3. Marxism Talking on «Fordizm»
Ford and Stalin. How to Live in Humaneness · перевод (English) · раздел 7 из 42
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3. Marxism Talking on «Fordizm»
«FORDIZM, a system of organizing mass production on the line originated in the USA in the first quarter of the 20th century. (…) The founding principle of Fordizm and of the new methods of organizing production and labor it gave rise to was the assembly belt. (…) Every worker placed along the assembly line performed one operation consisting in several (sometimes even one) working movements (for example turning a nut with a wrench) that required virtually no qualification. As Ford indicates 43 % of workers required one-day long training, 36 % - from 1 day up to one week, 6 % - one or two weeks, 14 % from one month up to 1 year [7].
Introducing the assembly line along with several other technical innovations (product typification, standardization of component parts, their interchangeability and so on) enabled a sharp growth of labor productivity and decrease in manufacture costs [8] and initiated mass production (…) At the same time Fordizm intensified labor to an unprecedented extent, made it dull and mechanical. Fordizm counts on turning workers into robots and requires an extreme nervous and physical exertion. Compulsory pace of work set by the assembly line made it necessary to substitute piecework payment by payment by the hour [9]. The word «Fordizm» like «Tailorizm» before it became synonymous to exploitation of workers characteristic of the monopoly stage of capitalism, which is bent on increasing profits of capitalist monopolies.
Seeking to suppress the feeling of discontent among workers and to prevent them from organizing a fight for their rights and interests Ford introduced a military-like discipline in factories, encouraged spying among workers, ran his own police for severe punishment of active workers. For many years Ford did not permit trade unions at his factories.
In his book “My Life and Work” Ford claimed to play the role of some «social reformer» and asserted that his methods of production and labor organization could turn a bourgeois society into a «society of affluence and social harmony». Ford praised his system as the one catering for the workers making special emphasis on wages at his factories being higher than the average wage in the industry. However higher wages are connected with higher working pace, quick wear of workforce, the task to attract more and more new workers to substitute those put out of action.
Bourgeois ideologists regard the workers’ opposition to destructive social consequences of Fordizm as an opposition to technical progress. Actually the workers fight not against technical progress but against the capitalist way to use its achievements. Modern technological revolution, improvement of the workers’ education and training, strengthening of their struggle have turned Fordizm into an obstacle for labor productivity growth.
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.
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.