Work in Machine Society
Tumin, Melvin
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, by Georges Friedmann. (Edited and with an introduction by Harold L. Sheppard.) Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1955. 436 pp., $6.00. No Marx-ward inclination is required...
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...LITERARY POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UKRAINE, 1917-1934, by George Luckyj...
...2) the extent to which they exercise a role in making decisions relevant to that process and their functions within it...
...But the minimal level of imagination at which the management-sponsored experiments have tended to remain is reasonably good evidence that, at least in the view of management, no substantial broadening of the scope of workers' participation is possible...
...partly on the particular sub-culture of which the worker is a member...
...the ability to work at one's own time-pace and space...
...From this threefold perspective, it is evident that any proposal to restructure the nature of work must consider three lines of consequence: productivity, profit and pleasure-at-work...
...the imposition of workrythm upon man by the machine...
...the amount of control over product and machine...
...lighting, sanitation and air improved...
...These have a second line of ramification, out of the factory and office, in those numerous places where a man meets those against whom he has learned to evaluate and measure the worth and the quality of his own job, and of himself in that job...
...the absence of reasons for pride in work...
...It seems clear, then, that at any moment in time, the equilibrium among profit, productivity and pleasure will be determined not by any rational calculation of the lines of convergence of various theoretical maxima, nor by any drastic shift in ideology, but rather by the classs struggle in its most consequential form: the conflict between labor and capital...
...and in which all proposals are ultimately referred for their evaluation to the consequences for live human beings...
...subordination of the man to the machine...
...And even in the best of pos sible meanings of Worker as Man, one would have to question seriously the extent to which any social institution, whether it be work, family, or religion, could reasonably use "total man" as a guide line to change...
...It tells how we can publish, promote and distribute your book, as we have done for hundreds of other writers...
...is the source from which he derives his income with which to demand society's resources, and which sets limits and gives form to his life chances...
...THERE ARE ERRORS, to be sure...
...A thoroughly documented scholarly work providing a mass of details on the Stalinist suppression of culture...
...partly on idiosyncratic facts of life history...
...the fragmentation of the organic totality of the work enterprise...
...ception of human needs and desires...
...Precisely because he does suspend these views of the inherent limitations in a profit-motivated society, he is able to make the greatest contribution to industrial sociology and psychology which has yet appeared in print: namely, a detailed specification of many possible ameliorations of the average condition of the machine-worker, at the same time that productivity will be maintained or increased, and no significant inroads made upon the present level or distribution of profits...
...Or, a high income may count for little in the psychic bookkeeping of an individual if he is burdened with bad relationships with a work-superior...
...Much of this material has already appeared in the New Yorker, but gathered together it makes for an extremely brilliant book, written with remarkable lucidity and from a generally radical point of view...
...arbitrariness of rule in the shop-organization...
...a gratifying BOOK MANUSCRIPTS INVITED If you are looking for a publisher, send for our free, illustrated booklet titled To the Author in Search of a Publisher...
...In the quality of these errors, one sees Friedmann's real stature...
...This, in short, is one of those rare books in which theory and fact engage in a productive dialectic...
...THE ORDER OF LISTING of these three major dimensions, the extrinsic, the relational and the intrinsic, is not the natural order of their importance...
...3) the extent to which they receive what they consider a commensurate return for energy expended and responsibility assumed...
...social relations at the job have been ameliorated...
...Edited and with an introduction by Harold L. Sheppard...
...Fragmentation of work has been increased rather than decreased in the supposed interests of efficiency under conditions of automation...
...We may think first of the objective correlates, such as the income, prestige-rating, skill requirements, educational prerequisites, continuity of employment, security systems, and the range of conditions of work, including hours, vacations, the quality of air, lighting, safety, muscular and nervous strain...
...It has recently become fashionable once again in some intellectual circles to attribute to the profit motive an indispensable role in the creation and maintenance of a productive and prosperous society...
...He raises questions concerning what concretely can be done (given a machine technology, a capitalist mode of organization, and a desired high level of productivity) to solve problems of routine...
...Also, a reprint and expansion of Wilson's travel diary written in Russia during the mid-thirties...
...But this relativity must be qualified...
...Otherwise we cannot make any organized sense out of the failure of modern industrial society even to come close to tapping the full potential of productivity in the population...
...In both of these types of cases, it is not always clear in what way and to what extent the so-called causes were really relevant to the issues...
...Crucial here are such matters as the amount of choice and decision-making...
...Sometimes mot toes and slogans are substituted for analysis...
...The power to insist upon one's point of view re garding a fair day's return for a fair day's work will be more telling than any philosophical exchanges...
...To catalogue the various dimensions of any job is to indicate at the same time the many possible consequences of work...
...His present volume, which is the second part of a projected trilogy on The Machine and Humanism, is concerned with the character of work in a machine society, in which high productivity and private profit are measures of the desirability of any proposed alteration in the work situation...
...Power to make decisions, and the right to a lion's share of profits are considered to be the unimpeachable prerogative of ownership and management...
...rest periods standardized...
...All subjects considered...
...New authors welcomed...
...Low income has less psychological significance when one has many rather than few companions at the same level...
...IN Calif.: 6253 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood series of cross-references to physiological and psychological studies...
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...in which there is a fertile yield from the interplay of various disciplines...
...When these aspects of occupation are taken into account, it is clearly no longer possible to talk about work as primarily an economic fact...
...able, that the history of the improvements of the conditions of labor can be written far more in terms of significant changes in almost all other aspects of work than in those four facets just listed...
...IT is to Georges Friedmann's great credit that he grasps the complexity of the problems involved when three divergent interests are striving for predominance in the productive process...
...No explicit proof is ever adduced by Friedmann regarding the detailed ways in which the profit motive necessarily is antagonistic to a broader conBOOKS RECEIVED RED, BLACK, BLOND AND OLIVE, by Edmund Wilson...
...His concern is with whether industrial society, given its present limits, can reasonably take into account more human needs and desires than it has done in the past...
...And the maintenance of a system of well known invidious distinctions between different jobs has been rationalized as indispensable to the efficient location, recruitment and motivation of the higher echelons of talent in the population...
...How could it be otherwise, when a man's job is the place at which he spends most of his waking hours...
...He speaks primarily from an ideological identification with the Worker as Man when he insists that pleasureinwork shall be granted importance equal to productivity and profit in the evaluation of any work situation...
...Principally they result from an over-eagerness to attribute the success of any alteration of industrial work to the increase in the workers' share of profits and decisions...
...He refuses, out of ideological conviction and the weight of scientific evidence, to be satisfied with the temporary alleviations of symptoms through the use of soporifics and tranquilizers...
...Reportage of life among the Indians, a visit to Haiti, and a description of Israeli civilization...
...fatigue...
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...and his own wide experience at various jobs in different workshops in Europe...
...No Marx-ward inclination is required to see that work is central to man's fate in modern industrial society...
...monotony...
...the narrowness of training and consequent job-immobility...
...But nothing of basic importance has occurred so far as sharing more amply the power, the prestige, the profit and the play element of work...
...But it is again to his credit that he is willing to discard, for purposes of objectivity, his own convictions regarding the narrow limits which private ownership sets upon the range of possible alternatives...
...and lastly, the extent to which the job utilizes one's talents in a way and at a level deemed appropriate for one's muscles, nervous system and self-image...
...When we confront this failure, and seek its causes, the evidence seems clearly to suggest that the productivity of any society will vary, all other things being equal, with the following four factors: (1) the extent to which the producers at all levels of talent feel valued by their society for their role in the productive process...
...the extent to which the job makes effective room for spontaneity and creativity, as against the quotient of routine, monotonous following of pre-set plans...
...The single most objectionable feature is Friedmann's failure to be analytically clear about, and ideologically extricated from, his conception of the "total individual," or the "whole man...
...Rather, he approaches his task with a firm command over a wide body of the relevant European literature...
...and (4) the extent to which there is provision for some type of creative relationship between themselves and their tasks...
...security has been increased...
...Third, there are all those elements which constitute the relationship of the individual to the job itself...
...However trivial the results may seem when compared to the possibilities when the limitations inherent in private ownership are removed, the fact remains that modern industrial society, for all its enlightenment and supposed good will, has not yet done a fragment of what can apparently be achieved to ameliorate the condition of the machine worker, without any significant consequences for profits, and, indeed, with apparently beneficent consequences for total productivity...
...The correlative error also appears, namely, an overreadiness to account for the failure of an experiment in terms of the inadequate provisions for profit-sharing and participation in decision-making...
...and the disappearance of the sense of craftsmanship...
...a somewhat less firm, but still adequate, knowledge of the American experiences and reports...
...Friedmann's documentation of the cost to the worker, in terms of a debasement of a total life pattern, which arises from considering only profit and productivity and not pleasure-in-work, may help to restore some balance to the ideological persuasions of those mobile students of the class structure who have become slightly tipsy on the way up...
...productivity for the total society, profit for the entrepreneur and pleasure for the worker...
...the real standard of living has been raised...
...Whether and how any of these aspects becomes decisive depends partly on the character of the society...
...the parochialism of the culture and life perspectives of the workers...
...the failure to recognize individual differences among workers...
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...However significant the income-dimensions of a job may be, and however important the sheerly economic aspects of production and distribution may be for a society, the non-economic aspects of both work and the economic system are often crucial in the determination of the character and fate of any population...
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...the rigidity of work-rhythms...
...Yet as Friedmann specifies the important things that can be achieved within the limits of the present system, he makes patently clear the larger possibilities under an alternative system of ownership and management...
...Since his use of Worker as Man is central to his analysis, the constant movement back and forth across lines of chemistry, physiology, psychology and sociology is sometimes more con fusing than clarifying...
...There is secondly the range of social involvements at work, those interhuman relationships where a man appraises himself of his worth in the eyes of his superiors, peers and subordinates...
...His examination of the range of possibilities is far from being the exercise in speculation which one usually confronts...
...demoralization...
...Hours of work have been reduced...
...One cannot see clearly into the core of the problems of industrial society, then, if one takes the point of view of a single segment...
...and is the single most important criterion by which he is assigned a rank in a highly rank-conscious society...
...It is noteworthy, but totally expect...
...A comprehensive grasp of these problems requires consideration of the basic interests of all elements: the consuming society, the entrepreneurs and the workers...
Vol. 3 • April 1956 • No. 2
