“struggle against alcohol…becomes a function of the state.” because he calls alcohol “the most dangerous agent of destruction of labouring power” (Gramsci, 1929, 302-4).
What did workers have to do to become members of Ford’s profit-share scheme? To receive the extra wages workers were expected to “improve their living conditions, to keep their houses clean and comfortable and to ensure they lived in a healthy, well-ventilated and well-lit environment”(Doray, 1988, 190) and about one hundred investigators were responsible for collecting information about the morality, respectability, habits and opinions of applicants over a period of years.
It should be clearly understood that Ford’s puritanical initiatives had nothing to do with saving their souls. Indeed Gramsci picks up on this point:
“It is certain that they are not concerned with the “humanity” or the “spirituality” of the worker, which are immediately smashed. This “humanity and spirituality” cannot be realised except in the world of production and work and in productive “creation”… “Puritanical” initiatives simply have the purpose of preserving, outside of work, a certain psycho-physical equilibrium which prevents the physiological collapse of the worker, exhausted by the new method of production…American industrialists are concerned to maintain the continuity of the physical and muscular-nervous efficiency of the worker. It is their interests to have a stable, skilled labour force, a permanently well-adjusted complex, because the human complex (the collective worker) of an enterprise is also a machine which cannot, without considerable loss, be taken to pieces too often and renewed with single new parts” (Gramsci, 1929, 303).
I have discussed many aspects of Taylorism and Fordism in this essay and I have argued that they were far more than just modern modes of organising labour. I have argued that while aspects of these have been seen prior to modernity many of the aspects were specific to the modern era, although Gramsci claims that they began with industrialism itself. I have argued that social and class relations were significantly effected and how workers began to be seen as machines rather than humans. I have also talked of Ford’s initiatives to make work rule whole life of the worker and of Gramsci’s opinions on the subject, how it was a whole new way of organising society.
However much more could still have been discussed. I have brushed over the changes these methods of production made in relation to science and also the effect the loss of the craftsman had on society, science and particularly culture. And of course I have not mentioned the totalitarian regimes of Nazism and Stalinism which used aspects Taylorism and Fordism with ruthless disregard for humanity. Taylorism and Fordism were far more than just modern methods of organising labour and this has to be remebered to help us understand the modern era as well as today.
Bibliography
Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air, 1982, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Braverman, Harry, Labour and Monopoly Capital, 1974, Monthly Review Press, New York.
Doray, Bernard (translation by David Macey), From Taylorism to Fordism: a Rational Madness, 1988, Free Association Books, London.
Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks, 1929-32, in Course Reader.
Simmel, Georg, The Metropolis and Modern Life, 1903, in Course Reader.
http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/index.html
Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air, 1982, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Braverman, Harry, Labour and Monopoly Capital, 1974, Monthly Review Press, New York.
Doray, Bernard (translation by David Macey), From Taylorism to Fordism: a Rational Madness, 1988, Free Association Books, London.
Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks, 1929-32, in Course Reader.
Simmel, Georg, The Metropolis and Modern Life, 1903
http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/index.html