge would not change his social status...

...It is the nature of work to produce the material conditions for a fully human existence, conditions upon which the worker himself can build his own human existence...

...it is not "essential...

...The man of science, the intellectual, that spiritual prince, would then find himself reduced to serving not the spirit, but those interested in the debasement of man the worker...

...We do not believe so, but hold that the essence of the problem lies outside contemporary technological developments...

...For Marx, liberation of the worker presupposed social change whereby he would no longer be alienated from his work...

...If manual labor is to be made compatible with an integrated human existence, not merely the scorn in which it is held but the manifold dependence which is its traditional accompaniment must be abolished...

...Ulysses worked with his hands but was nonetheless free and honored...

...Those who believe it sufficient fail to recognize the complexity of the problem...

...205-07...

...Servitude falls to those who, even before becoming subject to any compulsion, lack the conditions of independence...

...John Chrysostom wrote in the 4th century: "It is not good 35 to work with the body without working with the mind, and it is sloth to work with the mind without working with the body...

...But why should manual labor be scorned...

...These they found in political movement which anticipated a future society...

...His swineherd, however, only took care of the pigs...

...There is a significant difference between responsible completion of skilled work and the execution of routine mechanical tasks...

...Professor Aymard, in holding that what was scorned in ancient Greece was not so much work as dependence, recalls that Ulysses constructed his own nuptial bed, knew how to build a boat, proudly challenged all comers to better him in cutting a field of grain...

...It proposed that the disposition of wealth as well as the management and administrative control of economic, social and political life be transferred to the workers...

...For although esteem is attached only to activities of social significance, not all such activities are productive of esteem...

...He would not grow in esteem...

...Less tired and with more leisure, would not the worker then be in a, position to acquaint himself • The worker is, of course, not alone in living as a stranger in his world and ourremarks may be extended to other social strata...

...By shortening the work day...

...male et pathologique, 41@me ann6e, No...

...What is most painful in the psychic life of the worker, even if he does not or cannot put it in these words, is that it is his very occupation which causes him to be devalued...

...When Laye decided to leave his paternal hut in Upper Guinea to become integrated in the metropolitan life of France, he did not think he would be scorned because of his color, but he was afraid he would be looked down upon if he joined the working class: "I don't want to be a worker...

...11 Labor, vital though it is for society, is among those activities which carry little or no status...

...Work would still be scorned...

...He will not devote his time to acquiring a broad intellectual culture...

...For the exploited will always tend toward revolt...

...Camara Laye, author of the recent autobiography Black Child, has given us fresh evidence of this...

...There are those who will object that a good number of workers do use their free time in educating themselves and in cultivating their minds...

...Such a hope was present in the earlier labor movement...

...torique," Revue d'Economie politique, 5. Henri de Man, La Joie au Travail, 1889...

...They must consider ways to protect the worker from the effects which his work has upon him...

...As humanity advances, as techniques develop, and as intellectual culture becomes increasingly complex, the segment of reality available to the worker shrinks...

...Here there is no equal exchange of services, no solidarity, but rather exploitation and a relationship of master to menial...

...Could not the vertical servant to master, "believer" to savant, relationship grow into a horizontal "dependence" among equals...

...The aim was to abolish the line of demarcation which had been established between noble and ignoble activities...

...And esteem is something other than that "good reputation" which is open to the worker...

...It is upon this condition alone that the Marxist vision can be realized...

...Were not these workers able to use their spare time for intellectual improvement despite their despised social status...

...9. Henri de Man, op cit...

...Other men in other periods worked with their hands and yet enjoyed freedom and esteem...

...The dependence here is de facto, it is not derived from the nature of labor...

...If the man who pushes the button of an automatic machine or tightens screws on an assembly line could engage in outside activity of social significance, would not his dependence become susceptible of transformation...

...4. Maurice Halbwachs, Les Niveaux de 8. Dr...

...The citizen will be separated from the manual laborer...

...The character of modern industrial labor—repetitive, monotonous, segmented, cut off from directed thought—considerably modifies the problem of socialism...

...They have avoided work by placing it upon those not in a position to choose, men living under the compulsion of need or of defeat, or those impotent vis-a-vis the politically powerful...

...He would continue to belong to that enormous mass whose every particle, taken by itself, is without importance...

...Although this subordinating effect of specialization has not applied to all work at all times, can one deny that it has been an inherent characteristic of work since the advent of modern technology...

...It narrows the scope of the worker's life, and prevents him from rising to mental autonomy...

...The worker would then seem hemmed in by the alternatives: eternal disgrace or eternal revolt...

...For the machine tender, dependence at the intellectual level has been "built in" at the very core of his activity...

...Homer's Ulysses is depicted as worker, warrior, and statesman...

...The case of Ulysses, however, does not prove Professor Aymard's thesis that work in the Homeric age was not yet scorned...

...With the view of rising individually above their inferior status, the career-minded lay plans for leaving the shop, if only by becoming bureaucratic "representatives" of those they leave behind...

...Relaxation and sports, so good in themselves, deteriorate in meaning and envelop the whole domain of leisure...

...If the very nature of labor is inhuman, the worker's defeat is permanent...

...This is a key idea...

...A shorter work day is doubtless indispensable but will not suffice for the solution of our problem...

...But no educational effort, no cam paign against the injustice of not respecting a man who works with his hands at a task vital to society, no call for change in attitude, will overcome the stigma attached to the worker's lot...

...With the abolition of privileges, it is "noble" activity which the worker will appropriate for himself...

...Paris, Gallimard, 1950, pp...

...Is not this "utopia" the price to pay if one wants civilization to survive—or revive...

...It is obvious that this way of seeing and thinking is not acquired in just any kind of activity—one's job furnishes neither the occasion nor the indispensable knowledge...

...Such an attitude, rare as it is these days, is not impossible...

...He who has not achieved such autonomy is at the mercy of those who have...

...9 If the worker finds himself dependent, De Man states, it is because the work process requires not only one man to carry it out, but another to coordinate it...

...I From time immemorial, the nature of work has been violated...

...Lacking orientation and autonomy, he is forced to lead an absurd existence at the fringes of civilization.* Almost a half century ago Maurice Halbwachs, in his doctoral thesis on standards of living and the working class, vaguely foresaw the worker's divorce from the centers of societal existence and, in particular, from cultural life . 4 No inner reorganization of work can or will alter this situation either for the crafts or for the petty, repetitive chores of industrial work...

...I don't want to be scorned...

...His extreme dependence is reflected in the small measure of social prestige accorded to him and his type of work...

...8 Class hierarchy, Schmoller claimed, is founded upon the diversity of social activity itself...

...but the swineherd's position was one of dependency...

...If these men, in anticipation of their escape, devote their leisure to intellectual activity, they do so only because this activity holds social significance for them—not as workers, but as individuals anticipating elevation to a higher social stratum...

...Motivated by self-interest, or in the best of instances acting heedlessly and despite a bad conscience (with "exchange of services" as ready justification) , men have found natural a social division of labor which delegates noble activities to the privileged and ignoble ones to the serfs...

...They overlook an essential effect of work on the totality of the workingman's existence...

...From this and from Ulysses and his swineherd we learn that when work constitutes the center of gravity in the daily cycle of an individual's activities and thought, then dependence is attached to it like a shadow to its object...

...This is certainly the case, but only under special conditions...

...I, Jan.-Mar., 1948...

...Industrialists and statesmen are similarly "dependent" upon one another...

...The worker would possess the riches he produced, a demand usually understood only in its material sense...

...For some elements of society the problem of alienation, although not unaffected by specialization, will demand a somewhat different solution than the one here set forth...

...But we must also understand Marx's meaning at its highest plane: the worker, he who provides the material basis for the true life of man, will possess that life...

...He focuses the problem on the separation of work from life and states the need for conceiving a new mode of life and work...

...In educating themselves with the aim of raising the workers as a class to full human dignity, such men were able to acquire both social importance and esteem in support of their leisure time intellectual activity...

...It follows likewise that Marxism is no longer able to envision a radically restructured future...

...Paris, Alcan, 1930, p. 299...

...If it is decisive, even with the abolition of capitalist property relations and the transfer of political power, the natural hierarchy based on the functions of execution and coordination would fatally reinstate the dependence of the worker at the working level and, therefore, at the social level...

...It places the worker on the lower rungs of the social ladder...

...Trying to make the worker believe he is not held in disrepute is, as Henri de Man has written, like "trying to remove from Negroes their feeling of racial inferiority by attempting to demonstrate to them, by a shower of pamphlets, that their skin is white...

...Such pursuits appear to have no connection with everyday reality, no social relevance or repercussion...

...Now, in a sudden reversal, it takes on the appearance of a decisive factor...

...This false conclusion is drawn only when one is mistaken about the nature of work...

...To comprehend and to orient oneself towards the significant and historical world need not presuppose a knowledge of all its details nor a grasp of all its sciences...

...3. Ibid, p. 351...

...Rare today are those who will not condemn the man who says to another: "You will earn my bread by the sweat of your brow...

...Are there not, however, historical facts which shed a different light on the relation between work and dependence...

...In White Collar, C. Wright Mills describes the Marxist ideal as the creation of a society in which the worker will no longer be alienated from his work...

...The most elementary conception of justice, as well as interest in a renaissance of civilization, demands that an end be put to such a state of affairs...

...If added leisure time is to be of value to the worker who is in harmony with existent society, the scorn for his status which is so prevalent in modern life will have to cease...

...Without giving up their work in the shop, the workers would organize and administer production plans themselves, would govern the city themselves...

...They would accomplish this with the aid of knowledge gained through the educational efforts of the Bourses du Travail (local union centers) . V Although the activity of work depends upon other activities superimposed upon it, it does not follow that the worker is "naturally" dependent on those placed above him...

...The latter will be driven onto one of two paths—either crass violence or camouflaged violence...

...Is the human problem involved that of compensating the worker for the loss of interest and human value in modern work...

...The technological developments have merely accentuated the problem...

...IV After the turn of the century, certain writers such as the German economist Gustav Schmoller developed the theory that if society is divided into classes, this division cannot be explained simply by the fact that some men possess the means of production and political power while others do not...

...Thus it is clear that the mere extension of leisure time cannot remedy the devaluating effect of work on the worker's existence...

...Thus the great majority of workers take but the slightest interest, if any, in "higher" leisure-time pursuits...

...The existence of a healthy and vigorous labor movement proves to be the decisive condition for overcoming the intellectual degradation of the worker, and the use he can make of extended leisure appears to be linked to an attitude of mili tancy...

...The craftsman of the middle ages, during the period when he was independent and highly esteemed, was not bound by one trade but participated actively as an autonomous individual in the administration and defense of his city...

...This theory has gained ground, notably in Henri de Man's more sophisticated version developed during the twenties...

...Does work, even professional work, enable the worker to understand and gain perspective towards his general human condition, a condition broadly determined and not to be grasped by mere knowledge of the often narrow confines of daily life...

...In any case, social reality offers to the Negro [the proletarian] mirrors enough in which he can recognize his color.5 Nothing has fundamentally changed here " since Henri de Man wrote a quarter century ago...

...ence which binds servant to master, miner to mine owner, factory hand to factory head...

...But would not a man be equally wrong in saying: "You will work yourself to death so that I may devote myself to noble pursuits...

...The demands of material life have always included activities which are neither more attractive nor more edifying than the detailed, repetitive chores of the modern era...

...Gustav Schmoller, "La Division Vie et la Classe Ouvriere, These, Paris, du Travail etudiee an point de vue his1911...

...The work life of the craftsman, however, is productive of permanent values: self-assurance, consciousness and, sometimes, status...

...Translated from the French by HARRIMAN JONES NOTES: 6. Camara Laye, L'Enfant noir, Paris, Plon, 1953, pp...

...For were he to do so, would he thereby alter his devalued status...

...Is this due to the new technical developments in modern work as distinct from the economic and social structure in which it takes place...

...Mills concludes that Marx is "guilty" of having written a hundred years ago and that his ideas, although still valuable as points of departure, are no longer adequate for grasping the essence of our modern dilemma...

...This question leads us to the heart of our problem...

...III For Professor Aymard, manual labor is derogated because it implies a state of dependence for the worker...

...Here again it is not modern technology as such which is at fault...

...Work being an activity dependent on other activities which are more important, the worker is dependent on other men who are his superiors...

...Why expend effort and submit to intellectual discipline when it is more pleasant to see a football game, to go bowling, to listen to the radio, to take in a movie, if not to go fishing and enjoy the calmness of nature, or to cultivate a patch of garden, following the progress of flowers and peas one has himself planted...

...There is the dependency of reciprocal and cooperative relationships: there can be no steel production without coal mines, no cotton goods without cotton plantations, no factories without transport...

...In these instances we note an exchange of services of more or less equal value capable of engendering solidarity...

...The machine tender, on the other hand, reaps little from his years of labor other than premature old age, fatigue, general deterioration...

...Scorn for manual labor means scorn for the laborer...

...Neither goodwill nor psychological techniques can alter social fact: esteem in all societies is apportioned on the basis of one's socially significant activities...

...Manual labor is among the latter...

...et des Techniques," Toulouse, 1941, 2. C. Wright Mills, White Collar, New printed in Journal de Psychologie norYork, 1951, p. XIX ff...

...The classical labor movement understood this...

...This second type of dependence has from time immemorial been attached to manual labor...

...It distinguished the elite of the French labor movement during its classical period, many of whose members raised themselves to a lucidity and grasp of contemporary culture which was to be envied by men otherwise more favored...

...Furthermore, work does not lead to a knowledge of social and cultural reality...

...Or the social sciences, with their psycho- and socio-technical applications, will be employed not to teach man to know himself and others better, but to manipulate man...

...One fact is certain: some forms of work provide opportunities for broadening one's horizons, others do not...

...It is the nature of servitude to taint work itself, adding to the odium of an activity already held unattractive and of low esteem...

...Thus manual labor and, consequently, the manual laborer depend upon those who possess or have at their disposal the means of production, or upon those who hold power or have it delegated to them...

...Fernand Pelloutier, spokesman for revolutionary French syndicalism, based his entire writings on the idea that the division of labor so conceived must be abolished...

...The abolition of capitalism alone will not insure the future of civilization...

...But is not this alienation from work a general condition whose causes are other than that of the worker's subordination to capital alone...

...What is needed is a good measure of knowledge appropriate for one's times: acquisition of a certain way of confronting reality spiritually, a way of penetrating reality not by the senses alone, but by the mental faculties...

...Toward this end, and in order that the benefits of this transformation might be preserved, it proposed to put science at the worker's disposal...

...Unlike the machine tender, the craftsman can find a source of satisfaction in overcoming obstacles encountered, in mastering his material...

...Those who would speak seriously of a socialism which will respect the human person must henceforth go beyond the goal of liberating the workers from capitalism...

...The latter holds no interest for the worker, makes no demands on his intelligence...

...The craftsman's long working experience results in an increasingly better understanding of his craft—but will he have learned through his work to understand society, men and the world any better...

...3 Both Friedman and Mills agree that the abolition of capitalism alone will not solve the problem of work...

...Is it not, however, utopian to conceive of a society in which all work with their hands so that all in turn may devote themselves to socially significant intellectual activity and share in the organization and conduct of public affairs...