division of labor, technology, and alienation

[black magick hustla]

The beginning of the division of labor was the beginning of class society.

When agriculture made it possible to create a specialized class not involved in production but in administration, was the beginning of the state.


As technology advanced, the specialization and fragmentation of labor has made alienation more pronounced in the sense that there are heavily specialized individuals for each aspect of production. In the 19th century, an artisan knew a lot about the aspects of production in the factory, without heavily relying on a very specialized brand of engineering. Now, it is virtually impossible to be an engineer without a degree in University.

So we as socialists face a dilemma;

What should we do about this division of labor?

Certainly, capitalism makes it very difficult to the very disenfranchised individuals to get to know the precious, specialized crafts relevant to production. Not everybody has the time and money to go to University,

Is technology getting so complex that it is getting more and more difficult for normal people to actually manage it? Certainly the early 20th century production is nowhere similar to the very complex and refined methods of production of now. Enterprises now hire chemical, electrical and mechanical engineer in their administrative layers.

So again the question, how do we deal with the division of labor. How do we establish a functioning self managed society, where every worker can participate in the administration of production? How do we deal with the heavily mistified aspect of technology?

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by Marmot

So again the question, how do we deal with the division of labor. How do we establish a functioning self managed society, where every worker can participate in the administration of production? How do we deal with the heavily mistified aspect of technology?

Interesting question.

One possible answer was in your post itself.


Not everybody has the time and money to go to University,


We can make sure everybody could have time and money to go to university. Learning a concept of technology is made hard by the educational system today. Nobody is going to school,college/university to learn stuff but to mug up something and vomit in examinations to gain marks as it is taken as an indicator for someone's knowledge. Which is used by the individuals to get employment.

And moreover everything we learn(at least in India) is mainly based on theory we get less practical experience in what we study which puts us in backseat to those who have practical knowledge in skills.

I am afraid it is not an easy task that is going to be faced by a Socialist society.

[gilhyle]

I dont think we need to know how it will end up. We only need to know how to begin. And that is a matter of increasing the involvement of more workers in administration of production, of breaking down barriers that reflect the hierarchical structure within production.

As with all aspects of socialization, we see the future prefigured in the production methods and management methods of capitalism itself.

In its initial period, capitalism used (and still does in some cases) very severly hierarchical production organisation methods, using fines for talking and singing and banning toilet trips etc. That initial period relied very much on bullying and verbal violence as a general management feature.

Trade unions subsequently and generally won certain rights (and Im talking here about imperialist countries) with regard to the organisation of work which have - in part - been reversed in the most recent period. But we can still see the trend towards consultation, organised training and more inclusive production methods generally.

For revolutionaryes these can appear as negative in that they draw workers into the management process, but they do illustrate how it will be possible to move towards techniques which rotate workers between production functions and out of production into administration, while at the same democratising administration. What we should not assume is that any of this can be done over night or should be done at the price of abandoning the discipline of the production process.

But one of the things capitalism's moves in these directions show is that changes in approach that might once have seemed unthinkable to capitalist managers and a recipe for chaos, can be integrated into the process, if done properly.

[Kropotkin Has a Posse]

Use machines as often as possible, make the most mundane of tasks to be community or workplace obligations shared by all, and allow for there to be job rotation so that you could act as a journeyman going from one job to the next. I think Marx said something about that once.

[syndicat]

gilhyle:
As with all aspects of socialization, we see the future prefigured in the production methods and management methods of capitalism itself.

I hope not, as that would mean continued class subordination and exploitation. The logic of capitalism is to subdivide the work, to concentrate the conceptual and decision-making work into a hierarchy of professionals and managers. This denies development of skill and knowledge to the workers, underdevelops their potential. This happens partly because capitalism seeks to lower its costs of labor, and thus hire more low-skill workers. But just as important it is to change the balance of power to its advantage, to disempower workers by not being dependent on them having the control over the technology. In the 19th century, before the emergence of the corporate phase of capitalism, artisans employed by companies often had the technology in their heads, hired their own helpers, and the capitalists were dependent on them to organize production.

The Taylorizing of work that began with the corporate phase of capitalism generates also a third class, the top professionals and managers, who end up controlling the labor process, designing the jobs and processes and products, and making the decisions. To continue the capitalist division of labor into a future without capitalists would simply empower this profesionnal/managerial bureaucracy. They'd be the new ruling class. This is in fact what happened in all the "Communist" countries.

What's needed, then, is a strategy and program for workers liberation that envisions re-integrating the conceptual and decision-making tasks with the actual doing of the production work, so that workers gain the skill and expertise needed to effectively control production.

What would prefigure this would be a type of mass workers movement that was run in a self-managing way, with systematic training of workers as activists and organizers, as people to run their own unions and other organizations. This integration of skill and knowledge in the workers' movement, and their self-management of their organizations, would prefigure a future of direct worker power over social production and an end to the class system.