What Guarantees the Ruin of Economy? 2 страница
In the early 1970-s some capitalist firms are conducting experiments on modernizing assembly line production in order to make the work less monotonous, more meaningful and attractive and consequently more effective. To that end assembly lines are restructured: they are shortened, operations are combined, workers are moved along the line to perform a cycle of operations and so on. Measures of this kind are often depicted by bourgeois sociologists as the concern businessmen have for «humanizing labor». But actually they are caused by the urge to adapt Fordizm to the present conditions and thereby improve the methods of exploitation of the working people.
Only within socialism can labor be truly humanized. The man becomes a creative personality and is sure that his activity is socially valuable. He comprehends the science of controlling[10] production, state, society. Any form of technical progress including the assembly line is applied with the average socially normal labor intensiveness and their application is accompanied by facilitation and improvement of labor conditions» (“The Big Soviet Encyclopedia”, pub. 3, v. 27, pp. 537, 538).
It is typical of the “The Big Soviet Encyclopedia” in the third edition to have plenty of articles that only inform of the viewpoint one should share on this or that natural or social phenomenon in order to be loyal to the stagnant regime but give no information on what the phenomenon that the article is devoted to is in essence.
The article «Fordizm» quoted above with minor abridgements can be placed among the same kind. Consequently it does not contain a single word of gratitude to H. Ford for the support he lent in motorizing Soviet agriculture and for his contribution to establishing the Soviet automotive industry on the basis of «Fordizm» principles that were so severely condemned by Marxist talkers. According to the logic of the article’s authors’ argumentation one must admit the following: at Ford’s own factories «Fordizm» principles are bad, and at the Gorky car factory they are good, though work is organized pretty much the same way. Both factories have an assembly line that sets the pace of work for the entire collective, and the management seeks to increase the line’s speed. Labor discipline is demanded or otherwise the assembly line will stop or rejects will be plentiful. Manufacturing process is divided into most simple operations that are monotonous to perform throughout the working day and do not require long-term training or higher education and so on.
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On the whole this article is a fine specimen of Marxist propaganda slandering anyone who thinks differently and independently and therefore is able to solve the problems that one faces in life inventively. And this is one of the things that H. Ford and J.V. Stalin have in common. The historic myth claims that H. Ford and J.V. Stalin are very different people and the only thing that unites them is that they were contemporaries. Actually they are united by something else: in the dominating cultural tradition their aspirations and deeds are in the same way deliberately either buried in oblivion or obscured by lies. And believing those lies and myths results in misunderstanding their visions and doings equally by those who admires both of them and those who slight or hate them.
In order to understand the place they hold in history and the momentum their aspirations and deeds had in regard to the future one must turn to their own sayings. And if this is done we shall get a chance to experience a globalization of a totally different nature, of the kind that only parasites can oppose to.
4. A Campaign for What: for Capitalism?
Or for Socialism?
Humanism in Deed and in Word
Let us turn to the book by H. Ford “My Life and Work”[11] which was published in the USA in 1922 and first came out in Russian translation in the USSR as early as 1924. Let us start by dealing with the simplest issue of «humanizing labor» keeping in mind that H. Ford himself was not a «Fordist» in the very same way that Marx was not a «Marxist» and Muhammad was not a «Mohammedan».
In other words Ford’s own creative approach to life and business distinguishes him from many others who imitated him in introducing assembly line, «scientific methods» of organizing labor, etc. But they did not understand that what Ford did was inspired by a true concern about improving the life of common people by the means available to him and not by a hypocritical wish of a self-seeking financier to present himself as a humanist, reformer and «benefactor».
The proportion of disabled people among healthy people in a society and their actual way of life are universally recognized indicators, which tell how «humanistic» this society and labor in this society are. Henry Ford writes the following about this problem that is becoming more and more actual as medicine is becoming more and more capable of forcing a human soul to live in a maimed or ill body:
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«We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There is a most generous disposition to regard all of these people who are physically incapacitated for labor as a charge on society and to support them by charity. There are cases where I imagine that the support must be by charity — as, for instance, an idiot. But those cases are extraordinarily rare, and we have found it possible, among the great number of different tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an opening for almost any one and on the basis of production. The blind man or cripple can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly able-bodied man would. We do not prefer cripples — but we have demonstrated that they can earn full wages.
It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay them a lower wage, and be content with a lower output. That might be directly helping the men but it would not be helping them in the best way. The best way is always the way by which they can be put on a productive par with able-bodied men. I believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this world — that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. Most certainly business and charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does produce to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume without investigation that the full possession of faculties is a condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs. To discover just what was the real situation, I had all of the different jobs in the factory classified to the kind of machine and work — whether the physical labor involved was light, medium, or heavy; whether it were a wet or a dry job, and if not, with what kind of fluid; whether it were clean or dirty; near an oven or a furnace; the condition of the air; whether one or both hands had to be used; whether the employee stood or sat down at his work; whether it was noisy or quiet; whether it required accuracy; whether the light was natural or artificial; the number of pieces that had to be handled per hour; the weight of the material handled; and the description of the strain upon the worker. It turned out at the time of the inquiry that there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied, and practically physically perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary physical development and strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were disclosed as requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them could be satisfactorily filled by women or older children. The lightest jobs were again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by blind men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034 — although some of them required strength — did not require full physical capacity. That is, developed industry can provide wage work for a higher average of standard[12] men than are ordinarily included in any normal community. If the jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as ours have been analyzed, the proportion might be very different, yet I am quite sure that if work is sufficiently subdivided — subdivided to the point of highest economy — there will be no dearth of places in which the physically incapacitated can do a man’s job and get a man’s wage. It is economically most wasteful to accept crippled men as charges and then to teach them trivial tasks like the weaving of baskets or some other form of unremunerative hand labor, in the hope, not of aiding them to make a living, but of preventing despondency.
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When a man is taken on by the Employment Department, the theory is to put him into a job suited to his condition.If he is already at work and he does not seem able to perform the work, or if he does not like his work, he is given a transfer card, which he takes up to the transfer department, and after an examination he is tried out in some other work more suited to his condition or disposition. Those who are below the ordinary physical standards are just as good workers, rightly placed, as those who are above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already employed on this work. In two days the foreman sent a note to the transfer department releasing the able-bodied men because the blind man was able to do not only his own work but also the work that had formerly been done by the sound men.
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This salvage can be carried further. It is usually taken for granted that when a man is injured lie is simply out of the running and should be paid an allowance. But there is always a period of convalescence, especially in fracture cases, where the man is strong enough to work, and, indeed, by that time usually anxious to work, for the largest possible accident allowance can never be as great as a man’s wage. If it were, then a business would simply have an additional tax put upon it, and that tax would show up in the cost of the product. There would be less buying of the product and therefore less work for somebody. That is an inevitable sequence that must always be borne in mind.
We have experimented with bedridden men — men who were able to sit up[13]. We put black oilcloth covers or aprons over the beds and set the men to work screwing nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto Department. The men in the hospital could do it just as well as the men in the shop and they were able to receive their regular wages. In fact, their production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the usual shop production. No man had to do the work unless he wanted to. But they all wanted to. It kept time from hanging on their hands. They slept and ate better and recovered more rapidly.
(…)
At the time of the last analysis of employed, there were 9,563 sub-standard men. Of these, 123 had crippled or amputated arms, forearms, or hands. One had both hands off. There were 4 totally blind men, 207 blind in one eye, 253 with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and dumb, 60 epileptics, 4 with both legs or feet missing, 234 with one foot or leg missing. The others had minor impediments»[14] (Ch. 7, «The Terror of the Machine»)
Having read this an impudent Marxist propagandist will say that the infamous capitalist made his fortune out of invalids’ work disguising the desire to make profit by talking about human dignity of the cripples employed at his factories, comparing his «own» cripples to the cripples fully supported by social security institutions (as it supposedly should be in a society of established socialism and communism).
But when a cripple is fully supported by social security institutions and his creative and personal potential is not called for it leads to a corruption that only strong personalities can resist. It is so because man is a social being and if he is not a confirmed parasite he feels himself a normal person only when the society accepts his labor and recognizes the value of his labor’s product. Many invalids and cripples lapsed into spiritual degradation because they were not called for by society, the people around them refused to accept their wish to work having no ability and inclination to help a cripple realize himself or herself in valuable labor. Being fully provided for by social security was the last straw. Besides, historically real «charitable» foundations become a «washing machine» for money laundering and a sinecure for all kinds of parasites no matter whether those foundations operate under capitalism or under socialism.
H. Ford is more just in his attitude to employment of the sick and cripples than the bureaucratic practice of the Soviet «SOBES» (social care system in the USSR) that was satirized as far back as 1927 in a novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov “12 chairs” (known in the West as “Diamonds to sit on”). On the other hand a significant part of Marxist political work (propaganda) was nothing else but being parasitic on the labor of others while enjoying full social support according to their status in the hierarchy of bureaucratic state machinery and sociological academic and research institutions. Therefore it is clear why Marxists slander H. Ford who does not tolerate stimulating parasitism under the pretence of «social security» and «trade unions», which would enable parasites to have their share.
Besides, H. Ford sought to ensure that the enterprise under his management did not produce people with occupational diseases and cripples by itself. Many people have heard the anecdote about the following posters hanging around in workshops at Ford’s factories: «Worker, remember: God created man but did not make any spare parts!» In fact even if such posters did hang in workshops they comprised only a part of the accident prevention system. They were not the only «means» of ensuring safety or an excuse of the «God help those who help themselves» kind used by a miser who holds saving on personal safety for a major principle of running a business.
Ford shared a completely different approach to industrial safety:
«Machine safeguarding is a subject all of itself.We do not consider any machine — no matter how efficiently it may turn out its work — as a proper machine unless it is absolutely safe. We have no machines that we consider unsafe, but even at that a few accidents will happen. Every accident, no matter how trivial, is traced back by a skilled man employed solely for that purpose, and a study is made of the machine to make that same accident in the future impossible.
(…)
No reason exists why factory work should be dangerous. If a man has worked too hard or through too long hours he gets into a mental state that invites accidents. Part of the work of preventing accidents is to avoid this mental state; part is to prevent carelessness, and part is to make machinery absolutely fool-proof» (Ch. 7. «The Terror of the machine»).
Impudent Marxists can say that these are just lies and empty talking. Yet Ford’s approach to design of industrial equipment and organization of operating it includes both parts of the slogan proclaimed by the CPSU[15] as late as the 1960s: «Replace safety measures by safe equipment!» At the same time Ford unlike liars from the CPSU Central Committee of the “zastoi” (stagnation) period does not contrast «safe equipment» to «safety measures» (i.e. safe methods of work organization and of operating industrial equipment). He considers them to be the two constituents of industrial safety whereby both the equipment and work organization must be safe. Besides, Ford did some practical work to solve the problem of safe equipment and achieved success half a century before the CPSU called for it without having a practical solution. And those who denounce the inhumanity of Fordizm in the form it was applied by Ford himself should also bother to learn that Ford concludes the 7th chapter with the following words:
«Workmen will wear unsuitable clothing — ties that may be caught in a pulley, flowing sleeves, and all manner of unsuitable articles[16]. The bosses have to watch for that, and they catch most of the offenders. New machines are tested in every way before they are permitted to be installed. As a result we have practically no serious accidents. Industry needs not exact a human toll».
The attitude of personnel to their own safety described by Ford makes it clear that true humanism of labor and of social relations on the whole does not totally and exclusively depend on somebody from among the owners or managers of an enterprise. It is determined by cultural development on the whole and by the standard of work at a given enterprise in particular.
Yet sometimes the worker permits himself to start working in clothes unfit for it or to work drunk or «tipsy». He avoids wearing security clothes and accessories (breathing masks, light-protective spectacles etc.) and violates technology and organization procedures of specific works («safety measures» standards). He does this under the pretext of increasing performance but actually for the sake of raising his income «right now» or for the sake of «simplifying» technology and work organization in order to «lighten» his work to the detriment of product quality and safety. The worker thinks it possible to manufacture reject products that could heavily injure or cause some other losses to the customer or third persons. If all this is the case one need not put the blame of employees (including the working class idealized by Marxism for no reason whatsoever) for occupational injuries, occupational diseases, reject products etc. on the management and capitalists — whether in a socialist or a capitalist state.
Ford unlike the Marxists who controlled Russia’s economy and gave rise to no less than a custom of concealing mass occupational injuries and diseases is indeed a humanist because he makes it a direct responsibility of the supervisors to «catch the sinners» caring about the «sinners»’s health and about the welfare of their families notwithstanding what the «sinners» themselves having a self-confident and irresponsible attitude think to be appropriate. And this is truly a difficult task — to protect fools from themselves and at the same time make them grow wiser if possible.
What Guarantees the Ruin of Economy?
Everyone knows that Ford manufactured cars. That is why one might get an impression that Ford managed to occupy a «microeconomic» niche and afterwards made profit from maintaining a virtual monopoly for decades, and that his principles and experience cannot be applied outside this «microeconomic» niche, therefore there is nothing to learn from him. Yet Ford achieved success not only as a manufacturer of cars but also as an owner of a railroad, though he did it not on his own accord but pressed by the circumstances. The fact is that the Detroit-Toledo-Ironton railroad formed a part of «Ford Motors» production cycle. It provided freight services necessary to connect remote trade shops into a single car-manufacturing procedure. Ford writes as follows about the quality of those services:
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