Class, Conception and Conflict : The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labor and The Working Class Rebellion, 1903-22

Palmer, Bryan D.

doi:10.1177/048661347500700203

Cited by 34 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…This new ideology of efficiency through managerial control supplanted the traditional vision of the craftsman's labor as noble, "manly," and creative, with a conception of labor as simply another input into the production process, no less subject to the logic of economy and the discretionary powers of management than any other input (see Nelson, 1975:48-121;Palmer, 1975;Noble, 1977;Gordon, Edwards, and Reich, 1982:100-164;Jacoby, 1985;Montgomery, 1987:214-329;and Haydu, 1988:26-59). Thus the mutualistic self-direction of skilled laborers was directly assaulted by the new management and the social powers it sought to create.…”

Section: From Craft Control To Systematic Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing Hegemony: State/Society Relations and the Politics of Productivity in the United States

Rupert

1990

International Studies Quarterly

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Wiley and The International Studies Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Studies Quarterly. This paper argues for a historical reinterpretation of the social bases of American global hegemony in this century. The first part builds a case for three related propositions: 1) prevailing theoretical traditions in international political economy embody inadequate conceptions of states, state powers, and state/society relations and are, as a consequence, largely unable to interpret the historically concrete processes by which the socio-political basis of American global power was constructed in the twentieth century; 2) recent scholarship in historical political economy suggests potentially fruitful alternatives to prevailing understandings of state powers and the core relations of American global hegemony in this century; and 3) in light of the first two propositions a historical reinterpretation of the socio-political core of American hegemony is warranted. As a step in this direction, the second part of the paper suggests one such alternative interpretation. It is argued that the extraordinary global powers of the United States were made possible by a reconstruction of state/society relations peculiar to the U.S., simultaneously creating the social infrastructure of mass production and consumption while maintaining the formal separation between the spheres of politics and economics, public and private, which is characteristic of liberal capitalist social formations. The distinctive neoliberal quality of American hegemony may be best understood as the historical outcome of the political struggles entailed in this process of socio-political restructuring.Building upon criticisms of the two major research traditions in International Political Economy (IPE), this paper argues that the American global hegemony of this century was made possible by processes of socio-political structuring which are opaque both to neorealism and to world-system analysis by virtue of their underlying theories of the state. The reification of state/society relations by major approaches to IPE warrants undertaking a historical reinterpretation of the construction of hegemonic social relations. Understanding the social history of hegemony is an important task of the emerging literature of critical international relations scholarship, a task to

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Section: From Craft Control To Systematic Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing Hegemony: State/Society Relations and the Politics of Productivity in the United States

Rupert

1990

International Studies Quarterly

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“…Laborers worked for twelve hours per day, six days per week, generally in small groups of 10-15 men (Scammon 1870;Lucia 1965). Given these material circumstances, it is not surprising that work was glorified as the bastion of the social order, with none of the stigma of being bestial that it acquired in later years (Palmer 1975). Loggers were proud and boastful of their skills, although generally only head sawyers were sufficiently powerful t o withhold their services occasionally to gain wage increases (Jensen 1945).…”

Section: -1929mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Loggers were proud and boastful of their skills, although generally only head sawyers were sufficiently powerful t o withhold their services occasionally to gain wage increases (Jensen 1945). Given these material circumstances, it is not surprising that work was glorified as the bastion of the social order, with none of the stigma of being bestial that it acquired in later years (Palmer 1975).…”

Section: -1929mentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Transformation, Everyday Life, and Pacific Northwest Lumber Production

Warf

1988

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

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I am integrating a theory of the political economy of regional change with the literature on structuration theory, focusing on the labor process. Employing Massey's "geological" metaphor, I argue that the spatial division of labor i s reproduced through business cycles that successively change the comparative advantage of individual areas and restructure local social relations. The precise form of such a process is contingent upon the ideologies of local actors. The lumber industry of the Pacific Northwest illustrates this theme empirically. Several "rounds of production" are identified statistically. The turbulent past of the region's lumber industry i s then recreated, upholding the ideology and actions of labor unions as necessary analytical moments in its territorial reproduction within each wave of production. Finally, I explore the nature of a renewed regional geography sensitive t o local uniqueness.

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“…Marxist theories of the state and of the differences between "productive" and "non-productive" labor raise new issues connecting political economy to bureaucratic administration (Gold, et al, 1975;O'Connor, 1973O'Connor, , 1976. Finally, research on current and past worker struggles (Aronowitz, 1973); Davis, 1975;Brecher, 1972;Palmer, 1975) and on the burgeoning workers' control movement (Hunnius, 1973;Jenkins, 1973) help emphasize both how workers make history and how bureaucratic arrangements are influenced by the political activities of organized and unorganized workers and not merely by executive decision.…”

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confidence: 99%

Managerial Strategies and the Worker: a Marxist Analysis of Bureaucracy

Goldman

Houten²

1977

The Sociological Quarterly

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Systematic study of the sociology of organizations is almost absent in both the classical and modern Marxist traditions. Although some recent studies in the Marxist tradition show considerable promise, the field has been dominated by the Webenan perspective. The development of new theory should be informed by the Marxian concepts of (a) labor theory of value, (b) the forces and relations of production, (c) historical development of capitalism, and (d) class structure and class struggle. Bourgeois organizational theory has some serious deficiencies, but there is much of value that can be subsumed under the broader rubric of Marxist political economy. The potential for a Marxist theory of bureaucracy is explored in an examination of managerial strategies to minimize external uncertainties in a monopoly capitalist system, and internal uncertainties arising from the work force. Strategies for controlling the work force include the division of labor, organizational hierarchy, rules and procedures, the uses of secrecy and hoarding of knowledge, and the maintenance ofethnic and sexual divisions in the work force. Further research is needed on (a) differentiating capital accumulation and social control strategies, (b) comparisons between workers in the state and corporate sectors, (c) comparisons between work organization under full range of socialist economies and those in capitalist economies in both manufacturing and government and (d) alternatives for the future. SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF T H E SOCIOLOGY of organizations is almost absent in both the classical and modern Marxist traditions. Marxist scholars have given little attention to the bureaucratic aspects of the labor process and have thus left us without a sophisticated understanding of how managerial decision making and the institution of "bureaucratic rationality" have served the purposes of capital accumulation and social control of the work force during the capitalist epoch. This inattention has limited our knowledge of the structural contradictions of capitalist administrative practice.For the most part Marxists have ceded this area of intellectual inquiry to professors of business administration and to sociologists who take the Weberian perspective as a point of departure. Both Giddens (1973) and Wright (1974) have described the disjunction between the Marxian and Weberian traditions in a fashion that is suggestive for the study of the industrial enterprise. Wright notes:Marxists have generally continued to focus on the dynamics and contradictions of capitalist society seen as a total system, while paying relatively little attention to the organizational dynamics of the state . . . Analvsts in the Weberian tradition in contrast. have continued to treat organizations in isolation &om the social contradictions in which they are embedded (1974: 103).We hope in this paper to begin to synthesize these divergent viewpoints, and subsume current bourgeois' administrative and sociological theory and research under the broader rubric of Marxist political economy. Recent...

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Class, Conception and Conflict : The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labor and The Working Class Rebellion, 1903-22

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Producing Hegemony: State/Society Relations and the Politics of Productivity in the United States

Producing Hegemony: State/Society Relations and the Politics of Productivity in the United States

Regional Transformation, Everyday Life, and Pacific Northwest Lumber Production

Managerial Strategies and the Worker: a Marxist Analysis of Bureaucracy

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