!

\cknowleJgcmcnts Many people provided valuable support or assistance for the publication of this book, including: Jean Heriot, Kirkpatrick Sale, Kathan Zerzan, Alice Parman, John Parman, Herb Weiner, John Roberts, Lawrence Jarach, Jean

CONTENTS

Marie Apostolides, Kathryn Longstreth-Brown, Carolyn Wayland, Lorraine Perlman, Gary Rumor, Mary Roberts, Gary Brown, James Diggs, Drake
Scott, Alex Troller and A. Hacker.
7

Preface to the Second Ed it ion Introduction to the First Edition

PART ONE 15 Beginning of Time, End of Time Languagc: Origin and M eaning Num bc r: Its Origin and Evolution

2nd, Revised Edition Anti-copyright

@ 1999 John Zerzan

1st Edition originally published by Left Bank Books (Seattle, 1988 ) . This book may be freely pirated and quoted. The author and publisher would like to be informed at: C.A.L. PressIPaleo POB 1446 Columbia, MO 65205-1446 USA
AAA

31 45
63

The Case Ag a i nst Art

Agriculture

Editions

Columbia Alternative Library

73

PART TWO

91
105

Industrialism and Domestication Who Killed Ned Ludd? Axis Point of American Industrialism Thc Practical Marx Origins and Meaning of WWI
Taylorism and Unionism

POB 11331 Eugene, OR 9744 0 USA Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

113 133 145

Zerzan, John. Elements of Refusal/John Zerzan. Columbia, Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-8 90532-01-0

MO

: C.A.L. Press, 1999

165 171 185

. 1. Social History. 2. Social Problems.3 Prehistoric Peoples. 4. Labor. 5.

Work Ethic. I. Title.

Unionization in America Organized Labor vs. "The Revolt Against Work"

301.09 10987654321

Elements of Refusal
John Zerzan

collective. This publishing project is dedicated to bringing to the discerning public not also to keeping in print those "classics" which have lapsed into publishing oblivion. you have an idea, contact C.AL. P ress, POB 1446, Columbia, MO 65205-1446 at:
us

on ly the newest and most devastating critiques of the awful mess we call society, but

Columbia Alternative Library signals yet another salvo from this new book publishing under the imprint of Paleo Editions by the We welcome proposals for further hooks or pamphlets. No manuscripts, please. [f

The publication of Elements

A NOTE ABOUT

of Refusal

CAL.

PRESS/PALEO EDITIONS

Jason McQuinn John Zerzan

l)aul Z. Simons

of the Columbia Alternative Library

Paleo Editions
An imprint

i,

203
207

II)l}

1'1 l-r\lIN!.,>

Nl'W YUI k, Nl'W York

tIl II'J'IIC,.\I

The Refusal of Technology Anti-Work and the Struggle for Control

I'I{ I 'TACh TO T H E S ECOND E D ITION

Ihis collection of offerings was published by Left Bank in 1 988, and

PART THREE 21 7 245 255 261 265 The Promise of the '80s The '80s So Far Present-Day Banalities Media, Irony and "Bob" Afterword Commentary on For m and Con ten t in Elements of Refusal Notes Author's Bibliography Index Appendix: Excerpts from Adventures in Subversion' . Flyers & Posters, 1981-85

w,'111 out of print fairly quickly.

IIi part because of a totality that keeps giving us new evidence, on every "h,dlcnges, created by such a depth of peril and falsity, is the strongest
Ii ightening reality.

I believe most of it holds up rather well,

li'vel, of its fundamental destructiveness. The magnitude of these

IIlIpetus behind efforts to question every component of our truly Unfortunately, stark reality has far more often brought the opposite

response, based on fear and denial. More and more we are immersed in
a

273 297 301 310

routines and securities. How tempting, apparently, to avoid asking why,

feci the nothingness, the void, just beneath the surface of everyday
thus elevating the superficial as the only appropriate, indeed the only

postmodern ethos of appearances, images, and veneers. Everyone can

possible response. The fragmentary, the cynical, and the partial define an extremely pervasive postmodcrn stance-if such a cowardly, shifting outlook even qualifies as a stance.

bereft features of the social order as a whole, rushes into this intellectual and moral vacuum with an increasing acceleration. I live in the Pacific Northwest, where I was born and where the final traces of the natural forests are being systematically eradicated. The vista of cloned humans looms, as we struggle to maintain some undamaged humanness in a blcak, artificialized panorama. The group suicide of techno-occultists at Rancho Santa Fe (March 1997) is too faithful a reflection of the desperation generated by engulfing emptiness. One of the would-be UFO voyagers spoke for so many others: "Maybe I'm crazy but I don't care. I've been here thirty-one years and there's nothing for me here." The first five essays in this volume, written during the mid-1 980s, arc the basis for more recent efforts such as "Future Primitive" (1992) and "Running on Emptiness" (1997). The question of the origins of our estrangement is refused by a reigning culture that recognizes neither origins nor estrangement. I feel that this question must be explored, in the facc of this stunning, still-unfolding enormity: the entire absence of

I! is hardly surprising that the high-tech juggernaut, embodying all the

mdations of alienatiun tu he t(lUnd in thcsc catl'gori es, or anywhere else. Certainly these five explorations , and the others that followed, have elicited so me very negative reactio ns. When they were published in Fifth Estate in th e '80s, FE never faile d to run accompanying commentaries rejecting their conclusions. This lin e of originary studie s has been called absolu tist, moralistic, religio us, paralyzing, even anti-pleasurc', among ot her things. To me they are none of the above, In trying to pu t forth the most cogent lines of thought, I m ay have written essays th at seem ed dcfinitively closed to other perspectives. If so , J regret it. "Industrialism and Dom estication" and "Who Killed Ned Ludd?" appear later in the book , but were written ea rlier. Discovering the intentional social contro l built into industrial te chnology and the factor y system was part of a qu estioning that led not on ly to a re-appraisal of technology itself, but al so to a search fo r the remote origins of Ou r present captivity, al l the way back at th e be gi nn n i gs of symbolic culture. Many of the remaining contributions deal with anti-work phenomena and other recent evidence of the erosion of belief in society's dominant values, These writings of ten implied that a colla pse of the transcendent order was all but immin ent. Here I was obviousl y a bit too sanguine. The onrushing impoverishmen t of daily life, not to neglect contracting economic pressures, has le d many to cling to any semblance of content or meaning, ev en when found in the context of work, Tbus trends of social and workplace al ienation that some of us sa w as promising bave yet to move to the stag e of significant resistan ce, even if the method of being attentive to barely -concealed indices of disa ffection remains valid, 1 hop e that aspects of F.l ements of Refusal may be usef ul to those who are appalled by tbe nigh tmare we face, and who are determined not to go along, This edition I dedicate to the Unabom ber. As Arleen Davila put it, <?fe tried to save us ."
Hakim Bey ev en c l ai med that I "wrote an essay against humor." Bey is a partisan of the postm odern renunciation o f truth and meaning, whi ch often simply makes up reality as it go es alon g; no such essay exists, 'In

Tillll', language, IItllllh l'I", arl, agriculllll'l', O il Ihl (It her hand. IIw yhe th ere are no f,"

IhT

III

wile II.' lill-.

II) 1111

:'-.1( "Nil

I'IHIIIIN

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION

'/.< rzan's writings. Appearing over the past decade 10 pnmanly marglOal . . til' "underground" publications, thiS coIIeetlon IS Iong 0verduc . ' No les s than as they appeared, these essays arc provocatIve an d . , Ilnportant. For me John's writings have always contained that cntlcal
,
'

I''/I'lnen/s of Refusal
.
',

is the first comprehensive colection of J ohn

.'

. Still the designated social straitjacket Ill-fIts and tbe SOCial fabrie isn't , smoth as appearances dictate, Daily life, as John ,akes c1e r, With so . its increasingly intensifying alienallons, schlwphrema and PS}Ch tho logy becomes more spectacular and bizarre. No, all IS not wetn . It is a weird and peculiar world where the growlOg destr tlOn Utopia' of the 'earth is touted as "progress," an advance for humamty. vcry , technological innovation promising to bring u closer together dnves u farther apart; every revolution promises to lIberate us from want, bu
_

. , PresenI-d aY "reality" as constituted by those With vested lnteres t s 10 , ' ., . "'f t the only malO tammg thl's domination is touted as the "best, . an I possible reality. Accordingly, histry is shaped lIke a monstrous I' d-fill
. ,

afflicting the latter.

oi" and the ' i rit which best characterized both the old "F ran kfurt Sch0, . . tuationists-but are more radical, and without the debllnah g despal ,f the former or the disgusting love affair with technology and , progress

to legitimize this contemporary hlgh-nse shdl.

I no

leaves us morc in need, We

Millennium (1997),

of consumption (a display of lies) and we are told that here IS is reduced to a game where, for a price, anyone can play;

where :11 that is human is gutted, Our noses are shoved to t e mdow

. , 'd I row more dependent on glitter and dlstracllon to f'll t he VOl

nowhere to play. Indeed, the word "survive" replaces the w?r

h, but

kind of social terror permeates everything, beeommg a con:moplae" in t"eters on the brink of collapse and dissolutIon.

more and more in our everyday speech, as if they were equlvaI ent.

? e I f

Life

massively touted by mass media), this :'work-buy-consume-dle paradise

our lives. Because, contrary to thc glib, superfiCial aura (despcately and

coherellCY (If our fedillgs or insights through allcrnalivc g ro u p ings

()f

nllill

cars,

1:\

11tlllII()IIJ.III(l"';IISP('('1 SOIlWlhillJ'. aWI, It! hllv hjl'vdr illslead ' ' III cal 11\(lrl' glaill. less ull'a!. /1 is 1]( " t'n()lIh I' allirlll thL:
.

structures, cultures, and so t()rth. We must go much further. Failure to

press coherently to the sources of our malaise simply leave us carrying thIS offal about, endlessly failing to understand anything, repeating . . forever the stupIdItIes trappmg us here, reducing everything to a cynical charade. We will be continually victimized, our best insights nothing if we are not to become visionaries, insisting more of life than a never ending senes of computer gadgets, new "causes," new mysticisms or re-runs of Dr. Strangelove ad nauseam. John's essays make all this abundantly clear. Here it is axiomatic that time, technology, work and other aspects of our social lives-hailed as the liberators of humanity-are, in fact, the co-conspirators of domestica tion and domination. Today, more than ever-as you will see from this modest collection-they stand exposed. If some think these efforts are simply a theory of spontaneity they will fail to understand anything, much less the end of illusion, how to separate the authentic from the corrupt and recuperable. If de-mystification is difficult, tInding those prepared to listen or to undertake the necessary doings is more so. The blat of everyday survival threatens to drown out some important voices of our time. A few I would point out, for example, are Fredy Perlman, Frederick Turner, Jacques Camatte, P,erre Clastres, Marshall Sahlins, Richard Drinnon, Stanley DIamond, Howard Zinn and the lively, changing groups of people who have been involved in marginal and periodical publications, such as the Fifth Estate in Detroit. These people constitute no school or homoge nous group. They are diverse individuals whose disagreements, . opposItIons and arguments are as integral to their activity as the commonality of their projects. At the core we see much of what is vital to any authentic revolution: to have done with the "civilizing" myths destroymg us. Much of their work is necessarily "anthropologically" grounded. The . Importance of this digging cannot be underestimated. It isn't a rooting about for utopia or silly sociological role-models. We are so locked in

John's writings mhk that must be aHacked. se dolill!,. II.' in. hul Ihl' lolal <'n dross always this effort-divestcd of the important part of ;11 (, all n anew rather than ntioned movements-to begt IIlIdnmilling I he hest-inte are not nd of a aps of the old society, for we "" (lJ' within the ash-he

baggage all about. while trucking its diseased plague

. . , mustngs, sult of one person's urSUIts 1.'I"ments of Refusal is the re tIons where so ties, researches and clarIfica ibili ('oneerns discoveries, poss us in its nced to eological landscape is insidio liltle is u derstood. Th e id suspicious, t e is is confirmed. Even the prevail. Everywhere th ThIS small book IS sers have few places to turn. lIlar<>i nalized or the rcfu ative futurc, but begins l no r a blueprint of an altcrn how-to manua not of its pa ts. estioning the whole in each qu where we must all begin: by d rescarchtng t problems of rummaglOg an And it reflects the attendan ok of on-gOIng od. This is, ultimately, a bo wherc so little is understo . ' . explorations-not equations fIrst encom three sccttons: the ticles ar c loosely grouped in Thcse ar es for the swe ping, p culativc search l, passes th c more fundamenta to reqUIre malalsc-ongms so deep as ry sources of our contempora to events a d e second group is oriented digging into pre-history; th rtain mythologIes 100 years or so, debunking ce movements over the past ty of "breakdowns," , the origins of WWT, a varie surrounding technology and the itant actors and movements; ncom and industrialism with its co ass medIa's 80s, draws especially upon m last section, focused on the 19 ay dIverSIons ing us to understand present-d own disparate materials, help "breakdowns." d th e radical contexts of its an element of refusal sal gives us hope and every Every pocket of refu of those "past," as we are th e legatees the keeps this hope burning: in absolutely. t each other; to the "future," gs before us; "presently," amon nnot and do so-called "Golden Age," we ca e Of some primitive past, som , now, recover time or character; but w e can . not want to re-implement its , s tone IS often stly, If John to its temper. And here, la and cleave lements of Refusal IS indeed, it is in this spirit E apocalyptic, so be it; lenges. . ries of provocations and chal presented-as a se DaVId Brown

Left Bank Books

physically to "what is" that we fail to recognize that our ktngdom IS a pnson. The overwhelming power of present-day ruling notions and the reqU1 ements of sheer survival leave many of us virtually tncapable of recognIZIng how dIverse arc the possibilities of life.
l! is not the power of the State, of capitalism, mass media, nationalism . . raCIsm, seXIsm, work routine, class, language, schooling, or culturaJization
,

n:entally and

HI CiINNING OF TIME, END O F TIME

.I"st as today's most obsessive notion is that of the material reality of

did not exist before the individual became separate from it. Reificatiun "f this magnitude-the beginning of time-constitutes the Fall: the

lilllC, sclfexistent time was the first lie of social life. As with nature, time

initiation of alienation, of history. Spengler observed that one culture is differentiated from another by the intuitive meanings assigned to time,' Canetti that the regulation of from community to civilization is also predicated there. It is the fundamental language of technology and the spirit of domination. "solution" of spatializing it, is exposing it as an artificial, oppressive force along with its corollaries, Progress and Becoming. More concretely, technology and work are being revealed by the palpable thrall of time. Either way, the pressure to dissolve history and the rule of time hasn't been so strong since the Middle Ages, before that, since the Neolithic revolution establishing agriculture. When the humanization of technology and work appear as dubious propositions, the humanization of time itself is also called into question. The questions forming are, how can basic oppressions be effectively controlled or reformed? Why not abolished? who is only to the extent that he suppresses Being,' is identical to time.'" looking at the origins, evolution and present status of time. If "all rcification is forgetting,''' in Horkheimer and Adorno's pregnant phrase, it seems equally true that all "forgetting"-in the sense of loss of contact with our time-less beginnings, of constant "falling into time"-is a reification. All the other reifications, in fact, follow this one.' It may be due to the huge implications involved that no one has Quoting Hegel approvingly, Debord wrote, "Man, 'the negative being time is the primary attribute of all government.' But the very movement

Today the feverish acceleration of time, as well as the failure of the

This equation is being refused, a situation perhaps best illumined by

satisfactorily defined the objectification called time and its course. From

the future, which now kills species, languages, cultures, and possibly the entire natural world. This essay should go no further without declaring

time, into history, through progress, and so to the murderous idolatry of

II,

111'f\lI'NT L)]' 1,1'111\;\1

IllS

I !

At the heart of the process is the reigning concept of temporality itself, which was unknown in early humans. Levy-Bruhl provides an introduction: "Our idea of time seems to be a natural attribute of the human mind. But that is a delusion. Such an idea scarcely exists where primitive mentality is concerned....'" Thc Frankfurts duration or as a uccession of qualitatively indifferent moments."9 which brought along a different cluster of coexisting events at every concluded that primeval thought "doeS not know time as uniform Rather, early individuals "Iivcd in a strearn of inner and outer experience

is also well captured by Marcuse's "History is the negation of Nature,'" the incrcasing speed of which has carried man quite outside of himself.

"llislOry is eternal becoming and theretore eternal future; Nature i kcome and thcrefore eternally past,'" as Spengler put it. This movement

preVL'lIlcd '''''"11 recycling) hy annulling time and hitory.

;111 illll'lIl alld strategy: technological society call unly be dissolved (and

h'Ttt

It 1 ahovt.:, a few words may he in order, cspl.:cially inasmuch as there has

111 lei

or till origillal, h llnler- gatlu.:n r h u manityh gt.:ncrally rcfcrrcu ..: compiete

"nearly

reversal in

anthropological

orthodoxy,,16

fOtteeming it since thc cnd of the 1960s. Life prior to the earliest

siiort and hrutish, but the research of Marshall Sahlins, Richard Lee and
Ille original affluent society in that it provided life and pleasures with a

ariel1ltural societies of about 10,000 years ago had been secn as nasty,

tIllIers has changed this view very drastically. Foraging now represents minimum of effort; work was regarded strictly as a social cost and the spirit of the gift predominated.17 This, then, was the basis of no-time, bringing to mind Whitrow's rcmark that "Primitives live in a now, as we all do when we arc having fun"I' and Nietzsche's that "All pleasure desires eternity-deep, deep eternity." The idca of an original state of pleasure and pcrfection is very old and

moment, and thus constantly changed, quantitatively and qualitatively."10

Meditating on the skull of a plains hunter-gatherer woman, Jacquetta Hawks could imagine thc "eternal present in which all days, all the seasons of the plain stand in an enduring unity."" In fact, life was lived in a continuous present," underlying the po int that historical time is not inherent in rcality, but an imposition on it. The concept of time itself as

virtually universal19 The memory of a "Lost Paradise"-and oftcn an accompanying eschatology that demands the destruction of subsequent existcnce-is seen in the Taoist idea of a Golden Age, the Cronia and Saturnalia of Rome, the Greeks' Elysium, and the Christian Garden of Eden and the Fall (probably deriving from the Sume rian laments for lost situation with the dawn of time rcveals time as the curse of the Fall,

an abstract, continuing "thread," unravelling in an cndless progression completely unknown. that links all evcnts together while remaining independcnt of them, was Henri-Charles Puesch's term "articulated atemporality" is a useful one,

happiness in lordless society), to name but a few. The loss of a paradisal history seen as a consequencc of Original Sin. Norman O. Brown fclt that "Separateness, then is the Fall-the fall into division, the original lie,"2O Walter Benjamin that "thc origin of ahSlraction ...is to be sought in the Fall.'>21 Conversely, Eliade discerned in the shamanic experience a "nostalgia for paradise," in exploring the bclief that "what the shaman can do today by all human beings

with the absence of an explicit sense of time. The relationship of subject intruded into the psyche. Perception was not the detached act we know to object was radically different, clearly, before temporal distance

which rcflects the fact that awareness of interval, tor instance, existed

now, involving thc distance that allow an externalization and domination of nature. Of course, we can see the reflections of this original condition in

in ecstasy" could, prior to the hegemony of time, "be done in concreto."" Small wonder that Loren Eisely saw

in aboriginal people "remarkably effeelive efforts to erase or ignore all happy land of no change,"" or that Lcvi-Slraus found primitivc societies

that is not involved with the trancendent search for timelessness, the determined to "rcsist desperately any modification in their structure that would enable history to burst forth into their midst."" modern cliches may give pause as to where an absence of wisdom rcally If all this seems a bit too heady for such a sober topic as time, a few

The Hopi language employs no referenceS to past, prcsent or future. speech, but it is not a category of it, just as another African group, the a gradual one; just as the early Egyptians kept two clocks, measuring Nuer, have no concept of time as a separate idca. The fall into time is

century Pawnee Jndians, "Life had a rhythm but not a progression."13

Further in the direction of history, time is explicit in Tiv thought and

surviving tribal peoples, in varying degrees. Wax said of the nineteenth

lics. John G. Gunnell tells uS that "Time is a form of ordering experience,"" an exact parallcl to the equally fallacious sertion of the neutrality of technology. Even more extreme in its fealty to time is Clark and Piggott's bizarre claim that "human societies differ from animal ones, in the final resort, through their consciousness of history."" Erich Kahler

"doesn't t e l l what time it is, but rather what kind of time it is.""

everyday cycles and uniform "objective" time, the Balinese calendar

'""Jj!,tll

11'J ' II'" "JIll

Wl"lll'f\ as Leslie Paul's "In steppillf\ ,)ul or Ilall1re, Illall makes himself
free of the dimension of time."'" Kahler, it might be adueu, is on vastly

1t;1:-'

illdividu;tiily, Ihey I,ave 1101 illdividual properly,""

il liI;11 "Silh"C IHilllitiv(" peopics !t;lvr scucciy allY rlTlill1--', for

I1r\IJ

a 11\)lioil ;os loLally

firmer grounu in noting that the early inuividual's "primitive participation

with his universe and with his community begins to uisintcgrate" with the acquiring of time." Seidenberg also detected this loss, in which our ancestor "found himself diverging ever further from his instinctual harmony along a precarious path of unstable synthesis. And that path is history."'o Coming back to the mythic dimension, as in the generalized ancient memory of an original Eden-the reality of which was hunter-gatherer life-we confront the magical practices found in all races and early societies. What is seen here, as opposed to the timebounu mode of technology, is an atemporal intervention aimcd at the "reinstatement of thc usual uniformities of nature."" It is this primary human interest in the regularity, not the supersession, of the processes of nature that bears cmphasizing. Relatcd to magic is totemism, in which the kinship o f all living things is paramount; with magic and its totemic context, participa tion with nature underlies all. "In pure totemism," says Frazer, "...the totem [ancestor, patron] is ncver a god and is never worshipped."" The step from participation to religion, from communion with the world to externalized deities for worship, is a part of the alienation process of emerging time. Ratschow held the rise of historical consciousness responsible for the collapse of magic and its replacement by religion," an essential connection. In much the same sense, theil, did Durkheim consider time to be a "product of religious thought."" Eliade saw this gathering separation and related it to social life: "the most extravagant myths and rituals, Gods and Goddesses of the most various kinds, the Ancestors, masks and secret societies, temples, priesthoods, and so on-all this is found in cultures that have passed beyond the stage of gathering and small-game hunt ing ..
. . "J5

sive breakdown of hunter-gatherer life, The bourgeois way of stating this

( ;" ""sis to "He fruitful and multiply" was seen by Cioran as "criminal."" I', ,ssihly he could sec in it the first spatialization-that of humans them , .. Ivcs--for uivision of labor and the other ensuing separations may be ,aid to stem from the large growth of human numbers, with the progres

stayed its dcfillilivl' victory. ils nmvl"rsioll 11110 h is t ory Spa1 iali/alioll. willch is liI(" IIlulor or technology. Gill he traced hack to the e arlies t ad t'lipcricllccsof deprivation through time, hack to tht.: beginning efforts to oll."d the passage to time hy extension in space. The injunction in
.

1'11,1\11' ....,)'1:-. II, 1<1,1,11',\I ,

L'l

is Ihe cliche that domination (rulers, cities, the state, etc.) was the natural outcome of "population pressures." In the movement from thc hunter-gatherer to the nomad we see spatialization in the form, at about 1200 B.C., of thc war chariot (and the centaur figure). The intoxication with space and speed, as compensation I'm contrOlling time, is obviOUSly with us yet. It is a kind of sublimation; Ihe anxious energy of the sense of time is converted toward domination spatially, most simply. With the end of a nomadic existence, the social order is created on a basis of fixed property," a further spatialization. Here enters Euclid, whose gcometry reflects the nccds of the early agricultural systems and whieh established science on thc wrong track by taking space as the primary concept. In attempting a typology of the egalitarian society Morton Fried declared that it had no regular division of labor (and thus no political power accrued therefrom) and that "Almost all of these societies are founded upon hunting and gathering and lack significant harvest periods when large reserves of food arc stored."" Agricultural civilization changed all of this, introducing production via the development of
,

surplus and specialization. Supporteu by surplus, the priest measured time, traced celestial movement, and predicted future events. Time, controlled by a powerful elite, was used directly 10 control the lives of great numbers of men anu women." The masters of the early calenuars and their attendant lore "became a separate priestly caste,"" according to Lawrence Wright. A prime example was the very time-obsessed Mayan,; GJ. Whitrow tells us that "of all ancient peoples, the Mayan priests developed the most elaborate and accurate astronomical calendar, and thereby gained enormous intluence over the masses."" Generally speaking, Henry Elmer Barnes is quite correct that formal reminded here of the famous Old Testament curse of agriculture (Genesis 3:17-18) at the expulsion from Paradise, which announces work time concepts came with the development of agriculture." One is

Elman Service found the band societies of the hunter-gatherer stage to have been "surprisingly" egalitarian and marked by the absence not only of authoritarian chiefs, but of specialists, intermediaries of any kind, and non-productive gratification." In that long, original epoch, alienation first began to appear in the shape of time, although many tens of thousands of years' resistance division of labor, and classes." Civilization, as Freud repeatedly pointed

out, with alienation at its core, had to break the early hold of timeless

-. -.---.--

,'II

tion of time constituted a demarcation line between a state of nature and one of civilization, between the educated classes and the masss." It is rccognized as a dcfining mode of the new Neolithic phcnomena, as expressed by Nilsson's comment that "ancient civilizcd peoplcs appear in

and domination, With the advance ot' farming

became more defined and conceptual, and differences in the interpreta

c- u l l

ulT till" idea or lime

, ,
l

absolute , Iht' Illonastery confined the individual in time just as its walls

Strict time Iilhk: tilt' Il\tlllastl'ry.'d Run likc a dock, organized and

.'t

1111',1',111 ('[lIl'lIt or time and a temporally ordered mode of life, a project

confmed ililll ill space. The Chureh was the first power to conjoin the

history with a fully-dcvcloped system of time-reckoning,"" and by civilization, ,'47 Thompson's that "thc form of the calendar is basic to the form of a The Babylonians gave the day 12 hours, the Hebrews gave the week 7 days, and the carly notion of cyclical time, with its partial claim to a progression . Time and domestication of nature advanced, at a price upheavalS and spiritual breakdowns whosc magnitude thc modern mind finds it well-nigh impossible to conceive."'" A world fell before this virulent partnership, but not without a vast struggle. So with Jacob Burckhardt we must approach history "as it werc as a pathologist"; with curse?" Holderlin we still seck to know "How did it begin ? Who b ro ught the Rcsuming the narrative, even up to Grcek civilization did resistance systematic philosophy, was time at least held at bay, precisely because "forgetting" timeless bcginnings was still regarded as the chief obstacle to wisdom or salvation." J.8. Bury's classic out the "widely-spread belief' in Grcece that the human race had decidedly degencrated from an initial "golden age of simplicity""'-a longstanding bar to the progress of the idea of progrcss. Christianson Greeks and Babylonians, also clung to various notions of cyclical recur. ,,51 rcnce III t' Imc.... itself into a linear progression. Here was a radical departure, as the found the anti-progress attitude later yet: "The Romans, no less than the flourish. In fact, evcn with Socrates and Plato and the primacy of unrivalled. "The discovcry of agricul ture, " as Eliade claimed, "provoked return t o the beginnings, gradually succumbed to time as a linear

I,v t','Ill' Sylvester II, i n the year 1000, is thus quite fitting. The Ilt'lwdicl illc order, in particular, has been seen by Coulton, Sombart,

"

1'"lSlll'd vigorously.'" The invention of the striking and wheeled clock

tlllllt()Jd and others as perhaps the original founder of modern ','1'"alism. The Benedictines, who ruled 40,000 monasteries at their
, . . - " , and rhythm of the machine, reminding us that the clock is not

II<' 'I',ill, helped crucially to yoke human endeavor to the regular, collective
111111lan action.55
"

lI,nely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing

III the Middle Ages, specifically the 14th century, the march of time lI",t

resistance unequalled in scope, quite possibly, since the Neolithic

,ill' very basic developments of time and social revolt, which seems to IIldicate a definite and profound collision of the two. With the 1300s quantified, official time staked its claim to the
colonization of modern life; time then became fully abstracted into a llniform series of units, points and sections. The technology of the verge escapement early in the century produced the first modern mechanical clock, symbol of a qualitatively new era of confinement now dawning as temporal associations became completely separate from nature. Public clocks appeared, and around 1345 the division of hours into sixty minutes and of minutes into sixty seconds became common,56 among other new conventions and usages across Europe, The new exactitude carried a tighter synchronization forward, essential to a new level of domestication. Glasser remarked on the "loss of poetry and immediacy in personal experience" caused by time's new power, and reflected that this manifes tation of time replaced the movement and radiance of the day by its utilization as a temporal unit.57 Days, hours, and minutes became inter changeable like the standardized parts and work processes they prefig ured. These decisive and oppressive changes must have been at the heart of the great social revolts that coincided with them. Textile workers, peasants, and city poor shook the norms and barriers of society to the point of dissolution, in risings such as that of Flanders between 1323 and 1328, the facquerie of France of 1358, and the English revolt of 1381, to name only the three most prominent. The millennial character of revolutionary insurgence at this time, which in Bohemia and Germany

ll'Volution of agriculture. This claim can be assessed by a comparison of

The Idea of Progress

pointed

With Judaism and Christianity, however, time very clearly sharpened

outlined by Augustine, not coincidentally at one of the most catastrophic

urgency of timc scized upon humanity. lts standard features were Rome.52 Augustine definitely attacked cyclical time, portrayi ng a unitary

moments of history-the collapsc of the ancient world and the fall of mankind that advances ir reversibly through time; appearing at about 400

A.D., it is the first notable theory of history.

soon finds, in feudal Europe, the first instance of d aily life ruled by a

As if to emphasize the Christian stamp on triumphant linear time, one

lime

rersislcd I'Vl' ll i l l io Ihe c a rly I ll l h lTlllury, 1IIIlIn l i l l'"

c l e me n t and recalls earlier e xa mr le s

England sought the state of nature, for examp l e , as did the famolls span, who then was a gentleman?" Very instructive is a meditation of the radical mystic Suso, of Cologne, at about 1330: 'Whence h ave you
com e ?'

proverb stressed hy the rebel John Ball: "When Adam d e lv e d a n d Eve

The im age (appearing to Suso) an swe rs
'

unmediated condition, The mystical anarchism of the Free S r i ri t ill

of longing for

I lll' " l l I l i i s l aah'"

all

, I ,d

origi"al,

you wish?' ') do not wish.' 'This is a miracl e ! Tell me, what is your name?' ') am called Nameless Wildness.' 'Where docs your insight lead to?' 'To untrammelled freedom.' 'Tell me, what do you call un trammelled freedom?' 'When a man lives according to all his without looking before or afteL .. .' " caprices without distinguishing between God and himself, and

'1 come from nowhere.' 'Tell me, what are you?' .I am not.' 'What do

The desire "to hold all things in common," to abolish rank and hierarchy, and, even more so, Suso's explicitly anti-time utterance, reveal strate its element of time refusaL" the most extreme desires of the 14th cent u ry social revolt and demon This watershed i n the la tc medieval period can also be understood via

of the clocks, Before the 1 4t h century there was no attempt at perspec tive because the painter attempted to record things as they are, not as

art, where the measured space of perspective followed the m easu re d time

they look. After the 1 4th century, an acute time sense informs art; "Not
so much a place as a moment is fixed for us, and a 11et:ting moment: a

point of view i n time more than in space, ,,60 as Bronowski described it.

Similarly, Yi-Fu Tuan pointed out that the landscape picrure, which appeared only with the 15th century, represented a major re-ordering of time as well as space with its perspective," Motion is stressed by perspective's transformation of the similarity of space into a happening in time, which, returning to t he theme of spatialization, shows in another way that a "quantum leap" in time had occurred, Movement again became a sou rce of values fol lowing the defeat of the 14th century resistance to time; a new level of spatialization was involved, as seen most clearly in the emergence of the modern map, in the 1 5th century, and the ensuing age of the great voyages, Braudel's , phrase, modern civilization's "war against empty space,, 6! is best understood in this light "The new valuation of Time, which then hroke to the surface, actually became one of the most powerful agencies by which Western thought, at the end of the Middle Ages, was transformed .. , ,"" was Kantorowicz's way

1 1,1 is t" pl \'ssi lll'. thl' lIew , slrc ligli lcl1l "d hl'J.-',l' lIIon y or lillil ', I f ill " hl(T livl' klll p( ) r;11 ord er oj" offic ial, lega l. faclu al l i m e (lilly the spal l,al nece ssar ily 1 " l I l 1 d l lie possi hilit y of n.:al expr essio n, all th i nk i ng wou ld he ation can ',Ioill ed, and aiso " ro ug hl to heeL A good deal of this reorient thc carly 15th I . . Ii'''' lli in Le Goffs simp le observation concerning time ,"'" "" l l l uI'V, that "the first virtuc of the hum anis t is a sens e of ions else cou ld modernity be achieved but by the new dim ens and perfected I t'ach ed by time and technology together, thei r dist inctive s pro duc ed by the I l ial ing') Li llcy note d that "thc most complex machine saw that " th e M iddl e Ages were mechanical cl ocks , " just as M u mford ern mdu sma l dock not the steam engine is the key mac hine of the mod ae,";" Marx too found her e the first basi s of machine ind ustry: "Th e oses , and dock is t h c first automatic machinc app lied to practical purp cd on it.',6 7 I he whole theory of production of regular motion was dcv elop h century, the Ano thcr telli no congruence is the fact that , in the mid -15t o s pres s was a first doc ume nt known to have bee n p rinted on Gutenb erg' en d of the cale nda r (not a bibl e), And it is noteworthy that the , a In the 1 5th mill enarian revolt, such as that of the Tabontes of Bohemi 1 6th century, cen tury and the Anab ap ti st s of Mu nste r in the early the mechamcal clock, I n coincide d with the perfection and spread of , cts and i d ea Pete r B reugh cl ' s The Triumph of Time (157 4), the many Obje k, of the pain ting are dominated by the figure of a modern cloc by way of This triu mph , as noted above, awaken ed a great spatIal urge overy" sud d nly, compensation: circumnavigating the glob e and the disc relatIOnship to of vast ncw lands, for exampl e , But just as certain IS Its of Charles "the p rogre s s i ve disrealization of th e world,"" in th words of d omlnlton, Newman, which began at this ti me, Extension, in the form a totally fitting obviously accentuated alienation from the world: accompaniment to the dawning of mod ern hi story, , all-pervaSive, Official tim e had become a barr i e r bot h palpable and of this time , filtering and distorting what people said to each othe r. As on s and restramt it unm istakably imposed a new distance on human rel atI search for rare on emotional responses, A Renaissance hallmark, the longing to wi th s tand manuscripts and classical anti qu iti e s is one form of and abs tract tIm e this powerful tim e, But the battle had b een dec ided , tence, When Ellu l had bcc om e the mil ieu, the new framework of exis per mea ted by opi ned that "the whole structure of bein g " was now centrally to the " me chanical abstraction and rigidity," he referred most
.

1 1m:

"

tim e dim ens ion , proclaimed All thi s bloo med in the 1 600s, from Baco n, who first ion rega rdin g m oderni ty' s domination of natu re, and Descartes' formulat

t" H l t n l l ( )f l1alllrt' which charact('ri/.t"s IlHHll:rn seiellct'. "I>I, i n c l u d i n g

Life and nature became mere quantity, the unique lost its strength, and soon the Newtonian image of the world as a clock-like mechanism prevailed. Equivalence-with u niform time as its real model-carne to rule, in a development that made "the dissimilar comparable by reducing i t to abstract quantities."'o The poct Ciro di Pers understood that the clock made time scarce and life short. To him, i t Speeds on the course of the fleeing century, And to make it open up, Knocks every hour at the tomb.7l Later i n the 1 7th century, Milton's with labour I must earn My bread; what harm?

(jaliko and the whole ensemhle of the century's scientific revolution.

I l ll" 1I/lIi" 'f's ..t 1,/ I.\",\'I '" j'I 'UrS ti,' /0

- -

1/(1t1l1"l',

" " II'I\ ( jl

which predict e d l i ll' i m pe r i a l i s t i c

1 1 1\ 1 1 , I N I I I II

"

1\. 1 1 .

time's

Nt

I I 1 1 1 . 1 1 1 l 1 1 IIlI(' [ J [ S 01 i I lS I I I J',(OIH"\' ,I l l' t l H' { l i l ly (HTasioilS

[ V I 'lllllY. Aceo! d i ng t ( l POllld, fl() one fell

l ' I I - r-.. l 1 N I .\ I I I 1 , 1 - 1 1 1",\1

\\

\,- h I w t pte of I l i e malcontents "who have

metamorphisis

of 1 ill 1( : iIlto so me t hing quite infernal than did Bauddairc,

fTHlfC

01 sl' l l s i l ivily t ( )

grievllusly till:

refused. redemption by work,"

I I ! ' w,l l I l e d " t o possess immediately, on this earth, a Paradise"; these he

termed

" "Slaves martyred hy Time," a notion echoed hy Rimbaud's

of the scandal of an existence in time. These two poets in the long, dark night of capital's mid- and late-19th century

denunciation

suffered made

asce , , , l a ney, though it could be argued that their awareness of time was

dearest via their active participation, respectively, in the 1848

revolution and the Commune of 1871. S , , , , , "cl Butler's utopian Erewhon portrayed workers who destroyed
I I ". "

time, to the point of denigrating the timeless, paradisiacal state:

Paradise Lost

sides with victorious

d ( ' r ivl's

machines lest their machines destroy them. Its opening theme from the incident of wearing a watch) and later a visitor's watch

" , , ather forcibly retired to a museum of bygone evils. Very much in this You may d1illy as long as you like by the roadside. It is almost as if I he millennium were arrived, when we shall throw our clocks and more. Not to keep hours for a lifetime is, I was going to say, to live forever. You have no idea, unless you have tried it, how endlessly

" 1 '" it, and from the same era, are these lines of Robert Louis Stevenson:

Idleness had been worse.72 Well before the beginnings of industrial capitalism, then, had time substantially subdued and synchronized life; advancing technology can be said to have heen borne hy the earlier breakthroughs of time. "It was the beginning of modern time that made the speed of technology possible,"73 concluded Octavio Paz. E.P.Thompson's widely-known "Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism"" described the industrialization of time, but, more fundamentally, it was time that did the industrializing, the great daily life struggles of the late 18th and early 19th centuries against the factory system" notwithstanding.
In terms of the modern era, again one can discern in social revolts the

watches over the housetop, and rem emher time and seasons no

long is a summcr's day, that you measure only hy hunger, and bring 79 to an end only when you are drowsy. Refcrringto such phenomena as huge political rallies, Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" made the point that "Mass reproduction is aided especially by the reproduction of m1isses ... ." so But one could go much further and say simply that mass reproduction is the reproduction of masses, or the mass-man. Mass production itself with its standardized, interchangeable parts and wage11ibor to match constitutes a fascism of everyday life long predating tbe fascist rallies Benjamin had in mind. And, as described above, it was time, several hundred years before that, which provided the categorical paradigm to mass production, in the f()rm of uniform but discrete qU1l.nta ordering life, Stewart Ewen held that during the 19th and early 20th centuries, "the
, , .

century, for i n st 1in ce, the context of two revolutions, one must judge,

definite aspect of time refusal, however inchoate. In the very late 1 8th helped Kant see that space and time are not part of the e mpirical world

but part of our acquired intersubjective faculties. It is a non-revolutionary twist that a new, short-lived, calendar was introduced by the French Revolution-not resistance to time, but its renewal under new management!'" W alter Benjamin wrote of actual time refusal vis-a.-vis the July revolution of 1 830, noting the fact that in early fighting "the clocks in towers were being fired on simultaneously and independently from several places in Paris." He quoted an eyewitness the following verse: Who would have believed? We are told that new ]oshuas at the foot of every tower, as though irritated with time itself, fired at the dials in order to stop the day ."

industrial definition of social time and space stood at the core of social 81 unrest,', and this is certainly true; however, the breadth of the time and space "issue" requires a rather broad historical perspective to allow for a comprehension of modernity's unfolding mass age.

That the years immediate1y preceding World War I expressed a rising

radical challenge requiring the fearful carnage of the war to divert and

"

H I ' ( o I N N Ir'> J( , I H
;\

I I r-. r l , " N i l ( ) I

1 11\ 1 1

challclI gc l-an ht.:st he p l u mhl'<t i l l h:rIliS or I he refusal ur t i lllt'. The contemporary tnsion between the domains of being and of l i m e was first elucidated by Bergson in the pre-war period in his protest against. the
fragmentary and repressive character of m echan ist ic time.",1 With h i s

d c s l n lV i l is .

1 1 1 lsis I have ;IIT,lIl'd 1.:iscwlH' I LIl , Tile depth n/" I h is

I ' I I I\II N I '> ( li

1 { 1 1 1 1",\]

{ J U I" c( ) n te m porary situation, a restive awareness of time began 1 0 1 (' l' l I w r}-',l' as a /lew rouno of contestation neared. I n the mid 1 950's I I I<' sc i c l Il i , 1 N .J . Herrill interrupted a fairly dispassionate book to
Nearer
j()

Year Reich

distrust of science, Bergson argued that a qualitative sense of time, of lived expe r i e n ce or duree, r e q ui res a resistance to formalized, spatialized subjugation. Most of this century's anti-time impulse was rather fully articulated i n
thc quickening movement just prior to the war. Cubism's urgent re

&.cImm ( ' [ 1 1 ( )I l lhl' predominant desire in society "to get from nowhere to

no\\ I 1 ( ' [ ( ' i n nothing nat," observing, "And still a minute can embrace eternity alld a month be empty of meaning." Still more startling, he cried
I l i a l " I :or a long time I have felt trapped in time, like a prisoner

opposition to a tyranny that had come to inform so many elements of

timc. Though limited, his outlook announced t h e r enewal of a developing

out

searching

f(lr some sense of escape."89 Perhaps an unlikely quarter from

\\ 1 1 1( ' 1 1 t o lwar such an articulation, but another man of science made a similar statement forty years before, just as World War I was about to ' 1 ' 1 < " 1 1 i l l surgence for decades; Wittgenstein noted, "Only a man who lives
l!\ II

perspective, which h a d prevailed since the early Renaissance, the Cubists

examination o f appearances helongs here, of course; by smashing visual

sought to apprehend reality as it was, not as i t looked at a moment of

time. It is this whieh enabled John Berger to judge that "the Cubist

tal. Alienation in time, the beginning of time as an alien "thing," begins

in
"

'" arc looking for subjects for the idea that only the prcsent can be ady infancy, as early as the maternity ward, though Joost Meerloo is

( ' l I i ldren, of course, live in a now and want their gratification now, if

i l l time hut in the present is happy."9D

formula presupposed . . . for the first time in history, man living unalicnated
from nature."" Einstein and Minkowski also bespoke the time revolt context with the well-known scrapping of the Newtonian universe bascd

. . ,,, eet that "With every trauma in life, every new separation, the ,,,,,,reness of time grows."" Raoul Vaneigem supplied the conscious " I " ment, outlining perfectly the function of schooling: "The child's days ,";cape adult time; their time is swollen by subjectivity, passion, dreams l Iaunted by reality. Outside, the educators look on, waiting, watch in lIalld, till the child joins and fits the cycle of the hours."" The levels of cnnclitioning reflect, of course, the dimensions of a world so emptied, so

on absolute time and spacc. In music, Arnold Schoenberg liberated dissonance from thc prevailing false positivity's restraints, and Stravinsky explicitly attacked temporal limitations i n a variety of new ways, as did Proust, Joyce," and others in literature . All modes of expre ssion , and Archimedean reason, in t h at crucial decade of 1905-1 9 1 5 !"" I n the 1920s Heidegger emphasized time as the central concept for
contemporary metaphysics and as torming the essential structure of

according to Donald Lowe , "rejected the linear perspective of visuality

" I :vcry passing second drags me from the moment that was to the
llever cxistS."93 The repetitious, routine nature of industrial life is the obvious product of time and technology." An important aspect of time-less hunter gatherer life was the unique, sporadic quality of its activities, rather than the repetitive;95 numbers and time apply to the quantitative, not the

nquisitely alienated that time has completely robbed us of the present.

lIloment tbat will be. Every second spirits mc away from myself; now

subjectivity. But the devastating impact of the war had deeply altered the sense of possibilities within social reality. Being and

far from questioning time, surrendercd to i t completcly as the only vantage that allows understanding of being. Related, in the parallcl provided by Adorno, i s "the trick of military command, which dressed up imperative in the guise of a predicative sentcnce ... Heidegger, too, cracks
I

Time

( 1 927), in fact,

qualitative. In this regard Richard Schlegel judged that if events were always novel, not only would order and routine be impossible, but so would notions of time itself.96

thc whip when h e italicizes the auxiliary verb i n thc sentence, 'Death
's
.

was essentially suppressed. By the 1930s, one could still find signs of i t predominant was the renewed rush of technolob and domination, as 'Y ret1ected by Katayev's Five-Year-Plan novel in, say, the Surrealist movement, or novels o f Aldous Huxley," but deformation expressed in the literally millenarian symbol, the Thousand

Indeed, for almost forty years after World War I the anti-time spirit

11187

aiting f Godot, the two main characters receive or In Beckett's play, W

a visitor, after which one of them sighs, "Well, at least it belped to pass thc time." The other replies, "Nonsense, time would have passed

anyway."" In this prosaic exchange the basic horror of modern life is

plumbed. The meta-presence of time is by this time felt as a heavily oppressive force, standing over its subjects quite autonomously. Very

Time, Fonvard! or the bestial

p re s e n t sense

;II ' l t lptl,\ is l l i i s S l l l l l i l l i llf, 1 1 ( 1 hv ( i('( l l gC rvh 1 1 J ',; t I l : " A h l' l fu l hllSY1H'SS t
' h i l l ( i IlH." : I I H.1 n'slkss IHOV(.' I I It'lll from lI( lvt' lly III l1t)vdly

1 1 1 1\1 1 N t ',

t Il

1 { 1 ' 1 1 1""':\1

">

achievements, modern man is losing the suhstance uf human life."'''' Loren Eisely once described "a feeling

of

fu t i l i ty

anll

vacu(\usness. I n

the millst of his endless terror," as if he

hury

:til ever

of inexplicable

and his companion, who were examining a skull, were in thc path of "a torrent that was sweeping everything to destruction." Understanding Eiscly's sensation completely, his friend paraphrased him as saying, "to know time is to fear it, and to know civilized time is to be terror strieken."" Given the history of time and our present plight in it, it would bc hard to imagine a more prescient bit of communication. I n the J 9605 Robert Lowell gave succinct expression to the extremity alienation of time: I am learning to live i n history. What is history? What you cannot touch.lOO Fortunately, also in the '60s, many others were beginning the unlearn ing of how to live i n history, as evidenced by the shedding es, the use of psychedelic drugs, and paradoxically popular single-word slogan

of the

uf wristwatch perhaps, by the

of

the French insurrection aries of May

1 968-"Quick!" The clement of time refusal in the revolt of the '60s was strong and there arc signs-such as the revolt against work-that it continues to deepen even as it contends with extreme new spatializations of time. Since Marcuse wrote of "the alliance between time and the order of

that "The concept of the h i stor ical progress of , , ,, , , , k i,,d l'annot he sundercd from thc concept of its progression l1 ' 1 I I P I II.l1 a homogenous timc,"H he called for a cri t i q u e of hoth, littlt; realizing how rcsonant this call might someday become. Still l e s s, of , could Gocthe's dictum that "No man can judge history but one ", I I " has himself experienced history" '08 have been foreseen to apply in such a who l e s ale way as it does now, with time the most real an d ""T(lllS d im ens ion . The project of an nu l l i n g time and h i story will havc r . , hl' developed as the only hopc of human liberation. ( )f course, there is no d e arth of the wise who continue to assert that , , ",sciousness itself is impossihle without time and its sp ati al i zat ion 109 "vl'rlooking somehow an overwhelmingly massive period of humanity's nistcnce. Some concluding words from W il liam Morris's News from N"where are a fitting hope in reply to such sages of domination: "In spite "I" all the infallihle maxims of your day there is yet a time of rest in store r,,,- the world, when mastery has changed into fellowship."llo
\\ 11<' ' ' Hl'njamin assayed
""

singularities a n d I l Il" like, ;IIHI jht: comfurling appeal of t h l' "dccp l i l l i e " of the \0 calkd geo l o gic a l romances, slich as John McPhee's IImill IIlld Range ( I 'IX t ) .

widespread ;l l 'l'i:al tIl ; 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.." l"t 1 l 1t.'c p I S 1IIt 1 1 l' t i l le ss h H ,sd.y dn ivnl from pliv'\ical I hcnry. s l i c i l as hlillk hoks, l i me wal l )S, spa("l'l illu"

, , ',

a function of repression, Hn the vividness of the connection has

grown.

repression,"'01 and Norman O. Brown on the sense of time or history as puwerfully

Christopher Lasch, in the late '70s, noticed that " A profound shift i n our sense of time has transformed work hahits, values, and the definition

of success."'OJ

And if work is heing refused as a key component of time,

it is also becoming obvious how consumption gobbles up time alive. Today's perfect spatial symbol of the

latter

is the Pac-Man video game

figure, which literally eats up space to kill time.'o, As with Aldous Huxley's Mr. Propter, millions have come to find time "a thing intrinsically nightmarish."'os A fixation with age and the pro longevity movement, as discussed

by

Lasch and others, are two signs of

its torment. Adorno once said, "As the subjects live less, death grows more precipitous, more terrifying."'06 There seems to be

new genera

tion among the young virtually every three or four years, as time, growing more palpable, has accelerated since the '60s. Science has provided a popular reflection of time resistance in at least two phenomena; the

LANGUAGE: O RIGIN AN D MEANING

I"""allity in terms of scarcity and brutalization. As if the implications of already becoming widely understood, there seems to be a 1'' ' )wing sense of that vast epoch as one of wholeness and grace. Our I ,"I<' on earth, charactcrized by the very opposite of those qualities, is in < In'pest need of a reversal of the dialectic that stripped the wholeness I I o III our life as a species. Being alive in nature, before our abstraction from it, must have , "volved a perception and contact that we can scarcely comprehend from " " r levels of anguish and alienation. The communication with all of !'Xistenee must have been an exquisite play of all the senses, reflecting Ihe numberless, nameless varieties of pleasure and emotion once accessible within us. To Levy-Bruhl , Durkheim and others , the cardinal ami qualitative difference between the "primitive mind" and ours is the primitive's lack of detachment in the moment of experience; "the savage mind totalizes,'" as Levi-Strauss put it. Of course we have long been instructed that this original unity was destined to crumble, that alienation is the province of heing human: consciousness depends on it. In much the same sense as objectified time has been held to be essential to consciousness-Hegclcalled it "the necessary alienation"-so has language , and equally falsely. Language may he properly considered the fundamental ideology, perhaps as deep a separation from the natural world as self-existent time. And if timelessness resolves the split between spontaneity and consciousness, languagclcssness may he equally necessary. Adorno. in Minima Moralfa, wrote: "To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it , but is in it.'" This could stand as an excellent description of humankind as we existed before the emergence of time and language, before the division and distancing that exhausted authenticity.
1 1 , , \ are

"hhlcratcd the long-dominant conception which defined prehistoric

; t i l ly

recent anthropology (e.g. Sahlins , R.B. Lee) has virtually

Earl ier writers coul d define cons ciou snes s in a facile way as that which can be verbalized, or even argu e that wordless thought is impo ssibl e (des pite coun ter-e xam ples such as ches s-playing, com posin g musi c, or usmg tools ). But In our present straits, we have to consider anew the meaning of the birth and character of language rather than assume it to be merely a neut ral, if not benign, inevitable pres ence . The philo soph ers are now force d to recognize the ques tion with intensified inter est . Gadamer, for example: "Admitte dly, the natu re of language is one of th most mysterious ques tions that exists for man to pond er on.'" Beca use language is the symboliza tion of thought, and symbols are the basIc U n i ts of cultu re, speech is a cultu ral phen ome non fundame ntal to what civilization is. And because at the level of symbols and struc ture there are neith er prim itive nor deve lope d languages, it may be justifiabl e to b gm by locating the basic qual ities of la nguage specifica lly to consider the congruence of langu age and ideo logy, in a basic sen se Ideo logy, alienation's armored way of seein g, is a dom inati on emb ed ded in a systematic false conscious ness . It is easie r still to begi n to locat e language In thes e terms if One takes up another defin ition com mon to both ideo logy and language: nam ely, that each is a system of disto rted CO mun icati on betw een two pole m s and pred icate d upon symboliza tion. Like Ideology, language creates false separations and objectifi cations through ItS symboliZIng power This falsification is mad e poss ible by : concealIng, and ultImately vltla tmg, the part icipa tion of the subj ect in the phySical world. Modern language s, t(lf example, employ the word "min d"

Languagc is the subject of this explo ration, understood in it, virul cnt sens e. A fragm ent from Nietzsche intro duce s its central persp ectiv e: "wor ds dilut e and brutalize; word s depe rson alize ; word s make the uncom mon comm on."3 Although language can still be desc ribed by scholars in such phra ses as "the most significant and colos sal work that the human spirit has evolved, "4 this characterization occurs now in a context of extre mity i n which w e are forccd t o call the aggregate of the work of the "hum an spiri t" into ques tion. Similarly, if in Coward and Ellis ' estim ation the "mo st significant feature of twen tieth -cent ury intel lectual develop ent" has been the lIght shed by linguistics upon social reality,' this focus hints at bow fundamental our scrutiny must yct beco me in orde r to com pre hcnd maim ed modern lIfe. It may sound positivist to assert that lang uagc :nust somehow embody all the "advances" of society, but in civilization It seem s that all mcaning is u ltimately lingu istic; the q u estion of the meanrng of language, cons idere d in its totality, has beco me the unav oid able next step .

LANt jLI\(jL ORl<jIN ANI I M J ANIN( ;

[,

1 " l I lhr;ln' of sens a t i u n , rlrce pti()ll, and

I l l{' Sa1iskrit wlln!. w h i l'IJ m e a n s "work.ing w i t h i n , " involving a n active

co

dlsnih a t h i n g dwl' l l i ll'. ilHkpl-lH i e l l l lv i l l O U f

1 ' 1 I r\ \ I ' T'.!

"

c "

' 1 [ I ! ' . \ [

1 " '"1 a el ive 10 passive, from unity to separation, i s similarly rellected in

g n i ti on. The logic of iucoio!,Y, '

hodies. cOlllpand w i l h

I I

I I ",

d e cav of the verb ti)rm in general. I t is noteworthy that the much

1 1 <", ' an

rr:

, i<-c1ined to approximately half of all words at a languagc; III modern _ I 'nglish, verbs account ti)r less than ten percent of words.' " .,rving up of nature, its reduction into concepts and eqUIvalencies, occurs along lines laid down by the p atterns of language., A n d the more
to itself, the
i i , i ncept ion, its progress is marked by a stcaddy dehaslllg process. The

I I l l J losition of civilization, work and property at the same time that verbs

sensuous hunter-gatherer cultures gave way to the Neolithic

Though language, in its definitive features, seems to be complete from

t h e machinery of language, again paralleling ideolob subjects cXlstenee 'Y,

Navajo has been termed an "excessively literal" language, from the characteristic hias of our time for the more general and abstract. In a much earlier time, we arc reminded, the direct and concretc held sway;
there existed a "plethora of terms for the touched and seen.'" Toynbee

;;"ore blind its role in reproducing a society of subjugation.

action" among American Indian tribes and understood that such terms bcar to each other a relation of juxtaposition rather than of subordin a sumptuous prodigality of symbols obtained, it was a closure of symbols, of abstract conventions, even at that stage, whIch might be thought of as adolescent ideology.

tendency toward simplification of language through the abandonment of inllexions.lO Cassirer saw the "astoundlUg vanety of terms for a partIcular tion.1l But i t is worth repeating once more that while very early on a

noted the "amazing wealth of inl1exions" in early languages and the later

recognized as the determinant organizer of cognition. As the pioneer linguist Sapir noted, humans are very much at the mercy 01 languagc concerning what constitutes "social reality " Another semmal anthropo mines one's entire way of life, including o ne
'

Considered as the paradigm of idcolob 'Y, language must also be

logical linguist, Wharf, took this further to p ropos e that language deter forms of mental activity. To use language i, to l i m i t oneself to the modes of perception already inherent in that language. The fact Ihat language is only form and yet molds everyth i ng goes to the wl'e is.12 It is reality revealed only ideologically, as a stratum sepalate from u s .
,

thlll klllg and all other

01

wha t Ideology

In this way language creates, and debases t h e world. " I !uman ,pecch : conceals far more than it confides; it blurs much more than It dctme s; I t

"

'

I '

Ij-

I r l( W;I,\

system.

phonological.

ideology on this level. where due to the essential arbitrarincss of Ihe syntactic, and semantic rules of each, moment of reproducing an unnatural world.

1\1 n J'l' ("'OlltTl' k ly. I ltl

a

Illodel, that shapcs and controls spc a k i ng. I t is casicr s t i l l tt)

('1 ) l l /ln'I S,'"

(.'SSt'I H.:c.:

ur learlli llg a \;lHgll al' is learning

\
.

( ;n II ."

1 1
"'

\ !\i J

1 1\ 1 1 l'

S t c i lH" 'S

\ N ""It

l"I

H\('l usiO I l ,

I
a

' I I fl.-I i ' N I ...

e ll 1, , - , - , J ...
.

\I ,IS

Sl'l'

every human

language must be learned. The unnatural i s imposed, as a necessary

forward " , ; J 1 1 ( Jwing liS to profit from others' experiences as though they ' were \ 1 111 own. Perhaps what is forgotten is simply that others' experienc

ing W I W I l' i l l l : l I l g U;lgC ellables aCCll llluiatl:d I-.. now i c ogc to be transmitted
1101 our own,

Civilization

is o f k l l t hought o r 1101 as :t forge t t i n g h U I

;1 ITIIlllllhl' r .

es are

that the civilizing process is thus a vicarious and

Even i n the most primitive languages, words rarely bear a recognizable

similarity to what tht:y denote; they are purely conventional." Of course this is part of the tendency to st:e reality symholically, which Cioran referred to as thl:: "sticky symholic net" of language, an infinite regression which cuts us off from the world.1< The arbitrary, self-contained nature of language's symbolic organization creates growing areas of false certainty when; wonder, multiplicity and non-equivalence should prevail. Barthes' depiction of languagc as "absolutely terrorist" is much to the point here; he saw that its systematic nature "in order to be complete needs only to be valid, and not to be trllt:."16 Language effects the original split between wisdom and method. Along these lines, in terms of structure, it is evident that "freedom of speech" docs not exist; grammar is the invisible "thought control" o f our invisible prison. With language we have already accommodated ourselves to a world of unfrcedom. Rcificarion, the tendency to take the conceptual as the perceived and to treat concepts as tangible, is as basic to language as it is to ideology. Language represents the mind's reification of its experience, that is, an analysis into parts which, as concepts, can be manipulated as if they were objects. Horkheimcr pointed out that ideology consists more in what people are like-their mental constricted ness, their complete dependence on associations provided for them-than in what they believe. In a statement that seems as pertinent to language as to ideology, he added that people experience everything only within the conventional frame work of concepts '" I t has been asserted that reification is necessary to mental functioning, that the formation of concepts which can themselves be mistaken for living properties and relationships does away with the otherwise almost i n tolerable burden of relating one experitmce to another. Cassirer said of this distancing from experience, "Physical reality seems to reduce in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances."l" Represen tation and uniformity begin with language, reminding us of Heidegger's insistence that something extraordinarily important has been forgotten hy civilization.

{"e<1 1 1 I 1 110US With

inauthentic : one . When language, for good reason, is held to be virtually

h;" l I ",ved progressively farther from directly lived experience.

Irk, we are dealing with another way of saying that life

L : i llguage, like ideology, mediates the here and now, attacking direct,

t " ," t aneous connections. A descriptive example was provided by a " , , , ' I l e r objecting to the pressure to learn to read: "Once a child is
1 ; 1 < 1 "Ie, there is no turning back. Walk through an art museum. Watch
thr l i terate adulls read the title cards before viewing the paintings to be

61 1 1 " that they know what to see. Or watch them read the cards and

w i l hout looking through them."19

""ms. But once those doors arc open it is very difficult to sec the world

1lIorC the paintings entircly...As the primers point out, reading opens

The process of transforming all direct experience into the supreme 'ymholic expression, language, monopolizes life. Like ideology, language claim to vali di ty It is at the root of civilization, the dynamic code of ('ivilization s alienated nature. As the paradigm of ideology, language together. It remains for us to clarify what forms of
e nge nd ered

I"I)nceals and j u st ifies, comp e ll i ng us to suspend our doubts about its

stands behmd all of the massive legitimation neeessarv to hold civilization

of repression.

this justification, made l angu age necessary as a basic means

ascent domination

It should be clear, first of all, that the arbitrary and decisive association of a particular sound with a particular thing is hardly inevitable or accidental. Language is an invention for the reason that cognitive

processes must precede their expression in language. To asse rt that

humanity is only human because of language generally neolects the corollary that being human is the precondition of inventing l nguage.20 The question is how did words first come to be accepted as sign s at al l ?

How did the first symbol originate? Contemporary linguists seem to find this "such a serious problem that one may despair of finding a way out of its difficulties."" Among the more than ten thousand works on the origin of language, even the most recent admit that the theoretical discrepancies are staggering. The question of when language began has also brought forth extremely diverse opinions ." There is no cultural

phenomenon that is more m ome nto us, but no other development offers fewer facts as to its beginnings . Not surprisingly, Bernard Campbell is far

I I t ll l l ; d p l l r I I I h i .... pU1rl l H' l l l l l! ; t l " W e Ih IW o r w h c n langtlagl' hegan.

".' !

....

language are trivial; they

MallY "r t h e theories lilal have heell pul forlh as 1(1 I he migill

i l l 1pl, d"

' '' l l o J l\J

I h l t l.. II( 1W, " l i d

\ N I ' 1\ . , \ N j,'\J(

IIl'VeI

" I l rvll N I :-'

I ll

I{ I . . .

I,\J

\/

a l changes introduced by language. The "ding-dong" theory mailliai that there is somehow an innate connection between sound and t h e "pooh-pooh" theory holds that language at first

e xplai n nothing about

the 4 u a l i l : l l ivc. i n l e n l

ejaculations of surprise, fear, pleasure, pain, etc.; the "ta-ta" theory posit the imitation of bodily movements as the genesis of l anguage, and so

meanil1111 consisteu ot,

011

qlll"-siioll which is asslImct.i in his contrary opinion that language showed lip much later. He aSKs, how it is, if humanity had speech h " " '" lllpic of million years, that there was virtually no develop II'. n l 0 1 lfehnology'!'< J ayn e s s question implies a utilitarian valuc
anore interesting
'

quill; e a rly, ill reiatioll lu silllple stone li lt ll" ; I I H I I I ll'ir reproduction, J u lian Jaynts has raised perhaps a
1 1 1 ; 1 1 S I H"t'l'li arose

Where as

, V l a l l{)s k i t

positive labor

inhering. ill l"nguage,

a supposed release of latent potentialities of a

among "explanations" that only beg the question. The hypothesis that the requirements of hunting made language necessary, on the other hand, i e asily refuted; animals hunt together without language, and it i s generally necessary for humans to remain silent in order to hunt. Somewhat closer to t h e mark, I believe, is the approach of contempo rary linguist E.H. Sturtevant: since all intentions and emotions arc involuntarily expressed by gesture , look, or sound, voluntary communica tion, such as language, must have been invented for the purpose of lying

rfcrrcd to above, it may be that while language and technology are , , ,deed linked, they were in fact both successfully resisted fo r -tllou'j;]lIds of generations. 1\ 1 ilS urigins language had to meet the requirements of a problem that
existed outside language. In light of the congruence of language and

Ilature.::') But givt!n the destructive dynamic of the division of

lo Iol, >gy, it is also evident that as soon as a human spoke, he or she was Jep;rraLcd. This rupture is th e moment of dissolution of the original unity

or deceiving.2' In a more circumspect vein, the philosopher Caws insisted that "truth .. ,is a comparative latecomer on the linguistic scene, and i t is certainly a mistake to suppose that language was invented for the purpose of telling it."25 But it i s i n the specific social context of our cxploration, the terms and choices of concrcte activities and relationships, that more understanding of the genesis of language must be sought. Olivia Vlahos judged that the "power of words" must have appeared very early; "Surely . . . not long after man had begun to fashion tools shaped to a special pattern., ,26 The flaking or chipping of stone tools, during the million or two years of Paleolithic life, however, seems much more apt to h ave been shared by direct, intimate demonstration than hy spoken directions. Nevertheless, the proposition that language arose with the beginnings of technology-that is, in the sense of division of labor and its concomitants, as a standardizing of things and events and the effective power of specialists over others-is at the heart of the matter, i n my view. 1 t would seem very difficult to disengage the division of labor-"the source of civilization,"" in Durkheim's phrase-from language at any stage, perhaps least of all the beginning. Division of labor necessitates a relatively complex control of group action; in effcct it demands that the whole community be organized and directed. This happens through the breakdown of functions previously performed by everybody, into a progressively greater differentiation of tasks, and hence of roles and distinctions.

b,'lween humanity and nature; it coincides with the initiation of division of lohor. Marx recognized that the risc of idcological consciousness was f,,;rhlished by the division of labor; language was for him the primary I ' . o r adigm of "productive labor." Every step in the advancement of , " i lization has mcant added labor, however, and thc fundamentally alien , ,. ; r l i ty of productive labor/work is realized and advanced via language. I deology receives its substance from division of labor, and, inseparably,
l I S form from language.

Engels, valorizing labor even more explicitly than Marx, explained the "rigin of language from and with labor, the "mastery of nature." He ,,-,pressed the essential connection by the phrase," first labor, after it and Ihen with i t speech."" To put it more critically, the artificial communi cation which is language was and is the voicc of the artificial separation (In the usual, repressive parlance, this is phrased positively, of course, in terms of the invaluable nature of language in organizing "individual responsibilities.") Language was elaborated for the suppression of feelings; as the codc of civilization it exprcsses the sublimation of Eros, the repression of instinct, which is the core of civilization. Freud, in the one paragraph he devoted to the origin of language, connected original specch to sexual bonding as the instrumentality by which work was made acceptable as "an equivalence and substitute for sexual activity.'>32 This transference language constituted in the establishing of the link between mating calls from a free sexuality to work is original sublimation, and Freud saw

which is (division

(1) labor .'1

and work processes. The nco-Freudian Laean carries this analysis further, asserting that the

language. For Lacan the unconscious i thus "structurell likc a lallgu;lg,," traditional Freudian sense.JJ and functions linguistically, not instinctively or symholically ill t l1l'

U l l cUllscious

is formco by lhc p ri ma ry rpression of acq u isitioll

l,r
;'

1'1

well

studies, in Lee . . '0WO[ < I s l ) f 1 11:-\ I . shows t h e h ll i l i e f -gat hen" rs to havc hi.: c l l nourished ; I l 1 d 1( 1 h avl I had l abundant leisure timc.,,4 l

To look at the problem of origin on a figurative plane, it is interestillit to consider the myth of the Tower of Babel. The story of the confound ing of language, like that other story in Genesis, the Fall from the gracl'
of the Garllen, is an attempt to come to terms with the origin of evil .

'Constant

tongues may best be understood as the emergence of symbolic language, and humans can understand them."

The splintering of an "original language" into mutually unintelligibk : the eclipse of an earlier state of more total and authentic communica

.8l-m.orl has wncludcd, "The question to be asked is

1
ht

til I I I ) l 'r C l llSC ()f food shortage or population pressures. Tn fact, as Lewis

ah, HIt s u rvival; the time for rctlcction and linguistic devolpment was availahk, hut this path was apparently refused for many I thousands I , f years. Nor did the conclusive victory of agriculture, civilization's l.'t )J"IH:rstonc, take place (in the form of the Neolithic revolu
\VI

Early

i l l l l l l: I J l i t v was [lot dderred from language by the pressures of

I I I l l'S

tion. I n numerous traditions of paradise, for example, animals can talk I have argued elsewhere" that the Fall can be understood as a fall into time. Likewise, the failure of the Tower of Babel suggests, as Russell Fraser put it, "the isolation of man in historical time."' But the Fall also has a meaning in terms of the origin of language. Benjamin found in it the mediation which is language and the "origin o f abstraction, too, as a faculty of language-mind."" "The fall is into language," according to Norman O. Brown .'s Another part of Genesis provides Biblical commentary on an essential
of language, names," and on the notion that naming i s an act of

\md f ""'' ' storage techniques were not developed everywhere, but why 4' ihll.\' wen' developed at all.)) < II liliin ance of agriculture, including property ownership, law, cities, I l l . d l H" l t latics, surplus, permanent hierarchy and specialization, and W r ;tt-lIo, to mention a few of its elements, was no inevitable step in human

not why agriculture

progre ss "; neither was language itself. The reali ty of pre N w l i l hie life demonstrates the degradation or defeat involved in what h " I)("en generally seen as an enormous step forward, an admirable .' ,,,>;("cnding of nature, etc. In this light, many of the insights of I , " k ing of progress in i nstr umental control with regression in affective ' I H" r i c n ce) are made equivocal by their false conclusion that "Men have . > i w:tys had to choose between their subjugation to nature or the subjuga I l t l [ \ of nature to the Self."45 .. Nowhere is civilization so perfectly mirrored as in speech,"" as Pei . . . ,mmentcd, and in so me very significant ways language has not only , , neeted but determined shifts in human life. The deep, powerful break I hat was announced by the birth of language prefigured and overshad " wed the arrival of civilization and history, a mere 10,000 years ago. In I h e reach of language, "the whole of History stands unified and complete in the manner of a Natural Order,"" says Barthes . Mythology, which, as Cassirer noted, "is from its very beginning " potential religion," can be understood as a function of language, subject
'

HOI heimer and Adorno in the

Dialectic of Enlightenment

(such as the

Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." This bears nature: man became master of things only because h e first named them,

domination. 1 refer to the creation myth, which includes "and whatsoever

directly on the necessary linguistic component of the domination of by a name is to win power over il.,,'1 i n the formulation of Dufrenne. '[) As Spengler had it, "To name anything The beginning of humankind's separation from and conquest of the

world is thus located in the naming of the world.

involved in the first naming, which represents the domination of the

Logos

itself as god is

deity. The well-known passage is contained in the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Returning to the question of the origin of language in real terms, we also come hack to the notion that the problem of language is the problem of civilization. The anthropologist Lizot noted that the hunter gatherer mode exhibited that l ack of technology and division of labor that Jaynes felt must have bespoken an absence of language: "[Primitive progress per se are beyond question."" Furthermore, "the bulk of recent people's] contempt for work and their disinterest i n technological

10 its requirements like any ideological product. The nineteenth-century linguist Muller described mythology as a "disease of language" in just this sens e; language deforms thought by its inability to describe things
of language . . . [It is I the dark shadow which language throws upon

directly. "Mythology is inevitable, it is natural, it is an inherent necessity

thought, and which can never disappear till language becomes entirely " commensurate with thought, which it never will." "real" language consisting not of conventional signs but expressing the It is little wonder, then, that the old dream of a lingua Adamica, a

I 1
,
,

I ,
,

' . 1 '

II,

\ I J )

t h T()w r of Babel i one of the e nu u r i n g significations of tili, y"al'lliIlN ' to truly commune with each other anu with nature.

d i I C l " i , 1 I I I I I W d i ; l I n I I l l C ; t l l i l l}', l ll" t h i llgs, has h(,(,11 ;111 i l l l q l ;d p;1 l 1 h U II 1 , l I l i l y's IOllgi!lg fl ll'

1\ 1 1 , \ N I Nr ,

participation in the totality of nature to religion involved a detaching of

forces and beings into outward, inverteu existences. This separation took , the form of deities, and the religious practitioner, the shaman, was the

a cohcrent whole, interconnected by the closest bonds. The step from ,

I n that carlier (but long enduring) condition nature and s(lcity t(lrJlll',I .

tt

losl p r i l l H.' v a l slale . As ITlllarl-.l'd UpOl1 ahovt\

of
'

division I I II tlhOf has ctlildusivciy ucstroycd an earlier reality. With Derrida, . I IIW C:tll accuralely refer to "language as the origin of history."S3 I l l ) ' ,II . II'. t i t sd f is a repression, and along its progress repression
:is iri<-()I()gy, as work-so as to generate historical time. Wi thout ,I !" . - " LHI;G I l . l/'.l' ; 1 1 1 of history would disappear .
J-il l h ;! ; l l i l l ll has definitively arrived, "One gets the impression," Freud ' ' ' ' 1 ,, ,',. . < 1 on a res i sting majority by a minority which undcrstood how to " o l>t; " " I,,'ssession of the means of power and coercion." If the matter
"I
"rot..

incoorates 1 1 11H" ;11111 is I Ih'n"hy illlil11;lll"d hy i t at every cxprcssioll,

I ' l l t\l l ' N I >.; I I 1, 1 ' 1 - 1 1:-" \ 1

I I

PI!'

h i"iI C l l'y is rrc-writing; writing of some sort is the signal that

th e only profound cultural developments underlying our modern I estrangc me nt. Also in the Upper Paleolithic era, as the species Neander was born. [n the celebrated cave paintings of roughly 30,000 years ago is ; found a wide assortment of abstract signs; the symbolism of late ' Paleolithic art slowly stiffens into the much more stylized forms of the Neolithic agriculturalists. During this period, which is likely either synonymous with the beginnings of l anguage or registers its first real dominance, a mounting unrest surfaced. John Pfeiffer described this in terms of thc erosion of the egalitarian hunter-gatherer traditions, as Cro Magnon est ablished its h e g e mo ny. so Whereas there was "no trace of

first specialist. Th e decisive mediations of mythology and religion are not, however, ' thaI gave way to Cro-Magnon (and the brain actually shrank in size), art 1

i l l "/I/('

Fllllire oJ oll ll/liSioll, "that civilization

is som cth i ng that was

I . l l l ! ', u agl: makes its appearance contrihuting to subjugation in rat h e r

I "" "

and language can seem problematic, writing as a stage of

( ut lO,OOO B.C. cxt en sive division of labor had produccd the kind , ,j ; wial control reflected by cities and tcmples. The earliest wri t i ngs arc " , , ,,lIs of taxes, laws, terms of labor servitudc. This objectified domina
ill'
'

, u k < " l l fashion. Freud could have legitimately pointed to written language , . , l il" lever by which civilization was imposed and consolidated.
;, ,o
'

I I<

'"

Ihus originated from the practical needs of political economy. An heights of power and conquest, as exemplified in thc ncw form of As Levi-Strauss p u t

" . , . , " ased usc of letters and tablets soon enabled those in charge to reach
1"
,.,.w

rank" until the Upper Paleolithic, the emerging division of labor and its

immediate social consequences demanded a disciplining of those rcsisting the gradual approach of civilization. As a formalizing, indoctrinating device , the dramatic power of art fulfilled this need for cultural cohercnce and the continu ity of authority. Language, myth, religion and art thus advanced as deeply "political" conditions of social life, by which the artificial media of symbolic forms rcplaced the d irectly-lived quality longer see reality face to face; the logic of domination drew a veil over play, freedom, aft1uence. At the close of the Paleolithic Age, as a decreased proportion of verbs in the language reflected the decline of unique and fredy chosen acts in consequence of division of labor, language still possessed no tenses.51 existence of time, n o fixed differentiations had developed before hunter gatherer life was displaced by Neolithic farming. But when every verb whether time exists apart from grammar. Once the structure of speech Although the crcation of a symbolic world was the condition for t h e of life before division of labor. From this point on, humanity could no

. . 1 lIlankind . .. Wri t ing, on this its first appearance in our m i d st , had allied ss , I ';clf with falsehood."

,t.

I V l m m e nt commanded by Hammurabi of Babylon.

"

writing "seems to favor rather the exploitation than thc e nlighte n m e nt

I " " 1 , in h i croglyphic and ideographic writing and then in phonetic

I .anguage at this juncture becomes the representation of representa

"I words, to that of syllables, and finally to letters in an alphabet, ,,,,[,osed an increasingly irresistible sense of order and control. And in llie r c i fieat ion that writing pcrmits, language is no longer tied to a speaking subject or community of discourse, but creates an autonomous '" lield from which every subject can be absent. In the contemporary world, the avant-garde of art has, most noticeably, [,erformed at least the gestures of refusal of the prison of language. Since Mallarme, a good deal of modernist poetry and ['rose has moved against
the taken-for-grantedness of normal speech. To Ihe question " Who is " After this spe ak ing?" Mallarmc answered, "Language is speaking."

.d phabetic writing. The progress of symbolization, from the symbolizing

form shows a tcnse, language is "demanding lip service to time even when time is furthest from our thoughts."" From this point one can ask

the explosive period around World War I when Joyce, Stein and others attcmpted a new syntax as well as a new vocabulary, the restraints and distortions of language have been assaulted
reply, and especially

since

w h p i l ' s ; i I , ' I I I l i l t - L l l lI l

and

resistance to language."

i l l I h e " )2!!, 10 l"l'c ; i l e "poei l y w i l h o u l "'( 1 " l s " ) , A , l au", I he S l I rre a l i s l:

C.

" lIss i ; 1 I 1 I"U I I i I i s i s. 1 ); , , ( ; , l Co,',. I I II!'." I t t l l

'

ktlrits wa among the

mme exotic c "' J I I e l l l s or

', e J J('fa

d'I",

1 ' I I\.l I N I \ I II 1 1 ' I ' l l, \ r

held that defiance of society also includes defiance of its language. B u l

The Symbolist poets, and many who could he called

their desce n d anls,

inadequ acy in the former arena precluded success in the latter, bringing

one to ask whether avant-garde strivings can be anything more than abstract, hermetic gestures. Language, which at any given moment emhodies the ideology of a particular culture, must be ended in order to abolish both categories of estrangement; a project of some considerable social dimensions, let us say. That literary texts (e.g. poetry of e.e. cummings) break the rules of language seems mainly to have the paradoxical effect of evoking the rules themsclves. By permit ti n g the free play of ideas about language, society treats these ideas as mere play. The massive amount of l ies-official, commercial and otherwise-is perhaps i n itelf sufficient to explain why Johnny Can't Read or Write, why i l literacy is increasing in the metropole. In any case, i t is not only that "the pressure on language has gotten very great, "'9 according to Canetti, but that "unlearning" has come "to be a force in almost every field of thought,"" in Rohert Harbison's estimation. Today " i ncredible" and "awesome" are applied to the most commonly trivial and boring, ami it is no accident that powerful or shocking words barely exist anymore . The deterioration of language mirrors a more general estrangement; it has become almost totally external to us. From Kalka to Pinter silence itself is a fitting voice of our times. "Few hooks are forgivable. Black on the canvas, silence on the screen, an empty white sheet of paper, arc perhaps feasible,"6' as R.D. Laing put i t so welL Meanwhile, the structuralists and post-structuralists-Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucau lt, Lacan, Derrida-have been almost entirely occupied with the duplicity of language in their endless exegetical burrowings into it. They have virtually rcnounced the project of extracting meaning from language. reifies the resistance to reification. As T.S. Eliot's Sweeney explains, "I 've I am writing (obvioliSly) enclosed i n language, aware that language

ake, Finnegan 's W

the

dlsirc to go furth er, (ke per t h an wo r<l,. I I H' f('(' l i llg , , (' wal lting only to he don e with all talk , knowing that IJP i n l '. , d ll lwn ] t ( ) live coh eren tly cras es the nee d to formulat e coh eren ce. 1 1 1 l ' 1 ( ' i"" ;1 pro fo u nd trut h to the notion that "lovers nee d no wor ds." I I " t " " " t is that we mus t have a world of lovers, a world of the face-to f.c<c . " whic h even nam es can be forgotten, a world which know s that enchantment is the opp osite of ignorance. Only a politics that und oes t " ' ! ' ' '''I',l' and time and is thus visionary to the point of volu ptuo usne ss l I as. ;lny mea ning .
u n b fl.d l e Kl 1 J 11H". We havl ' < I I I had the

\V, : t d "

I W '-.p("; Ji,

I \

;t s;\ ( I I ll'ss : I hey an: lIsed to soak up ! I ll' e l l l p t i ness or

gotta use words when I talk to you." One can imagine replacing the imprisonment of time with a brilliant present-only by imagining a world without division of labor, without that divorce from nature from which all ideology and authority accrue. We couldn't live in this world without language and that is just how profoundly we must transform this world.

"

N U M BER: I TS O R I G I N AND EVOLUTION

I h,' wrenching and demoralizing character of the cnSlS we find . . " , sclves in, above all, the growing emptiness of spirit and artificiality of " I . , " n, lead uS more and more to question the most commonplace of
' /,."" II S . " Time and language begin to arousc suspicions; number, too, no

' ' ' ' '}:I,r seems "neutral." The glare of alienation in technological civiliza " " " i s too painfully bright to hide its essence now, and mathematics is

I , y to focus on the meaning or the reasons for the emergence of the 'Iuantitative, we are once again looking at a decisive moment of our ('Strangcment from natural being.
Number, like language, is always saying what it cannot say. As the root

I I is also the language of science-how deep must we go, how far back 10 reveal the "reason" for damaged life? The tangled skein of unneces '.ary s uffering, the strands of domination, arc unavoidably being unreeled, hy the pressurc of an unrelenting present.
When we

I I I<' schema of technology.

ask,

to what sorts of questions is the answer a number, and

"I' a certain kind of logic or method, mathematics is not mcrely a tool

hut a goal of scientific knowledge: to be perfectly exact, perfectly self consistent, and perfectly general. Never mind that the world is inexact, interrelated, and specific, that no one has ever seen leaves, trees, clouds, animals that arc any two the same, just as no two moments arc identical. ) As Dingle said, "All that can come from the ultimate scientific analysis of the material world is a set of numbers,'" reflecting upon the primacy of the conccpt of identity in math and its offspring, science. A little further on I will attempt an "anthropology" o f number and explore its social embeddedness. Horkhcimer

basis of the disease: "Even the deductive form of science reflects hierarchy and coercion . . . the whole logical order, dependency, progres sion, and union of [its] concepts is grounded in the corresponding l conditions of social reality-that is, of the division of labor." If mathematical reality is the purely formal structure of normative or ' standardizing measure (and later, science) , the first thing to be measured

and

Adorno point to the

at all was timc.5 The prima l connection h(!lwcn l i l lll' a l l d J l L J l l d w becom es imme diatel y eviden t. Autho rity, first ohjectified 'IS becom es rigidified by the gradually mathe matize d consc iousne ss ot l i l l l(". Put slightly difterently, time is a measu re and exists as a rcifica !ioll ",. materiality thanks to the introduction of meas ure. The i mportance of symbolization shoul d also be noted , in passin g, " "' a fur th e r interrelation consists of the fact that while the basic featu re of all measu remen t is symbolic repre sentat ion,' the creation of a symb olic world is the cond ition of the existence of time. To realize that repre sentat ion begin s with langu age, actualized in the creation of a reproducihle formal structure , is already to appre hend the fun dame ntal tic betwe en langu age and numbe r ? An impoverish e d prese nt rende rs i t easy to see, a s langu age becom es more impoverishe d, that math is simply the most reduc ed and draine d langu age. The ultim ate step in formalizing a language is to transform it into mathe matic s; conversely, the closer language come s to the dense concr etions of reality, the less abstract and exact it can be. The symholizing of life and mean ing is at its most versatile in langu age, which, in Wittgenstein's later view, virtually const itutes the world . Further, langu age, based as it is on a symbolic fac ulty for conve ntion al and arbitrary equiv alenci es, finds in the symbo lism of math its great est refI neme nt. Mathematics, as judge d by Max Black , is "the gram mar of a l l symbolic syste ms.'" The purpo se of the mathe matical aspec t of langu age and conce pt is t h e more comp lete isolation o f the conce pt from the sense s. Math is the paradigm of abstract thought for the same reason that Levy terme d pure mathematics "the metho d of isolat ion raised to a fine art.'" Closely related arc its character of "enormous generality," " as discu ssed by Par sons, Its retusal of limitations on said generality, as t()rm ulated by Whitehead .ll This abstracting process and its forma l, gener al results provide a ntent that seems to be comp letely detac hed from thc think ing Indlvldual; the user of a mathematical system and his/he r value s do n o t enter into the system . The Hegelian idea o f the auton omy of alie nated activity finds a pe rfect application with mathematics; it has its own laws of growth , its own di alectic, 12 and stands over the ind ivid ual as a separate power. Self-existent time and the first distancing of huma nity from natur c, it must be preliminarily added , began to emer ge when we first began to Count. Dom ination of nature, and then of huma ns. is thus . enabl ed.

N l J MBLi{:

ITS

O!{J( i l N A N ] )

I ':V( I] I j' 1 [( I N

11 is that it dUl:S 1 11 Ct J lIVl"y t ru t h ahu u t I l ll' ('ssential a l l i l Lldl loward th whole colorful move . h i ' 1 1 1 1 I l k i .s S U l l I l l I C d up hy, "Pul l h is anLl that t.:quaI to th a t a nd tIl i S 1 " ' 4 , I t . 1 1 .11 ' 1 1. 11 1 ; 1 1 , , 1 e.quivalencc. o r identity are inseparahle; the su pp ress ion "I II,, w( ll ItI -:-; r ichn e ss which is paramount in identity brought Adorno I" , .011 il " I h e ['rimal world of ideology. "" The untruth of identity i s ' d l I l J l Iy I hal t h e concept docs not exhaust the thing conccivcd.1b
f

1 1< 1 1 . , d f t l ;t l l l l" l I l i t l IC t i t l l( )II:hl _ I , I I LIi

I I I f\ J t

N I .

I l l ' I { I ' I - I I,\, \ I

1/

VIll l !" l t I . ! \

I ts

, l . l I l i l 1 l1atics is reiflcd, ritualizcd thought, the virtual abandonment of

1 1""'-,,,".

" > ' I I "'i"

saw the constitution of an ideality that has heen deployed 1 1 " " "I,.l<o ut history and has been questioned only to be repeated and
. . N " " ,"er is t h e most momentous ldea In the hIstory of human thought. .
,

; nn e

h l u cault foun d that "in the first gesture of the first mathc

1 ,u r l l i l d . ,n7

' I ", , " l ificatio n , and thereby produced the homogeneous and abstract , I > . I raeter of number, which made mathemallcs pOSSible. From ltS " " ' ( ' ption in elementary forms of counting (bcginning with a binary ""'is ion and proceeding to the usc of fingers and toes as bascs) to the
1

N l l r r lhcrino or counting (and measurement, the process of assigning " " " o I"'rs t represent qualities) gradually consolidated plurality into

, h'veloped, paralleling the m aturation of the time concept . As William .!" Illes p ut it, "the intellectual life of man consists almost wholly 1fI h s ' ; l I i lstitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual ordcr 1fI which h i S
,,18

;, ,'Ck idealization of number, an incrcasingly ab stract type of thinking

. . l'xl""'cricn cc angmaIIy comes. . . Boas concluded that "counting docs not become necessary unlll objects a r c considered in such gencralizcd form that their individualities arc

" ntirely lost sight of. " " In the growth of civilization we have learned to lise increasingly abstract signs to point at incrcasingly abstract ref?rents. On the other hand, prehistoric languages had a plethora of terms for the

/Iva

to find that an operational grasp of quantification will be a cultural norm in many primitive socicties."" Much earlier, and more crudely, AlI!cr referred to "the repugnance felt by uncivilized men towards any genurne , intellectual effort, more particula rly towards arithmetic., 22 different kinds of things, along to fully abstract number, there was an immense resistance, as if the objectification involved was somehow seen
ligbt of the striking,

touched and felt, while very often having no number words beyond one, " and many. Hunter-gatherer humanity had little if any need for nu bers, which is the reason Hallpike declared that "we cannot expect

I n fact on the long road toward abstraction, from an intuitive sense of amount 'to the use of different sets of number words for counting

In abstraction is the truth of Heyting's concl usion that "the character-

for what it was. This seems lcss implausible in

, (llll" .'II\(,TSlofS it'dI" .t "I ' . " i l which . and techmea I. (I'01' , W "H 01'IlOll Yl';US apu Jlouch is the I'mm'"'' t artIStic .. ula hellef w()rd.s) so evident and b "reeent, studlCs which , have dcmonstrated the existence, sme 300 OO years ago, of mental ablilty c(llIivalcnt to mouern man',," i the wordS 0f Bntlsh archeologist Clive Gamble ' ' B ased on observations of survlvmg tnbal peoples, it is apparent, to provide anothcr case o:t, that hunter-gatherers possessed an .' enormous and intimate d s n g of th nature and ecology of their local placcs, quite sutIicie:t t e mau"urated , agnculture perhaps . hundreds of thousand , of years before the Neol,thlc revolution, " But a new kind of rela!' nS lP tO nature was Involved; one that was evidently ; refuseu for so m y' many generatlons. . To us It has seemed a great advantage to abstract from the natural relationship of th' g , :h:reas In the, vast Stone Age being was appre hended and valu : hole, not In terms of separable attributes Toda : aolarge family sits down to dinner and it is noticd that s;:: ' n", th IS IS not uone by count' 0r wh en a hut was , mg, , built in prehistoric times the nm ber of reqUlred posts was not specified , or counted, ralher they "wr ' erent to the Id"a of the hut, intrinsically , involved in'it :lt (EvUlar y agnculture, the loss of a herd animal could be detected ot by ( ng but by missing a particular face or charaeteristic featurcs', I' t seems clear' however, as Bryan !'vIorgan argues that , , c "man's Ilrst use lor a number system" was certamly as a control of , domesticated tlock animals'27 as WI'Id creatures becamc products to be harvcsted ,) [n d'IS t"anclllg and separat'lon rles th e heart of mathematics: , the discursive reduction ',patterns, states and relationships which we initially pcrceive as whole t [n the birth of categories aimed , at control of what is free and unordered' crystallized by ca'riy countmg, we see a new attitude toward ' ' , l , ' the wor d, If nammg IS a distanclllg" a mastcry, so too IS number, which g s a/o;,ollary of language, is impoverished namin it is the signature of ' t :;n g 0 .a lcnahn. ,;'he rot meanings of number are instructive: "quic to grasp or take and to , take, especially to stcal,' " also "taken' seized, hence.. ,n umb,,," What IS ' ", made an object of domlllatlOn IS thereby reified' becomes numb , 'For h undreds of thous' d ' o f ar unter-gatherers enjoyed a direct, unimpaired access' to th:a rna ena s eeded tor survival. Work was ' not divided nor dd pnvate p:operty eXist. Dorothy Lee focused on a survivin exam ic r g /hat 20ne of the Trobrianders' a activitie; arc fited a :::: d sU 7e lne, There IS no Job, no labor, no drudgerv which finds its re'ard O tSIde the acl."" Equally important lIIlil a.)' hC'lllly ' ) 1' 1 00 I .'i' , . C
() I' ' rill " " 25 '
, < '

" I,

'

N I I l H J l { . I I '. ( )IUI ; ) N . \ N I I I " \ I I J I J I H IN

1 1 1 - 1\lI ' N r' I IJ

1-!. I I I I', \ 1

ch 1I1111 1rr a r e pro r libe ral r U S l t l i l i S for whi I " , I h (" " I ' l l H I I'_',a l i t y , " " I ll\' on " H ( l i l l)'. I I I S a h l i lls. \ h . 1 I illf. alld
1 . 1 1 1 1 1 1 \ 1';,
. ..

i:

rela opp osit es. counting or exchange are , of course, ectetive dom esti c de, animals killed or plants coll d for numhers W I L t ' I (' ''' Iid eos are ma dized ge, the re is no demand for standardevelops later, 1 1 ' . 1 ' ;t I I d 1I0t for exchan ions asllring and weighing possess , 1 1 nlca SlI rem cnt s, Nle and definition of property rights and duties ,tI, l I g with (he measurement of tools tes a decisive shift toward standardization hun ter I ;Jll l hnr ily, Isaa c loca stage of Uppcr Paleolithic period," the last me asu rem ent , 1 1 1 1 1 lang uage in the less abstract uni ts of )',; Jl hner humanity, Numbers and equ alization of differences , Earliest d, ' rive, as not ed above, from the liest division of labor, was indetermisame as ear ",c han ge, which is the not really be ematization; a tabl c of equ ivalencies canthe progress 1I;Jl e and defied syst predominance of the gift gave way toangeability of l nnu late d,JJ As the sion of labor, the universal interch be fixed as a . I exchange and divi , What comes to IIlal hem atics finds its concrete expression equivalent exchange-is onl y of principle of equal justice-the ideology n of labor. Lack of a dir ectly ion of divisio dominat I he practice of the y separation from tence, the loss of autonomy that eaccompan specialists, live d exis effectiv power of nature are the concomitants of thecan be defined only by dcfining all of Mauss stated that any exchange s later Belshaw grasped division of the institutions of society," Decade iety but the whole of it.35 Likewise soc labor as not merely a segment of clusion that a world without exchange listic, is the con sweeping, but rea be a world without number. or fractionalized endeavor wouldothers well before him, realized that Clastres, and Childe among basis of exchange, does not people's ability to produce a surplus, the Concerning the nonetheless to so, necessarily mean that they decidel/cudo al deficiency accounts for the nta ltur persistent view that only me more mistaken," judged Clastres '6 For absence of surplus, "nothing is "intrinsically an anti-surplus Sahlins, "Stone Age economics" was sely, For long ages humans had loo system,"" using the tcrm system veryons attendant on ass um ing a divided sati no desire for thc dubious compen t in number. Piling up a surplus of life, just as they had no interes , before Neanderthal times passed (0 anything was unknown, appare ntly tacts were nonexistent in the earlier the Cro-Magnon; extensive trade con with Cro-Magnon society," period, becoming common thereafter h agriculture, and characteristically Surplus was fully developed only wit colithic life was the perfection of the chief technical advancement of N the like," This development also the container: jars, bins, granaries and
.. , .. .

e a , h e i r i n d i llati on to mak

ft:a st

of l:vcrything

p ly d," ]"' ac han

gives concrete form to a bu rgeoning te nd en cy toward spatialization, th e sublimation of an increasingl y autonomous di m en sio n of tim e into spatial forms, Abstraction, perh aps the tlrst spatializatio n, was th e first compensation tor the de privation ca us ed by tbe se ns e of tim e, Spatialization was greatly re hned with number an d ge om etry, Ricoeur notes that "I nfinity is disc over ed "j n the fo rm of th e idealization of magnitudes, of m ea su re s, of numbers, figures,"" to carr y this still further. This qu es t for unrestricted spatiality is part and pa rc el of the abstract march of mathematics, So th en is the feeling of be in g tree d fro m th e world, from finitude, that Hannah A re nd t described co nc er ni ng mathe matics.4l Mathematical principles and their component nu m be rs and figurcs se em to exemplify a tim el es sn cs s which is po ss ib ly th ei r de ep es t character. Hermann Weyl, in attempting to sum up (n o pu n in te nd ed ) th e "life ce nt er of mathem atics," te rm ed it the scienc e of th e infinite." How be tte r to express an escape from reified time than by making it hm ltl es sly subservIent to sp ace-in the form of math. Spatialization-like mathrests upon separation; in he re nt in it arc division and an organizatio n of that division. The divi sion of tim e into parts (whi h se em s to have be en th e ea rli es t counting or measuring) is Itself spattal. TIme has alw ays be en m ea su re d in su ch terms as the movement of the earth or moon, or the hands of a cl ock. The first tim e indications w er e not numer ical bu t concrete, as w ith all ea rli es t counting. Y et , as we know, a numbe r system, pa ra lle lin g time, be co m es a separate, mvanable pn nc lp le . The se parations in social life-m ost fundamentally, dIvIsIon ot labor-seem alone ab le to account fo r the growth of es tranging conceptualizatio n. In fact, two critical mathem atical inventions, zero and th e pl ac e system, may serve as cultural evid ence of division of labor. Zero and th e place system, or position, em erged in de pe nd ently, "a gainst co ns id er ab le ps y hological re sis ta nc e," " in th e Mayan and Hindu civilizations. Mayan dIVISIon of labor, accompa nied by en or m ou s social str atification (not to m en tio n a notofloUS ob se ss io n with time, and largescale hu m an sacrifice at th e hands of a powerfu l pr ie st class) is a vividly do cu m en te d fact, while th e division of labor reflected in the In di an ca ste system was "t he m os t complex th at th e w orld ha d se en betore th e In du strial Revolu tio n. ,,44 The necessity of work (M arx) and the necessity of re pr es sio n (F re ud ) amount to the sa m e th in g: civilization. T he se false co mmandments tu rn ed humanity away from na ture and account for hi . story as a "s te ad ily le ng th en m g ch ro ill cl e of m as s ne ur os is ."" Fr eu d cr ed its

N ( I l I H ' IC ITS

O /{ J ( ilN A N I ) EV()UJTI()N

l ' I I ' l\l I ' N I 'l I l l, 1 ':' 1 - 1 1 1\.\(

Sell;: 1 l 1 1fic/ l l l ; 1 I he i l i a I ll'a l ae h i c ve Illen t as t h e h i g h e s t mOlllcn t of. eiv ili/.at iUl?,
a1Ld

1 1 1 1 It-l"SS i s t i l e price we pay for our most precious h man hentage, namely ( H I I ' ; l h i l i ty to represent experience and commumcate our thoughts by ,, I I wallS ( ) I sym l10 l S. 46 , . . . ' T i l l' t r iad of symbolization, work and repressIOn fmds Its opcratlllg
,

t h i s Sl'eIllS

va l i d

as

fu nct io n of its symholic nature.

" he neurotic

I " illeipIc in division of labor. This is why so little progress was made m
III

.[('cepling numerical values until the huge mcrease

dIVISIon of labor of

I i le Neolithic revolution: from the gathering of food to Its actual produc-

1 11lIJ. With that massive changeover mathematics became tully grounded

"11(1 necessary. Indeed it became more a category of eXIstence than a

mere instrumentality. . . The fifth century B.C. historian Herodotus attributed the ongm of
.

mathematics to the Egyptian king Sesostris (1300 B.C.), who needed to for tax purposes.47 Systematized math-m thIS case . geometry, which literally means "land measuring"-did in fact anse fro . requirements of political economy, though t predates Sesostns the C!,'ypt by perhaps 2000 years. The food surplus at NeolithIC CIVIlizatIOn measure land

made possible the emergence of specialized classes of pnests and mathematics writing and the calendar." In Sumer the first mathematical

administrators which by about 3200 B.C. had produced the alphabet, computation

purchased, interest payments, etc.49 As Bernal points out, "mathematIcs, o r at least arithmetic, came even before writing."so The number symbols arc most probably older than any other elements of the most ancIent forms of writing 51 . . At this point domination of nature and humaillty are SIgnaled not only

inventories ' deeds of sale, contracts, and the attendant umt pnces, UilltS

appeared, between 3500 and 3000 B.c., in the form of

by math and writing, but also by the wall

warfare and human slavcry. "Social labor (dIvIsIon ot labor), the coerced coordination of several workers at once, is thwarted by the old, person l . measures; lengths, weights, volumes must b e standardIzed. In thIS standardization, one of the hallmarks of civilization, mathematIcal exactitude and specialized skill go hand in hand. Math and speCializatIOn, requiring each other, developed apace and math becamc ltselt a speCIalty. The great trade routes, expressing the triumph of dIVISIon of labor, diffused the new, sophisticated techniques of counting, measurement and calculation. In Babylon, . merchant-mathematicians contrived a comprehenSIve and 2500 B.C., which system "was ,,

, grin-stocked CIty, along WIth

arithmetic between 3000

articulated as an abstract computational sCIence by about 2000 B.C.

lly In

N l l r\II\I
though

Ie ITS ( )J. .: l t i l N ,\ N I ) 1 '.\ / J 1 ( J I H ) N

succeeding centuries the Babylonians even invented a symb()lic algehra, Babylonian-Egyptian math has been generally regarded as extremely trial-and-error or empiricist compared to that of the much later Greeks. To the Egyptians and Babylonians mathematical figures had concrete referents: algebra was an aid to commercial transactions, a rectangle was a piece of land of a particular shape. The Grecks, however, were explicit in asserting that geometry deals with abstractions, and this development reflects an extreme form of division of labor and social stratification. Unlike Egyptian or Babylonian society, in Greece, a large slave class performed all productive labor, technical as well as unskilled, such that the ruling class milieu that included mathematicians disdained practical pursuits or applications. Pythagoras, more of less the founder of Greek mathematics (6th century B.C . ) expressed this rarefied, abstract bent in no uncertain terms. To him numbers were immutable and eternal. Directly anticipating Platonic idealism, he declared that numbers were the intelligible key to the universe. Usually encapsulated as "everything is number," the Pythagorean philosophy held that numbers exist in a literal sense and arc quite literally all that does exist.'] This form of mathematical philosophy, with the extremity of its search for harmony and order, may be seen as a deep fear of uncertainty or chaos, an oblique acknowledgment of the massive and perhaps unstablc repression underlying Greek society. An artificial intellectual life that rested so completely on the surplus created by slaves was at pains to deny the senses, the emotions and the real world. Greek sculpture is another example, in its abstract, ideological conformations, devoid of feelings or their histories." Its figures arc standardized idealizations; the parallel with a highly exaggerated cult of mathematics is manifest. The independent existence of ideas, which is Plato's fundamental premise, is directly derived from Pythagoras, just as his whole theory of ideas flows from the special character of mathematics. Geometry is properly an exercise of disembodied intellect, Plato taught, in character with his vicw that reality is a world of form Irom which matter, in every important respect, is banished. Philosophical idealism was thus estab of quantitative thinking. As c.I. Lewis observed, "from Plato to the lished out of this world-denying impoverishment, based on the primacy

1 1\ 1 " 1

l l i;11 \,C;lrs o f mathematical training arc necessary to corrcctly approach

j ilt" dool j ( ) I l i :-; AcadclIlY, titan that his totalitarian Ucpllhlic insists

I I I ( ' I l ll l s t important political and ethical questions.56 Consistently, hc

d C l li,d that a stateless society ever existed, identifying such a concept

w i l h that of a "state of swine.")7

\ocieties that followed was not Plato, but Aristotle, who cnl1clzed the Immer's Pythagorean reduction of science to mathematics . " . The long non-develo pment of math, which lasted vIrtually un111 the end

Systematiz ed by Euclid in the third century B.C., about a century after I 'l a t o , mathematics reached an apogee not to b e matched for almost two I l I ilknnia; the patron saint of intellect for the slave-based and feudal

01 the Renaissance, remains something of a mystery. But growmg trade

hegan to revive the art of the quantitative by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries." The impersona l order of the eountmg house m the new mercantile capitalism exemplified a renewed concentration on abstract measurem ent. Mumford stresses the mathematical prerequisi te to later mechanization and standardization;

in the rising merchant world, ,,60 and in the end numbers aIone counte d . 'counting numbers began here . Division of labor is the familiar counterpart of trade. As CrombIe

f
,

whole history of European science from the 1 2th to the 17th century can be regarded as a gradual penetration of mathemati cs."" . Decisive chanaes concerning time also announced a growmg tendency

noted "from the early 12th century there was a tendency to increasing speci lization."61 Thus the connection between division of labor and math, discussed earlier in this essay, is also once more apparent: "tbe

toward re-estab ishment of the Greek primacy of mathematic s. By the fourteenth century, public use of mechanical clocks introduced ahstract time as the new medium of social life. Town clocks came to symbohze a " methodical expenditure of hours" to match the "methodical accountancy

of moncy,"63 as time became a succession of precious, mathematIally isolated instants. In the steadily more sophisticated measureme nt of I1me, as in the intensely geometric Gothic style of architecture, could he seen

the growing importance of quantification. . . . By the late fifteenth century an increasing interest m the Ideas of Plato was underway," and in the Renaissance God acqUlred mathemallcal

present day, all the major epistemological theories have been dominated by, or formulated in the light of, accompanying conceptions of mathemat icS."S5 It is no less accidental that Plato wrote "Let only geometers enter"

properties. The growth of maritime commerce a d eololllzatlOn . after 1500 demanded unpreceden ted accuracy m navlgallon and arllllery. Sarton compared the greedy victories of the Conquistadors to those of

the mathematicians, whose "conquests were spiritual ones, conquests of pure reason, the scope of which was infinite. ''" . . But the Renaissance conviction that mathemal1cs should be apphcahle

all the arts (not to menl ion slich earlier and atypical Ii.H"l' r l l l l l l t'l"S ;IS Roger Bacon's 13th century contribution toward a strictly matilcma tic,li optics) was a mild prelude to the magnitude of number's triumph in the sevente enth century. Though thcy wcre soon eclipsed by other advances of the 1600s, Johanne s Kepler and Francis Bacon revealed its two most important and closely related aspcts early in the century. Kepler, who completed the Copermcan tranSitIon to the heliocentric model, saw the real world as composed of quantitative differenc es only; its differences are strictly thos of number ." Bacon, in The New Atlantis (c. 1 620), depicted an Ideahzed sCientific commumty, whose main object was dominati on of nature; as Jaspers put it, "Mastery o f nature .. 'knowledge is power ' has . ' been the watchword since Bacon."" The century of Galilco and Descartes-pre-e minent among those who deepene d all the previous forms of quantitative alienatio n and thus sketched a technological future-began with a qualitative leap in the diVISIOn of labor. Franz Borkena u provided the key as to why a profound change m the Western world-view took place in the seventee nth century, a moveme nt to a fundame ntally mathematical-mechanistic outlook. Accordin g to Borkena u, a great extension of division of labor, occurrin g from about 1600, mtroduced the novel notion of abstract work." This reificatio n of human activity proved pivotal. Along with degradation of work, the clock is the basis of modern life eq ally "scientific" in its reduction of life to a measurab ility, vi obJective, commodified units of time. The increasingly accurate and ubiqUItous clock reached a real dominat ion in the seventee nth century as, correspondingly, "the champio ns of the new sciences manifested a d avid interest in horological matters. "" Thus it seems fitting to introduce Galileo in terms of just this strong . mtcrest m the measure ment of time; his invention of the first mechanical clock based on the principle of the pendulum was likewise a fitting capstone to hiS long career. As increasingly Objectified or reified time reflects, at perhaps the deepest level, an increasin gly alienated social world, Gahleo's principal aim was the reduction of the world to an object of mathem atical dissectio n. Writing a few years before World War Jl and Auschwitz, Husser! located the roots of the co temporary crisis in this objectitying reduction . and IdentJhed Gahleo as Its main progenitor. The life-world has been "devalue d" by science precisely insofar as the "mathem atization of nature" initiated hy Galileo has proceeded7--clearlyno small indictme nt. For Galileo as with Kepler, mathematics was the "root grammar of the

10

,f\,,! I I I\I I U ' h: : ITS ( hW dN .-\NI ) 1 - \ I II I I , I I IN

I I \ " W I Iii i It \S( )pl! ical

nciat ion of the sense s claJ " .al worltl, and its meth ods of ahsolute renu ng away from quality to quan tity, thiS 10 1l0W re a li ty. Ohscrving this turni abstractions, Huss er! conc luded that t , l lI nge into a shadow-world of prevents us from knowmg lit;; as It IS. And "I< "lcrn . math ;;mat ical scien ce more specialized knowledge, that t Ill" rise of science has fuele d ever know n hy now. ,, ' s t u nting and imprisoning progression s<.> well r 2t mod ern SCIence for the Collingwood calle d Galil eo "the true fathe IS wntt en m math emat ical SlIecc ss of his dictum that the book of natu re hematics is the langu age langu age" and its corollary that thcrefore "mat evaluated, ,,73 Due to this separation from natur e, GJlhs ple I ) I S 1 ce . ccn 74 hum ane." . 'After Galil eo, science could no longer be the mathematician who synth cSIZe d geom etry [t seem s very fitting that ) and who, With Pascal, IS and algeh ra to form analytic geometry (1637 ld have shaped GalIl lean cred ited with inven ting calcu lus," shou The thesi s that the world mathematicism into a new system of thinking. a total hreak between people an is organized in such a way that thcre is phant WOrld-VICW, IS the the natural world contrived as a total and tnum mod ern philosophy. The of basis for Descart s' renown as the founder sm," is the his new system, the famous "cog ito, ergo foundation of een mmd and the n betw assig ning of scien tific certainty to the separatio l!y. rest 0 f reaI 76 . seem g only a comp letely This dual ism provided an alien ated mean s tor od Descartes dcclared t ohjectified natur e. In the Discourse on Meth and possessors of naturc : the aim of scien cc is "to make us mastcrs renewed the dlstanemg Though he was a devout Christian, Descartes God could no longer cffcclively from life that an already fading al ideology of estrange legiti mize . As Christianity weakened, a new centr r and dommalion based on men t came forth, this one guarantecing orde . math cmatical prec ision . . ,ng more , the material universe was a machmc and noth To Desc artes engin es, or matter sell mto just as animals "inde ede arc nothing else hut the cosmos Itsdf as a giant a cont inual and orderly moti on."" He saw a separate, auton omou s clockwork just when the illusi on that time is ate nature dle, d e a, proc ess was takin g hold . Also as li: i ng, . anim as capital and the marke inani mate money became endowed With hie, ')'clcs -'" Lastly, Descartes c assum ed the attrihutes of organic process and y, chaotic or live clem ents and math emat ical vision elimi nated any mess
> .

me tholl. ". . '1 d isCt HI I'St' I Ii:! t Ct )llS\ i t utcd Ill< )( e r n scie ntine what IS measurahle and try to ure I I t ' ( ' I l l i l i r i a l n i tlH: princ iple, " tu meas d the Pythagorean is "ot so yet . " Thus he resur recte " , , d n what ahstract math ematical relations or ,.he I 'lal< ,lIie subst itutio n of a world of
"

N I I f\ I I 1 I ' H: IT ( ) I , l f j I N . \ N I ) I . \'( ) I ,\ !] , I C IN

ushered in an attendant mechanical wlu'ld-vicw that was (,uin(idl' nlal wilh

power In the form of the modern nation -state . "The rationalization of admlnlstralion and of the natural order was occurring simultaneously " phIlosophy of reahty proved irresistible; by In 1650 It had become throughout Europe. In the words of Merchant." The total order of math and its mechaic 1

a tcn d ney to:vard central government controls

and concentratioll or

p ill divi si01 l or laho r is w()r tlt . . ftllT CSp Olltk un w i l \ 1 a jum land " o .slgl11hca, scv cntL: e n t h ct.:ntury Eng : 1 1 \ 1 1 : as I l i l! lks cl'ih lo. d rlIid g OUL . .
Jlll i ting
Ihr

I I 1 ro.11 N I ', l ) j

1< I \ . ,

:'. \

the

time of Descartes' death

sct in. The last poly " I HTi ali/ alio l1 "c:gal1 to , and to a rather of the pcasants slowly dlcd nit" songs alld dances

o:aths were

dym

Itteral

virtually the official framework of

though t

In the binary arithmetic he devised, an image of crcation was evoked; he lmagmed that one rep resented God and zero the void, that unity and zero expressed all numbers and all creation." He sought to mechanize expected would bc completed metaphySi cs.

inde endent clocks recal s h's d' turn, I Ie . ) . "Th ere IS nothmg that evades number."" Responsible also for the mo e . lmc IS mo ney,"" Leibniz, like Galileo and DesweII -known phrasc "T' , ca te s , was decply mterestcd in the design of clocks. illustrated by
0 0

Lcibniz, a near-contemporary, refined and extended the work of . D e scartes; the "pre-established harmony" he saw in existence is likewise f "' th ago rcan to I'Ill c age . This mathematical harmony, which Leibniz

iVided. s were enc lose d and d Illat hcm atization, the co mmo n land e; the two part of philosophy until this tim . Knowledge of nature was nature achieved . Its concept of mastery of par ted company as the diSSOCiation , which first issued from definitive mod ern form . Number dominating it . ended up describing and from the natural world , )

refe rence to two

of quantiticati on to ce lebr ate d thc centrality consolidation of the ng the eigh tee nth - ce ntu sensibilities, thereby aidi tcs had as sert ed ceding era. And whe reas Descar bre akthrough s of the pre lles s, and that man pain because they arc sou that animals could not feel went ettrie, in ausc he has a soul, LeM i s not exactly a machine bcc hiS L Homme eal ll1 e man complet ely mecham the whole way and mad

of Mathematics and Physics (17 02 Fontenelle's Preface on the Utility an the ent ire rangc of hum

ry

1777,

Machine .

thought by means of a forma ca culs, a project which he too sanguinely

l l

In

he was ce rtaInly the "first great modern thin er

base a theory of math on the fact that it is a univcrs al symbolic languagc' mto the true character of mathematical symbolism ""

provide all the answcrs, mcludmg those to questions of morality and Despite thIS Ill-fated effort, Leibniz was p e rhap s the first to

bve years. This und crtaking

was to

to

Furthenng the quantitative model of reality was the English ro alist Hobbes, who rcduced the human sou , will, brain, and appetites to tter ' mechalllcal motton, thus contributing directly to thc current concep

Cartesian clockwork universc. Product of the severely repressed Puritan outlook, which focused on subli mating sexual energy into brutalizing labor,

as the "output" of the brain as com puter. The complete objectification of time, so much with us today, was achlevcd by Isaac Newton, who ma ed the workin gs of the Galilean

hon of thm mg

have a clear insigh

:a

pp

Newton spoke of

to anythmg external."" Born in capped the

absolute rime, "flowing equably without regard

a pcrfect cl ock. Whitehead

mg a complet e mathematIcal formulatlOn of nature as a perfect machine '

1642, the year of Galileo's dearh' Newton S c: enti fic Revolution of the seventeenth century by develop j udged
that

"thc history

reads as though It were some vivid dream of Plato or Pyth agoras,"" notmg the astolll s hmgly rcfmcd mode of its quantitative tho ught. Again

of seventeenth-century science

of thc eightcc th lishments in the first half Bac h's imm ens e accomp cashed a century earher on thc spirit of mat h unl century also throw light ce to the rather to that spirit. In referen and he ped shape culture oke in mat hematics has bee n said that he "sp abstract music of Bach, it its ind epe nde nce and the indi vidu al voice lost to Go d."" At this tim e hanical conception . ood as sung but as a mec tone was nO longer underst of the stage of ocal so rt of math, moved it out Bach, treating music as a always u pon a smgle, rum ent al harmony, bas ed polyphony to that of inst ewhat vanable With instrum ents , inst ead of som autonomous tone fixed by hum an voiccsoR9 there is ted that in any particular theory Later in th e centu Kant sta d vot ed a atics, and nce as the re is mat hem only as much real scie Pure Reason to an analYSIS 01 the Critique of con side rab le part of his hmetic.1 . ' iplc s of geometry and arit u timate rinc nce bli sh a mathematical sCie Lcibni z strove to esta Descartes and saw the possibility of ic way of knowing, and met hod as the paradigmat erical symbols, th at uage, on the mo del of num a singular universal lang th -ce ntury Enltghten philosop hy. The eighteen could contain the wh ole of project. Condillae, ked at realizin g this latter ment thinkers actually wor lly concerned With were also characteristica Rou ssea u and others i ng human u age ; the ir goal of g asp origins-such as the origin of lang cd sy b ohc atlz uage to its ultimate, mathem understanding by taking lang boltzmg IS g that the origin of all sym le of s eein \evel madc thc m inca pab

ry

alien ation .

I ' l l M I ' N I ". ( I I 1 { 1 - 1 1 1 '.;\ 1 Symmetrical plowing is almost as old as agricu lture itself a means of impos ing order on an otherwise irregular world . But as the andscape of cultlvatJon becam e distinguished by linear forms of an increasingly mathematical regularity-i ncludi ng the popul arity of formal gardens-another eighteenth-century mark of math's ascendancy can be gauged . With the early 1 800s, howcver, the Roma ntic pocts and artists, amon g others , protes ted the new vision of natur e as a machine. Blake , Goeth e and John Constable, for example, accused scienc e of turnin g the world mtG a clockwork, with thc Indus trial Revol ution providing ample eVIdence of Its power to violate organi c life_ The dcbas ing of work among textile workers, which cause d the furious uprisi ngs of the English Luddi tes during the secon d decad e of the ninete enth century, was e pi tomi zed by such automated and cheapencd products as those of the Jac4uard loom. This French device not only repres ented the mechanization of life and work unlea shed by seven teenth centu ry shifts, but direct ly inspir ed the first attempts at the modern computer. Thc design s of Charles Babba ge, unlike the "logic machi nes" of Lelbn lz and Descartes, involved both memo ry and calculating units under the control of programs via punch ed cards. The aims of the mathe matica l 13ahbagc and the inventor-industria list J . M . Jacquard can be saI to rest on the same rationalist reduc tion d of huma n activity to the machme as was then heginn ing to boom with industrialism. Quite in character, then, were the empha sis in Babbage's mathcmatical work on the necd for improved notation to further the processes of symbolization; hIS PrmClples of lo'conomy, which con tribu ted to the found ations of modern mana gcmen t; and his conte mporary fame as a crusader against London "nuisa nces," such as street music ians!91 Paralleling the full onslau ght of industrial c ap i talism and the hugely . accelerated diVISion of labor that it hrought was a marke d advance i n mathematical developmen t. According to White head, "Duri ng the nI n e te e nth centu ry pure mathematics made almost as much progress as durIng the prccedIng centunes from Pytha goras onwards . "" The non-E uclide an geome tries of Bolyai, Lobac hevski, Riema nn an d Klcin must be m en tionc d as well as th e modern algehra of Boole , gcne rally regarded as the baSIS of symbo lic logic. Boole an algebra made . pOSSIb le a new level of t(lrmu lated thought, as its found er pond ered "the human mmd . . an Instrument of conquest and dominion over the powers of surro undin g Natur e,"" in an unthi nking mirro ring of the maste ry that mathc atlz ed caPltaltsm was gainin g in the mid-I SOOs. (Although the specrahst IS rarely faulIed by the dom in an t culture for his "pure"

ll ' s rcso l u t l..: C l' c a l iv i l v, ;\ d l l rt H l adroitly (lhsl..: rved t h a t " t h e I l I a t l l l:maticia of lahor and division IIlh'OIl'il'-i(lLiSneS S tt.:slifil:s to the c()nnct i()n bt.:twccn ' p u rity. "'f'\

d Russell , In t()rm of that sterile coercion known as formal logic. Bertran , atics and logic had hecome one." Dlscard het determ ined that mathem othcrs believe d that i g JI1rcliahle, everyday language, Russell , Frege and n of language lay the real hope in the further degradation and rcductio for "progress in philoso phy."9 . s was related to The goal of establishing logic on mathematical ground nth century, that an even more ambitio us effort by the end of the mnctee sm proceed ed of establis hing the foundations of math itself. As capitalI s 01 secunn g Its to redefin e reality in its own image and become dcSIrou "logic" stage of math in latc 19th and . earl 20t loundations, the DaVId Hllhert s centuri es, fresh from new triumphs, sought the samc. attempt to banish contrad ictIon .or rror, theory of formalism, one such explicitly aim ed at safeguarding "the state power of mathematiCs lor all

If math

. mature is impover ished language, It can also b e seen as the

Ions. ,,,97 time from aII ' Ieb e II' . the phIlo Meanw hile, number seemed to bc doing 4uite well without century proou nc sophical underpinnings. Lord Kelvin's late ninetee nth easure It ment that we don't really know anythmg unless we can . s SCIentIfIc bespoke an exalted confide nce, just as Fredenck Taylor .of Industr ial Manag ement was about to lead the quantification edge al to the manage ment further in the directio n of subjugatmg the t ndlVldu categories of time and space. lifeless Newto nian . . of relatiVity Speaking of the latter, Capra has claimed that the theories the laW 1 920s, and quantum physics, developed between 1905 a.nd . ts of the Cartesi an world vIew and "shatte red all the principal concep y theory is certainly mathem atrcal Newtonian mechan ics."" But relativit geomet rlZlng formalism, and Einstein sought a unified field theory by him to have saId, lIke physics, such that success would have enabled De scart cs that his entire phYSICS was nothmg other than geome try. That matter hardly measur ing time and space (or "space- time") i, a relative of 4uantum remove s measur ement as its core elemen t. At the heart y, is H i se nbe rg' s Uncertainty Principle, which does not th eo ry, similarl s of classlc1 throw out quantification but rather expresses the h mltatton atical ways. As Gtlhspl e SUCCInct ly had It, physics in sophisticated mathem , lon of Euchdcan Cartcsian-Newtonian physical theory "wa, a n apphcat a y a spati lization ot Rieman n's geometry to space, general relativit zation of curvilinear geometry, and quantum mecham cs a naturalI , hefore and after statistical probability.",m More succinctly still: "Nature

',"

,;;

ly."

the quantum theory, is that which lUI

is to be

comrrehc!l(lcd mathcmat ical

During thse first three decades of th 20th century, moreovr, the great attempts by Russell and Whitehead, Hilbert, t aI., to provide a completely unproblcmatic basis for thc wholc edific of math, referred to above, went forward with considerable optimism. But in 1931 Kurt Godcl dashed these bright hopes with his Incompleteness Theorem, which demonstrates that any symbolic system can be either complet or fully consistent, but not both. Godel's devastating mathematical proof of this not only shows the limits of axiomatic number systems, but rules out nclosing nature by any closed, consistent language. If there are theorems or assertions within a system of thought which can neither b e proved nor disproved internally, i t i s impossible t o give a proof of consistency within the language used. As GOdel and immediate succes sors like Tarski and Church convincingly argued, "any system of knowledge about the world is, and must remain, fundamentally incom plete, eternally subject to rcvision."1O' Morris Kline's Mathemalics:

! 'Ill' l1l'i',htt'tled t nl i U Il1 of computerized plTicc work i s t o d ay s very visihle 1Il<lll ifcstation of mathcmatizcd, mechanized Jabor, with its nco
'

1 .I I ' hlI NT'> I ) ! - 1 1 ' 1 ' 1 1",\ 1

i ';!yIClJ'ist ljuantification via electronic display screens, announcing the

, o i l l fnrmation explosion" or "information society." Information work is now the chief economic activity and information the distinctive mmmodity,!09 in large part "choing the main concept of Shannon's i n formation theory of the late 1940s, in which "the produclIon and the

t ransmission of information could be defined quantitatively."lIO

from knowledoe, to information, to data, the mathematizing trajectory moved away fro structuralism " input" (thos bereft of goals or content, that is) by the ascendancy of and post-structuralism. The "global commUnICatIOns revolution" is another telling phnomenon, by which a maninglcss

meaning-paralleled exactly in thc realm of "ideas"

is to be instantly available everywherc among people who live, as

never before) in isolation.Ill Into this spiritual vacuum the computr boldly steps. In 1950 Turing said in answcr to the the

tics" that have befallen the once seemingly inviolable "majesty of mathematics,""J3 chiefly dating from Godel. Math, like language, used to describe the world and itself, fails in

The Loss of Certainty

relatd the "calami

will hav altered so much that one will b able to sp"ak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradjctd."JI2 Note that his reply had nothino to do with the state of machines but wholly that of humans. As prcssu es build for life to hecome more quantified and machine-likc, so does th drive to make machines morc life-like. By th" mid-'60s, in fact, a few prominent voices already announced that the distinction between human and machine was about to be superseded-and saw this as positive. Mazlish provided a especially unequivocal commentary: "Man is on the threshold of breaklllg past the discontinuity between himself and machins ... We cannot think any longer of man without a machin . . . Moreovcr, this changc .. .is essential to our . . ,,1'1 harmonious acceptance 0f an IndustnaI' d worId . lze
"

nd of the century the usc of words and gcneral educated opinion

question "can machines think?", "I believe that at

its totalizing quest, in the same way

that capitalism cannot provide itself with unassailable grounding. Further, with Godel's Theorem not only was mathematics "recognized to be much more abstract and formal than had been traditionally supposed,"!C4 but it also became clar that "the resources of the human mind have not becn, and cannot be, fully formalized."'os

But who could deny that, in practice, quantity has been mastering us,
with or without definitively shoring up its theoretical basis? Human hdplssness secms to be directly proportional to mathematical technology's domination over naturc, or as Adorno phrased it, "the subjection of outer nature is successful only in the measure of the repression of inner nature."!D6 And certainly undrstanding is diminished by number's hallmark, division of labor. Raymond Firth accidentally exemplified th stupidity of advanced specialization, in a passing comment on a crucial topic: "the proposition that symbols are instru ments of knowlcdge raises epistemological issues which anthropologists arc not trained to handle."!D7 The connection with a more common degradation is made by Singh, in the contcxt of an ever more refined division of labor and a more and more technicized social life, noting that "automation of computation immediately paved the way for automatizing industrial operations."!OH

By th latc 1 9 80s thinking sufficiently impersonated the machine that

Artificial Intelligence experts, lik Minsky, could matter-of-factly speak of the symbol-manipulating brain as "a computr made of meat."!!' Cognitive psychology, echoing Hobbes, has hecom almost entIrely base d , on the computational model of thought in thc decades Since Turing s 1 950 prediction .'"

is an inhcrent tcndenc for Western thlllkmg y to merge into thc mathematical sciences, and saw science as "incapable
of awakning, and in fact emasculating, the spirit of genuine inquiry."!" Wc find ourselves, in an age when the fruits of

Heidegger felt that there

science

threaten to end

human lif altogether, when a dying capitalism seems capable of taking

everyhing with it, more apt to want to d iscov er till' ultill late origin.') ( ) r the nightmare. When the world and its thought (Levi-Stra uss and Chomsky come . Imm ediately to mrnd ) reach a condltlOn that is increasingly mathematizcd and empty (where c mputers are widely toute d as capable of feelings and even of Irfe Itself),ll. the beginnings of this bleak journey, including the ongl ns of the number concept, demand comp rehension. It may be that . this mqu lry IS essential to save us and our hum anne ss.

N t I M l l j l.'.: 1 1'\ ( ) I I ( d N \ N I ) 1 '- \ ( 1j

..

[ I [ If 1 N

T H E CASE AGAINST ART

Art is always about "something hidden." But docs it help us connect with that hidden something" I think it moves us away from it. During the first million or so years as reflective beings humans seem to have created no art. As Jameson put it, art had no place in that "unfallen social reality" because there was no need for it. Though tools were fashioned with an astonishing economy of effort and perfection of form, the old cliche about thc aesthetic impulse as one of the irreducible components of the human mind is invalid. The oldest enduring works of art are hand-prints, produced by pressure or blown pigment-a dramatic token of direct impress on nature. Later in the Upper Paleolithic era, about 30,000 years ago, commenced the rather sudden appearance of the cave art associated with names like Altamira and Laseaux. These images of animals possess an often breathtaking vibrancy and naturalism, though concurrent sculpture, such as the widely-found "venus" statuettes of women, was quite stylized. Perhaps this indicates that domestication of people was to precede domestication of nature. Significantly, the "sympathetic magic" or hunting theory of carliest art is now waning in the light of evidence that nature was bountiful rather than threatening. The veritable explosion of art at this time bespeaks an anxicty not fcIt before: in Worringer' s words, "creation in order to subdue the torment of perception." Here is the appearance of the symbolic, as a moment of discontent. It was a social anxiety; people felt something precious slipping away. The rapid development of the earliest ritual or ceremony parallels the birth of art, and we arc reminded of the earliest ritual re-enactments of the moment of "the beginning," the primordial paradise of the timeless present. Pictorial representation roused the belief in controlling loss, the belief in coercion itself. And we see the earliest evidence of symholic division, as with the half human, half-beast stone faces at El Juyo. The world is divided into opposing forces, by which binal)' distinction the contrast of culture and nature begins and a productionist, hierarchical society is perhaps already prefigured. The perceptual order itself, as a unity, starts to hreak down in

' 1 '1 1 1

CASI'. ;\ " A I NSI ;\1{1

1 1 1 ' 1\1 1 ' 1'4

I " ( ) ) , 1 { 1 ' 1 1 1 " ..\ 1

'

j ) '-,

reflection of an incrc singly complex social order. A hierarchy of senses, wIth the vIsual steadIly more separate from the others and seeking its completIOn m artrf lclal Images such as cave paintings, moves to replace the full sImultaneIty of sensual gratification. Levi-Strauss discovered, to hIs amazement, a tnbal people that had been able to see Venus in daytime; but not only were our faculties once so very acute, they were also not ordered and separate. Part of training sight to appreciate the

mtellectual sense: reahty was removed in favor of merely aesthetic expenenee. Art anesthellzes the sense organs and removes the natural world from their purview. This reproduces culture, which can never compensate for the disability. Not surprisingly, the first signs of a departure from those egalitarian prIncIples that characterized hunter-gathercr life show up now. The . shamamstlc ongm of VIsual art and music has been often remarked the point here being that the artist-shaman was the first specialist. It s ems likely that the ideas of surplus and commodity appeared with the shaman, whose orchestration of symbolic activity portended further alIenation and stratification.

?bJects of culture was the accompanying repression of immediacy in an

life demand ed it. Art provided the medium of separated from cl>ncept llal transformation by which the individu al was ted, at the deepest level, socially. Art's ability to " a l ure and domina What we svmholize and direct human emotion accomp lished both ends. y, in order to keep ourselves oriented in were led to accept as necessit ic world, the nature and society, was at base thc invention of the symbol
a l i e n a l l:d

m an s role was A r t t u r n s t i ll' suhject i n t o ohject, i l l t o symbol. The sh a suhjeetivity alikc [ I > I>hilTlily rl'alily; I h i s happene d to outer nature and to
k c all s c

hill of Man.

portrayed ancestors, and future behavior anticipated and controlled. Memones became externalized, akin to property but not even the property of the subject.

puttlllg Its stamp on all mental functions. Cultural memory meant that onc person's action could be compared with that of another, including

Nietzsche saw the trammg of memory, especially the memory of obhgatlOns, as the beginning of civilized morality. Once thc symbolic process of art developed It dominated memory as well as perception,

followlllg, served as the semblance of real memory. In the recesses of th caves, earliest indoctrination proceeded via the paintings and other symbols, intended to inscribe rules in depersonalized, collective memory.

"is what unifies." As the need for solidarity accelerated, so did the need for ceremony; art also played a role m Its mnemonic function. Art, with myth closelv

statcment that "art is a means of union among men, joining them together III the same feeling," elucidates art's contribution to social cohesion at the dawn of culture. Socializing ritual required art; art works ongmated m the service of ritual; the ritual production of art and the artistic production of ritual are the same. "Music" " wrote Scu-ma-tsen

Art, like language, is a system of symbolic exchange that introduces exchange itself. It is also a necessary device for holding together a commumty based on the first symptoms of unequal life. Tolstoy's

nication by The world must be mcdiate d by art (and human commu of labor, as seen in the language, and being by time) duc to division not appear in nature of ritual. The real object, its particul arity, does of ceremo nial ritual; instead, an abstract one is used, so that the terms in division express ion are open to substitu tion. The conven tions neetled its standardization and loss of the uniquc, are thosc of of labor, with l, based on ritual, of symbolization. Thc process is at base identica goods, as the hunter-gatherer modc is equivale nce. Production of ion) and gradually liquidated in favor of agriculture (historical product ritual product ion. religion (full symbolic product ion), is also od, leader The agent, again, is thc sbaman-artist, en route to priestho via the symbol. All by reason of masteri ng his own immediate desires d by art and that is spontan eous, organic and instinctive is to be neutere myth. a Recently the painter Eric Fischl prescnte d at the Whitney Museum their d couple in the act of sexual intercou rse. A video camera recorde d them on a TV monitor before the two. The man's actions and projecte clearly more eyes were riveted to the image on the screen, which was The evocative cave pictures, volatile in the exciting than the act itself. in Fischl's dramatic, lamp-lit depths, began the transfer exemplified primal acts can become secondary to tableau, in which even the most existence has their represe ntation. Conditioned self-distancing from real Similarly, the category of been a goal of art from the beginning. has striven audienc e, of supervi sed consumption, is nothing new, as art to make life itself an object of contcmplation. re As the Paleolithic Age gave way to the Neolith ic arrival of agricultu language, and civilization-production, private property, written spiritual government and religion-culture could be seen morc fully as of labor, though global specialization and a mechan is decline via division tic technology did not prevail until the late I ron Age. by a The vivid represen tation of late hunter-gatherer art was replaced pictures of animals and humans to formalistic, geometric style, reducing

hh

Ti l l ' ( ', \ \ 1 ' ;\ ( ; .\ I N,\

.

':\ 1':

1 1 1 . t\ U ' N I ' "

II'

verse. The aridity of linear precision is one of the hallmarks 01 Ihl civilization: "This country has become civilized," literally mea liS, ill turning point, calling to mind the Yoruba, who assoeial e l i l l C wllh

off from the wealth of empirical reality and crea t i ng til l' symboli(' tolli

symho I ic shapes. This narrow s 1yli za tiOIl revc a Is t I I l'

a 1 ' 1 is 1

s! ILl I I ill,I.', I I i III "i{'lt

'

referring to this spirit, points out that thc pots of a Neolithic village arc all alike. Rclatedly, warfare in the form of combat scenes makes its lirsl appearance in art.

alienatcd society arc everywhere apparcnt; Gordon Childc, for ex""'pit-,

Yoruba, "this carth has lines upon its facc." The inflexiblc forms 01 I ndy

socicty in a direct sensc, an instrument of the necds of the ncw

Thc work of art was in no scnse autonomous at this timc; it serwd

of years art's function will bc to dcpict thc gods. Meanwhile, what Gliiek

collectivity. Thcre had been no worship-cults during the Paleolithic, hut now religion held sway, and it is worth rcmcmbering that for thousands stressed about African tribal architecture was true in all other cultures secular ruler. And though not even the first signed works show up before thc latc Grcek pcriod, it is not inappropriate to turn here to art's realization, some of its gencral fcaturcs. as well: sacrcd buildings camc to life on the model of thosc of the

of thc symbolic matrix of estranged social life. Oscar Wilde said that art symbolism, not forgetting that it docs not imitate life, but vice versa; which is to say that life follows is (deformed) life that produces

Art not only creates the symbols of and for a socicty, it is a basic pan

symbolism. Every art form, according to T.S. Eliot, is "an attack upon the

i y avcr rc li, tor ' uns ir it ua Hv , lt i s w dd ..f i tfll l\ I i i /al inti, nl eX'tH I.: ss \d .q ,tm'lt cm t icl fioures accou nt for the a 0 , f )(':r (, . ' I ll ' l l '\ lt1 ll th :{ IHllll -rc at na tu re hY the example 's famous di ct um to .-'t . . ' . I . 'T hc re is Cezan ne " en t that th e efficacy "t , I I and Kandinsky's Ju dg cm ' . re an u th c cone , " . . I I I l. sp he ttect no c cylinder , n a circlc pr od uc es an . ' ngle 0t. a t ro angle o . ,c m p . d " t th L , ute a Im oc o th e fin0 r of A d am ger 0f G 0 d toueh i n an th e !m . I I, , .) I H ,w e I.1'U I th conclude d , IS 'tS . t. a symbell J as C ha rl cs Pi er ce , , . se 0 ' J 'l . \ 1 " 1 , ," 1,I" bc o . " Th e se n tIo n, WIth th e an en dl es s re pr od uc ' another sy mbo l) th us _ H:J I I:; \a ti o n m to "_ 01 al w ay s d is p la ce d . ility to ' . - it s inab IIY concc rn ed w lth be au ty' n d a m en ta th o ug h art IS no t fu m pa ri so ns . many unfavorable co k 'd . ", . .1 "atu re sensuou Sly " :,a V ; ; Shell ey praise d th e " un pre l a tho rne t u re , I "o nl o gh t IS scu pt e se a m ar c ame pr on ou nc ed th erI" . f the skyl ark V ", ,d lt at ed art" 0 et s, snowtlakes, s. 1' . A nd so on with suns 'b ' e cathe dra r .. . ' " ltifu] than all th in fact, ]lC prod u cts ' of art . Je an Arp , th e sym 0 1 1 1 1w cr s, et c" b cyon d . . ' ) "warty, th re ad bare re " n oth I n g m or c th an perfect pictu ' I i . I IllC d " th e m o st , . dry p o rr od g e. " lm ' rox. ation , a ion an d at ' ' 1 'l s . 't' Iy to art". A , compens c re sp o nd p O SI lve n Why t h en wo uld o fi ci en t and to na tu re an d lif e is so de 1 ati on sh ip , , , l l i ative , b ecause our rc ' '!vI n "One gives to one' s art I As . (1 therla t put it , . , an authentIC o n e. I I I s a II ows e)wn cXlstencc. " 1 t IS ..... s " . . not b e e n capabl C 0f glvlflg to on "' , ne has w loa t o . n ar is es from un sallsI 0 ' . aII ke , art , rk e re iio io ' i am lcnce lr u e for artist and
.

I IC ' on1y sclent'fi

'r ' Llle Ul

' t zaIOn elVlIl

"

(II

{"

PI ' sY III llI 1b . N I II, l l l u ls l W l H 1 UV i n a ul ld iu lli ' . - . IS liv ed ' . " ,. " ' tic h a m a.! c (,,1110n s ,01 "i ra i ad iv i\y ht lt ae st he I l' ' h l lO lo
. , , .

Il

H I'. \ I

I,

inarticulate." Upon the unsymbolized he should have said. , Both painter and poet have always wanted to reach the silence behind individual, in adopting these modes of expression, didn't settle for far too and within art and language, leaving the question of whether the

lied d es ir e.

little. Though Bergson tried to approach the goal of thought without undoing of all the laycrs of alienation. In the extremity of revolutionary situations, immediate communication has bloomed, if briefly. The primary function of art is to objectify feeling, by which one's own symbols, such a breakthrough seems impossible outside our active

motivations and identity are transformed into symbol and metaphor. All

art, as symbolization, is rooted in the creation of substitutcs, surrogates

for something else; by its vcry nature, therefore, it is falsification. Under vicarious, symholic descriptions of how we should fee I, trained to need psychic security. such public images of sentiment that ritual art and myth providc for our

the guise of "cnriching the quality of human experience," we accept

ry also in th e io us activity and catego " SI d cr cd a re lig Art should b e con . r not to pe n sh of ,. "W e have Art i n or de s apo r:sm sen se of N ietzsche' for m et ap ho r e w id es pr ea d preference tIon ex p al; th l ; T ru th ." 1I s consola su re w er e en ui ne ar tic e . If pl ea th c l10nshlp over a d lf ec t rela th e antitheSIS . . l t t ra'; , th e result w ou ld be m evcry res , . someh ow re le a sc d fro wever, ad not exist ou ts id e art, ho lf freedom docs d l. of art. In d o m on ate ing is w cl co m ed . ' 1 on of th e ri ch es of be form d fracti . sO even a uny, d e , , " revcaI e d Klcc . o rd e r n o t to cry, create on important, an d on .' . . l ' t. . . . ntnve d rfe 's ho th . p a rate realm of co ' , h IS se T onstltullonahze d are th at prevails. 1n it s a e , ctual ni ghtm comploclty Wlth th neral, w he re It s l r ' on and id eo logy in ge d . tO separation It corre sP JI1 S ! ;"k of art is a selection t ualizcd' th e w an cannot . , e le m e n ts are not, from the . mblic te rm s. A ri si ng e c of possibilit ies unre ; x e by reas o n f ms to religion not only i a v ' e se n se of lo ss refe rr dl ss cn tm g and its ab se nc e of any he re . n j' e d en t to an I de aI sp t lZ of I S Co n fi em th an thoroughly ne ut ra be no more ' t 1t can hence c o n se q u e n c c s, h u
.

critique at best. Frequ ently comp ared to play, art and cultur e like religio " haY<' more often worked as gener ators of guilt and oppre ssion. Pe rh a ps the ludic fllnction of art, as well as its comm on claim to transc enden ce, shoul d be esti mated as one might reasse ss the meaning of Versail l es: hy conte mplat ing the misery of the work ers who peris hed draining its marsh es. Clive Bell point ed to the inten tion of art to transport us from the plane of daily strug gle "to a world of aesth etic exalta tion," paral leling the aim of religion. Malr aux offered another tribute to the conservative off ice of art when he wrote that without art work s civilization would crum ble "within fifty years ," beco ming "ensl aved to instin cts and to elem entary dream s." Hege l deter mined that art and religi on also have "this in comm on, name ly, havin g entire ly universal matte rs as conte nt." This feature of gener ality, of mean ing without concr ete reference, serve s to intro duce the notio n that ambig uity is a distinctive sign of art. Usua lly depic ted positively, as a revela tion of truth free of the conti ngenc ies of time and place . the impo ssibili ty of such a form ulatio n only i l l uminates another mom ent of falseness abou t art. Kierkegaard found the defin ing trait of the aesth etic outlo ok to be its hospi table reconciliation of all point s of view and its evasi on of choic e. This can be seen in the perpe tual comp romis e that at once valorizes art only to repud iate its intent and contents with "well, after all, it is only art." Today cultu re is commodity and art p e rhaps the star commodity. The situat ion is unde rstood inade quate ly as the produ ct of a centr alized cultu re industry, " fa Hork heime r and Ador no. We witne ss, rathe r, a mass diffus ion of cultu re depen dent on partic ipatio n for its stren gth, not forgetting that the critiq ue must be of culture itself, not of its allege d control. Daily life has become acsth eticiz ed by a saturation of image s and music , largely throu gh the electr onic medi a, the repre senta tion of repre senta tion. Imag e and sound , in their ever- prese nce, have becom e a void, ever more absen t of mean ing for the indiv idual . Meanwhile, the distance between artist and spectator has dimin iShed , a narrowing t ha t only highl ights the absolute distan ce between aesth etic expcr ience and what is real. This perfectly dupli cates the spectacle at large : separ ate and mani pulat ing, perpe tual aesth etic exper ience and a demo nstra tion of political powe r. Reacting again st the incre asing mech anization of life , avan t-garde move ment s have not, however, resist ed the spectacular natur e of art any

1 1 11 1 1 ( I h a l l 1 1 I l i t(Jdux I c n til.: ncics havc-. I I I ' "I'.;l g l alienation with its own uevices.

I - I I t\1I 1'1 I " \ JI

I I I I I " , \ I
fact, (llie

;\ ( I h d i c i s l l l , ( ) r " a rt for arCs sakt.:," is mon radical than an attempt to .:

1 ',//'/ development was a self-reflective rejectIOn of the world, as opposed

Th latc 1 9th century art p,:ttr

CUllld

ilrgllc t h a t

, , , Ihe avant-garde effort to somchow orgamze lite around art. A vahd

"f

I I ,, ,,,,ent of Lioubt lies behind Aestheticism, the realIzalIon that d,V,Sion

lahm has diminished cxperienee and turned art mto Just another

" I'l'cialization: art shed its illusory ambitions and beeam Its own eontet.

,,,cia I institution peculiar to technologIcal society that so strongly pHzes IHwelty; it is predicated on the progressivist notion that realIty must be " llJ1stantly updated.

The avant-garde has generally stak d out WIder claims, proJectlOg leading role denied it by modern cap , tahsm . It IS best u nderstod as ,

, But avant-garde culture cannot compete with the odern w':rld : . capacity to shock and transgress (and not Just symbolically). Its d e m ise Dada was one of the last two major avant-garde movements, its . Ileoative image greatly cnhaneed hy the sense of general hlstoneal co apse radiated by World War 1. lts partisans claimed, at lImes, tO b e , again st all "isms," including the Idca o f art. But pamtlOg c"nnot ne gte symholic culture is the co-opting of perceptIon, expressIon and communi cation. [n fact, Dada was a quest for new artistic modes, Its attack on the rit'idities and irrelevancies of bourgeois art a factor i n the a vancc of art; . . H ns Richter's memoirs referred to "the regeneration ot VISual art that Dada had begun." If World War I almost killed art, the Dadaists painting, nor can sculpture invalidate sculpture, keepmg III mmd that all
i, another datum that the myth of progress IS Itself bankrupt.

ll

radically reformed it.

which society imprisons III the unconscIous. The talse Judgem"t that would have re-introduced art into everyday life and thereby transfigured

Bcfo re trailing off into Trotskyism andior art-world fame, the Surreahsts upheld chance and the primitive as w ys to un Iock ' ((th e M arclou s"

. . . ' Surrealism is the last school to assert the polllleal mISSIon of art.

I!

it certainly misunderstood the relationship of art to represSIve society. The real barrier is not between art and social reality. hleh arc one, but between desire and the existing world. The Surrealists aIm of lOventlOg

,,:

a new symbolism and m)1hology upheld these categones and mlS rusted , unmediated sensuality. Concerning the latter, Breton held that enJoy ment is a science; the exercise of the senses demands a personal initiation and thereforc you need art." . . . Modernist abstraction resumed the trend hegun by AesthetiCism III

that it expressed the conviction that only by a drasttc restncllon at Its

field o r vision could art surviv e. With I he k;ISl strain 0 1 t'lllhc l i i s h l l l C l l i possible in a formal language, art nccame increasingly self refere ntial, ill its search for a "purity" that was hostile to narrative. Guaranteed not to reprcsent anything, modern painting is consciously nothing more than " flat surface with paint on it. But the strategy of trying to empty art of symbolic value, the insistence on the work of art as an object in its own right in a world of objects, proved a virtually self-annihilating method. This "radical physicality," based on aversion to authority though it was, never amounted to more, in its objectiveness, than simple commodity status. The sterile grids of Mondrian and the repeated all-black squares of Reinhardt echo this acquiescence no less than hideous 20th centllry architecture in general. Modernist self-liquidation was parodied by Rauschenberg's 1 953 Erased Dral1ling, exhibited after his month-long erasur e o a de Kooning The very concept of art, Dlichamp's showing fof a urinal indrawing. a 1 exhibition notwithstanding, bccame an open question in the '50s and 9 1 7 has grown steadily more undefinahle since. Pop Art dcmonstrated that the boundarics betwcen art and mass mcdia (e.g. ads and comics) are dissolving. Its perfunctory and mass-produced look is that of the whole society and the detached, blank quality of a Warhol and his products sum it up. Banal, morally weightlcss, deperson alized images, cynically manipulated by a fashion-conscious stratagem: the nothingness of modern art and its world reveamarketing led . The proliferation of art styles and approaches in the '60s-Conceptual, Minimalist, Pcrformanee, etc.-and the accelerated obsolescence of most art brought the "postmodern" era, a displacement of the formal "puris m" of mode rnism by an eclectic mix from past stylistic achievements. This is basically a tired, spiritless recycling of used-up fragm ents, announcing that the development of art is at an end. Against the global devaluing of the symbolic, moreover, it is incapable of generating new symbols and scarcely even makes an effort to do so. Occasionally critics, like Thomas Lawson, bemoan art's curre nt inability "to stimulate the growth of a really troubling doubt," little noticing that a quite noticeable movement of douht threatens to throw over art Such "critics" cannot grasp that art must remain alienation and asitself. such must be superseded, that art is disappearing because the immemoria separation between nature and art is a death sentence for the world thatl must be voided . Deconstruction, for its part, announced the project of decoding Litcrature and indeed the "texts," or systems of significatio n, throu all culture. But this attempt to reveal supposedly hidden ideology ghout is

III

/I

. . Its . _I' I I consider oriins or historical causatio n, . an ' . ' , . . . , .(\ ('I SHIII I'I , .I I dlcritl"d from structurallsm!poststructurarism. D'rnda' . ' dcaIs with language as a SOlIpSism, " . I k,'tlllslrU Cllon s. scmLllal figure, J . . HISillH.d to sdt-Intcr pn.::-t,at'1 0 n' he cnnagcs not m en't.ca1 activity but in .' 1 1. 1 1 ' ahout writing. Rathcr than a de-constructing 0f. Impactcd reality, . .. , \\, 1 . ' " I I II S approach is merely a Se 1f-c a ad :c in which Literaconcern with its e pamtmg b !Or , v r p tllll", likC 010dcrn , '\V I I surface. . . -d Meanwhile since Plero Manzom eanne his own kces and sold them I . ' d Chris Burden had himself shot in the arm, and cruelTed 11 :: :: )I7w: e n, we sec in art cver more fitting Parale : s : ; u e . i u :IS Ihe self-portalt: d'awn by AnastasI-wIth hI.S eye .S lIlUSIC IS long dead an . popui r music deteriorates; poetry nears collapsc : 1 1,,1 retr eats from vi ew dra m : which moved from the Absurd to Silence , ' I . '. f onl y way to write is dying; and the noveI IS ec Ipse d by non - iction as the seriously :, In a Jaued, eneTVated age, where it seemS to speak is to say less, art is . . . certainly less. Baudelaire .was obliged to claim a poers d:gOl.ty :n a society . . , hand. out . A century anu more later how which had no more dignIty to . inescapable is the truth of that condItlon and how much more threadbare tile consolation or sta on it goes without saying tha t Adorno began h IS 00 . . nothing eoncern in g r o '. ) k:J , h less withou t thinking. t . s incr life, its relation . t ( Everythmg abou.t a/ . c .ght t0 st " But Aellzetic .llzemy affIrms art , Just as to socic, even Its r . . dId, tiing to despair and to the difficulty of Marcuse s last war And altbough other assailing the hermetically sealed IdeolO as, counscl t a ;e to abolish symbolic "radicals " such as Haberm . . mediati is irrational, it is hecoming c1ca:er hat whn e y ; \ p t ment with our hcarts and hands the sphre 0 art IS s ll: left behind and I n the transfigurati()n w e m u s rtp e . self-expression and y, art refuse d m tavo r of the authentic experience will recommence at that momen t.
. , , , n i n t hv . .
It .. lIS,\ ' . () . ,'I )

eo

' ,

'.

kO'dd:: : :
.

; / : S:;"

AGR ICULTU RE

Agriculture, the indispensahle basis of civilization, was originally encountered as time, language , number and art won out. As t he materialization of alienation, agriculture is the triumph of estrangemcnt and the definite divide between culture and nature and humans from each other. Agriculture is the hirth of production, complete with its essential features and deformation of life and consciousness. The land itself be comes an instrument of product ion and the planet's specie s its objects Wild or tame, weeds or crops speak of that duality that cripples the soul of our being, ushering in, relatively quickly, the despotism, war and impoverishment of high civilization over the great length of that earlier oneness with naturc. The forced march of civilization, which Adorno recognized in the assumption of an irrational catastroph e at the beginning of history," which Freud felt as "something imposed on a resisting majority," of which Stanley Diamond found only "conscripts, not volunteers," was dictated by agriculture. And Mircea Eliadc was correct to assess its coming as having "provoked upheavals and spiritual breakdowns" whose magnitude the modcrn mind cannot imaginc. "To level off, to standardizc the human landscapc, to effacc its irregularities and banish its surprises," these words of E.M. Ciaran apply perfectly to the logic of agriculture, the end of life as mainly sensuous activity, the embodiment and generator of separated life. Artificiality and work have steadily increased since its i nception and are known as culture: in domesticating animals and plants man necessarily domesticated himself. Historical time, like agriculture, is not inherent in social reality but an imposition o n it. The dimension of time or history is a function of repre ssion, whose foundation is production or agriculture. Hunter gatherer life was anti-time in its simultaneous and spontaneous openness; farming life generates a sense of time by its successive-task narrowness, its directed routine. As the non-closure and variety of Paleolithic living gave way to the literal enclosure of agriculture, time assumed power and came to take on the character of an enclosed space. Formalized temporal reference points-ccremonies with fixed dates, the naming of days, ctc.. "

would industrial society he im p n s si hk wi l il uu t t i m e sc he d ules , Ow l:lld agriculture (basis

<In' nUt'j a l I t , I l le l I n k l ill}" of I h e wnl lt! 01 productioll: as ;1 "chnllllc ( If

I I

\ t , I : It I

Ir

I I II I
,ti l

I I

productioJ1,

the calcllttar is ililegra! In ('ivili/al ioll. COllvcfsdy, IIPt ollly

of all

production) would he I he l'nu of h i s torical time.

(;1"

I w l wTII

I If

1 , 1\11 r'1

111("11

I ',

t 11 I, I , l l 1'-, \ I

/.

Iwcomillg cumJllOIl.

pcople alivann,:.d with the Neolithic period, scenes of hattles

.

i l ljn)!, nll'lI. a l l ohsrssioll w i l l i

depict illg (,( l I l f r n n t a t i ( ) 1 I

Representation hegins with language, a means of reining in desire. By displacing autonomous images with verbal symbols, life is reduced and brought under strict control; all direct, unmediated cxpericnce is subsumed by that supreme mode of symholic expression, language.

Time, language , number, art and all the rest of culture, which predates as autonomy ; l 1 l d leads to agricultu re, rests on symbolization. Just estication, the rtional and the self-dom p rcceded domestication and

Language cuts up

and

organizes

rcality, as

Benjamin Whorf put it, and

this segmentation of naturc, an aspcct of grammar, scts the stage for agriculture. Julian Jaynes, i n fact, concluded that the ncw linguistic mentality l e d very directly to agriculture. Unquestionably, the crystalliza keeping of agricultural transactions, is the signal that civilization has begun. tion of language into writing, called forth mainly by the need for record

I n the no n-commodified, egalitarian hunter-gatherer ethos, the basis of which (as has so often been remarked) was sharing, number was not
wanted. There was no ground for the urge to quantify, no reason to divide what was whole. Not until the domestication of animals and plants did this cultural concept fully emerge. Two of number's seminal figures testify clearly to its alliance with separateness and property: Pythagoras, center of a highly intluential religious cult of number, and Euclid, father of mathematics and science, whose geometry originated to measure fields for reasons of ownership, taxation

social preced e the symbolic. Food production, it is etcrnally and gratefully acknowl edged, "permit what ." But Inl t he cultural potentiality of the human species to develop tendency toward the symbolic, toward the elaborat ln and i s this . catIOn, impositi on of arbitrary forms'! It is a growing capacity tor obJectifi become s reified, thing-lik e. Symbols are mor hy which what is living distance us than the basic units of culture; they arc screeOlng deVices to They classify and reduce, "to do away with," in from our experien ces. le Leakey and Lcwin's remarka ble phrase, "the otherwise almost intolerab ." burdcn of relating one experie nce to another . Thus culture is governe d hy the imperative of reforming and subordi

re accom nating nature. The artificial environment which is agricultu ated plished this pivotal mediatio n, with the symbolism of objects manipul only external in the construction of relation s of dominance. For It IS not is subjugated: the face-tofaee quality of pre-agricultural life nature that it.

legitimiz es in itself severely limited dominat ion, while culture extends and

and slave labor.

One of civilization's

early forms, chieftainship, entails a linear rank order in which each member i s assigned an exact numerical place. Soon, following the anti natural l i nearity of plow culture, the intlexible 90-degree gridiron plan of even earliest cities appeared. Their insistent regularity constitutes in itself
a repressive ideology. Culture, now numberized, becomcs morc firmly

bounded and lifeless. Art, too, in its relationship to agriculture, highlights both institutions. I t begins as a means to interpret and subdue reality, to rationalize nature, and conforms to the great turning point which is agriculture in its basic features. The pre-Neolithic cave paintings, for example, are vivid and bold, a dynamiC exaltation of animal grace and freedom. The neolithic art of farmers and pastoralists, however, stitlens into stylized

or Jt is likclv that already duri ng the Paleolith ic era certain forms ' or ideas, in a symholizing manner but III names were attached to objects same ne s s and a shifting, imperma nent, perhaps playful sense. The will to became as stallc and security found in agricultu re means that the symbols gi constant as farming life. Regularization, rule patterning, and technolo to ground cal differentiation, under the sign of division of labor, interact shift and and advance symbolization. Agriculture complete s the symbolic VictOry the virus of alienation has overcome authentic, free life. It is the

of materials and

forms; Franz Bmkenau typified its pottery as a "narrow, timid hotching forms." With agriculture, art lost its variety and became standardized into geometric designs that tended to degencrte into dull, repetitive patterns, a perfect reflection of standardized, confincd, rule

patterned life. And where there had been no representation in PaleOlithic

it, "The of cultural control; as anthropologist Marshal l Sahlins puts per capita increases with the evolutio n of culture and amount of work the amount of leisure per capita decrease s." . l Today, the few surviving hunter-gatherers o cc u py the. it:ast "ecooom , cally interesting" areas of the world where agricultu re has 1101 pc:nctrated thc I\u s l ra i r a o ahorrglll cs. And such as the snows of the Inuit or deserto!" bears its yet the refusal of farming drudgery, even in a<ivl"lsc s c l t ings, Tasaday, ! Kung ot own rewards. The Hazda of Tamania. Filipino Botswana or the Kalahari Desert ! Kung San- who were seen by Richard ing Lee as e a ily surviving a serious, several years' drougirl while neighbor

group on earth

I'anlll:rs starvTd

lack of control over the environment" o f such groups, And yet simple cooking technique like steaming foods by heating stones in a covered pit;

attributed this condition to "the very simplicity of the h ' t" i l i l ology and

spend it primal ily on games, conve rsa t i ( ) 1 1 and relaxing," Scrvice righlly

; t i S ( ) k s l i l 'y t ( ) I h d e ; 1 1 1 1 1 l :l a l l l l l ' r "t'S S lI 1 I 1 1 I 1 ; I l V I h a l " N i l : hils more leisure t ime Ihall hunk!"s :1Ilt! gal licfers, who

' h ighl r" ( ) n iL: r ' I" tll l"C hy Illc, a l l S or a . . . " 1 1 h \ k i l lt IIlI ' ll' ('ld ( " l l l C ' J',('S h 1 . g l ( } U 1 1 ( i ' ' t-' . ' ' t' line t' , Ion l)f m amta ltllIlg t he . ' tU1l't l III l Ilis ' c(;Ja IIy req t lr n';d ity It IS lSP cultur e , . , a . . , a tul . , d e m and s of agri ' I SOl i l't)' " hy' the unn ' , < l i l l i a n t y (l . , " ' ii ii i n Turkish Anatolia, o ne of
age i ll the Nc oli thl e v:"

/I

Paleolithic methods were, in their own way, "advanced," Consider a basil'

of Catal H y k sowing can pur pos es, Plowing and S used fo r ritual ('vcry three rooms wa of systemat m rding to Bu rke rt, a for renunCltlons acco ri fi ce, i)(' see n as ritual cle me nt. Speaking of sac
pamed Ie represslOn accom

this is immemorially older than any

ashioning of such water, for example, Or considcr the f

most nutritionally sound way to cook, far healthier than boiling food in

anti-containcr in its non-surplus, non-exchange orientation) and is the

pottery, kettles or baskets (in

fact, is

strong, which modern industrial techniques cannot duplicate, The h unting and gathering likstyle represents the

long and exceptionally thin "laurel leaf" knives, dclicately chipped but

stonc tools as the

agriculturc phenomena likc the intensive collection of food or the systematic hunting of a single

enduring adaptation ever achieved by humankind, In occasional pre

most successful and

breakdown of a pleasurable mode that remained so static for so long agriculturc. in Clark's words, is the vehicle of culture, "rational" only in greater destruction, as wil1 be outlined below,

species

can be seen signs of impending

precisely because it was pleasurable, The "penury and day-long grind" of its perpetual disequilibrium and its logical progression toward ever Although the term hunter-gatherer should be reversed (and has been

by not a few current anthropologists) because it is recognized that hunting provides salient contrast to domestication, Th e relationship

gathering constitutes by far the larger survival component, the nature of the hunter to the hunted animal, which is sovereign, free and even

of

farmer or herdsman to the enslaved chattcls over which hc absolutely, coercivc rites and subduing Evidence of the urge to impose order

considered equal, is obviously qualitatively different from that of the

rules

where ambiguous behavior is ruled out, purity and defilement defined and enforced, Levi-Strauss defined religion as the anthropomorphism of nature;

of

the world that is agriculture has at l e ast some of its basis

or suhjugate is found in the uncleanness taboos of incipient religion, The eventual

values or traits upon i t. The sacred means that which is separated, and

earlier spirituality was participatory with naturl', not imposing cultural

ritual and formalization, increasingly removed fn lin the ongoing activities

of daily life and in the control of such sp e c ial ist s liS s h amans and priests,

arc closely linked with hierarchy and institutio"alized power. Religion

al als (or even h umans) for ntu domest icated anim ich is the killing 01 there , wh , Itural soc ieti es and fou nd only ' ive 10 agneu 't ' ' purposes, I IS pervas ed a symb olic ' I ' , h' re l'glons ofte n atte mpt , IC " \e of t I maJo r Neolit Some thc mythol ogy 01 tore with nat ure thro ugh , ltural healing 01 the agricu restore the lost to say doe s nothing to ther, which nec " . 'Pti an Osi ris, the Gr eek the earth mo , ' ntral: the E"' yths arc aiso ee 'I't unity, Fertl I y m Jes us, god s , the Canaamt es, and the New Tes tam ent ' " " I,ersephone, Baal of , 01 the SOl1, not to the per sev era nce , urrectIOn testify ' ' ' wh0se death and res " ' f' d th e r l s e o f first tem ple s l ., lll IC , 'man soui , 1'h C Ion the hu to me nt' dom estl cauniv erse as an are na of a mOd 'l f the on man cosmologies ba sed ify the sup pre ssio n of hu e m turn crves to just or barnyard, which tio n , as Redfiel d put i t , . "he ld , IlIze d soc iety was y, Whereas preclV autonom ical con cep con tinu ally rea lize d eth , undeclared b ut toge!her bY largely citizens, placmg th e m o r aI of crea ting a veloped a s , way tio ns ," rel igion de manage order unde r public i vastly i ncr e ased tiation of produ ctio n, on Illvolv ed t icatio n, Domestrcatl social stratif ted fou nda tion s of and the eo pI divisions of labor, racter of hum an u tion bot h in the cha an epoch a Th is amounted to eve r mor e I()u din g the latt er with n developm , existence an d Its hunter-gatherers as vio lent ry 'the mytb of con ti g non violence an d work, evid enc e shows tha t exis n the : reent Y("pygmies") s tudied by Turnbull, app arently and aggre ss ive, by ' Mbul1 , , ' I' , armers, such as the t'" ive spmt, even With a sort 0 , ' wlthout any aggress at kl1lmg they do e, on the do wh every civilization or stat " I d the fan nat' on of reg ret . Warfare an , hnke d , ' are mseparably oth er han d , ' ch sep arale groups might ht over areas in whi .. not hg Pri ma l peoples did rito rial " struggles d h ntin g At least "ter the ir gathenng converge in y would see m eve n less I ratur 'md the ethnograp I l't , arc no t pa rt of the gre ater and l 'story whn rcsO rces wer e . III preI ikelv to have occurred ' non- eXIstent. ' T t ' " ty, and contact Wi th elVI Iza p es h d no conception of private pro per Indeed, these pw d hy the nde divided society was fou , e Jud ae t' that e," and Ro uss eau 's flguratlv saying "Th is lan d is min a pW e f grou nd, , man who first wwed " . ' I valid "M ine and t hine, the Iy , heve him, IS cssentla found others to be

sacrificial

rIcSS

:7

\'

10;

seeds of all mischief, have no place with them." cads Pic l ro 's I ) I I account of the natives encountered on C,olumbus' second V(ly"g<', Centuries later, surviving Native Americans asked, "Sell the Earth') Why not sell the air, the clouds , the great sea?" Agriculture cre a t es ali<I elevates possessions; consider the longing root of belongings, as if they ever make up for the loss, Work, as a distinct category of life, likewise did not exist until agriculture, The human capacity of being shackled to crops and herds devolved rather quickly , Food production overcame thc common absence or paucity of ritual and hierarchy in society and introduced civilized activities like the forced labor of temple-building, Here is the real "Cartesian split" between inner and outer reality, the separation whereby nature became merely something to be "worked," On this capacity for a sedentary and servile existence rests the cntire superstructure of civilization with its increasing weight of repression , Male violence toward women originated with agriculture, which transmuted women into beasts of burden and breeders of children, Before farming, the egalitarianism of foraging life "applied as fully to women as to men," judged Eleanor Leacock, owing to the autonomy of tasks and the fact that decisions were made by those who carried them out. In the absence of production and with no drudge work suitable for child labor such as weeding, women were not consigned to onerous chores or the constant supply of babies, Along with the curse of perpetual work, via agriculture, in the expulsion from Eden, God told woman, "1 will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conccption; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and that desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee," Similarly, the first known codified laws, those of the Sumerian king Ur Namu, prescribed death to any woman satistying desires outside of marriage, Thus Whyte referred to the ground women "lost relative to men when humans first abandoned a simple hunting and gathering way of life," and Simone de Beauvoir saw in the cultural equation of plow and phallus a fitting symbol of the oppression of women, As wild animals arc converted into sluggish meat-making machines, the concept of becoming "cultivated" is a virtue enforced on people, meaning the weeding out of freedom from onc's nature, in the service of domestication and exploitation, As Rice points out, in Sumer, the first civilization, the earliest cities had factories with their characteristic high organization and refraction of skills , Civilization from this point exacts human labor and the mass production of [(lOd, buildings, war and authority,
r

'IX

Al il.:.!( ' I I I Tl ll':I'

fur dSl. Thl'il l I a lIl' , . . . . nd nothi ng wpr l-.. was " CUlS C '\ . Tn the ( ; rrd s, sorrow The larnoliS II e root a s till': Lat l h !)(lI/(I.\" h;IS thL' sam Punl ' i () n fom Paradise iI , ' , ' t c exp uIS I tur e as, ford put it, ( l id Test ame nt CUI,e on agncu f wark ' As Mum , ' ' f the ongm 0 {Neol'Ith'Ie I ;slS 3 : 1 7- I H) remmds s 0
(Gem
' ..

.:\1 1 )1 . 1':' 1 _ 1 _ 1 1, 1 "-1 l ' fl.'l H.J I ',

1' <

'ere the keys to this nformIty, repetrtlon, patrence "" In this monotony and pasSIvIty ot "Co for wor the peasant's culturc ,the pat i ent capacity n to Paul Shepard , and waltmg IS born, accord ures at' reet'tude and heaviness, and tending I g "deep, latent resentments,crude m<'xtadd a StOl'c insensitivity and lack, aI' , r. 0ne mIght al o bsence ?f h umoparable from rehglous faith, sullenness, and SUSp ICIon : .. of farmIng, Imagmatlon <nse , dome s ti cated life among traits , widely attnbuted to theature mcIudes a latent readiness for ' Although tood prod uctron bY I'tS, n elVIIIzm culture was from the " "matron and although , political d om eover invoIvC d a e h' mc, th' chang , " 'an begmmng Its own pr()pag da m ac 's Agam,l,[ f"eviathan! Aoamst H'IS" ' monumcntal struggle , Fredy P erlm an' h' ng Toynbec's attention to the ly ,enn, ntents within and without Story! is unr ivaled on this, vast , co "internal" and "external proletanatsax. S fOm digging stick farming to civilization, Nonetheless, along the d l , gatI n syste ms an almost total iate o f Plow a"rieulture to fully difherent wasIrn Oan'Iy' effec;ed. . ncccss s and u nters ses ,are Part of the domesticatmg genocide of gatherer ,ormatl'on and storage 0f surplu ' ', The i tendency to svmboIIze, " , stalle, an aspect 0!'I thetakes the forms of herd will to control and make ' A bulwark against the !low of natura: :sarliest medium of equ iva animals and grananes, Stored gram y wlth the appearance of wealth m , lence, the oldest form of capItal. Onladallons 0f labor and social classes or ' the shape of storable grams d0 the y 'rains before all this (and WI'Id , "wild g While there were certaml rote ,m compared to 1 2 percent for proceed, p wheat, by the way, is 24 percent Iture rna e, every difference, Civilizak, domesticated wheat), the bI, as af euon grananes as on symbolization, tion and its cities rested as muc h ' ,in seems even more impenetrable in '' . ' s ong , The myste ry of agflculture the pn:vious era I . , hn o not'ons that rsal 0t' l ong-stam sence of leisure, "One could no light of the recent reve an ab ' ' was one of hostl'Itty ta nat ure andat earIy man domesticated plants" and ' longer assume," wrote Armc, "th starvation . If anything the contrary ' animals to escape d ru dgery and armmg saw the end of innocence , Fo r ' .. " appeared tr ue, and th e advent of" f hy was, n't ,'igricullll r c a<iopteu much " a long ,tIme, the questlOn was " W rceently, we,' know that agnculhlrc, In . , , . , earher ,m human evaIulton '}" More huntmg (tnd gathering and docs not ' , an . Cohen s words, IS not casler th alatablc, or more sccun' food ,hase, . , provide a hlgh er quarIty, more p IS, "Why was it adopted at all? " n oW Thus the cons ensu s questIon

"

'

'

'

'

'

..

"

'

"

;)

Many thcories havc been ad ance d, none convincingly. Child e alld others argue that population increase pushe d huma n societies into more intimate contact with other specie s, leadin g to domcstication and the need to p oduce in order to feed the additi onal peopl e. But it has been shown rather conclusively that population . increase did not precede agrrculture but was caused by it. "I don't see any evidence anywh ere in thc world ," onclu ded Flannery, "that sugge sts that population pressure was responSIble for the begin ning of agricu lture. " Another theory has it that major clImatIc changcs occurred at thc end of the Pleistocene, about 1 1,000 years ago, that upset the old hunte r-gatherer life-world and led dlrcctly to the cultivation of certain surviv ing staple s. Recent dating metho ds have helpe d demo lish this appro ach; no such climatic shift happe ned that could have forced the new mode into existence. Besid es, there are scores of examples of agricu lture being adopted-or retused-In evcry type of climate. Another major hypothcsis is that agnculture was Introduced via chance discov ery or invention as if it had never occurred to the species before a certai n moment that, for example, food grows from sprouted seeds. It seems certain that Paleolithic h u manity had a virtually inexhaustible know ledge of flora and fauna for many tens of thousands of years before the cultivation of plants began ' which rende rs this theory especially weak. Agreemenl with Carl summation that, "Agricu l tu re did not ongmate trom a growing or chronic shorta ge of food" i s sufficient in fact, to dismis s virtually all originary theori es that have been advan ed. A remaining idea, prese nted by Hahn, Isaac and others, holds that food production began at base as a eligio us ctivity. This hypot hesis comes closest to plausibility. Sheep and goats, the tlrst animals to domesticated, are known to have been widely used in religious cerem onies, and to have been r ised In enclosed meadows lor sacrificial purposes. Befor e they werc dome sti cat d, moreover, shecp had no wool suitab lc for textile purpo ses. The mam use of the hen in southeaster n Asia and the easter n Mediterranean-the earliest centers of eiviliz ation-"seem s to have been," according to Darby, "sacrificial or divina tory rather than alimenta ry." Sauer adds that the "egg laying and meat producing qualities" of tamcd fowl "arc relatively late consequenc es of their domesticati on " Wild cattle were fierce and dangerous; neither the docility of oxen n the modltled meat texture of such castra tes could have been forese en. Cattle were not milke d until centu ries after their initia l captivity, and repre sentat ions mdleatc that their first know n harnessing was to wagons In relIgIOUS procession s.

SII

I ' I I ' MI'HIS

to Ill: contrull ed) exhihit. si milar b ckground s so ':ar s i s pumpkr n, uscd 1 l( ) W I l . ( \lIlsidn t he New World example s of squash and discussed the rehglous "n original ly as ceremonial rattles. Johannessen . s lIlystical motives connected with the domestication of Ize, MeXICO
P l a n l s . l I ('x t

II 1 { I 'J ' I IS:\ 1

SI

of dlshnctIve types A nder son investigated the selection and developm nt l slgn rf cance. The "I' v ario s cultivated plants because of their magIcal should add, were well-pla ced in positions of powcr to sh a man s, I involved m ntual and introduce agriculture via the taming and planting ' . . above. . ed sketch ily referr . . tIon of the ongIns of agnclllture has been Though the religiou s explana us, In my oplOlon , to the very doorste p somcwhat overlooked, it that non-ratIonal, of the real explanation of the birth of produc tion: language, forms of cultural force of alienatio n which spre d , in he psychIC lIfe III number and art, to ultimately colonize m terial and

ic relIglo n. LIkeWIse, lIlost important crop and center of its native Neolith .

religion,

to brings

Sauer's r

a bc

ation of thIS lllfectlon agriculture. "Religion" is too narrow a conceptualiz encompassmg to have and its growth. Domination is too weighty, too all: ed by thc pathology that IS relIgIon . hecn sole y convey . ity that are part of But the cultural values of control and uniform the heginning. Noting religion are certainly part of agriculture, and from very eaSIly, Anderson studled the very that strains of corn cross-pollinate of Assam, the N aga tribe, and theIr varIety of prim itive plant. True to culture, corn that exhibited no differences from plant to tion, the Naga showin g that it is complete from the beginn ing of produc adherence to a Ideal kept their varieties so pure "only by a fanatical and productIOn In type." This exe mplifies the marnage of ll ltur and work. domestication and its inevitable progeny, repressIon ous tending of strains of plants finds its parallel in the The scrupu selechon and re domesticating of animals , which also defies natural lable organic world at a debased, artIfICIal level. establishes the control late d; a dairy cow, for . Like plants, animals are mere things to be manipu of machine for convertIng grass to milk. instance, is seen as a kind s paraSItes, these Transmuted from a st te of f eedom to that of helples on man for survival. In domestIc animal s becom e completely depend cnt of the brain becomes relatively smaller as mamma ls, as a rule, the to growth and less to specim ens are produced that devote more eneq,'Y the sheep, most activity. Placid, infantilized, typified perhaps by ence of WIld sheep domesticated of herd animals; the remarkable mtellig The social relationships is comple tely lost in their tamed counter parts. al are reduced to the crudest essenlla ls. Non among domestic anim ed, courtship IS curtaIled, rep oductive parts of the l fe cycle are minimiz

t a

hme,

agriculturalists

size

" "Iways to 4uasi-dr ier conditio n, since the beginnings of the Neolithi c." t ksnts now occupy most of the areas where the high civilizati ons once rr. Ll l is lw d , and there is much historical evidenc e that these early Ie lrlllatio ns inevitably ruined their environ ments.

"Vast regions have changed their aspect complet ely," estimate s Zeuner.

; J l l d t h e d o m i na ti o n over nature soon bcgan to turn the gn.:cn mantle

;1I11 l ilt,. ; l I I i l ll;t l ',..; very ( apacily

i ;lrlllJlIg
:

.,. ,

;ds() c r e a t e d tllL: potential for rapid environm ental destruct i()11

to

nX(l g ll izt; i t s ( )wn species is i m p a i r e d

S\

cities," wrot 1 1 H" ; ISks a l l d hubonic plague the appearance of large

the risc of farming, . I , d w l n d ( )sis a n d d i a rr h e a l disc:.tsc had to await

1 11 , 1 1 wvered the birthplaces of civilization into harren and lifeless areas.

>

",,,I Asia, agriculture turned lush and hospitable lands into dcplcted , dry, , , , , , I rocky terrain. In Crilias, Plato describe d Attica as "a

Throug hout thc Mediter ranean Basin and in the adjoining Near East skeleton wasted

,uminan ts, was a major factor in the de nudi ng of G re ece, L ebano n, and :'>/orth Africa, and the desertitication of the Roman and Mesopo tamian l'mplrcs . Anothe r, ore immedi ate impact of agriculture, brough t to light . 'lIcreasIngly 10 recent years, involved the physical well-be ing of its s l l bJeets. Ltc and Dtvore's researc hes show that "the diet of gathe ri ng "copies was far bcttcr than that of cultivators, that starvation is rare, that l he,r health status was generally superior, and that there is a lower incidence of chronic disease. " Conversely, Farb summarized, "Production provides an inferior diet based on a limited number of foods is much less reliable because of bl ights and the vagaries of we ther, is much more costly in terms of human labor expende d." Thc new field of paleopathology has reached even more emphat ic wnc1us lOns, stressIn g, as docs Angel, the "sharp decline in growth and Ilutnl!on caused by the changeover from food gatheri ng to food product ion." Earlier conclusions about life span have also been revised. I though eyewitn ess Spanish accounts of the sixteenth century tell of I'londa Indian fathers seeing their fifth generation before passing away, It was long beheve d that primitive people died in their 30s and 40s. Robson , Boyden and others have dispelle d the confusion of longevity WIth hfe expectancy and discovered that cu rren t hunter-gathcre rs, barring injury and severe mtectlOn, often outlive their civilized contem porarie s. Dunng tne m dustrial age only fairly recentl y did life span lengthe n for the speCIes, and It IS now widely recognized that in Paleolithic times human s w re long-lived animal s, once certain risks were passed . De Vries IS correct In hiS Judgme nt that duration of life dropped sharply upon contact with civilization.

t ( l , ts earher fIchness . Grazing by goats and sheep, thc first domesticated

hy disease, " referring to the deforestation of Greece and contrast ing it

killer of humanrty, and I ) " " " . ""I. Malaria . probably the single greatest heritage of agriculture. ) " , , , Iv a l l other infectious disease s are thc h the reign of N " I ,itional and degene rativc di seases i n gene ral appear wi t anemia, dental d, l ne s t i c a tion and culture. Cancer, coronary thrombosis, ure; " il's, and mental disorde rs arc but a few of the hallmar ks of agricult pain. ty and little or no I " l' V i o u sly women gave birth with no difficul more alive in all their senses. !Kung San, reportcd !'eople were far was stili 70 m ,les IU I. Post, have heard a singl e -engi ne plane while It see four moons at JupIter WIth the naked "way, and many of them can as to "an overall declIne ( ' y e . The s u mmary j u dgmen t of Harris and Ross, of human life among farmer s ' " the qualityand probably in the length tated. as compa red with earlier hunter-gatherer groups," is unders that there was once One of the most persistent and universal ideas is Hesiod , fo instanc e, " Golden Age of innoce nce before history began. its COpiOUS fruIts ,eferre d to the "life-sustaining soil, which yielded gatherers and ""hribc d by toiL" Eden was clearly the home of the hunter paradlse must have the yearnin g expressed by thc historical images ot . rs of t he soil for a lost hfe of treedom and heen that of disillusioned tille
.

Jared

a nd

relative ease. ement of nature The historv of civilization shows the increasing displac in part by a narrowin g of food from huma experie nce, characterized sustena nce 10 choices. According to Rooney, prehistoric people s found civilizations," Wenkc over 1 500 species of wild pla nts , whereas "All or more of Just remind s us," have been based on the cultivation of one potatos . " six plant species: wheat, barley, millet, rice, maize, and . ot differen t It is a striking truth that over the centuries "the number out, "has steadily edible foods which are actually eaten," Pykc points population now depends for most of its subsis dwindle d . " The world's natural strarns are tence on only about 20 genera of plants while their and the genetic pool of these plants be replaced by artificial hybrids

comes far less varied . as the propor The diversi ty of food tends to disappe ar or tlatten out Today the very same ar hcie s of tion of manufactured foods increases. and an African diet are distrihu ted worldwide, so that an Inuit Eskimo Wisconsi or frozen may soon be eating powdered milk manufactured in tionals such fish sticks from a single factory in Sweden . A lew big multllla y, preSIde over as Unilever the world's biggest food production compan not to nourish a highly int grated scrvice system in which the ohject is to force an ever-increasing consum phon of tabncator even to feed, but

/\( ; ] Z ] ( ' [ i l . l ' ! I IZ I

cd, processed products upon the world. When Descartes enunciated the principlc that the fulles t exrloi tatioll of matter to any use is the whole duty of man, our separa tion from naturc was virtually completc and the stage was set for the Indust..ial Revolution. Three hundre d and fifty years later this spirit lingere d in the person of Jean Vorst, Curator of France's Museum of Natura l History, who pronounced that our species, "hecausc of intcllect," can no longer re-cross a certain threshold of civilization and oncc again becom c part of a natural habitat. He further stated, expressing perfectly the original and pcrscvcring imperialism of agriculture, "As thc carth in its primit ive state IS not adapted to our expansion, man must shacklc it to fulfill human destiny." The early factories literally mimicked the agricultural model, indicating agam that at base all mass production is farming. The natura l world is to be broken and forced to work. One thinks of the mid-America n prairies where settlers had to yoke six oxen to plows in order to cut through the soil for the first time. Or a scene from the 1 870s in Th_ Oclopus by Frank Norris, in which gang-plows were driven like "a great column of field artillcry" across thc San Joaquin Va l ley, cut tin g 1 75 fu rrows at once. Today the organic, what is left of it, is fully mcchanizcd under the aegis of a fcw pe trochemical corporations. Their artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and near-monopoly of the world's seed stock definc a total environment that integrates food production from planting to consump tion. Although Levi-Strauss is right that "Civilization manufacture s monoculture like sugar beets, " only sincc World War II has a completely SynthCtiC orrcntatIon begun to dominate. Agriculturc takes more organic matter out of the soi l than it puts hack, and soil erosion is basic to the mono culture of annuals. Regar ding the latter, some arc promoted with devastating results to the land; along with cotton and soybeans, corn, which in its presen t domcs ticatcd state is totally dependent on agriculture for its existcncc, is especially bad. J .Russe ll Smith called it "the killer of contincnts ... and one of the worst enemies of the human future." The erosion cost of one bushel of Iowa corn is two bushels of topsoi l , highlighting the more genera l large-scale mdustrIal destruction of farmland. The continuous ti ll age of huoe monocultures, with massivc usc of chemicals and no application f manure or humus, obviously raises soil detcrioration and soil loss to much highe r levels. The dominant agricultural mode has it that soil needs massiv e infusions of chemicals, supervised by technicians whose overriding goal is to maximizc production. Artificial fertilizers and all thc rest from this

tht.: soil and indeed i n s tT u llH nt o f prouuction, The promis e of .: i l ' C ' h l l ( l I ( lgy i s lotal control, a completely contrived environment that . . ,,"ply su p",selks the natural balancc of the biosphere. But mOlT and more energy is cxpended to purchase great monocultural \'id<ls that arc heginning to decline, nevcr mind the toxic contamination , I ' the s o i l , ground water and food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture '::Iys that cropland erosion is occurring in this country at a rate of two I , i llinn tons of soil a year. The National Academy of Sciences estimates I i l at over one third of topsoil is already gone forever. The ecological imhalanee caused by monocropping and synthctic fertilizers causes '. 110rmous increases in pests and crop diseases; since World War 11, crop loss due to insects has actually doubled. Technology responds, of coursc, with spiraling applications of more synthetic fertilizers, and "weed" and pcst" killers, accelerating the crime against nature. Another post-war phenomenonwas the Green Rcvolution, billed as the salvation of the impoverish cd Third World by American capital and t echnology. But rather than feeding the hungry, the Green Revolution drove millions of poor people from farmlands in Asia, Latin America and Africa as victims of the program that fosters large corporate farms . It amounted to an enormous technological colonization creating dependen cy on capital-intensive agribusiness, destroying older agrarian communal ism, requiring massive fossil fuel consumption and assaulting nature on an unprecedented scale. Desertification, or loss of soil due to agriculture, has been steadily increasing. Each year, a total area equivalent to more than two Belgiums is bcing converted to desert worldwide. Thc fatc of the world's tropical rainforests is a factor in the acceleration of this desiccation: half of them have been erased in the past thirty ycars. In Botswana, the last wilder ness region of Africa has disappeared like much of the Amazon jungle and almost half of the rainforests of Central America, primarily to raise cattle for the hamburger markets in the U.S, and Europe. The few arcas safe from deforestation are where agriculture doesn't want to go. The destruction of the land is proceeding in the U .S. over a greatcr land area than was encompassed by thc original thirtcen colon ies, just as it was at the heart of thc scvere African famine of the mid-1980s, and the extinction of one species of wild animal and plant after another. Returning to animals, onc is reminded of the words of Genesis in which God said to Noah, "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands are they delivered." When
" n l ver! l' i i r l l i l l a l c lIl'l'd f(Jt l h t' C l l l l l p l c :x l i fe of

I I1 I l l' " )h

iI

illl{) a

l lH'

mere

1\ ( ; 1 ':' ] ( \ 1 1 I I ! I I

newly discovered territory was first visited by t h e advance gll;lnl (II production, as a wide descriptive literature shows, the w i l d m a m m a l s " l i d birds showed no fear whatsoever of the explorers. The agricu lturalizcd mentality, however, so aptly foretold in the hiblical passage, projects "" exaggerated belief in the fierceness of wild creatures, which follows from progressive estrangement and loss of contact with the animal world, plus the need to maintain dominance over it. The fate of domestic animals is defined by the fact that agricultural technologists continually look to factories as models of how to refine their own prmluction systems. Nature is banished from these systems as, increasingly, [arm animals are kept largely immobile throughout their deformed lives, maintaineu in high-density, wholly artificial environments. Billions of chickens, pigs, and veal calves, for example, no longer even see the light of day much less roam the fields, fields growing more silent as more and morc pastures are plowed up to grow fecd for these hideously confined beings. The high-tech chickens, whose beak ends have been clipped off to rcduce death from stress-induced fighting, often exist four or even five to a l2" by 18" cage and are periodically deprived of food and water for up to tcn days to regulate their egg-laying cycles. Pigs live on concrete floors with no bedding; foot-rot, tail-biting and cannibalism are endemic because of physical conditions and stress. Sows nurse their piglets scparated by metal grates, mother and offspring barred from natural contact. Veal calves are often raised in darkness, chained to stalls so narrow as to disallow turning around or other normal posture adjust ment. Thesc animals arc generally under regimens of constant mcdica tion due to the tortures involved and their heightened susccptibility to diseases; automated animal production relies upon hormones and antibiotics. Such systematic cruelty, not to mention the kind of food that results, brings to mind the fact that captivity itself and every form of enslavement has agriculturc as its progenitor or model . Food has been one of our most direct contacts with the natural environment, but we are rendered increasingly dependent on a techno logical production system in which finally even our senses have become redundant; taste, once vital for judging a food's value or safcty, is no longcr experienced, but rather certified by a label. Overall, thc healthful ness of what we consume declines and land once cultivated for food now produces coffee, tobacco, grains for alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs, creating the context for famine. Even the non-processed foods like fruits and vegetables are now grown to be tasteless and uniform because the demands of handling, transport and storage, not nutrition or pleasure,

\ ' 1 1 . i l I N , .. , ) \ \ ,

\\. 1 1 1

.....

\1

.111; \ '\

millions )f acrS n t . . ' . Ilu rln g th, V .lc,tnam Wa.r, but the plun denng 0! t e . I ,,, "I ' IH I pl \lce(I even more Icthallv In Its d ally, global forms . Foo.d as . .I'ed mlserably on the most ohvlous . . . ., I Ullrllnn nt pro d uetIOn has also tal . . as everyone k now>, suffers from malnourishment b ,. I : h a lf of the world, I . l liging to starvation itself. . T ' Meanwhile, the "dlseascs 0f cl. :ation as discussed hy Eaton and 1,,"ll1er in the January 3 1 , 1985 ; En land Journal of Medicine and .g r , , ,"Irasted with the healthful pr.'e-f-armlng , I cts underline the joyless, . of the .'n ,i.-klv world 0f chromc maladJustmcnt we I 'habit as prey . 5, and f'abrl cated food Domestica . ,,,'"llitacturcrs 0f mcdicine.' cosmehc . new heights of the pathoIoglca1 In genetic food engineenng, Iltln reaches . d mlcroorgan . e . f mals in the offing as well as contnve wllh ne j" : \:callY, humanity itsclf will also becomc a domeSH, cate ::;n;h o;d: s the world of production processcs us as much as It degrades and deforms every other natu al syst d , carried through by The project of subdumg nature, egun . IOns. Th e "success " of ' agriculture, has assumed g.igantic proport Icr humanily never wanted tastes civilization's progress, a success car I" . . more and more. II"ke ashes . James S erpe_Il su mmed it up this w'ay: ""I n , short we appear t o : ached thei end of thet line . We cannot expand; fy product on withou wreaking further havoc, unabl e t() n we seem "nd thc planet is fa t ecg : ; l " e ; ::initiation of agriculture " a PhYSiologist Jare la catastrophe fo ':'hIeh we have never recovered ." Agriculture has been levels, the one which underp ins the " nd. r c:: :l :;-hal at all e of alienation nOW dcstroym g us . cultur t i cn tIf e . Liberation is impossible without Its dISSOIut10n .

. 11 1. '[ , ' " " , 1 1", ,,1 A S I a

. ,

1H;jl\\::\ ;: :!I :
I
C
. _

rielll u rc to defoliate
.

. .

'

'

PART TW O

INDUSTRI ALISM AND D OMESTICATION

The modern definitions of division of labor, progress, ideology, and the workers' movcmentwere inscribed by the coming of industrial capitalism and the factory system. The dynamics of what Hobsbawm termed "the most fundamental transformation of human life" in written history specifically the reasons why it happened-explain the legacy and value of these institutions. Not surprisingly, much at the core of Marx's thought can also be evaluated against the reality of thc Industrial Revolution. Eighteenth-century England, where it all began, had long since seen the demise of feudalism. Capitalist social relations, however, had been unable to establish a definitive hegemony. Gwyn Williams (Artisans and Sans-Culottes) found it hard to find a single year free from popular uprisings; "England was preeminently the country of the eighteenth century mob," he wrote. Peter Las1ctt (The World We Have lost) surveyed the scene at thc beginning of the century, noting the general consciousness that working people were openly regarded as a proletariat, and the fact, as "everyone was quite well aware," that violence posed a constant threat to the social order. Laslett further notcd that enclosure, or the fencing off of lands previously pasturcd, ploughed, and harvested cooperatively, commenccd at this time and "destroyed communality altogether in English rural life." Neithcr was there, by 1750, a significant land-owning peasantry; thc great majority on the land were either tenant-farmers or agricultural wage laborcrs. T. S. Ashton, who wrote a classic economic history of 18th century England, identified a crucial key to this development by his observation that "Enclosure was desirable if only because rights of common led to irregularity of work," as was widely helieved. Britain in 1750, in any case, engendered a numbcr of foreign visitors' accounts that its common people were much "given to riot," according to historian E. J. Hobsbawm. The organization of manufacture prevailing then was the domestic, or "putting out" system, in which workers crafted goods in their own homes, and the capitalists were mainly merchants who supplied the raw materials

I N D I )STRIAIJSM A N I > i) ( l M J S rJ ( 'ATH )N

I - I H.II-Nr.

and then marketed the finished products. At tirst th,c generally owned their Own tools, but later came to rent them. III case, thc rclationship to the "means of production" affonkd greal stratgic strngth. Unsupervised, working for several masters, and wilh their time their own, a degree of independence was maintained. "Luddism," as E. P. Thompson (Making of the Enghsh Working Ciass) rcminds us, "was thc work of skilled men in small workshops." The Luddltcs (c. 1810-1820), though thcy belong toward the end of the period surveyed here, were perhaps the machine-breakers par excellence-textile knittcrs, wcavers, and spinners who exemplify both the relative autonomy and anti-employer sentiment of the free craftsman and craftswoman. Scorcs of commentators have discussed the independence of such domcstie workers as thc handloom weavers; Muggeridge's report on LancashIre craftsmen (from Exell, Brief HL<lory of the Weavers of the Country of Gloucester), for example, notes that Ihis kind of work "gratifies that innate love of independence ...by leaving the workman entircly a master of his own time, and the sole guide of his actions." Thcse workers treasured their versatility, and their right to execute individual designs of their own choosing rather than the standardization of the new factory employment (which began to emerge in earnest about 1770). Witt Bowdcn (Industrial Society in England Towards the End of the EIghteenth Century) noted that earlicrproeesses of production had indeed often "afforded the workers genuine opportunities for the expression of their personalities in their work," and that in these pre-specialization times craftsmen could pursue "artistic conceptions" in many cases. A non-working elass obscrver (Malachy Postlewayt, c. 1750), in fact, expresscd the view that the high quality of English manufactures was to be attributed to the frequent "relaxation of the people in their own way." Others dIscerned the workers' control over time a distinct threat to authority as well as to profits; Ashton wrote how "very serious was the almost universal practice of working a short week," adding a minister's alarm that "It is not those who arc absolutely idle that injure the public so much as those who work but half their time." If anything, Ashton understatcd the case when he concluded that ".. .leisure, at times of their own choice, stood high on the workers' scale of preferences." William Temple's admonition (1739) that the only way to insure tempcrancc and mdustry on the part of laborers was to make it necessary that they work all the time physically possiblc "in order to procure the common necessaries of life," was a frequent expression of ruling-class frustration. Temple's expcrience with the turbulent weavers of Gloucestershire had thus led him to agree with Arthur Young's "everyone but an idiot knows
cranS"'l"1I illol"1 III

will never hl' Iliduslri i c! l I l 1 1 . "II';" [ h l craftsm en of cloth, the insistence on their own mcthOd s the ingenious sahotage of finished goods was matche d , that of embezzlement of the raw materials assigned I ,v ;1l10Ihel " weapon passed to Ihem. As Ashton reports, "A survcy of the mcasures delay in returning materials shows a embezzlement and 18th ccntury "ressive increase in penalties." But throughout the and Industrial, Uhe Cotton Trade ;,,"("<)J"(Jing to Wadsworth and Mann I ,",,:ashire, 16001780), "the execution of the anti-embezzlem ent . . .lagged behind their letter." Their effectiveness was limited by the . . I"csentmentofthe spinners and workpeople,"which prosecutors incurred inspection. James' .'1ll1 by the difficulty of detection without regular acture echoes this finding: "Justices o f the orsted Manuf 1 /i.,lOry oj" the W entertai I'cace ... until compelled hy mandamus, refused to or false n charges reelers." proper evidence, embezzlers against or convict upon ed in the embezzlement issue the Wadsworth and Mann perceiv L'iationship between thc prcvailing "work ethic" and the prevailing mode "f production : eye The fact is simply that a great many.. .have never seen hip. to eye with owncrs The home Iheir employers on the rights and sanctity of worker of the eighteenth century, living away from the restraints of the factory and workshop and the employer's eye, had every induce ment (to try) to defeat the hard bargain the employer had driven. to The indepcndent craftsman was a threatening adversary knothe his well wn employing class, and he clung strongly to his prerogatives:standard of the to reject "the higher material propensity, for instance, veget factory towns," in Thompson's phrase, to gather his own fruits,blight ables and the developing industrial and nowers, to largely escape ring workers at the dinner pollution, to gather freely with his neighbo mestic hour. Thompson noted a good example of the nature of the dode ss and indepen nce" worker in "the Yorkshire reputation for bluntne "men which could be traced to what local historian Frank Peel saw as sq doffed their caps to no one, and recognized no right in either uire who or parson to question or meddle with them." Turning to some of the specifics of pr-factory system revolt in England, Ashton provides a good introduction: Following the harvest failure of 1 709 the keel men of the Tyne took to rioting. When the price of food rose sharply in J 727 the tin-miners of Cornwall plundered granaries at Falmouth, and the coal-miners of Somerset broke down the turnpikes on the road to Bristol. Ten years
1 1 1,11 l l w l\lWlr t'!; tS:-'l'S r l t u s l hI,: !.. cpt
d i\ ( l l ( ) I I ', Pllt)" or

1 '1-

1\ 1 -'1 1'-. ,\ 1 I hey

'1 \

" , d " d i l l. al limes. I" 1"

. I l P I'ITSS

;,,"Is

" rebe llIon led t a ill Northumberland and Durham ' wh ch woen seem to have take ' n a lead ing part: ships were board .h ses broken .open, and the guild at Newcastle was reduced t ' t the same !Jme attacks on , corn dealers were reported from North and South Wal es. The year s . 1 748 and 1 753 saw similar h' appenmgs m sevcral parts of the country; and in 1 756 there was hardl a coun ty rom which n o report reached / the Home Office of the pulli g d o n m!lIs or Quaker m e eting, : houses, or the rough hand l i ng Of : k r rs nd gram deal ers. In spite of drastic penalties the same thl , 'n 0 Occurre d 10 each af th c , I ater dearths of the century: in 1762 , 1 765- 7 1 7 74 1 78 1789 , 179) , and 1800 , Th" read ines s for direct actio n infarm ' the stnfc 10 textlics, . the mdu stry so impo rtan t to England nd t0 capllallst evol utio n, whcre, for example, "discontent was the reva t a t ude ofth e operatives enga ged ?, in the wool indu strie s far cen uric s' urn l ey m h,s HJStorys of Woo l and W oolcombing. Popular ballads g ample eVIdence to this, as does the case of rioti ng Lon don weav e s, who Panl cked the govcrnm ' ent in 1675 , Lipson's History of the W. ol and W orsted Industries provides man y instances of the robustne s ome stlc textl ie workers' struggle s' inclu ding that of a 1728 weavers stnke which was mten d e d to . ' have bee n paCI fied by a meeting of strik e Ieaders and employers a " ' mo b" 0 t ' ' . , weavers "burst into the rOOm in which th e negotlatlons wer e taki ng place, d agged back the clothiers as they ende avored to escape from the wmdows, and forced them t0 conce de all theI r demand s. ' " 0r thes e a dd'lhonal acco unts by Lipson: The Wiltshire weavers were e . uallY oted for theI r turb ulen t character and the rude violence with ' h t ey proclaImed the wrongs und er which they smarted In b d togeth er in a rio tous IC manner from the viliages round ::::; a and Trowbntlge, and mad e . an attack upon the housc of a cloth er wh 0 had redu ced the pric e of weaving . Thcy sma shed ope thc oors, consumed or spoi led the provisions in the cell ar dran all th e Wllle hey could, set the casks t ' running and end ed up Y d es troymg great quantities of raw materia ls and utesils . In add I'tIon to th,s ' ' explOlt they extorte d a prom ise from all the clothiers in Mel ksham , that they wouI d pay f Ifteen penc e a yard for weaving Another g t umu lt occu!'red at Bradford (Wil tshir e) in 175 2. Th;; weavers m ted to prison ; the next day (; 1l :: above a thou sand weave rs a s armcd wJth blud geon s and firearms, beat the guard , brok e ope n thc pns on, and rescued " thei r The famm e

TIverton .

ialer the Cornish tinn ccs asse mble d ag n at falmouth to prcYl'. nl 'ai ' 1 Ill' exportation of corn and ln the f' ' .0 IIowmg seas on the rc was , , ' ' ' no tIng ' 1 1
"

I N l l l IS' I J{I:\I .ISr-.'1 1\N I J 1 )( Il\tIl .. H .. d A rI ( J N

..

j ' l l fvll f'.j I '.

("( 1 I I I 1 ' a I l I l I l I S . I S i l i l i l a riy, ,I. i ' . Kay was dr i ve n

! t[

1 ": 1 -1- 1 1'.;\ 1

I )',

0f

1739 ,40

"

,,

'

to his h.l, as " u l hrc"ks of violence flared in many districts in response ",,'rlllion , Ihe flyi ng shuttle for mechanizing weaving,

from Lee ds in 1 745 a n d from Bury in

i:

; / -,s 0 ,

Accounts to Wadsworth and Mann found the Manchester Constables the late 1740s, ' "aVl report e d "great Riots, Tumult s, and Disorde rs" in s grow more ,Illd that "After 1750 food riots and industrial dispute study) virtuall y I n:quen t," with outbreaks in Lancashire (the area of their e in all " very year. These historians further recount "unres t and violenc Manchester and parts of the country" in the middle to late 1750s, with the propertied classes. " I ';vcrpool fre quently in alarm and p anic among 1764-68 saw After sporadic risings, such as Manchester, 1762, the years put it in 1766, rioting in almost every county in the country; as the King parts broke forth <oa spirit of the most daring insurrection has in divers smashing of ill violencc of the most criminal nature, " Although the 1727, in a vain stocking frames had been made a capital offense in 24 incidents of attempt to stem worker violenc e, Hobsbawm counte d type of riotous wages and prices bcing forcibly set by exactly this
"

destruction in 1766 alone. inning jenny Sporadic rioting occurred in 1769, such as the anti-sp and during which outbur sts which menaced the inventor Hargreaves in order to huildin gs were demoli shed at Oswaldthistle and Blackb urn began in 1772. smash the hated mechanization . A whole new wave e proposal Sailors in Liverpool, for example, respon ded to a wage decreas flag,' and in 1775 by "sacking the owners' houses, hoisting 'the bloody accordi ng to bringing cannon ashore which they fired on the Exchan ge,"

173 :

Wadsworth and Mann. the destruction The very widespread anti-m aChinery risings of 1779 saw spinning devices which were too large for of hundre ds of weaving and shared, as domestic use, The rioters' sentiments were very widely d miners , nailma kers, laborers, evidenced by arrest rccords that include The workers' joiners-a fair sample of the entire industrial popula tion, the Hands of the complaint averred that the smaller machines are "in of the Rich," and Poor and the larger 'Patcnt Machin es' in the Hands machines I than by "that the work is better manufactured by small [textile

large ones." extended into the This list, very incomplete as it is, could be easily to have enjoyed many early 19th century outbreaks, all of which seem to close this great popular support. But perhaps a fitting entry on which written by sample would be these lines from a public letter d that you got Gloucestcrshire shear men in 1 802: "Wc hear in Forme

Shear in mee sheens am! if you Don 't P u l l thclII Down i n infernold Dog."

I N I ) [ IS'II<.I/\I I\1\1 A N I ) I ), I M I 'STH ;\"1[( I N

N ights Time we will pull them Down tilr you Wee will yo u

"

l'"m!!"1

1)"11111

to introduce the conscious motivation behind the factory system. Sidney need of "breaking the social bonds which had held the peasants, the opposition to the new order." Pollard saw too the essential nature of the in innumerable tiny domestic workshop units, Pollard

This brief look at the willfulness of the 18th century proletariat serves

as to the need ,10 (Tl lailily Illl' lIew onk.r is also rdated h) C{llIsu mption arc those who sec ItS ,.,lIaran l : c. contro l of pr()ductio n i n fact, there

<) ,

d for mass production, but , " igin almost strictly in terms of market deman
who do not see the conscious element here either.

(The Genesis of Modem Management)

recognized the capitalists'

craftsmen and the town poor of the eightecnth century together in domestic system, that the masters "had to depend on the work performed unsupervised and

unsupervisable." Such "incompatibility," he concluded, "was bound to set up tensions and to drive the merchants to seek new ways of production, productive sector." imposing their own managerial achievements and practiccs in the

control was also firmly grasped by David Landes (The Unbound Prometheus): "One can understand why the thoughts of employers turned

This underlying sense of the real inadequacy of existing powers of

watchful overseers, and to machines that would solve the shortage of manpower while curbing the insolence and dishonesty of men." Accord not brought under severe discipline to habits of industry and docile subordination." ing to Wadsworth and Mann, in fact, many employers definitely felt that "the country would perish if the poor-that is, the working classes-were Writing on the evolution of the "central workshop" or factory, historian

to workshops where the men would be brought together to labour under

was purely for purposes of discipline, so that the workers could be reliable mold following the full realization that they were dealing with a and culture had to be broken. Bowden described this with great clarity: mechanical and administrative routine." Adam Smith, in his classic recalcitrant, hostile working class whose entire morale, habits of work,

N. S. B. Gras saw its installation strictly in terms of control of labor: "It

itself became the central weapon to force an enemy character into a safe,

effectively controlled under the supervision of foremen." Factory work

creatio n of In passing Bishop Berkeley's query of 1755, "whether the y in a people ?" is wants be n, t the likelies t way to produce industr the popula c was , mincntly relevant. As Hobsb awm painted out, ed to standardized products; mdustnahza definitely not originally attract own markets, if not I ion gradually enable d production "to expand its identic al goods succee ded actually to create them." The lure of cheap, es. When essentially due to the enforced absence of earlier pleasur e, a differe nt kind indepe ndence and variety of pursuits were more possibl course, was m itself of leisure and consumption was the norm. This, of d by economists, a target of the factory system, "the tendency, so deplore put it. to work less when food was cheap," as Christopher Hill d an obvious support of thc emerging rcgime , back Exports, too, were iCial r artIf hy the systematic and aggressive help of government, anothe iC market was at least as important, deman d mecha nism. But the domest ization and stemming from the "predisposing condition" that special ss," as Max Weber observ ed. discipline of labor makes for further "progre those who saw Richar d Arkwright (1732-1 793) agreed comple telywith "as to the necessity of the need for consciously spurring consumption, But it is as the arousing and satisfying new wants," in his phrase . special word developer of cotton spinning machinery that he deserves . ent hgure m here; because he is generally regarded as the most pronlln founder of the the history of the textile industr ies and even as "the ght is a clear illustration of the political and social factory system." Arkwri concern with character of the technology he did so much to advance. His his writings and correspondenc e, and social control is very evident from Century) discerned Mantoux (The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth discipline he estahli shed in that "his most original achievement was the

"More directly as a result of the introduction of machinery and of large well understood that the

scale organization was the SUbjection of the workers to a deadening succcss of industrial capitalism lies with nothing so much as with the division of labor, that is, with ever-increasing specialization and the is as much about the production and allocation of commodities. And destruction of versatility in work. He also knew that the division of labor

Wealth of Nations,

the mills." discipline and Arkwright also saw the vital connection hetween work their attendance on social stability: "Being obliged to be more regular in t " For his their work, thcy became more orderly in their conduc se; Lipson pioneering efforts, he received his share of appropriate respon orhood of relates that in 1767, with "the news of the riots in the neighh ' spinning jenny," he Blackburn which had been provoked by Hargreaves lves the inancial backer Smolley, "fearing to draw upon themse and his f removed to Nottingham." Similarly, attention of the machine-wreckers, 1 779. Lipson ably Arkwright'S Birkacre mill was destroyed by workers in

I I'!I II I';r I { J . \ I I"I . \ l'J l l l h ll\ l I ', I II \ I I ( I N ',1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ; 1 1 i l.l'S I I is I I I a II;I/.:C ri a I CUll I I ihll I it II I .
1

1 '. 1 1 M I ' N I S

e ll H I I I I;..;\1

\ )1)

1 1 I l"( l( Jl d l l la l i ll)..', a l l I l i e various paris I l l' l 1 i vast i n dustrial s{rlictU I"l.S: ill

I railled army . . . in comhining division of labour with effective superv isio l l 1"1 1 1 111 a
'" '

i n t o his 11iche and the whole acted with the mechanical precision o r a
c

1 1").',;11 l i sin)..', a n d disciplining large hodil:S of Illell, so that each mall filled

er (from 1 6lJ l ) who \ H' rhaps I he very first ("ado!"y owner and organiz his workers to display ed aU ohsessi on with the p ro blem of disciplining the way in which people , ( I ' i n sti t u l i() n S() alien in its assumptions about

; I I '"'

i\ l I d n'w lire's Philosophy of Manufactures is one of the major attempls

pos i ti on of the factory system, a work cited often by Marx in

ommo n ccntrc ... a new epoch was inaugurated,

( "I,ilili. I ts reveali ng preface speaks of tracing "the progression of the

r,IIidance of self-acting machinery." Examining the nature of the new

" I w, "'kmen, is withdrawn from handicraft control, and placed under the

I I. il ish system of industry, acco rding to which every process peculiarly

"i,''', alld therefore liable to injury from the ignorance and waywardness

'VSklll, we find, instead of domestic craft labor, "industrial labor. . . [which I imposes a regularity, routine, and monotony ... which conflicts...with all the i n c l inations of a humanity as yet unconditioned into it," in the words of I lohshawm. Factory production slowly supplanted that of the domestic svsil'm in the face of fierce opposition, and workers experienced the
w, H',"

';[uHdd speno their lives.1) "I have not half I .cwis Paul wrote from his London firm in 1742 that today and I have no fascination in the prospect I l ly people come to work people ," In 1757 Josiah I "at I have put myself in the power of such ery is highly provocative to the lucker noted that factory-type machin and Insurrections po pulace who "never fail to hreak out into Riots seen, and as Christo whenever such things arc proposed." As we have n of free pher Hill put it, "Machine-breaking was the lo gical reactio es as the in factori men ...who saw the concentration of machinery of their enslavement." instrument ittee on Woollen A hosiery capitalist, in admitting defeat to the Comm sp i r it that had to be Manufacture, tells uS much of the independent
broken: men, to any regular I found the utmost distaste on the part of the mcn themselves were considerably hours or regular habits .... The as they please d , and dissatisficd, becaus e they could not go in and out extent as complete go on just as they had been used to do ... to such an was obliged to hreak ly to disgust them with the whole system, and J it up.

I<-<'Iillg of daily entering a prison to meet the new "strain and viol ence of
as the Hammonds put it. Factories often resembled pauper work """":S or prisons, after which they had actually often been modeled;

W,'hn saw a strong initial similarity between the modern factory and the
w,

1( I.ssian serf - labor workshOps, wherein the means of production and the
I l a m monds'

<l kns themselves were appropriated by the masters.

'lown Labourer

I "e

leading fact about the new system for the working classes: "The

saw "the d e preciation of human life" as

Watt, were likewise The famous early entreprcneurs, Boulton and deal with were "strong, dismayed to find that the miners they had to officer dared healthy and resolute men, setting the law at defiance; no

1 ( (( l l I an material was used up rapidly; workmen were called old at forty," I'"ssibly just as important was the novel, "inhuman" nature of its do",ination, as if all "were in the grasp of a great machine that threat " .,cd tn destroy all sen se of the dignity of human life." A famous
I ( l f()rget terms:

chracterization by J.P. Kay (1832) put the cveryday subjugation in har d Whilst the engine runs the people must work-men, women and ",aehine-breakable in the best case, subj ect to a thousand sources of are yoked together with iron and steam. The animal

children

s(lffering-is chained fast to the iron machine, which knows no

suffering and no weariness.

"'(ICC, reflecti ng the latent anti-capitalism of thc domestic worker "the

I(esistancc to industrial labor displayed a grcat strength and persis

d('Spair of thc masters"-in a time when a palpable aura of unfreedom " I ( I ( l g to wage-labor, Lipson gives us the example of Ambrose Crowley,

to execute a warrant against them." entrepreneur, had to Wedgwood, the well-known pottery and china ople" when he tried to develop fight "the open hostility of his workpe to Mantoux. And Jewit!'s division of labor in his workshops, accordi ng tells The Wed&woods, exposing the social intent of industrial technology, to accept the worker us "It was machinery (which1 ultimately forced the of the factory," discipline the ncw regimen, it Considering the depth of workers' antipathy to of "thc large evidence comes as no surprise that Pollard should spe ak ment was precisely which all points to the fact that continuous employ of factory work." This was the case one of the most hated aspects tion, was perceived because the work itself, as an agent of pacifica later provide s the other side of the "precisely" in its true nature. Pollard rulers' insistence on coin to the workers' hatred of the job; namely, the strikes so modern a note in it for its own (disciplinary) sake: "Nothing attempts to provid e the social provisions of the factory villages as the

1 1 111

C(l i l t i l l lH HIS cmph )YIllC II t . "

I N I H I .... , I";\ ] 1.'\1\.1 ..\ N I I 1 )( I I\ I I - \ J I ( ,\ [ ' [( I N

I :.I I - M ! Nt

\ II

R I ' t ' I IS:\ 1

,

till

of the Poor

"rarely work on Monday and that many of them keep holiday two or

Rdurning to the specifics of t"lsistallcc, S i r J:rcdcric 1 ': dcll, in his ,\'/fI',' ( 1 797), stated that the industrial lahorers of Manches"'l

the mo st dee e i r cU1 llm and " -thi s was . 1 1 I l I l t . "T( I s l a J l d a t t h ma ker of the heart to be the real :01' he felt him sdf, at I ll d igllity. 1
clolh....

ply rc c ntctl

three days in the week." Thus Vre's tirades about the employe,,,' factory labor," arc re!lccted in such data as the fact that as late as 1 H(). striving to maintain a maximum of personal liberty. "unworkful impulses," their "aversion to the control and conti nui ty or Absenteeism, as well as turnover, then, was part of the syndrome or Max Weber spoke of the "immensely stubborn resistance" to the new work discipline, and a later social scientist, Reinhard Bendix, saw also that the drive to establish the management of labor on "an impersonal, systematic basis" was opposed "at every point." Vre, in a comment worth quoting at length, discusses the fight to master the workers in terms of Arkwright's career: The main difficulty [he faced was j above all, in training human beings

spinners would be missing from the factories on Mondays and Tuesdays.

to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the

with the unvarying regularity of the complex automation. To devise and necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean enterprise, the noble achlevment of Arkwnght. Even at the present day, when the system IS perfectly organized, and its labour lightened to the utmost, it is found nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty, whether drawn from rural or from handicraft occupations, into useful factory hands. We also encounter in this selection from Vre the reason why early factory labor was so heavily comprised of the labor of children, women and paupers thrcatened with loss of the dole. Thompson quotes a witness before a Parliamentary investigative committee, that "all persons working on the power-loom are working there hy force because they cannot exist any other way." Hundreds of thousands clung to the deeply declining fortunes of hand-loom weaving for decades, in a classic case of the primacy of human dignity, which Mathias

acturers pre ferr c d to example, paper manuf This sp i r it was why for ses, ' 806) machine pro ces bor for the new (post-1 I rain ile xpe rien ced I An d why Samuel hand pap er-m ake rs. tha n employ ski lled I ath er thIS ented, relatJvely late m the spin nin g mule, lam ( 'rompton, inventor of . pniod, ' Ifst mach me smce m y f' more than thirty years this day, though i t To WIth as mU Ch nver. I am hunted and watched . was shown to the public, t ever dIsgraced st notorious villam tha care as if I was thc mo cea sing gct I were to go to a smIthy to do affirm that the human form; and I tander s, they to the bys if opportunity offe red a common nail ma de, but a naI l. see if it was anythmg minutely to wo uld examine it most as stil l bem g won at lea st dec ade s, wit h victories Th e battle rag ed for s,?crely 1882, who tned to dford entrepreneur in late as that over a Bra estIC workers. It was was discovered by the dom inst all a power-loom but in a cart und er a convoy taken down, and, placed therefore immediately and routed the consta aged weavers attacked h of constables, but the enr ler and warp m tnu m, m, and dragged its rol bles, des troyed the loo req UIr em ent of te of the le wonder that Vre wro . through Baildon." Litt per s of :,ork subdue the refractory tem bition to . Napoleon nerve and am or forgettmg tha t It was ing the earlier per iod , peo ple ." Without idealiz HIli ,,:,rote, s, it is also t ru , as by capitalist relationship certainly va lety ure was the es and enclos "What was lost by factori d d." Adam SmIth admJlte ll producers had enjoye and fre edo m which sma hon n of l bor, the des truc " due to the new divisio , the "m ental mutilation pam vIous VIvaCIty of bot h ess of mind and a pre of bot h an earlier alertn

is

If

defined

e Jfldcpendnce, :

(The First Industrial Nazion)

notes "defied the operation of simple economic incentives." What Hill termed the English craftsmen's tradition "of self-help and self-respect" was a major source of that popular will which denied complete dominion by capital, the "proud awareness that voluntarily going into a factory was to surrender their birth-right." and hateful restraints" and that everything about factory life was an Thompson demonstrates that the work rules "appeared as unnatural

. and ple asu re." tIon when he d eciare d, discussed this transforma Robert Owen likewise actures throughout a eral diffusion of maut in 181 5, that "The gen l change m the gen era character. .. an essentlal country generates a new the Ha mm ond s abstractly, of the peo ple ." Les s character of the mass me nt tha t the tury and hea rd the "la early 19t h cen of har ken ed back to the and that soon "th e art life are disappearing," games and happiness of . ed to its rudest forms." . tIon of . living had bee n deg rad . speakmg ot the popula reformer Francis Place, In 1 81 9 the ntil very lately It would ple ase d to note that "U ind ustrial Lancashire, was d 500 of the m on any ous to have assemble have been very danger ed together and no not peo ple may he collect .' occasIOn. . .. Now 100 ,000 lly, bet wee n 1780 and son summarized: gradua ens ue." It was as Thomp

cal , less violent and less spontaneous. " A rising at the end of this period, the "last Lahourers' Revol l," 01 agricultural workers in J 830, says a good deal about the gener al changl' that had occurred. Simila r to outbreaks and 1 822, much .. u .. al property had been destroyed and large parts of Ken t and East Ang lia , were m the rebels control. The Duke of Buckin gham, reflecting I h l' , government s alarm, declared the whole countr y as having been taken over by the noter s. But despit e several weeks ' success, th e moveme n l co l lapsed at the first show of real force. Historian Paulin e Gregg descn bed the sudde n relaps e into apathy and despair; they were "unused to assertIng thems elves, their earlier traditi on of vigor and initiative conqu ered by Ihe generalized triumph of the new order . Also concern i ng this year as marking a water shed, is Mantoux's remark about Arkwright, that "About 1830 he becam e the hero of political economy " Absurd, then, are the many who date the "age of revolution" as beginning at this time, such as the Tills' Rebel Century, 1830-1930. Only with the defeat of the workers could Arkw right, the architect of the factor y ystem, be installed as the hero of the bourgeoisie; this defeat of authenllc rebell ion also gave birth to politic al ideology. Socialism, a caneaturc of the challc nge that had existed, could have bcgun no other way.

subject to th e productive time of (he.: clock,

I H3J, "the ave rage) I ngli:"il i work i II}.; Illall becam e llIore d isc i p l i l i e d , lilt 1/ l' more reserved and 1JI('l hodi
L

liP

I N J ) 1 1 :-'>"1 In\1 ,J:-,I\-1 \ N I ) 1 )4 )1\11 ' ';T lt

' ,Y Ilt IN

I w , t l i l 1gs, r;w l ( )ry rules, Methodism, the education system, the diversion
, H ' I l l n:l

III \

L tII lwtl as idcology t h t: n ti n ; hattcry of i nstitutions that have never d 1I lichallengcu success.
"

of 1816

n U H n psoll recognized the essentially "repressive and disabli ng " , ,,,,il'line of industrialization and yet, as if remembering that he is a "'niSi h i stori a n, somehow finds the process good and inevitable. How " " I I " th e Industrial Revolution have happened without this discipline, he
. " , b , and in fact finds that in the production of "sober and disciplined" w< l .. kers, "this growth in self-respect[ ! ] and political consciousness" to h"ve been the "one real gain" of the transformation of society.

"

I f this appears as insanity to the healthy reader, it is wholly consistent with the philosophy of Marx. "Division of labor," said the young Marx,
"increases with civilization." It is a fundamental law, just as its concomi
I"nt, the total victory of the capitalist system.

In Volume I of

Capital,

Marx described the inevitable and necessary

" movement of the proletariat": In the ordinary run of things, the worker can he left to the action of the natural laws of production, i.e. to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, guaranteed, and perpetuated by the very Until, as he says elsewhere, on the day of the Revolution the proletari "t will have been "disciplined, united, and organized by the very mechanism of production." Then they will have achieved that state whereby they can totally transform the world; "completely depri e d of any self-activity" or "real life content," as the young Marx prescnhed. mechanism of production.

The German busine ssman Harkort, wrote in 1 844 of the "new form of serfdom," the diminution of the strength and intellig e nce of the workers hat he saw. The American Colman witnessed (1845 ) nothing less than , Wretched, de frau ded, oppre ssed, crushed human nature , lying in bleed mg fragments all over the face of sOciet y." Amazing that another buslilessman of this time could, in his Condi tion of the Working Class glory that the "factory hands, eldest children of the indust rial revolution have from the beginning to the prese nt day formed the nucleus of th Labour Move ment. " But Enge ls statement at least contains no internal co tradiction; the tamed, defeated factory operative has clearly been the mamstay of the labor movement and social ist ideology among the workmg class. As Rexford Tugw ell admitted in his Industrial Discipline and the Governmental Arts: "When the factory came into existenee . . .work became an indignity rather than a matte r for pride . . . . Organized labor has always consented to this entirely uncre ative subjec tion." Thus, "the character structure of the rebell ious pre-industrial lahourer or artisan was violently recast into that of the submissive indus trial worker," in Thompson's words; by trade unionism, the fines, firings,

To back-track for a moment, consider the conscrvallve hlstonan Ashton's puzzlement at such workers as the west-country weavers who destroyed tenter frames, or of the colliers who frequently smashed the

'

pit gear, and sometimes even set the mines On fire: they must have rcalized that their action would result in u nempl oyment, but theIr immediate conccrn was to assert their strength and inflict loss on stubborn employers. There seems to have been l ittle or no social theory in the minds of the rioters and very little class consciousness in the Marxist sense of the term. This orthodox professor would certainly have understood Marx's admonition to just such workers, "to direct their attacks, not against the

material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used." Marx understood, after all, that "the way machinery is utilized is totally distinct from the machinery itself," as he wrote in 1 R46 Similarly, Engels destroyed the logic of the anarchists by showing that the well-known neutrality of technology necessitates subordination, authority

el . I ' as 's, could a flcLor CIS t'J. I n fact, Ma rx alld . v ngels explain worker resistan . , t 'Lletlhc socIalism" largely in terms E of the survival of artisantypc eb t c who arc the more hcaten aJIII subordinated resist it the leas It' 'is htoneal lact that those closest to the category artisan ("underdeve1ope,') actually have fclt the most ' capacity to abolish the wage system, precisely because they still exerci;c some control of work processcs. Throughout nearly all his writingS ho ev r, Marx managed to return to the idea that, in socialist society ''dI'V;uas would deveop fully in and through their work. But by the thOr O me of CapJlal hIS attitude had changed and the emphasis was upn t ;eal of frcedom" which "only begins, in fact, where that labor whc IS etermincd by need and . external purpose' ceases " I7 '"outsIde the sphere of material produc i tion proper." Thus Mar a t . t not e en under socialism will the degradation of labor bc undones. (IS I.S c(osely related to the Marxist notion of revolutionary preservafIon, In whIch the acquisitions and productivity of the capitalist ee system are, not to be disturbed by proletarian revolution.) The alton ?f Itfe IS hence banished, reduced to the marginalia of existence much lIke hobbles class society. Despite his analysis of alienated I bor, mueh of the explicit core of his I philosophy is virtually. a conseeraton f wark as tyranny' . . Durkhelm, wntmg m the late 19th 'century, saw as the maIn social ' . I Integration Much J'ke Marx, who problem. the need for a cohesl've socIa I , aIso deSIred the consolidation and ;;,auratIOn of' capitalism, albeit for different reasons, Durkheim thaug t e found the key division of labor. In the need for coord'natlon/ngndered by division of labor, he discerned the essential so;ce so Idanty. Today this grotesque inversion of human valu s i reeogmed rather fully; the hostility to specialization and its always authontanan expertise I's StrongIy present. A Ioak at the recent in' :I cades of rtielcs like Fortune 's "The Senseless War o se ( r 71 ) wIll suffIce. The perennial struggle against inte rati9 the dommant system now by contmues as a struggle for d'/tr .o: a ore and more consciously .' nihilist effort. The progress P gSS . IS left WIth few partIsans ' and Its enemies with few I'11USlons as to what IS worth preserving. '
and powcr . I low . .
. st:, 1C

I I J.I

I N I H IS I I' I r\ I . lSM ANI ) 1 )( IM I -S l lt ' A l lt 'N

k
..

"

. ,"

.J

LUDD? W H O K IL L E D N E D
symbols of the days Ned Ludd is on e of the1 ideas 1/1 papier.mache likeness of workers' attitude to the new

what the ,"" I have gone, a reminder of nt. no t grown strong and efficie might be if the unions had Labour,
I it 111 n

III

Il1

at the time of the Produe Union Congress magazine Trade Exhibition, 1956 . beginning in textiles, England, the first industrial nation, an d arose the widespread I ost enterprise there, capital'S first and forem(between 181 0 and 1820) known as Luddism, (evolutionary movement ite risings-and their defeat-was of very great 'I'he challenge of the Ludd uent course of modern society. Machine imp ortance to the subseq n, predates this period, to be sure; Darvall we wrecking, a principal "peaponial" throughout the 18t h century, in good tely termed it ren tainly not confined to either textile workers accura cer limes and bad, And it wasrs, miners, millers, and many others joined in or England. Farm workeen against what would generally be termed their destroying machinery, oft " Similarly, as FUlopMiller reminds us, there own "economic interests. rpen and AixlaChapclle who destroyed the were the workers of Eu , the spinners of Schmollen an d Crimmitschau rks important Cockerill Wothose towns, and countless others at the dawn of ls of who razed the mil tion. the Industrial Revolu s the English cloth workers-knitters, weavers Nevertheless, it wa armen, and the like-who initiated a movement spinners, croppers, shc ionary fury has rarely bee n more widespread i which "in sheer insurrect pson wrote, in what is probably an understate English history," as Thom racterized as a blind, unorganized, reaction me nt. Though generally chaupheaval, this "instinctive" revolt against the ary, limited, and ineffective y successful for a tim e and ha d revolutionary ver new economic order wa sin the more developed areas, the central and s strongest aims. It wa especially. 11mes of Fehruary 1 1, 18 12 northern parts of the country open warfaThein England. Vice Lieutenant re" of described "the appearancem in the government on June 17, 181 2 that Wood wrote to Fitzwilliawhich were occupi ed by Soldiers, the Country ts "except for the very sposession of the lawless." was virtually in the pos
,

1 1 111

1 .l l r\'l I N l; ( l ] ' 1< 1 ' 1 ' 1 1\;\1

I1I1

sci, " " n ess. J\s Cole and Postgate put it, "Certainly there was no stopping I ll(" Luddites. Troops ran up and down helplessly, baffled by the silence alld conn ivance of the workers." Further, an examination of newspaper accounts, letters and leat1ets reveals insurrection as the stated intent; for example, "all Nobles and tyrants must be brought down," read part of a It-atkt distributed in Leeds. Evidence of explicit general revolutionary prcrarations was widely available in both Yorkshire and Lancashire, for instance, as early as 1812. J\n immense amount of property was destroyed, including vast numbers 01 textile frames which had been redesigned for the production of inferior goods. In fact, the movement took its name from young Ned I .udd, who, rather than do the prescribed shoddy work, took a sledge hammer to the frames at hand. This insistence on either the control of the productive processes or the annihilation of them fired the popular imagination and brought the Luddites virtually unanimous support. I lohsbawm declared that there existed an "overwhelming sympathy for Illachine-wreckers in all parts of the population," a condition which by I X 1 3, according to Churchill, "had exposed the complete absence of means of preserving public order." Frame-breaking had been made a capital offense in 1812 and increasing numbers of troops had to be dispatched, to a point exceeding the total Wellington had under his com mand against Napoleon. The army, however, was not only spread very Ihin, but was often found unreliable due to its own sympathies and the presence of many conscripted Luddites in the ranks. Likewise, thc local magistrates and constabulary could not be counted upon, and a massive spy system proved ineffective against the real solidarity of the populace. J\s might be guessed the volunteer militia, as detailed under the Watch and Ward Act, served only to "arm the most powerfully disaffected," according to thc Hammonds, and thus the modern professional police system had to be instituted, from the time of Peel. Required against what Mathias termed "the attempt to destroy the new society," was a weapon much closer to the point of production, namely t hc furtherance of an acceptance of the fundamental order in the form "I' trade unionism. Though it is clear that the promotion of trade unionism was a consequence of Luddism as much as the creation of the modern police was, it must also be realized that there had existed a long tolerated tradition of unionism among the textile workers and others prior to the Luddite risings. Hence, as Morton and Tate almost alone point out, the machine-breaking of this period cannot be viewed as the

, I t-cHk 01 the century and developed a very high morale and self-con

I 'IIt" I

,uddites indeed WlTC irrcsistihk at scveral moments in the second

d('lp;liril1r, outhurst or wurkL;rs having no other ou tlet. DL:spik the ( 'OJlIhi nation Acts, which were an unenforced ban on unions between I 1'1'1 a n d I X24, l.uddism did not move into a vacuum but was successful 10' a time in opposition to the refusal of the extensive union apparatus I " ('()rnpromisc capital. In fact, the choice between the two was available . , , , d the unions were thrown aside in favor of the direct self-organization " I workers and their radical aims. During the period in question it is quite clcar that unionism was seen as fundamentally distinct from Luddism and promoted as such, in the ""pc of absorbing the Luddite autonomy. Contrary to the fact of the ( 'ombination Acts, unions were often held to be legal in the courts, for " "ample; and when unionists were prosecuted they generally received light punishment or none whatever, whereas thc Luddites wcre usually "anged. Some members of Parliament openly blamed the owners for the social distress, for not making full usc of the trade union path of escape. I'his is not to say that union objectives and control wcre as clear or pronounced as they are today, but the indispensable role of unions vis-a vis capital was becoming clear, illumined by the crisis at hand and the felt nccessity for allies in the pacification of the workers. Members of Parliament in the M idlands counties urged Governor Henson, head of the Framework Knitters Union, to combat Luddism-as if this was .needed. His method of promoting restraint was of course his tireless advocacy of the extension of union strength. Thc Framcwork Knitters Committce of the union, according to Church's study of Nottingham, "issued specific instructions to workmen not to damage frames." And the 's!ottingham Union, the major attempt at a general industrial union, likewise set itself against Luddism and never employed violence. If unions were hardly the allies of the Luddites, it can only be said that they were the next stage after Luddism in the sense that unionism played the critical role in its defeat, through thc divisions, confusion, and deflection of energies the unions enginecred. It "replaced" Luddism in the same way that it rescued the manufacturers from the taunts of the children in the streets, from the direct power of the people. Thus thc full recognition of unions in the repeal laws in 1 R24 and 1 R25 of the Combination Acts "had a moderating effcct upon popular discontent," in Darvall's words. The repeal efforts, led by Place and Hume, easily passed an unreformed Parliament, by the way, with much pro-repeal testimony from employers as well as unionists, with only a few reactionar ies opposed. I n fact, while the conservative arguments of Place and Hume included a prediction of fewcr strikes post-repeal, many employers understood the cathartic, pacific role of strikes and were not much

I l lS

dismayed hy the rash of strikes which attended repeal. Th" rcpcal Acts of course OffiCially delimited unionism to its traditional m a rgi n a l wages and hours concern, a legacy of which is the universal presence of "management's rights" clauses in collcctivc hargaining contracts to the present period. The mid-1 830s campaign against unions by some employcrs only underlined in its way the central role of unions: the campaign was possiblc only because the unions had succceded so well against the radicality of the unmediated workers in the previous period. Hence, Lecky was completely accurate later in the century when he judged that "there can be little doubt that the largest, wealthiest and best-organized Trade Unions have donc much to diminish labor conflicts," just as the Webbs also conceded in the 19th century that there existed much more labor rcvolt bcfore unionism became thc rulc. But to return to the Luddites, we find very few first-person accounts and a virtually secret tradition mainly because they projected themselves through their acts , seemingly unmediated hy ideology. What was it really all about? Stearns, perhaps as close as the commentators come, wrote "The Luddites developed a doctrinc based on the prcsumed virtues of manual methods." He all but calls them "backward-looking wretches" in his condescension, yet there is a grain of truth here certainly. The attack of the Luddites was not occasioned by the introduction of new machin ery, however, as is commonly thought, for there is no evidence of such in 1 8 1 1 and 1812 whcn Luddism proper began. Rather, the destruction was leveled at the new slip-shod methods which were ordered into effect on the extant machinery. Not an attack against production on economic grounds, it was above all the violent response of the textile workers (soon joined by others) to their attempted degradation i n thc form of inferior work; shoddy goods-the hastily-assembled "cut-ups," primarily-was the issue at hand. Whilc Luddite offensives generally corresponded to periods of economic downturn, it was because employers often took advantage of these periods to introduce new production methods. But it was also true that not all periods of privation produced Luddism, as it was that Luddism appeared in areas not particularly distressed. Leicester shire, for instance, was the least hit by hard times and it was an area producing the finest quality woolen goods; Lcicestershirc was a strong center for Luddism. To wonder what was so radical about a movement which seemed to demand "only" the cessation of fraudulent work, is to rail to perceive the inner truth of the valid assumption, madc on every side, of the connec tion betwecn frame-breaking and sedition. As if the fight by the producer

. Another clement of the Luddite phenomenon gencrally treatcd With mlldescension , by the method of ignoring it altogether, is the organiza1 ional aspect. Luddite" as we all know, struck out wildly and blindly, whilc the unions provide the only organized form to the workers. But In fact, the Luddites organized themselves locally and even federally, induding workers from all trades, with an amazing, spontaneous coordination. Eschewing an alicnating structure, theIr orgamzalton was neither formal nor permanent. Their revolt tradition was without a center ilnd existed largely as an "unspoken code"; theirs was a non-manipulative community, organization which trusted itself. All this, of course, was csscntial to the depth of Luddism, to the appeal at its roots. In practIce, "no degree of activity by the magistrates or by large reinforcements of military deterred the Luddites. Every attack reveale planmng and method," stated Thompson, who also gave credit to theIr superb secunty and communications." An army officer in Yorkshire understood their possession of "a most extraordinary degree of concert and organization." William Cobbett wrote, concerning a report to the govcrnment III 1812: "And this is the circumstance that will most puzzle the ministry. They can find no agitators. It is a movemcnt of the people's own." Coming to the rescue of the authorities, howevcr, despite Cobbett's . frustrated comments, was the leadership of the Luddltes. TheIrS was not a completely egalitarian movement, though this element may have be n closer to the mark than was their appreciation of how much was wlthm their grasp and how narrowly it eluded them. Of course , it ,,:as from amono the leaders that "political sophistication" issued most effectIvely in ti; just as it was from them that union cadres dcveloped in some e, cases. In the "pre-political" days of the Ludditcs-developing in our "postpolitical" days, too-the peoplc opcnly ha!ed their rulers . They cheered . Pitt's death in 1806 and, more so, Perceval s assassmatlon m 1812. The,e celebrations at the demise of prime ministers bespoke the weakness of mediations between rulers and ruled, the lack of integration between the two. The political enfranchisement of the workers was certainly le s important than their industrial enfranchisement or mtegratIon, Via . unions; it proceeded the more slowly for this reason. Nevcrtheless, It IS true that a strong weapon of pacification was the strenuous effort made

l I n l I lt, i l l l L'gl'i1v of l I i s wor k -- l ik loall he l11 aliL: willlUul calling the whole , ,[" c a p i t al i sm illto question. The demand for the cessation of fraudulent wo .. necessarily hecomes a cataclysm, an all-or-nothmg hattlc Insofar as i 1 is pursued; it leads directly to the heart of the capitalist relationship and its dynamic.

i l l , r-.,l l ' NT\

1 )1,

\,1 1- ] 1":\1

1 1 )1 J

to interest the population in legal activities, namely Ihe drive 10 wi d, " the electoral basis of Parliament. Cobbett, described by many as I he IIIl1sl powerful pamphleteer in English history, induced many to join l lampdcu Clubs in pursuit of voting reform, and was also noted, in th e words 01 Davis, for his "outspoken condemnation of the Luddites." The pernici"", effects of this divisive reform campaign can be partially measured hy comparing such robust earlier demonstrations of anti-government wralh as the Gordon Riots (1780) and the mohhing of the King in London ( 1 795) with such massacres and fiaseos as the Pcntridge and Peterlo" "risings," which coincided roughly with the defeat of Luddism just before 1 820. But to return, in conclusion, to more fundamental mechanisms, we again confront the problem of work and unionism. The latter , it must be agreed, was made permanent upon the effective divorce of the worker from control of the instruments of production-and unionism itself contributed most critically to this divorce, as we have seen. Some, certainly including the Marxists, see this defeat and its form, the victory of the factory system, as both an inevitable and desirahle outcome, though even they must admit that in work execution res i de s a significant part of the direction of industrial operations even now. A century after Marx, Galbraith located the guarantee of the system of productivity over creativity in the unions' basic renunciation of any claims regarding work itself. But work, as all idcologists sense, is an area closed off to perma nent falsification. Thus modcrn mediators ignore the unceasing universal Luddite contest over control of the productive processes, even as every form of "employee participation" is now promoted. In the early trade union movement there existed a good deal of democracy. Widespread, for example, was the practice of designating delegates by rotation or hy lot. But what cannot be legitimately demo cratized is the real defeat at the root of the unions' victory, which makes them the organization of complicity, a mockery of community. Form on this level cannot disguise unionism, the agent of acceptance and maintenance of a grotesquc world. The Marxian quantification elevates productivity as the summum honum, as leftists likewise ignore the ending of the direct power of the producers and so manage, incredibly, to espouse unions as all that untutored workers can have. The opportunism and elitism of all the Internationals, indeed the history of leftism, sees its product finally in fascism, when accumulated confines bri ng their result. When fascism could successfully appeal to workers as the removal of inh ib i t i ons, as the "Socialism of Action," etc.-<lS revolutionary-it should be clear how
'

III

W i l l ) K i Ll I >! ) N I [ J 1 .I H l l l '!

I I l lId. was htl!

1 1 1 i\ 1 1 N I ', ! 11

I { I 1 , 1 1'; , \ 1

I I I

inl willi the I .uddiles. .:.n.ly aga in fix the lahcl of " age of transition" rlll"1 C ;Irc t hose who aln turn out nicely in another defeat , > I I I I J d "y's growing crisis, hoping all will i .uddit es. We see today the same need to enforce work dlselplme 1 , > 1 I h l' by the the earlier period, perhaps even the same awareness ; I S ill possibly we now can rc ing of "progress." Quite 1 >1 )Illilat ion of the mean transltlon all our enemi es the more clearly, so that thiS tIme the , , )gllizc enl he in the hands of thc creators.
.

AXIS P O INT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIALISM

';'

The 1820s constituted a watershed in U .S . life. By the end of that .kcade, about ten years after the last of the English Luddite risings had heen suppressed, industrialism secured its decisive American victory; by end of the 1830s all of its cardinal features were definitively prcscnt. The many overt thrcats to the coherence of emerging industrial capitalism, the ensemble of forms of resistance to its hegemony, were hlunted at this time and forced into the current of that participation so vital to modern domination. In terms of technology, work, politics, sexuality, culture, and the whole fabric of ordinary life, the struggles of an earlier, relative autonomy, which threatened both old and new forms of authority, fell short and a dialectic of domestication, so familiar to us today, broke through. The reactions engendered in the face of the new dynamic in this epoch of its arrival seem, by the way, to offer some implicit parallels to present trends as technOlogical civilization likely enters its terminal crisis: the answers of progress, now anything but new or promising, encounter a renewed legitimation challenge that can be informed, even inspired, by understanding the past. American "industrial consciousness," which Samuel Rezneckjudged to have triumphed by 1830,' was in large measure and from the outset a virtual project of the State. In 1787, generals and government officials sponsored the first promotional effort, the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Usdul Arts. With Benjamin Franklin as the Socicty's official patron, capital was raised and a factory equipped, but arson put an end to this venture arly in 1790. Another benchmark of the period was Alexander Hamilton's Iiep0rl an the Subject afManuf actures, drafted by his tirelessly pro-factory technolo gy assistant secretary of the Treasury, Tench Coxe. It is noteworthy that Coxe received government appointments from hoth the Federalist Hamilton and his arch-rival Jefferson, Republican and career celebrator of the yeoman free-holder as the basis of independent values. While Hamilton pushed industrialization, arguing,2 for example, that children
I he

1 1 1

A ,'\ [ s 1 '( l I N T ( l i ' A M I ' I { I ( ' A N I N I ) l I STI I I\ I ,ISM

were better off in mills than at home or in school, J dTers()Jl is n llIl'lll bcrcd as a constant loe of that evil, alien import, manufacturing. To correct the record is to glimpse tile primacy of technology over ideological rhetoric as well as to remember that no Enlightenment man was not also an enthusiast of science and technology. In fact, i t is f itting that Jcfferson, the American most closely associatcd with the Enlighten ment, introduccd and promoted the idea of interchangeability of parts, key to the modern factory, from France as early as 1785.' Also to the point is Charles V. Hagnar's remark that in the 1 790s "Thomas Jefferson . . . a personal friend of my father... indoctrinated him with the manufacturing fever," and induced him to start a cottonmill.' As early as 1 805, Jefferson, at least in private, complained that his earlier insistence on independent producers as the bedrock of national virtue was misunderstood, that his condemnation of industrialism was only meant to apply to the cities of Europe.' Political foliage aside, it was becoming clear that mcchanization was in no way impedcd by government. The role of the State is tellingly "American system of manufacturcs" term as the more accurate to that Cochran referred to thc necd for the federal authority to "keep up and their methods .' In the 1 820s a fully developed industrial lobby in Congress and the extensive usc of the technology fair and exhibit-not to mention nationalist pro-development appeals such as to anti-British sentiment after the War of 1 8 1 2, and other non-political factors to be discussed below-contributed to the assured ascendancy of industrialization, by 1830. Ranged against the efforts to achieve that ascendancy was an unmistakable antipathy, observed in the references to its early manifesta tions in classic historical works. Norman Ware found that the Industrial Revolution "was repugnant to an astonishingly large section of the earlier American community,'" and Victor S. Clark noted the strong popular welfare of tllc working-people.'" pr",judice that existed "against factory industries as detrimental to the Later, too, this aversion was still present, if declining, as a pivotal force. the "suffering, depravity, reflected hy the fact that the "armory system" now rivals the older deserihe the new system of production methods ' It is along these lines
.,'

I ' l l rvll N' I :--O ( J I ' R I , l ' I I . \ 1

I I .,

l ' llglisli l i bn"I I I " l l i , t Martineau, in h e r efforts il l/-, i l l ( l i ,all'd t h at her difficulties were precisely l I is l I l 10 the sUhject.11
..

to defend manufactur h e r audi"'nces' antago

" speeially the widespread evidence of deep-seated resistance (of which

Ihe foregoing citations are a minute sample), thcre lingers the notion of all enthusiastic embrace of mechanization in America by craftsmen as
wel l as capitalists B Fortunately, recent scholarship has been contributing I,) a better grasp of the struggles of the early-to-mid-nineteenth century, Merritt Roe Smith's excellent Har pers Ferry Armory and the New 'iechn%

Y ct despite the "slow and painful"" naturc of the changeover and

gy,14 for example. "The Harp",rs Ferry story diverges s harply

from oft-repeated generalizations that 'most Americans accepted and welcomed technological change with uncritical enthusiasm,''' 1 5 Smith L1eelares in his introduction. Suffice it to interject here that no valid separation exists between anti technology feelings and the more commonly recognized elements of contestation of classes that proceeded from the grounding of that technology; in practice the two strands were (and are) obviously opposition of early industrialism or to Taft and Ross' dictum that "the United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history intertwined. This reference to the "massive and irrefutable"16 elass

the pressure," around 1 820, in order to soften local resistance to factories

industrial nation ,,;17 finds its full meaning when we appraise both levels of anti-authoritarianism, especially in the watersh e d period of the 1 820s. In e arly 1 8 1 9 the English visitor William Faux declared that "Labour

of any

is quite as costly as in England, whether done by slaves, or by hired whites, and it is also much more troUblesome."" Later that year his travel journal further testified to the "very villainous" character of American workers, who "feel too free to work in earnest, or at all, above two or three days in a week."" Indeed, travelers seemed invariably to r",mark on "the independent manners of the laboring classes,"" in slightly softer language.

More specifically, dissent by skilled workers , as has often been noted, was the sharpest and most durable. Givcn the "astonishing versatility of the average native laborer,"" howewr, it is also true that a generalized climate of resistance confronted the imp",nding debasement of work by the factory. Thosc most clearly identified as artisans give us the clearest look at resistance, owing to the self-reliant culture that was a function of autono mous handicraft production. Bruce Laurie, commenting on some

The July 4, 1830 oratory of pro-manufacture Whig Edward Everett contained a necessary reference to and hrutalism"l0 of industrialism-in Europe-for the purpose of det1ccting hostility from its American counterpart. Later in the 1830s the visiting

Philadelphia textile craftsmen, illustrates the vibrant pre-industrial life in question, with its blase attitude toward work: "On a muggy summer day

obstacle to manufacturing innovation, causing Carl Russell Fish to assay that "craftsmen were the only actively dissatisfied class in the country."" The orthodox explanation of industrialism's triumph stresses the much higher U.S. wage levels, compared to Europe, and an alleged shortage of skilled workers. These are, as a rule considered the primary factors , that produce d "an environment affording every suggest ion and induce ment to substitute machinery for men," and that nurture d that "inven tiveness and mcchanical intuition which are sometim es regarded as a national trait," in the descriptive phrases of Clark." But the preceding dicusion should already be enough to indicate that it wa the presence of work kills that challenged the new technology; not their absence. Research shows no dearth of killed workers ,26 and there is abundant evidence that "the trend toward mechanization came more from cultural and managerial bias than from carefully calculat ed marginal costs.,m Habakkuk's comparison of American and British antebel lum technolo gy and l abor economics cites the "scarcity and belliger ency of the available skilled labour"'" and we must accent the latter quality, while realizing that scarcity can also mean the ability to make oneself scarce namely, the oft-remarked high turnover rate.29 It was industrial discipline that was missing, especially among crafts men. A t mid-century Samuel Colt confided to a British engineering

turned the neighborhood avenues into a playground. Knots of loun g ill : workers joked and exchanged gossip .... The more athletic challenged onl' another to foo t races and games ... (and) quenched their thirst wilh frequen t drams. The spree was a classic celebration of St. Monday,"'" It was no accident that mass production-primarily textile factories first appeare d in New England, with its relative lack of strong craft traditions, rather than in say, Philadelphia, the center of American artisan skills ." Traditions of indepenoent creativity ohvious ly posed an

in August I K2X Kensington's hand 100111 weavers alillOUllc cd a JHllidIY from their daily toil. News of the affair circulateo throughout t h l' d i strirt and by mid-afternoon the hard-living frame tenders and their
eOlnrad,'"

J\ dS "( )j N- . - f , , A M I ', U r\ N I N I II I"> ' IO:\l ISM

I I I M I ' N I :-. f ll 1 < 1 ' ) 1 1:-,,.\ 1

.,

"I " s l anda rdizing, regimenting technology, predicatcd on the worker as

h l l u rs,

I I "wl'ver. l'speeiatly by t h e t Kltls, Ihese

S l'('u l l l

"Pl 'osition, ludditc in many instances, contrary to the time-hon ored

" , u "ganizeu" workers who

mlllroncnt of it. And although this distinction is not total, it was the

s tr uggle s (largely lor shorter i a r ily over wages ) WL:n essentially situated. within the world :
mounted the most extreme form s of

III

wisdom that luddism and America were strangers.

"gainst cotton mill properties, and that the deliberate burning of textile

,"inc,d that in Pawtucket alone more than five arson attempts wcre made

( ;ary Kulik's excellent scholarship on industrial Rhode Island deter

lIIitis was far trom uncommon throughout early nineteenth century New
I ' "gland, declining by the 1830s." Jonathon Prude reached a similar

conclusion: " Rumors abounded in antebellum New England that flres

s"ffered by tcxtile factories were often of 'incendiary origin."'" The same reaction was felt in Philadelphia, albeit slightly later: "Scveral closely spaced mill burnings triggered cries of 'incendiarism' in the 1830s, a decade of intense industrial connict."" The hand sawyers who burned Oliver Evans' new steam mill at New Orleans in 181 3'6 also practiced machine-wrecking by arson, like their Northeastern cousins, and shortly later Massachusetts rope makers attacked machine-made yarn, boasting that their handspun" product was stronger. Sailors in New York often int1icted damage on vessels during strikes, according to Dulles, who noted "thc seamen were not organized and

were an especially obstreperous lat."" Though its impact, as with resistance in general, declined after the
I 820s, luddite-type violence continued. The unpopular superintendent of

the Harpers Ferry Armory" was shot dead in his office in carly 1830 by an angry craftsman named Ebcnezer Cox. Though Cox was hung for his act, he was a folk hero among the Harpers Ferry workers, who hated Dunn's empha.is on supervision and factory-type discipline, and "never tircd of citing Dunn's fate as a blunt reminder to superintendents of what could be expected if they became overzealous in executing their duties , and impinged on the traditional freedoms of employces. ,40 Construction laborers, especially in railroad work, frequently destroyed property; Gutman provides an example from 1 83 1 in which about three hundred of them punished a dishonest contractor by tearing up the track they built .'l The destructive fury of Irish strikers on the Baltimore and Ohio Canal in 1 834 occasioned the inaugural use of fedcral troops in a lahor dispute, on orders of Andrew Jackson. And in the mid-1830s anti railroad teamsters still waylaid trains and shot at their crewS from

group that "uneducated laborers" made the bet worker in his new mass-p roduction arms factory becaue they had so little to unlearn;lO skills-and the rccalcitrance accompanying themwcre hardly at a premium. Strikes and unionization (though ccrtainly not always linked) became common from 1 823 forward," and the modern labor movement showed particular vitality during the militant "great uprising " period of 18331837 -"

I I
a m b u s h .'\.'

A \ I " I '( ) [ r--.; r ( I I

/\r\ I I ' I , 1 ( , \ r"J I N I 1 1 1 " ,' I I , ! : \ 1 1 ' ; 1\ 1

'

l ' I I ' 1\1 I N 1S c l l ' I { I ' I ' I I;!\I : l l l t ' n d : I I H T , " into patterns u r
i l l l j l' lsrd a

I I ')

In the Philadelphia handlu"m weave rs s l r i k e oi" I X,!.', s l l ik i l lg , , , I i""ls used machine breaking) intimidation. destruction I ll' l I l I WtlVl'1I wool ; 1 1 1 1 1 production mill to burn it; the attack was driven off, with Iwo constables woundcd.43 Prude describes the situation after 1840: "Managers were rarely d i rectly challenged by their hands; and although mills continued tu hurn down, contemporaries did not as quickly assume that workers were setting the fires."44 LOOking for social-political reasons for the culture of industrialism, one finds that official dIorts to domesticate the ruled via the salutary effects of poor relief led Boston officials to put widows and orphans to work, beginning in 1735, in what amounted to a major experiment to inculcate habits of industry and routine. But even threats of denial of subsistence independent attitudes." aid failed to establish industrial discipline over irregular work habits and R eturning to the New England textile mills and incendiary luddisrn. finished cloth, house wrecking, and threats or even Will s c viOielHT. During this riotous struggle, weavers marched Oil a water powered. rna"

'1lIllrallt. and too often vicious."48 The English visitor Harriet Martlfl c au,

+ 'I
,

wo u l d otherwise be wasted and misdirected." She determined tha t unhke

Ii , u l u l to afford a safe and useful employment for much energy that

'are ofte n very , . i n l ro duced above, was of like mind in the early 1840s: "The faclon es arc "restraining intluencc" on people who
I i l e situation that had prevailed "hefore the introduction of manufac i llrcs . . . now the same society is eminently orderJy... disorders have almost

I : ")', I " " d lI l i l loWIlCl", Smith Wilkinson, judged in 1 8 3 5 that factory lahor

rq' u \,l ri ty
,

and calmness"l1 Another N e w

. l."ntlre Iy d' lsappeared . ,,49

regimented by modern productionist models. Unlike that of the factory, encounter, an adventure, or simply a distraction. This easy entry to gaming, drinking, personal projects, hunting, extended and often raucous revelry on a great variety of occasions, among other interruptions, was a preselVe of independence from authority in general. On the other hand, the regulation and monotony that adhere to the work differentiation of industrial undomesticated tendencies. Division of labor embOdies, as an implicit technology combat such casual,

Artisanal-and agricultural-work was far more casual than that

for example, it could almost always be interrupted in favor of an

purpose, the control and domination of the work process and those tied principle of the division of labor is ever more completely applied, the workman becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent.... Thus, the working class, it raises that of the masters."" This suhordination, including its obvious benefit, social control, was widely appreciated, especially but not eXClUSively, by the early industrial identify technological progress with a morc subdued populace. In 1 8 1 6 Walton Felch, for instance, claimed that the "restless dispositions and insatiate prodigality" of working people were altered, by "manufacturing ists. Manufacturers, with unruliness very visible to them, came quickly to to it. Adam Smith saw this, and so did Tocqueville, in the 1830s: "As the

at the same time that industrial science constantly lowers the standing of

whIch illlwring in mechanization, namely that of his Mill Rock armory, the late moved from craft shop to factory status during the period of th of the 1 790s to Whitney's death in 1825, Long associated with the bir parts production, he was tho : " American System" of interchangeable loped vIa tlugh1y unpopular with his employees for regimentation he deve scrptrne was increasing division of labor. His penchant for order and di " where embodied in his view of Mill Rock as a " moral gymnasium through "correct habits" of diligence and industry were inculcated systematic control of all facets of the work day ' . . p t hsm , Andrew Ure, the English ideologue of early industrial ca r a O gy by summed up the control intentionality behind the new techn er whlle typifying the factory as "a creation designed to restore ord : enlists science into her se[Vrce, the proclaiming that "when capital refractory hand of labor will always be ta ught doeility."'1 was also As skill levels were forcibly reduced, the art of living bours involved m purposefully degraded by the sheer number of a vague industrial work. Emerson, usually thought of in terms at of potenllal philosophy of human possibilities, applauded the suppression e ed the enacted by the work hours of 1830s railroad-building: he ob s lV and thrs long, hard construction shifts as "safe vents for peccant humors; d by all grim day's work of fifteen or sixteen hours, though deplor e . nff and hI'S humanity of the neighborhood, is a better police than the she al part of deputies"" A hundred years later Simone Weil supplied a cruCl wo darly the whole equation of industrialization: "No one would accept t duratron hours of slavery, To be accepted, slavery must be of such a d aily is Cochran's more recent (and as to break something i n a man."" Similar t It was more eonselVative) reference to the twelve-hour day, tha

l de SIgns I:h Whitney provides another caSe in point of the socia

Pioneer industrialist Samuel Slater wondered, in the 1 830s, whether national institutions could sUlVive "amongst a people whose en ergies arc

"maintained in part to keep workers under controL""

,\ .\ 1 ', ( ' ( l i NT ( ) ]

!\ 1\l I IW ..\ N ( N I I I I ';' ]']{ I :\ I I S M

n o t k e p t co ns ta n t ly i l l p l a y h y the p u r s u i t

s cmploymcnt.m lndccd, technological " progress" a n d the Illodern wagl'

to

or SOllle incessant pr()ductive

representative

I I I ' M I ' N 1 \ ( I I ' 1 < 1 ' 1 ' 1 1 \ 1

, ..

1 .) (

d l l l : l l it l l l ;tlld sclieduli llg of t h e i r task s , a l l d " t he i(ka

.

slavery accompanying it offered a new stahility

government, owing essentially to its magnified powers ti)r suppressing I I I\' individual. Slater's biographer recognized that "to maintain good order and sound government, [modern industry] is more efficient than tht' " sword or bayonet." A relentless assault on the worker's historic rights to free time, self education, craftsmanship, and play was at the hcart of the rise of tht' factory system; "increasingly, a feeling of degradation spread among " factory hands," according to Rex Burns. By the mid-1830s a common refrain in the working-class press was that the laborer had been debased 58 "into a necessary piece of machinery," Assisted by sermons, a growing public school system, a new didactic popular literature, and other social institutions that sang the praises of industrial discipline, the factory had won its survival by 1830. From this poin t on, and with increasing visibility by the end of the 1830s, conditions worsened and pay decreased." No longer was there a pressing need to lure first-time operatives into industrialized life and curry their favor with high wages and relatively light duties. Beginning before 1 840, for example, the pace of work in textile mills was greatly speeded up, facilitated also by the first major immigration influx, that of impoverished ." Irish and French Canadians Henry Clay asked, "Who has not been delighted with the clockwork " movements of a large cotton factory?" reminding us that concomitant with such regimentation was the spread of a new conception of time. Although certainly things did not always go "like clockwork" for the industrialists-"punctuality and absenteeism remained intractable problems for management" throughout the first half of the nineteenth century," for example-a new, industrial time, against great resistance, made gradual headway. In the task-oriented labors of artisans and farmers, work and play were freely mixed; a constant pace of unceasing labor was the ideal not of the mechanic but of the machine: more specifically, of the clock. The largely working at one's own pace, to enslavement to the uniform, unremitting technological time of the factory whistle, centralized power, and unvarying routine. For the Harpers Ferry armorers early in the century, the workshops opened at sunrise and closed at sunset but they were free to come and go as they pleased. They had long been accustomed to controlling the spontaneous games, fairs, festivals, and excursions gave way, along with

their self-respect ',C T I I I'd I I U \ Dilly rep u gn ant hut an outraguus insult to to 1 827 regulations that installed . l I d tr<,<,<lolll ."'" Hence, the opposition lck " 1ll1 announceu a ten-hour day was bitter and protracted.

ur a clocked day

" I'. ; o i I l S I

alien time were necessarily of a lingering, rear-guard late 1820s. An interesting illustration is that of " ; o racler by the clock t 'awiucket, Rhode Island, a mill village whose denizen s built a town 64 in 1828. In their efforts to counte r the monopoly I ,v puhlic subscription mill owner's factory bell, one can , . t recording time which had been the level of contestation had degenerated: the ",',' that by this time the whole ,,,ue was not industrial time itself but merely the democratlzatlOn of Its
the

dl

struggles ror those already under the regimen of factory p roduction,

t l 1 e asurcment,

y by Thoreau and others. i l l the depiction of American political econom

enmen t, is a master device The clock, favorite machine of the Enlight

gun manufac n lnsciousness.65 It is fitting that clockma king, along with the world in the I IIrc, was a model of the new technology; the U.S. led sive timepieces by the 1820s, a testimony to the production of inexpen about the < ' Ilcroaching industrial value system and the marked anxiety

ial apparatus with t i s function is decisive because it links the industr

1';JSsage of time that was part af It. 66 ic was a perma Though even in the first decade s of the Republ there centers of the Mld-Atlanl1c lIcnt operative class in at least three urban cloth " seaboard, industrialization began in earnest with New England . For example, production twenty years after the Constitution was adopted along New forty-one new woolen mills were built in the U.S., chiefly " The textile industry selected I ':ngland streams, between 1807 and 1 8 1 3 . ically deprived areas, and with cheery propaganda and, the most econom children initially, relatively good working conditions, enticed women and ) into the mills. That they "came from familIes (who had no other options " theirs was which could no longer support them at home," means that Obadiah Brown, in a letter to a partner cssentially forced labor. In 1797 inhabitants regarding the selectio n of a mill site, determ ined that "the very much on the decline . I appr?hend appear to be poor, their homes ChIldren it might be a very good place for a Cotton Manufactory, ' "In collcctin g .our help," a Connect icut appearing very plenty." . millowner said thirty years later, "we are obhged to employ poor famlhes " and generally those having the greatest number of children."

million New England factory cloth output increase d from about 2.4 approximately 13.9 million yards in 1 820, and the shift yards in 1 8 1 5 to by 1824." of weaving from home to factory was virtually completed

1 .1.'

.'\.\1. ... Pf IINI

)J - A t,,1 I 1lt ,\N I N I ) [ 1'. I I".-\l I'I\.1

Despite

whole dircction of specialized bureaucratic control, realized a generation As the standardizing, quasi-military machinc replaced the individual's tools, it provided authority with an invaluable, " objective" ally against social power, had also failed to fully resolve the issue in its favor in the clear.77

people working in them had more than doubled." Also by the 1820s the

capitalizcd to $50,000,000; by 1 840, to $250,000,000, and the number of

States was over,"" in Cochran's estimation. In 1 820, factories were

time spent in factories, the 1 820s was indeed a watershed. " Certainly by 1825 the first stage of the industrialization of the Uniled

others) have contended, a prime element of modernity is the amount of

proceeded in textiles as elsewhere. If, as Inkdes and S mi t h "

particular emphasis into the 1830s," t h e march of i n d ustriali/ali'''1

arson,

ahscllkeism, stealing,

:llld

s;[holagl'

pl'rsi s f i l l g

wi l l i

1 .1 I ' M I N I

n 1 < 1 1 1 1 .... \ 1

.'

' .LtldilLik

ill

(alllou

1 '. 1 1 1 i l i p a t i l l l l ,

I L l ' r L IW hasld, ()Idstylc ruk.

H;l I l i r l l()re, explicilly in order to attract workingmen's K( all early cxamrk o f a necessary part of moving away from

I ,

I l l s u i t a t i o n and participation in making decislons,"S4 A conse.rvative and . , "alional ist, he was at least occasionally candid: as he told Toequeville, I b nc

l ; o i "' d to comprehcnd that voters needed at least the appearance of

I ("wev",. J o hn Quincy Adams, who had become president in 1825,

I " , h ils of life. There are upper classes and working classes.""

later in such large corporations as the railroads, had already become

; " , < 1 accelerated a shift in American life. At the moment that meehaniza-

h lllowing Adams, the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 symbolized

is "a grcat equality before the law.. . lwhich] ceases abSOlutely in the

:;iF.l1alled the arrival of professional politics and a crucial diversion of the

I

1 ,, , " was securing its domination of life and culture, the Jacksonian era
"I his successful appeal to the "common man," the old general was in

implant itself i n the 1820s: political hegemony, as a necessary part of a "terrible precariousness,"" in Page Smith's phrase, characterized the cohesion of national power. In fact, by the early 1 820s a virtual break and a serious restructuring of American politics was required. Part of the restructuring dealt with law, in a parallel to the social struggles of the carly republic.78 Conflict of all kinds was rampant, and

"disorder." Not coincidentally did modern mass politics also labor to

" maining potentially dangerous energies. Embodying this domestication

i l l 1 788 defended the interests of Tennessee creditors against debtors.

10 thc working classes for the first time in

"'"Iity a plantation owner, land speculator, and lawyer, whose first case I I!fee predecessors, essentially renewing state power by a direct appeal
I X29 White House inaugural, celebrated in history text-books with its

He reversed the decline in executive strength that had plagued his

down of the legitimacy of traditional rule by informal elites was underway meaning of technology: "neutral" universal principles came to the fore

U.

S. history. The mob at the

smashing of china and trampling of the furniture, did in fact "symbolize

10 government.

law because of what it is creating and what it has to destroy."'" By the despite the unpopularity of this development as seen, for example, in the Along with the need to mobilize the lower orders into industrial work largdy a government of laws not men (though juries mitigated legality), time of Jackson's ascendancy in the late 1 820s, America had become

progress of division of labor. It must, in David Grimsted's words, "elevate

on an increasingly objectified legal system, which rcnected, at base, the

to justify increased coercion. Modern bourgeois society was forced to rely

a new power,"" in Curti's phrase-a power tamed and delivering itself

invidiously distinguished and profoundly antagonistic."" And yet, employ misleading terms as the money power, thc moneyed aristocracy, etc. Jackson's "public statements address a society divided into classes,

i n g the Jeffersonian argot, he regularly identified the class enemy in

widespread scorn of lawyers 81

voters remained very low during the decade." By this time newspapers machinery. critical integration achieved with Jackson and new, had prolIferated and were playing a key role in workina toward the

had extended the franchise to include all white males, the n umbers of

of legitimizing the whole. Although by the mid-I S20s almost every state

it was important to greatly increase political participation in the interest

whelmingly re-eleeted on thc strength of his attacks on the Bank of the

oriented rhetoric. In Jackson's second term, after he had been over popular act of his administration. United States," he vetoed the rechartering of the bank in the most Although many conservatives feared that Jackso n's policies and
'l

been rendered an anachronism," in large part via the use of class

By the presidential contest of 1832 the gentleman-leader had certainly

conduct would result in a "disastrous, perhaps a fatal," revolution,'" that the Jacksonians "had raised up forces greater than they could control," banks; it existed against all corporations."'"

In 1 826, a workingman was chosen for the first time as a mayoral

ass

political

popular anger. As Fish noted, "hostility was merdy keenest against

the bank proved a safe target for the J acksonian project of dellecting Thus, the "Monster" Bank, which did reap outrageous profits and

1 1 1

A X I S , 'c l I N l " e J l - ;\ r\I I - I < r ( -:\ N I N I H I ..... I " I { / : \ / I S M i\ llu'ricalJ ' " li,,,,,s
;0

openly purchased memhers of ( :o l l;ress, was illveighed ;Iainsl as tlt(: incanation of aristocracy, privilege, and the spirit of luxury, while. mlssmg the essential point, Daniel Wcbster and others warned against such IIlflammg of Ihe poor against the rich." Needless to say, the growth of n enslaving technology was never attacked; rather, as Bray Hammond maIO tamed, Jackson represented "a blow at an older set of capitalists hy a newcr, morc numcrous sct."" And meanwhile, along with the phrase

-;11'1111)-', Sl"Il Sl'

;lilt l u t t h e mounting unruliness. Printers, coopers, furniture makers, and

procession, to hear speeches expressing the usual republican virtues. But

great many other tradesmcn assembled at the culmination of the

i" Novemhcr l 830 was another incident that told a great deal

life, such that within a few years "Illany Americans had a of so c ia l disintegration.'JK The annual New York parade o f

1 '. 1 ) M I N I .... I I I 1<1 1 1 1.....-\ 1

1 / '1

"" this day politicians mouthing the same old ritual phrases about political freedom and the dignity of labor were suddenly confronted by

making of this "frontier democrat," class distinctions widened tensions increased, minus the means to successfully overcome the

I n the mid-1830s various workers' parties also sprang up. Many were

and

far from totally proletarian in composition, and few went much further than Jacksonian Dcmocracy, in their denunciations of the "monopOlists" and such demands a free public schools and equality of "opportunity." ThIS polItIcal workensm only advanced the absorption of working people mto the new political system and displayed, for the first time ' the now familiar intcrchangcability of labor leader and politician. But integration was not accomplished smoothly or automatically. For

('\lrscs, scuffling and a defiant temper. "As the militia tried to quiet the militants, the dissatisfied crowd knocked out the supports at: thc
scaffolding, causing the entire stage to crash to the ground,"" and hringing the ceremonies to an undignified end. The public violence of the 1830s was more a prolonged aftershock,

however, than a moment of revolutionary possibility. For the reasons given above, the triumph of industrial technology was a fact by the end

of the 1 820s and the ensuing aftcrmath, though major, could not be
decisive.

( 1 78 - 1 787), the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania ( 1 794), and Fnes Rebellion 10 eastcrn Pennsylvania (1 798-99).

one thing, political insurrection was a legacy of the eightecnth centnry: from Bacon's Rebellion (1675) in Virginia, by 1760 there had been eighteen uprisings aimed at overthrowing colonial governmcnts ," and more recently there had appeared Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts

But it is true that, by Hammctt's reckoning, "A climate of disorder prevailed. . .which seemed to be moving the nation to the edge of disaster. "loo As Page Smith described urban life in the early 1830s, "What is hard to comprehend today is the constant ferment of social unrcst and hitterness that manifested itself almost monthly in violent riots and civic disordcrs."1O' Gilje's research revealed "nearly 200 instances of riot between 1793 and 1829 in New York City alone,"'" for example, and Weinbaum counted 1 1 6 in that city just in the period of 1 8 2 1 to 1837 .'03 Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston witnessed outbreaks on a similar scale, often directed at bankers and "monopolists." Michael Chavalier wrote a chapter entitled "Symptoms of Revolution"

Twenty-fivc years after the Constitution was signed, extensive anti

Federalist rioting in Baltimore seemed to connect with this legacy, rather social control. Significantly, over the course of the summer 1 8 1 2

than to le ss authentic political a l tern ative to the old informal means of

upheavals, the composition of the mob shifted toward an exclUSively proletarian, unproperticd make-up " Moving into the period under particular scrutiny, the depth of general contestatIon IS somewhat reflected by a most unlikely revolt that of a "vicious cadet mutiny" at West point in 1826. On Christmas orning in that year, "drunken and raging cadets endeavored to kill at least one of their superior officers and converted their barracks into a bastion which

against the backdrop of four days of rioting in Baltimore over exploit ative practices of the Bank of Maryland in the summer of 1835. 104 Also in that year, disorders that caused Jackson to increasingly resort to the use of federal troops, occasioned William Ellery Channing's report from Boston: "The cry is, 'Property is insecure, law a ropc of sand, and the , mob sovereign." '05 Likewise, the Boston Hvening .Tournai pondered the "disorganizing, anarchical spirit" of the times in an August 7, 1 835 editorial. of the Holland Land Company in western New York. February, 1836 saw hundreds of debtor farmers attack and burn offices During 1 836 and 1 837 crowds in New York City broke into warehouses several times, furious over high food, rent, and fuel prices. Thc Workingmen's Party in New York, known as the Locofoco Party, has been linked with these
106

they proposed to defend, armed, against assault by relieving Regular Army troops on the Academy reservation. "" The fury of this amazing turn .of events, though detailed in much Board of Inquiry and courts martIal testimony, remains a little-known episode in U.S. history; it can be seen to have introduced a whole chapter of wholesale tumult, nonetheless. By the late 1 820s group violence had reached great prominence i n

a party member.107 Despite the narrow chances for the u lt i ma t success of IH30s uplisillgs, it is impossible to deny the existence of deep and bitter class feel ings, III the notion that the promise of equalily contained in the Declaration of Independencewas mocked by dis turbance s continued: the
none was

1I10 .'i[ clo s ely tied to Locofoco speech-making, of fi fty- tlnee lioiels '" I,"slt "
"tlollr riots," b ut, int r s t n ly ,

[ .).(1

/\ .\. I S 1 '( l I NT ( ) ] A f\..l l l.: l t .. \ N I N 1 1 l 1 '. I H I . \ J 1'.1\1

e e i g at

UH .: .

l '-d)J L 1 a l"Y

I K.n

()ulhllJ"st

shop. w i t h its " u l l s l ruct ured lc islIrt.:iy. and wholly allti -proliudive, character,'> ! was a social center well 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 I dlWI iv(". 11(111 mechaniz ed age, and in fact became mo re than ever the .llIlnt 1(1 \\., ,1 k l l ll.',111;(Il'S d u h as mo de rn ization cut him off from other emotional
l i B" l a v I ' 1 J J I I I
;1

1 . l l rv! l N J ....

4 )1

I ": I I I I ',:\J
,

eV('11

" ,lUg

\0

, , " l lds. 1 1 1
\lui

crowd

J 838 "Buckshot War," in which Harrisburg was

realily. Serious

in a Pennsylvania senatorial election

"Anti-rent" riots by New York tenants of the Van Rensselaer family ill "Indian Stream Republic" of 1832-35 in Ncw Hampshire) in whicl,

seized by an irate, armell dispute, for example; the

drunken ness-binge-drinking and solitary drinking, most -was increasing by 1820; significantly, alco holic e l irium or " "I " " 1820s.112 Alcohol ism is an during I I I ' 's , first app ear e d in the alienation, of the inability of people to "I o v i ( 1 " S re gist cr of strains and on th e m. with the burden of daily life which a society places

lal1tly

U.S.

the

1839; the "Dorr War" of 1 842 (somewhat reminiscent of the independenl thousands in Rhode Island approached civil war in a fight over rival state constitutions; and the sporadic anti-railroad riots in the Kensington section of Philadelphia from 1840 to 1842, were among major hostilities. to begin to superscde class-conscious struggles, though often disparate elements co-existed in the same occasions. This largely, and m u st But e th nic, racial and religious disputes began fairly early in

" 1 ''' resort to such I " ' " dy, there is little healthy or resistant about the t i l i r l king

the decade

decline in consciousness

practices reform was a part of the larger syndrome of social in industrialization, as irregular drinking habits ' I Lsciplinin g an obstacle to a well-managed population. Not surprisingly, factory were in the forefront of such effo rts , having to contend with 'Wll e r as ( 0 " uhl e som e wage-earners who had little taste for such dictums
temp erance

w<'1'e

. expressed

was manifested in anti-Irish, anti-abolitionist, and anti-Catholic riots

be seen in thc context of the earlier, principal defeat people by the factory system, in th e 1820s. Cut off from the only terrain on which challenge could gain basic victories, could change life, the upheaval in the 1830s was destined to sour. Ch aracte ristic ally,
of working
the end of the

' tion of ',I",,,ly arm of industry withers from drink." " Tyrell's examina found that "the l ea ing t e mp e rance W< 1 fc estcr, Massachusetts also of inventions and of I d(lfme rs were those with a hand in the work

"the e

I I 1 novati ons in factory and

forccs and organized gang violence in place as permanent fixtures.

J 830s saw both the professionalization of urban police

If by 1830 virtually every aspect of American life had undergone major alteration, the startling changes in drinking habits shed particular light on the industrialism behind this transformation. The "great alcoholic 108 and its precipitous decline in binge of the nineteenth eentury," the early 1830s, have much to say ahout how the culture of the new

early

t ech n ology took shape. of On up into the early decades of the cemury, small amounts of alcohol were commonly consumed throughout the day, at work and at home (sometimes the same place); reference has been made above to the frequent, spontaneous holidays of all kinds, and the wide-spread observance of "Blue Mondays" or three day weekends, "which run pretty well in to the week," aceo rding to one
Drinking, on the one hand, was a part of the pre-industrial blurring the distinction between work and leisurc. complaining New York employer.' Cl9 Drinking was the universal accompa niment to these parties, celebrations, and extended weekends, as it was

a no nn go While at one point worker s considered a daily liquor issue g reliance on 1 right and an emblem of their independence, increasin dominatio n by "leohol signifi e d the debility that went along with their that "th r e Illaehine culture. The Secretary of War estimat ed in 1829 four ounces of I [ L1arters o f the nation's laborers drank daily a t least 1 1 5 and in 1830 the average annual consumption of liquor distilled spirits,,, exceede d five gallons, nearly triple the amount 150 years later.'16 formation The anti- alcohol crusade hegan in earnest in 1826 with the and other l ocal groups such as the "I' the American Temperance Sociely, , Frugality Sociely in Lynn (Massac husetts) for the Promotion of lndustry r wrote his Six Sermons on and Temperance. In the same year Beeche Intemperance, the leading statement of an t i - dr in ki ng of the period, which ced tippling to be politically dangerous. In Gusficld's excellent

, mach ine production. ,1l4

iahle

pronoun

the creditor has summation, Beecher'swritings "displayed the classic fear domina nt of of the debtor, the propertied of the properlyless, and the and ation, the subordinate-the fear of disobedience, renunci ,, rebellion. 117
nda the Tempe rance exertions in the 1820s revealed in their propaga respectable held over the lahoring classes tenuous influence that the and during the height of the battle to establish industrial

to the normal work-day.

values

off at the end of the 1 820s and began to plumm el in lite early I HJO, 1K toward an unprecedented low. 1 As working peopic became domesticat

pn.:dict<Jhlc work-force. As this haltlt: was WOIJ, drillkin. sllddcnly kveh-d

A .\ I \ I 't l i NT I l l - !\r-.1 I 1 1 ( A N I N I I ! 1 '. 1 1 \ 1 . \ 1 1 ' . 1\ 1

1 .1 1 M l N I"S t il H . I I I I S A I

1 .'1)

;\sytullI,"

ed, the temperance movement shifted toward the goal of complete absli nence, and in the 1840s a "dry" campaign swept the nation l!' The other major reform movement, also arising in the mid-1820s, was for a public school system, and like the temperance campaign it was explicitly undertaken to "make the dangerous classes trustworthy.,,'20 The concept of mass schooling had arrived by the early Jacksonian period, when innovative forms of coercion were demanded by deteriorating restraints on social behavior, and auxiliary institutions came to the aid of the factory. The "willingness of early nineteenth century school promoters to intervene directly and without invitation in the lives of the working c1ass"'21 was a consequence of the notion that education was something the ruling orders did to the rest to make them orderly and tractable. Thus "the first compulsory schools were alien institutions set in hostile territory,"1Z2 as Katz put it, owing largely to the spirit of autonomy and egalitarianism that parents had instilled in their children. Faux noted, in 1 8 1 9 , the "prominent want of respect for rule and rulers," which he connected with a common refusal of "strict discipline" in schools;'23 Marryat's diary reported that students "learn precisely what they please and no morc.,,124 Drunkenness and rioting occurred in schools as weU as in the rest of society and educators interpreted the overall situation as announcing general subversion; in an 1 833 address on education, John Armstrong everything depends on the character of our people." 125 declared, "When Revolution threatens the overthrow of our institutions, Industrial morality-<lbedience, self-sacrifice, restraint, and order

The furlher development in the qu"st for civic docility. penltentla,ml efficiency of the factory was the model for the I ,':I1I ' " ily , t, 29 appeare d. 1 I ws, insane asylums, orphanages, and reformatories that now

of the The .Iad.sonia n period is also synonymous with the 'I\gc

"

model, I llIhodyin g uniformity and regularity, the factory was indeed the ; I S we have seen, for the whole of society. . the n;,d Religious rcvivalism and millenarianism grew in strength after I X20s, and one of th" new d"nominations to appear was thc MIlIentes group ( I"d ay's Seventh-day Adventists). On October 22, 1 844 the b e the end of the world. I'.alhered to await what they predicted would that rheir expectation was but the most literal manifestation 01 a leehng elevatm g the hegan to pervade the country after 1830;'30 without unduly that was pre-indu strial past, one can recognize the lament for a world sharpened The early stages of industrial capitalism introduced a and division between the worlds of work and home, male and female, small, private and public life, with large extended families eroding toward illdeed ended.

constituted the most important goal of public education; character was of rar greater importance than intcllectual development .''' The school system cam" into existence to shape behavior and attitudes and thus reinforce the emerging world. The belief that attendance should be importance.1 27 universal and compulsory followed logically from assumptions about its Moral instruction was also amplified by the churches during the 1 820s and 1830s, an antidote to that tendency to "rejoice in casting off restraints and unsettling the foundations of social order,"]28 woefully recorded by the Reverend Charles Hall. Sunday School and the society for diffusion of religious tracls were two new ecclesiastical contributions to social control in this period.

isolated nuclear families. came a Along with this process of increasing separation and isolatio g from new reqUlrcments ")cused repression of personal feelings, stemmin tIOn for rationalized, predictable bchavior. As planning and organIZa of the indIVIdual, moved ahead via the progress of the machine model Ion. Ihe ran"c of human scntiments became suspect, a target for suppreSS o a man For example, whereas in 1800 it was not consider ed "unmanly" for extreme to weep openly, by the 1 830s a proscription against any mJlarly, m emotional display, especially crying, was gaining strength .'31 Si wldely child training this tendency became very pronounced; in the Parents (1839), the Reverend John Hersey distributed Advice to Christian should emphasized that "in every stage of domestic education, children and desircs."'" be disciplined to restrain their appetites " . about The seventeenth century Puritans were hardly "puri tanical n society-especially III sexual matters, and eighteenth century America open the latter part of the century-was characterized by very s, moreover, sexuality;l3l during the seventeenth and eighteenth centurie tlOn of much emphasis was placed on the arousal, pleasure , and satisfac work of women. Aristotle's Master Piece, for example, was a very popular enturies, erotica and anatomy in thc cighteenth and early nineteenth c onc predicated on the sexual interest of women. There werc at least laints hundred editions of the book prior to 1 830-and no known comp s or periodicals.'" about it in any newspaper . ce was In 1 8 3 1 , the year that the last edition of ArislOtle's Master PIe

1 .1 1 1

published, J,N, Bolles' Soliwry Vice COflsidm,d ;o1'1><:are<1, all allii masturbation hooklet of a type that would proliferate from the early 1830s on,1\5 While the advice books on sex of thc carly part of th' century could be quite explicit concerning women's sexual satisfaction, the trend was that "medical, biological, instructional, and popular literature contained countless dcfcnses of extreme moderation and self control."nG The turning point, again) in this area as elsewhere, was the 1820s. By the 1840s the very idea of women's sexuality was becoming virtually erased. ]n the middle ycars of the century Dr. William Acton's Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs was a popular standby; it summed up the official view on the subject thusly: "The majority of women (happily for them) are not vcry much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind. What men are habitually, women are only cxceptionally. Among working and non-white women (not exclusive categories, Obviously) this ideology had less impact than among those of higher station, for whom the relentless quelling of the recognition of "animal passions" causcd vast physical and psychological damagc.138 The cult of female purity, or cult of the lady, or "true womanhood," emerged among the latter in thc 1830s, stressing picty and domesticity.1l9 This American woman was now exclusively a consumer of her husband's income, at a period when advertiSing developed on a scalc and sophistication unique in the world. Not surprisingly, national expansionist policy came into its own now, too. The hemispheric imperialism proclaimed in late 1823-thc Monroe Doctrinc-coincided with the beginnings of real Indian genocide, both occurring, of course, against thc backdrop of a gathcring industrial canccr. The Seminoles and Crceks were crushed at this time, an answer to the "especially menacing" spectcr of a combined Indian and runaway slave coalition: the First Seminole War was in large part undertakcn "to secure Indian lands and therewith deny sanctuary to runaway slaves."}" From 1814 to 1824, Jackson had been "the moving force behind southern Indian removal,""] a policy inherited from Jefferson and one which he completed upon becoming prcsident in 1828. Indian destruc tion, surely one of the major horror talcs of the modern agc, was more than an ugly stain on American politics and culture; indeed, Ragin's argument that its scope "defines for America the stage of primitive capitalist accumulation,"'" is at least partly true. At the very least it prcsagcd the further acquisitiveness that blossomed in the Manifest Destiny conquest spirit of the 1840s. But the more monstrous pcrhaps is i l s moral dimension, committed under Jackson's description of "extcnd..

A X I S )'( ) I NT ( l l ' !\ M I ; I l t ,\N I N I ) ] I ' , I H I.\ I I .... M

1111'.

.dln II I

137

. e," Nohle Savage, had to dISappear; he wasol savagthe for apt symb Dead India n is obviously a more a ll , though the romantic use of the Indian ajcci llry of indus trial capitalism capital's victory, when, by the 1830s ,'ach ed its height at the moment of subdued, whIle the maehllle was the N a t ure truly became an evil to be Illulitainhead of all values that counted. opposition survivcd. Johnny of Nevertheless, voices and symbolsinstance, who was respected by the n Chapman), for pplcseed (Jonatha ts the century, .and who repr were I lldians during the first forty years ofnon-commodity type. Thereesen liehes of a wholly non-productionist, , Hawthorne, Pac, and MelVille. such doubtcrs of the period as Thoreau orary scholars, has found, emp I ,ee Clark Mitchell, among other contrd of a popular sense of der. letters, diaries, and essays, the recowilds by technological progress. Illfeboding about the conquest of ther have certalllly never completely The victories of the dominant ordeal, a spirit renewing itself today. erascd this alternative spirit of refus
.. . .

. Ilh' ;11 (';l ()I I feelIom. rhe Red Mall, as

The

1 ', 1 I r>.l I ' N \"; I I I

,.\1

1 0:. 1 ' 1 1 1\.\1

I II

III

T H E P RACTICAL MARX

Karl Marx is always approached as so many thoughts, so many words. Hut in this case, as for every other, there is a lurking question: What of , c"l life? What connection is there between lived choices-one's willful lildime-and the presentation of one's ideas? Marx in his dealings with family and associates, his immediate relations to contemporary politics and to survival, the practical pattern and decisions of a life; this is perhaps worth a look. Despite my rejection of hasie conceptions he formulated, I aim not at character assassination in lieu of tackling those ideas, but as a reminder to myself and others that our many compromises and accommodations with a grisly world are the real field of our effort to hreak free, more so than merely stating our ideas. It is in disregarding abstractions for a moment that we see our actual equality, in the prosaic courses of our common nightmare. A brief sketch of the "everyday" Marx, introducing the relationship between his private and public lives as a point of entry, may serve to underline this. By 1843 Marx had become a husband and father, roles predating that of Great Thinker. In this capacity, he was to see three of his six children die, essentially of privation. Guido in 1850, Francesea in 1852, and Edgar in 1855 perished not because of poverty itself, so much as from his desire to maintain hourgeois appearances. David McLellan's Marx: His Life and Thought, generally accepted as the definitive biography, makes this point repeatedly. Despite these fairly constant domestic deficiencies, Marx cmployed Helene Demuth as maid, from 1845 until his death in 1881, and a second servant was added as of 1857. Beyond any question of credibility, it was Demuth who bore Marx's illegitimate son Frederick in 1851. To save Marx from scandal, and a "difficult domcstic contlict" according to Louis Freybergcr, Engels accepted paternity of the child. From the end of the 1 840s onward, the Marx household lived in London and endured a long cycle of hardship which quickly dissipated the physical and emotional resources of Jenny Marx. The weight of the conflicting pressures involved in being Mrs. Marx was a direct cause of her steadily failing health, as were the deaths of the three children in the '50s. By July 1858 Marx was accurate in conceding to Engels that "My

1 \, 1

J'J I I

" 1':;\( 1 1 1 /\1 t\-L\ I .'

wife's nerves an quite ruineu . . .. "

she spoke of the ((misery" of financial disasters, of h av i ng no monc fUl

Cn'lique of Political liconomy. Despite several inheritances, the beggin)!. letters to Engels remained virtually non-stop; by 1860 at the Iates!. J enny's once very handsome make-up had been turned to grey hair, had teeth, and obesity, It was in that year that smallpox, contracted after and pockmarked. transcribing the very lengthy and trivial Herr Vagt diatribe, left her deaf As secretary to Marx and under the steady strain of creditors, caused pre-eminently by the priority of maintaining appearances, J enny's life was extremely difficult. Marx to Engels, 1862: "In order to preserve a certain facade, my wife had to take to the pawnbrokers everything that was not actually nailed down." The mid '60s saw money spent on private lesson, for the eldest of the three daughters and tuition at a "ladies' seminary" or finishing school, as Marx escaped the bill collectors by spending his days at the British Museum. He admitted, in 1866, in a letter to his future son-in-law Paul LaFargue, that his wife's "life had been wrecked." Dealing with nervous breakdowns and chronic chest ailments, Jenny was harried by ever-present household debt. One partial solution was to withhold a small part of her weekly allowance in order to deal with their arrears, the extent of which she tended to hide from Marx. I n July, 1869 the Great Man exploded upon learning of this frugal effort; to Engels he wrote, "When I asked why, she replied that she was frightened to come out with the vast total (owed). Women plainly always need to b e controlled!" Speaking of Engels, we may turn from Marx the "fam i ly man" to a fairly chronological treatment of Marx in his immediate connections with contemporary politics. It may be noted here that Engels, his closest fnend, colleague and provider, was not only a quite notorious "womaniz er," but from 1838 on, a representative of the firm of Engels and Erman' in fact, throughout the 1 850s and '60s he was a full-time capitalist i Manchester. Thus his Condition o the W f orking Class in England in 1844
.,

Ch ristm as festivities, as she completed copying out work toward '/I",

In fact, her 'piril had been destroyed hy I H56 when she gave h i r l h I " a stillborn infant, her seventh pregnancy, Toward the end o f Ihal y .. al

h i s ( \ )mmu nis t Cune I I I ( ' I V ; l I l-', l l H , ; t cli;lra ctcl'isl ic slalllp . I II 1t;J"ms or . work J'vtarx (also l I H46) .c " 1 " H u l l ' I IlT ( \ lllllll i l k and its propaganda ; the he no talk at presc nt of achieving commUnIsm ", 1 . 1 1 1 " < 1 : " T h e n:

I ' I I r-,1 1 r1 1 :. 4 I I , I": I 1 , 1 1<';:\ I

"

was the fruit of a practical businessman, a man of precisely that class responsible for the terrible misery he chronicled so clearly. By 1846 Marx and Engels had written 1he German Ideology, which made a definitive break with the Young Hegelians and contains the full and mature ideas of the materialist concept of the progress of history.

of the same year he I " , ' " I'.,oi,i " Il I U ,t first come to the helm." In June to act "jesuitically," to not have "any ',1 ' 1 1 1 instructions to supporters eois hegemony. I I I {':,oJlIC moral scruples" about acting for bourg . i n e xorable laws of capitalist development, necessarily involving the I h. "insufficiently devel oped" proletarians, would . . . . . . , ifice of generations of rs to the depths of I " ' ' '.L'. capital to its full plenti tude-and the worke rence of profeSSional a confe , ' " ,Iavern ent. Thus in 1847, following publicly noted the in Brussels to which he was invited, Marx ,.,'""o mists ng class, and embraced thIS , J ,s;lSlrous effect of free trade upon the worki article, he likewise found , h've iopme nt. In a subse quent newspaper to be, on the whole , a ,'"I"n ialism with its cours e of miser y and death lism itself, inevitable and I'""d thing: like the development of capita ution. . I 'rogressive, working toward eventual revol . e was formed III London, and at Its In 1 847 the Communist Leagu Engel s were given the task s(,con d Congress later in the year Marx and ringing anti-capitalist phrases III " I' drafting its manifesto. Despi te a few ete dem nds by way of conciuslon i l s general opening sections, the concr statist (e.g. lor an mhen tanee arc gradualist, collaborationist, and highly n of credit and commumcatrons). l ax, gradu ated income tax, centralizatio the mid-1 8th century and I gnoring the incessant fight waged since for the revolutIOnary culminating with the Luddi tes, and unprepared than a year, the Commulllst upheavals that were to shake Europe in less tly devel oped" proletanat. . Manifesto sees, again, only an "insufficien one of the essential tactical mystenes From this policy document arises of both capitalism and the of Marx, that of the concomitant rise l is Clearly portrayed as the proletariat. The development of capita and brutahty, but along wIth accumulation of human misery, degradatIOn steadily more "centralized, it grows, by this process itself, a working class united, disciplined, and organized." . of phYSIcal and cultural How is it that from the extreme depths robotized, powedess, de-. oppression issues anything but a steadily more of revolts and mIlitance at individualized p rol et ariat ? In fact, the history majority do not come from the 19th and 20th centu ries shows that the those least disciplined and those most herd-l ike and deprived, but from

can

Along with this tome were practical activities in politics, also by now

with something to lose. the Manifesto plus the I n April of 1 848, Marx went to Germany with unist Party in Germany." The utterly reformist "Dem ands of the Comm constituent of a bourgeOIs "Dem ands," also by Marx and Engels, were

1'111

" IL\( ' I I ( ,\ 1

revolution, not a socialist one, appealing to many o f th e deml'nts thai directly fought thc March outbreak of the revolutioll . (:ollsidcring position as vice-president of the non-radical Democratic Association in Brussels during the previous year, and his support ttlr a prerequisite bourgeois ascendancy, he quickly camc into conflict with the revolution ary events of 1848 and much of the Communist League. Marx helped found a Democratic Society in Cologne, which ran candidates for till' Frankfurt Parliament, and he vigorously opposed any League support t(,r armed intcrvention in support of the revolutionaries. Using the opportun ist rationale of not wanting to see the workers become "isolated," he went so far as to use his "discretionary powers," as a League official, to dissolvc it in May as too radical, an embarrassment to his support of bourgeois elements. With the League out of the way, Marx concentrated his 1848 activities in Germany on support for thc Dcmocratic Society and his dictatorial editorship of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In both capacities he pursued a "united front" policy, in which working people would be aligned with all other "democratic forces" against the remnants of feudalism. Of course, this arrangement would afford the workers no autonomy, no freedom of movement; it chose to see no revolutionary possibilities residing with them. As editor of the NRZ, Marx gave advice to Camphausen, businessman and head of the provisional government following the defeat of the proletarian upsurge. And further, astounding as it sounds, he supported the Democratic Socicty's newspaper despite the fact that it condemned the June, 1848 insurrection of the Paris proletariat. As politician and newspaper editor, Marx was increasingly criticized for his consistent refusal to deal radically with the specific situation or interests of the working class. By the fall of 1848, the public activities of Marx began to take on a somewhat more activist, pro-worker coloration, as the risings of workers resumed in Germany. By December, however, disturbances were on the wane, and the volatile year in Germany appeared to be ending with no decisive revolutionary consequences. Now it was, and only now, that Marx in his paper declared that the working class would have to depend on itself, and not upon the bourgeoisie for revolution. But because it was rather clearly too late for this, the source of revolution would have to come, he divined, from a foreign external shock: namely, war between France and England, preceded by a renewed Freneb proletarian uprising. Thus at the beginning of 1849, Marx saw in a Franco-British war the social revolution, just as in early 1848 he had located it in war between Prussia and Russia. This was not to be the last time, by the way, that
Malxs

MAle,

I I

WI

rcvulutiun; thl occur to Marx, that they could act--anu again ils to . t ,d ad Oil thcoil own initiative without first having to be sacrificed, by I tlC generation, as factory slaves or cannon fodder. There were radicals wilo had seen the openings to revolution in 1848, and who were shocked t the deterministic conservatism of Marx. Louis Gottschalk, for example, attacked him for positing the choice for the working class as t[("tween bourgeois or feudal rule; "What of revolution?" he demanded. Alld so although Marx supported bourgeois candidates in the February ( t 49) elections, by April the Communist League (which he. had ;,t)olished) had been refounded without bim, effecllvely forClllg hIm to. leave the moderate Democratic Association. By May, WIth Its week of street fighting in Dresden, revolts in the Ruhr, and extensive insurgency ill Baden, events-as well as the reactions of the German radIcal community continued to leave Marx far behind . Thus in that month, e closed down the NRZ with a defiant-and manifestly absurd-edltonal claiming that the paper had been revolutionary and openly so throughout 1848-1849. By 1850 Marx had joined other German refugees in London, upon the close of the insurrectionary upheavals on the contlilent of the prevIous two years. Under pressure from the left, as noted above, he now came out in favor of an independently organized German proletanat and highly centralized state for the (increasingly centralized) working c1ass to seize and make its own. Despite the ill-WIll caused by hIS anythlllg-but radical activities in Germany, Marx was allowed to rejoin the Communist League and eventually resumed his dominance therein. In London he found support among the Chartists and other elements devoted to electoral reform and trade unionism, shunning the many radical German refugees whom he often branded as "agitators': and uassassins." This behavior gained him a majority of those present Londn an enabled him to triumph over those in the League who had called hIm a reactIon ary" for the minimalism of the Manifesto and for hIS dlsdalll of a revolutionary practice in Germany. But from the early '50s Marx had begun to spend most of his time in studies at the British Museum, where he could ponder the course of world revolution away from the noisome huhbuh of his precarious household. From this time, he quickly jettisoned the relative radicality of his new-found militance and foresaw a general prosperity ahead, bence no prospects for revolution. The coincidence of economic crisis with proletarian revolt is, of course, mocked by the real hIstory of ou: world. From the Luddites to the Commune, France 1968 to the multItude of
r\,Lt I X S;\W i l l till'
JlKl"rS

'

1\.1 i

' NT', ( ) I , 1 { I I I I S.'1

\/

slaughter of lIatiolial wars the spark of fa as suhject

'v

III

III

have often served, on the contrary, to denect class struggles to a lower, survivalist planc

been its own master; the great Iluctuations of unemployment or inflation

struggles o p e n i n g on the last quarter ur (he 20lh century. i J l surrection has

rather than to fuel social revolution. The Great

I IH

1 '. 1 I M I NT:-. ( > I

I ' I I I I.'\ I

I 'l l

, .r 'd i l i gence" an d lecturing him in the most prudish terms regarding his
I I l l e nti"ns

I I I 11 \ ; l l u r i tv

l'CUIlOll1ic guarantees for Paul LaFargue's future, criticizing his lack

L l l u k r his t huru u g h ly Victorian a u t hority. In I K()(} he inistu

almost twenty-one. Reminding

I \'1

Depression of the 1930s brought a diminished vision, for example, characterized by G erman National Socialism and its cousin, the American New Deal, nothing approaching the destruction of capitalism. (The Spanish Revolution, bright light of the '30s, had nothing to do with the Deprcssion gripping the industrialized nations.) Marx's overriding concern with externalities-principally economic crises, of course-was a trademark of his practical as well as theoretical approach; it obviously rellects his slight regard for the subjectivity of the majority of people, for their potential autonomy, imagination, and strength. The distanciation from actual social struggles of his day is seemingly closely linked with the correct bourgeois life h e led. In tcrms of his livelihood, onc is surprised by the gap between his concrete activities and his reputation as revolutionary theorist. From 1852 into the 1 860s, he was "one of the most highly valued" and "best paid" columnists of the

toward Laura, who was

'"-'press very puritanical strictures: "To my mind, true love expresses itself adored one, and certainly not in unconstrained passion and manifesta lions of premature familiarity." In 1868 he opposed the taking of a job

he co m e so, that it would constitute a "long-term affair," he went on to in the lover's restraint, modest bearing, evcn diffidence toward the

I .al ;arguc that he and Laura were not yet engaged and, if they were to

hy Jenny, who was then twenty-two; latcr he forbadc Eleanor from seeing
Ihc last barricade in Paris.

l .issagaray, a Communard who happened to have defended single-handed Turning back to politics, the economicerisis Marx avidly awaited in the

'50s had corne and gone in 1857 awakening no revolutionary activity. But hy 1863 and the Polish insurrection of that year unrest was in the air, providing the background for the formation of the Workingman's Association. Marx put aside his work on International and was

New

sixty-five of his articles were uscd as editorials by this not-quite-rcvolu tionary metropolitan daily, which could account for the fact that Marx requested in 1 855 that his subsequent pieces bc printed anonymously. But if he wanted not to appear as the voice of a huge bourgeois paper, hc wanted still more-as we have seen in his family role-to appear a gentleman. It was "to avoid a scandal" that he felt compelled to pay the printer's bill in 1859 for the reformist Das

York Daily Tribune,

according to its editor. In fact, one hundred and

Capital

most active in the affairs of the International from its London inception in September 1864. adger, Prcsident of the Council of all London Tradc U nions, and Cremer, Secretary of the Mason's Union, called the inaugural meeting, and Wheeler and Dell, two other British union officials, formally proposed an international organization. Marx was elected to the executive committee (soon to be called the G e neral Council), and at its first business mcetingwas instrumental in establishing Odger and Cremer as President and Secretary of the International. Thus from the start, Marx's allies were union hureaucrats, and his policy approach was a completely reformist one with "plain spcaking" as to the sending of Marx's spirited, fraternal greetings to Abraham Lincoln, radical aims disallowed. One of the first acts of the General Council was Other early activities by Marx included the formation, as part of the International, of the Reform League dedicated to manhood suffrage. Hc boasted to Engels that this achievement "is our doing," and was equally enthusiastic when the National Reform League, sole surviving Chartist organization, applied for membership. This latter proved too much even for the faithful Engels, who for some time after refused to even serve as correspondent to the International for Manchester, where he was still a full-time capitalist. During this practice of embracing every shade of English gradualism, principally by promoting the membership of London trade unions, he penned his famous "the proletariat is revolutionary or

Volk

newspaper in London. I n

1862 h e told Engels of his wish to engage i n some kind of business: "Grey, dear friend, is all theory and only business is green. Unfortunate ly, I have come too late to this insight." Though he declined the offers, Marx received, in 1865 and 1867, two invitations which are noteworthy for the mere fact that they would have been extended to him at all: the first, via messenger from Bismarck, to "put his great talents to thc service of the German people," the second, to write financial articles for the Prussian government's official journal. In 1866 he claimed to have made four hundred pounds by speculating in American funds, and his good advice to Engels on how to play the Stoek Market is well authenticated. 1874 saw Marx and two partners wrangle in court over ownership of a patent to a new engraving device, intending to exploit the rights and reap large profits. To these striking suggestions of ruling-class mentality must be added the behavior of Marx toward his children, the three daughters who grew

that "single-minded son of thc working class."

1 111

' 1 ' 1 1 1 . 1 1 1, :\ 1 ' 1 11 ' ,\ 1

M.-\ l c \

Lassalle and his Gen eral Unio n of Germ an Wor k e rs ( A DA VI harbored transparently serio us illus ions anout the state; namdy thai BIsmarck was capable of genu inely socialist policies as Chan cello r of Prus sia. Yet Marx in 1866 agreed to run for the presidency of the ADA V m the hope s of incorporating i t into the Inte rnational. At the same time he wrote (to a cousin of Engels): "the adherence of the ADA V will onl be o! USe at the beginning, again st Our oppo nent s here . Later the whole insti tutio n of this Unio n, which rests on a false basis, mus t bc destroyed ." Volu me could be wflttcn, and poss ibly have, on the manipulation of Marx wnhm the Inte rnational, the maneuverings of placcs, date s and engths of mee tmgs , for example, i n the servicc of securing and cent raliz mg hIS authority. To the casc of the ADAV could be added, amo ng a muil ltude of others, his cultivatio n of the wealthy bourgeois Lefo rt, so as to keep hlS wholly nonradical facti on within the organization. By 1867 his dedIcated achmatIOns were felt to have reap ed thcir reward; to Engels he wrote, , wc (I.e. you and I) have . thIS powerful machme in Our hand s." Also In 1867 he availed hims clf publicly once more of one of his favo ritc notio ns, that a war between Prussia and Russ ia would provc noth . progressIve and mevltanle. Such a war would involve thc Germ an proletariat versus despotic Eastern barbarism and would thus be salut ory for the prospects o! European revolution . This perennial "war gam es" type of mentalIty som ehow man ages to equa te victi ms, set in moti on precIsely as chattels of the state , with prolctarian subjects actin g for themselves; It would seem to para llel the suns tituti on of trade unio n officials for workers, the hallmark of his preferrcd strategy as burc aucrat of the InternatIonal. Marx naturally ridiculed anyone such as his futu re son- m-Iaw, LaFarguC-for suggestin g that the proper role of revolutio n an s dJd not lie in such a crass game of weighing com peting natJOnal sms. And m 1868 when thc Belgian delegation to the Jnter natlo nal ,s Brussels Con gress proposed the response of a general tnke to war, M rx dismissed the idea as a "stupidity," owing to the unde rdeveloped , statu s of the working class. The weaknesses and contradictions of the adherents of Proudhon and Bak unin are irrelevant here, but we may observe 1869 as the high water mar k of the mfluence of Marx, due to the approaching decl ine of the Prou dhom sts and the mfancy of Bak unin 's impa ct in that year. With mid1870 anu the Napoleon ill-en gine ered FrancO-Prussian War, we see once mor e the pre-occupation with "pro gressive "vs. "non-progressive" mili tary explOIts of go ernm ents . Marx to Engels: "The French need a drubbing. If the Prusslans are vletonou s then centralization of the workino

i l is noth ing" Iinc, in a leite r In (he ( ierm an s()(.:i illisl h.::nl in<lll d I .a:-;:sa lh',

1 1 1 dass . . . l l u " sll p'ri()ril'y of l hl' ( .ienll(lns{)vcr the French in the world arena wOllld

!Ileal! at

1 ', omlhon's

( '''[Incil, Marx added to this outlook a warning: "if the German workmg
class allows the present war to lose its strictly defensive character and

lIy July 1 7()

and so on. "

t.he same

time the superiority of our theory over

in an Address endorsed by the International's General

degcnerate into a war against the French people, victory or defeat will prove alike disastrous." Thus the butchery of French workers is fine and good-but only up to a point. This height of cynical calculation appears almost too incredible-and after the Belgians and others were loudly denounced for imagining that the proletarian could be a factor for Ihemselves in any case. How now could the "German working class" (Prussian army) decide how far to carry out the orders of the Pruss ian ruling class-and if they could, why not "instruct" them to simply ignore any and all of these class orders? This kind of public statement by Marx, so devoid of revolutionary content, was naturally received with popularity hy the bourgeois press. I n fact, none other than the patron saint of British private property, John Sluart Mill, sent a message of congratulations to the lntcrnational for its wise and moderate Address. When the war Napoleon III had begun turned out as a Prussian victory, by the end of summcr 1 870, Marx protested, predictably, that Germany had dropped its approved "defensive" posture and was now an aggressor demanding annexation of the Alsace-Lorraine provinces. The defeat of France brought the fall of Louis Napoleon and hIS Second Empire, and a provisional Republican government was formed. Marx decided that the aims of the International were now two-fold: to secure the recognition of the new Republican regime in England, and to prevent any revolutionary outbrcak by the French workers. . His policy advised that "any attempt to upset the new government III

the present crisis, when the (Prussian) army is almost knocking at thc doors of Paris, would be a desperate folly." This shabby, anti-revolution ary strategy was publicly promoted quite vigorously-until the Commune itself made a most rude and "unscicntific" mockery of it in short order. Well-known, of course, is Marx's negative reception to thc rising of the Parisians; it is over-generous to say that he was merely pessimistic about the future of the Commune. Days after the successful insurrection began he failed to applaud its audacity, and satisfied himself with grumbling that "it had no chance of success." Though he finally recognized the fact of the Commune (and was thereby forced to revise his reformist ideas regarding proletarian use of existing state machinery), his lack of

<>

' 1 ' 1 1 1 ' I ' H I\( TIt , \ 1

M ;\ H \

sympathy is amply reneeted by the fact that t h lOuglHlut t h l' ( 'O I l l " " " W " two-month existence. the General Council o f the International spoke "ot a single word about it. It often escapes notice when an analysis or tribute i s delivered well after the living struggle is. safely, living no longer. The masterful polemieizing about the triumphs of the Commune in his Civil W ar ill
France constitutes an obituary, in just the same way that Class Strug gles in France did so at a similarly safe distance from the events he failed to

( ; l p i l a l ist dn!dop l l ll'lIt, w l iich prescrihld that generations wo u ld havc to

1 . 1 1 1'v1 I ' N' I , I I I 1 , 1 01 - 1 1:;,\1

t 1 \

: Iw sacrificed to i t . I t h i n k that the ahove ohservations of his real life an

; 1 1 1 1 1 h i s body of ideas _ The task of moving the exploration along to

I I l I l 'mtallt and typical ones, and suggest a consistency between that life

," ncompass the "distinctly thcoretical" part of Marx, is exprcssly beyond l l i e scope of this effort; pOSSibly, however, the preceding will throw at least indirect light on the mell"e "dis-embodied" Marx.

support at the time of revolutionary Paris, 1848. After a very brief period-again like his public attitude just after 184849 outbreaks in Europe-of stated optimism as to proletarian successes in general, Marx returned to his more usual colors. He denied the support of the International to the scattered summer 1871 uprisings in Italy, Russia, and Spain-countries mainly susceptible to the doctrines of anarchism, by thc way. September witnessed the last meeting of thc International before the Marx faction effectively disbandcd it, rather than accept its domination by more radical elements such as the Bakuninists, in the following year. The bourgeois gradualism of Marx was much in evidence at the fall 1871 London Conference, as exemplified by such remarks as: "To get workers into parliament is equivalent to a victory over the governments, but one must choose the right man." Between the demise of the I nternational and his own death in 1881, Marx lived in a style that varied little from that of previous decades. Shunning the Communard refugees, by and large-as he had shunned the radical Germans in the '50s after their exile following 1848-49, Marx kept company with men like Maxim Kovalevsky, a non-socialist Russian aristocrat, the well-to-do Dr. Kugelmann, the businessman Max Oppenheim, H . M. Hyndman, a very wealthy social democrat, and, of course, the now-retired capitalist, Engels. With such a circle as his choice of friends, it is not surprising that he continued to see little radical capacity in the workers, just as he had always failed to see it. In 1874, he wrote, "The general situation of Europe is such that it moves to a general European war. We must go through this war before we can think of any decisive external effective ness of the European working class." Looking, as ever, to externalities and of course to the "immutable laws of history"-he contributes to the legacy of the millions of World War I dead, sacrificed by the capitulation of the Marxist parties to the support of war in 1 9 1 4 . Refusing throughout his lifetime to see the possibilities of real class struggles, to understand the reality of the living negation of capitalism, Marx actively and concretely worked for the progress and fullness of

O R I G I N S AND M EANING OF WWI

World War T, i n Jan Patocka's words, "That tremendous and, i n a "'nsc, cosmic cvent'" was a watershed in the history of the West and the II,ajor influence on our century. Regarding its causes, nearly all the d i scussion has concerned the dcgree of responsibility of the various I',, ,vcrnments, in terms of the alliance system (ultimately, the Triple " :ntente of England, France and Russia and the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy) which, it is alleged, had to eventuate in worldwide war. The other major focus is thc Marxist theory of imperialism, which contends that international rivalry caused by the need for markets and sourccs of raw material made inevitable a world war. Domestic causcs have received remarkably little attention, and when the internal or social dynamics have been explorcd at all, several mistaken notions, large and small, have been introduced, The genesis of the war is examined here in light of the social question and its dynamics; the thesis entertained is that a rapidly developing challenge to domination was destroyed by the arrival of war, the most significant stroke of counterrevolution i n modern world history. If the real movement was somehow canceled by August 1914, it is clear that the usual reference (in this case, Debord's) to "the profound social upheaval which arose with the first world war'" i s profoundly in error. Some obselvers have noted, in passing, the prevalence of uncontrolled and unpredictable violence throughout Europe prior to the war, perhaps the most telling sign of the haunting dissatisfaction within an unanchored society. This could be seen in the major nations-and in many othe r regions as well. Ha\(!vy, for example, was surprised by the 1 9 1 3 general strikes i n South Africa and Dublin, which "so strangely and unexpectedly cut across the feud between English and Dutch overseas, betwcen Protestant and Catholic in Ireland." ] Berghahn saw that Turkey as well as Austria-Hungary "were threatened in their existence by both social and national revolutionary movements.'" Sazonoz's Reminiscences refe r to the sudden outbreaks of rioting i n Constantinople, and to the " Dashnaktzutium, Armenian radicals, of whom it was "difficult to discern if they were more directed against Turkey or intent on fomenting a revolution at home. ' And Pierre van Paascn's memoirs tcll of a social

..

( ' 1 .: 11 ;IN' .\ NI I 1 1 . \ N I N t ; 1 ) 1

W "" I illvaded

at nights in small groups or singles. They came marching homc . . . a l l "r windows rattled. What had come over these fellows'!"" them singing, singing as if they wanted 10 burst their lungs, so that lhe Instead of analysis of this telling background, the coming of war is typically trivialized by a concentration on the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the nature and duration of the ensuing carnage falsified as a surprise development. In fact, neither of these approachcs to the meaning of the war hold up under a moment's scrutiny. On the facc of it, the Serbian militant who shot the Hapsburg Archduke did not so simply plunge Europe into hostilities; this can be seen first of all by the fact that six weeks passed between the June act and the August mobilizations. Zeman writes of this: "Indeed, in all the capitals of Europe, the reaction to the assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg throne was calm to the point of indifference. The people took httle notlcc; the stock exchange registered hardly a tremor.'" As for the "surprise" as to the length and design of the war itself, it must be stressed that trench warfare-the hallmark of World War I was anything but new. Employed 50 years before in the American Civil War in the Crimea, and at Palevna (1877-78), as in the Russo-Japanese Wa Bloch's six-volume

commu nity. For unf: t h i ng) the shi pY ;lrd workers IlO IOllger d ri lk d h U l l I e

peaee d i .-.; i l l ! q.'.I < 1 t illg i l l prewar 1 1 " I L l l ld :

" i\ flew s p i l i t

Ihl"

rhlT kcd viole ntly and prrh aps

1 . 1 1 M I NTS t i l 1 { I I I IS:\ ]
a rr

11 1

gc, ire and expectation ot inificant. han s fOll r year s of death wa t i l l: des :

iloI lO he confused wilil

of 1 904-05, it is little wonder that military authorities predicted it. Ivan

The Future of War emphasized trench warfare and the

totality of modern war; the work was discussed in ruling circles from the 1890s on. The adjustment of the record brings us closer to the thesis of war as a needed discharge of accumulated tensions, requiring a form and duratIon equal to the task of extinguishing radical possibilitics. L. T. Hobhouse viewed domestic problems in Europe as successively more clamorous, creating a crescendo of urgency. "Thus the catastrophe of 1914 was . . . the climax of a time of stress and strain.'" Similarly, Stefan ZweIg wrote of the outbreak of war: "I cannot explain it otherwise than by this surplus force, a tragic consequence of their internal dynamism that had accumulated . . . and now sought violent release.'" The scale and conditions of the war had to be equal to the force straining against SOCIety, m ordcr to replace this challenge with the horror and despair that spread from the battlefields to darken the mind of the 20th century West. Beyond the initial value of war in promoting centralization and acceptance of authority, a far larger objective can be seen. In Wells' words, "greater happiness, and a continual enlargement of life, has been

chall enged in popular lifc ll . insip id, which was heing society, completc WIth OUS, uniform p rese nt of industrial The monoton asing bure aucratization, was inde ed becoming Web erian forecast of incre as p a l pable . And leftist ideology seems just more and more miserably provided an me asured against this reality. War increasingly threadbare as ence. By 1914 , daily life an d the chance of its transcend escape from both ted visio n s Marxism migh t once have repr esen whatever emancipatory ence war, anarchism, whic h had seem ed to Laur were moribund; with the ,,12 . IS S was aIso d emoI h ed . . . Lafore "imposingly VIgOroU d i nternal crisis and the means by whIch It examine the gene ralize To us and destroyed by World War I, the vario was successfully deflected developed and endmg r, with the less countries-beginning, in rough orde and England-arc surveyed here . . with Germ any of Austn a eliminated the would-have -been Emperor The act that ster s atypical one: Russian Prime Mini Hungary was by no mean an PremIer of sinated in 1 9 1 1 , as was Canale)as, Stolypin had been assas othe r King Geo rge of Greece on 1913 , to cIte Spain in 1912, and t were several attempts upon the lIves prom inent fatalities. I n fact, here g th e imminent prewar years, and even more of Hapsburg royalty durin er i on that particular notonous summ than one against Franz Ferd nand , that the Archduke paId hIS s stive, then 1914 afternoon. All the more ugge nal day of that restive the anniversaIY of Kossovo, the natio state visit on burg s. Similar in provocation would have been vassal nation of the Haps 1916 . Dublin on Easter Sunday in, say, a visit by the British royalty to the umversally p worth mentioning that . And in passing, it is perha s nalost (o for this and other Balkan dramas! the naho agreed upon figure m exactly), is rather too readIly typecast. Valoa nationalist student , more ia and his t affiliation and influence in Serb noted the revival of anarc lishe d that Fran z Ferd inand 's assas sins were Bosn ia,ll and it is well estah good nalist . War, of cour se, always requires a hardly exclusively natio s tate' s real enem ies are, more clear ly than excu se, especially when the the Sarajevo outrage was taIlor-made to usual, its own citizcnry; the ime . nee ds of the ailing reg land, allied with a quite ndist syste m of feuda l rule on the The latifu t , ided the background for a very poten usuri ous brand of capitalism prov the nationalist mic that outweighed even social revolution ary dyna anciet s of the exceedingly polyglot empire. In the separatist stresse leItmotIf ude mirrored the crumblmg rule; the capital, a descending lassit

l h e ho urgeois ideology of POSItIVIsm, OSSIf

e s te d allogclhc r."llJ

Vihrant hefore lhe

Ied and

P';

With p eo p le w ea ri ed , b le d dry by fo ur ye ars of apocalypse, ru le was pr es erved fo llowing th e collapse of the dynast y by the re m ai ni ng se rv ants of power. T he Soci al Democrats continue d th ei r basic role wit h th e

o f C( )L1 1l (k ss w or ks is Vit; nl la 's sl r: lII g( " ; l I l I l o .... ph l" 1 ( t ) ' ...O lll l' h i I I '. ("n rll i II } vi si hl y tll an n d ." H o fs th m al lll th al 's I 'J l' k l ra n il s . .. ( 'an ( J ill' Iir'c ay Ii . . a rotten corpse'!" H is slriking play of th e ,a lll lIa m is th l p er k l'l artifact o f im pe ri al Vie ' nna, in its vision of dis aste r . III fact, th e dr am a is an extremely apt al lc go ry o f Europe at large, portraying the ob se ss iV l' ne ed for a bl o od le tting o ut of a terror of de at h. A s Norman St o nc pu t it , "Official circles i n Aus tria-Hungary ca lc ul at ed ge ne ra l conflict in Europ e w as th ei r on ly alternat ive to civil war. ,," Th u th e ul ti m at um se rv ed on s Serbia, fo llowing th e de ath by S er bi an s o f Franz Ferdinand, was m er el y a pretext for war with R us si a an d that genera conflict. War was declar l ed on Scrbia, with th e co rresponding involv em cn o f R us si a, de sp it e th e ac t ceptance o f th e ul ti m at um ; Se rb ia 's capitulatio widely ha ile d as Austr n, ia's "h ri lli an t di pl om at ic coup," th erefore m ea nt no th in g. The im m en se si gn ificance o f A us tr ia 's in te rn al problem s dc m an de d war an d a m ore complete reliance o n its p er en ni al school civic virtues, th e H ap sb of ur g army. V ery critical to th e Success of th is tactic was the organizationa he ge mony of th e Mar l xian mass party over the working cl as se s. The A us tr ia n Social D emoc ratic Party, m o st de ge ne ra te o f the Euro ean l e ft, was actually co m m it te d to th e maintenance p o f th e m o narchy an d it s federative reorganizati on . " W he n war ca m e, i t was bi lle d as an unavoidabl e de fe ns e agai nst the m enacing eastern be he m o th , R us si a. T he le ft, of course cast it pa rl ia m en tary votes in s , favor of war an d im m ed ia te ly in st it ut ed war m e asures against work stoppages and ot he r fo rms of in su bo rd in at io A lt ho ug h so m e Czech n. s threw down their ar m s upon be in g order ed against R us si a, ho st ili ti es were in it ia te d w it ho ut serious resistancc." B ut , in th e worlds of A rt hu r May, "D is affection and di sc o nt en t among th e rank an d file" took only months before thc pro secution o f the war w "seriously affe ct ed ." " as Food riots w er e co m m o n by 1 9 1 5 an d ha d sp re ad to th e he ar t V ie nn a by la te 1 91 6 . P of rofessor Jo se f R ed lic h' s journal recorded that the p o p Ul ation se em ed p le as ed w he n Prime M inister Strugkh was sh o t to de at h by a renegadc So cialist in October 1 91 6. The Social Dem ocrati Party was co m p le te ly c dedicated, m ea nw hi le , to the "cooperation of al l cl as se s, " an d it o rg an iz ed Scores of peace m ee tings-not of an an tiwar variety, but to restra in the masses from breaches o f th e "d o m es ti c p cace. "18
.

( " r c d N "

\ N J , 1\.1 1 .\ N I N I , ( )l

\V W I

'. ( ' q ( l : o l ly ; ( l l l i-rl'vIlI(llllll l"ry , ll lStl,1Il I) moerats a n d were to govern ' , . e 1 m I .e ye,1 rs parallelong on many ways that post ar prelude to \ ( ls t , I :I '
,

I '. I I M I ' N"' \ ('J

,'

( '

I RI J ( IS.-\I

I ,I')

, . ' "" >I1ths ot SOCial 0 emocrat'c rule was C IIowe d by the bureaucratlc' .0 " . . . ' '"I alltanan e t'f'orts 0f B e la Kun s H unganan SovI et Republic (with Lukacs of this Leninist failure were : 0 ' Commissar of Culture); four mon th

1
,

'

;('J'I11"1I N a tI o n al SoClar ' ,sm, the We,mar

'

'

..

"

R epubll' c.

. w In Hunoary' SIX 0

(,Ilough to usher in the Horthy regIme, w at was to b e a quarter-century

. . I' reaction. . War, 10 th e casc

'.

,
, ',: 1

rote, w RUSSia.

. 0f R ussla, d ' d not prevent a revolution from occur. ' u t I s mam moth ravages dICt at ed the instant deformation 01. that nng, b ' 't . . . . revolution-the VictOry 01 the Bolshcvik project. The class structure 0f . 'd demlse , Z.A . B . Zeman ' ' Romanov society was t 00 bankrupt to avol

I l e t1 destr ction and suffering of the milli ns . 'tself rendered a whole, breath lllg of combatants (and non-comb atants ) 111 1 . rcvolution impossible. . . The Austro-H ungarian declaratIon af war on small Slavic Serbia r e I st pro-war chord that could be arms; Pan-Slavlsm, not Czansm' . Russia's war with Japan had s uccessfully struck by a doomcd rcglm , m fer ent in to calmer, patriotic n been a clear attempt to dlr ution. In 1 9 14, only a victorio us channels; defeat sct off the
war could conceivably offer hope for the status quo. Barring war, "within

: But the

examplc o n II' p

! ::

"amazin

ease of the dynastic collapse in

enabled a barely sufficien: respo

r :

: :

th

Krcmlin's consequent call to

. a short time, " as Germany's Pnnce von B ulow wrote , "revolution would . . have broken out in Russia, where It was np e since the death of Alexan. to From 1909, vano us mtcrna t' n I incidents and crises, mainly i n North th regularity to try to divert popular Africa and the Balkans, arose
der III in 1 894,"w

West, authonty was deeply on the defensive in this final period, and . . . ' st 7 RUSSia IS no t an exceplion . smce at Iea, 1 "09 state weakness was a '

' " attention in Europe from the gathenng sociaI cnSIS. Throughout the
.

WI

. . . glanng constant. By then the memones 0f' post - 1 905 repression were . fa d' lIlg and "the tcmpcr 0f thc factory workers was turning revolutIonary . 21 again," accordmg to Taylor. A d d ' ontcnt was rising even faster d ue
0

p n cow the oppressed, but n fact i; aroused workers all over Russia to a ; e two ears before the war, the curve of new wave of challeng , I

r ? IC h following Stolypin's to the more reactionary po lles of gold fields assassination in 1 9 1 1 . : h n l l i:k: of sthe Lenanot only failewere d to attackcd by troops avagery
t e regime
111

ed, m aning that another year of peace . would surely have secn ncw and even more senous u pheavals . .

social disorder stea dI y m u

( )I, II ; t N ... .-\ N I ' f\,I ! . \ NINc

.

i I

I I , W \tV I

ent, initiate d especIally hy th e I: ' II 01' I wo hk ' r'el'.s ;",,1 women factory op era tives of St Pe t . 'b urg , had hrought "the pro aga in to the barricade letari at s,"" A rno aye r succmctly pu t it, "du rin rhl' first seven months of 1 91:, In dustna . . l un res t reach 'd u nparaI Ie it'd i ntensI ty, much of it politically and so I ciaI Y m olIvated. ,, Th ' us the gUl l, of August roared, the timing all bU t unaVOI dable The war to save op pressed andfl eate thr ne d Slavdom, lau nch ' mo me ntary enthusia ed with a . sm was soon agging . . Me ne l Buchanan's . biob phy ora of he r father, the 8n ISh am . 't ' b assador t R ussla, bemoaned "how bri and fra il was that spi . ef rit of devotion ' elf-sacnf , how Soo lce and despair, impati n do uht ; ence lassitud e a s , C(m tent crept in."" Widely recou nted was the lame ; i' s , t o . tate mlnlstcrs by . mid - 1 9 1 5 . "POor R Even her army wh ' . USs lar ich 'n a filled the world wit h the thu nd er of its victories . . . trns ou; t ;i ?nl y of Cowards and des ert ers. Certainly by the WI r"'" 'desp rea d ma ss stn kes of l' anuary and Fehruary the civil truce had bee 191 6, n definitivcly broken . , The anarchIst tid e rose swiftlY d umg ' the war for a time, gen era l draining eff des pit e the ect of th e g Igantic bloodshed an d thc diS illu sio nm ent caused specific . by th ro- ar pOSItIOn of Kr opotkin. This latter accommodation to :: state po el n ot course as a bet principle, was in rayal of / fact share' aJO rIty of RU SSI.an Ideologues, especially anarchist in Moscow ,'yTh e cap itulation at the top led gre ate r Success of syn to the dicalism mon ' many an t a thon arian s, a more t practical," less " utopi " r- u t l " an ideo ogy. nothe r moment of the dim radical perspectives ming of . Kropotkin-like Ro cker-located the rea . . son for war rn the com for markets and the petition qu est for colonies, Ign orrng, With the Marxi overarching domestic sts, the dynamic t an extern al, mechanis ic etiolog his untiring cfforts t y. An d to urge 0 tro op s of the En ten te to the gre ate r kil lin g of the Centr al Powe rs' o r ar evokes cou ld always be Cou arx and En gel s, who nted On to ; d: fy t e more progresSive" support in a given wa state to r. The collapse of the Romanov autocra in M arch 1 917 demon that the spiritual exh strated austion of the r I t ' CYna was not s advanc allow the greatly ov ed as to erdue dynasty a u fy t er arrowed tIme. ha d be en surprised Lenin, who by eve revol onary outbreak in Russ ia," could see in mid-1 917 that the disiZegrati of the provISional govern me , Soo n to be a rea lity nt was , H" VictOry In IS . that m" alme d d rm ens ron and ' co nse qu en t Bolshev the ik CQunterrevol ufIOn . IS an all too fam iliar tale in its

E d m u n d Wi lso Il ohs erved t ha I "hy 1 ') 1 " dill I I ') 1 , 1 t h l'll ' , W'IS 01 S r ' ," "I' " wave even b' er tha ' 'gg n that of I 9()') ' : Ily Ihe spf lng an d ear ly S U IJIII " 191 4, a movem . Il'I of
.

e,

dt' [ ; 1 i I s .

I I I 1\1 1 'N 1 '0 ( 11 ' 1 , 1 ' 1 - " ":\ 1

, ,

; t i l ivl'ti at t h e prewar years in a volatile state. Propaganda in favor of

,', '''qucst and expansion had failed to distract the submerged classes from
1 0 th e chamber.29
;t

t r O l l y , l u r h u k n t t h r()uh t he l lNOs

and the first decade of thc century,

r he essential; at the elections of 1 9 1 3 only three N ationalists were elected

The months preceding thc war were marked by rioting and strikes on

, In the Adriatic coast; this week oflune 1914 was to see its quick spread, were violent revolutionary outhreaks, Local republics were set up i n Bologna. Officcrs were disarmed; the military barracks were heseiged i n many places,"30 particulars: "In the Romagna and the Marches of Central Italy there many smaller towns, and the red flag was hoisted o n the town hall of The populace displayed, in outlook. and methods, an anarchic, autonomous tempcr that found its reflection in the anti-war position of
into a general strike and countrywide riots. F. L. Carsten providcs

I )uring demonstrations by anarchists and republicans, violencc broke out

wide scale, culminating in the famous Red Week of early summcr.

the whole lef!. In this moment the syndicalist discovery of the myth of off could hardly have becn forecast with practical results. An overwhelm Hungary and Germany, and rendered war far too dangerous a card to be played in hopes of defusing class war-for the time being. for over half a year, with Italy being drawn steadily toward the abyss ing sentiment for neutrality canceled Italy's alliance with Austria the nation seemed far away; that a national syndicalism was hut a year

'

By thc spring of 1915, every major European nation had been at war

dcspitc popular resistance. A friend of von Bulow states in May, "how the [Halian] Minister of the Interior had said to him that if there were elemcnts engineered, with paid demonstrators, pro-interventionist riots a plebiscite there would be no war."" Zeman, likewise speaking of May 1915, obscrved that "Romc carne to the verge of civil war."" Foreign

against the neutralists-who received no police protection and suffered a vicio us pro-war press. Rennell Rodd and others who thought they saw spontaneous enthusiasm for war there were largely deceived , participation in the war. "All the factories werc closed, all public services workers," according to Mario Montagna's memoirs, quoted by John Cammet!. Cammett continues the narrative: "The entire working force Socialist Party debated its position regarding Italy's apparently imminent completely paralyzed. The strike was total among all categories of I n mid-May the Turin workers declared a general strike, while the

of the city gathered before the Chamber of Labor, and then slowly

( ) I , l < i l N S .\ N I I r'vl l ' ,\ N I N ( ;

ithou t t he urging o f spen:ill's toward ill' Prckcl rrotet the war.",H I,'ighting enslied but till; sO'ike canwl to a n e n d ounl"l' Mav 19, c?ictly due to the isolation and demoralization hrough t on hy til ;' Party s retusal to support th,s self-authorized initiative. Meanwh (he "revolutionary" syndicalists had become the first section of the ilelia" 1t left to advocate war, arguing that reactionary Austria must not he allowed to defeat progressive France. On May 23, Italy entered the war. Mussolini's radically rightward shift, in full swing partIcular symptom of the intense frustration caused by at this time, is a the and bctray,als. The young Grams?i, in fact, showed a passingleft's inaction sympathy for Mussoh", new pro-war pOSItIOn and hIS dIsgust WIth the passivity enforced on (he proletariat." When oppositional ideology asslJ e such a renunciation of movement, the way is and its arbiters steadIly more backward forms for thwarted class energieprepared for. s Forward avenues seem completely blocked and there was to assume thus little altcrnatlve to the channel and dictates of war. Giampero Carocci, among others, noted that after years of war, "the majority of workers and some three and a half of (parncularly on,,:e Po Valley, in Tscany and in l!mbria) "the peasants for revolutoon -but thc pervasIVe pOSTwar d,scontent still "longed was of an anxious, pessimistic kind. The occupation of the factories, in the fall of bears the imprint of a proletariat cheated and blocked by the 1920nd batteredfull left by war. DespIte the enormous scale of the takeovers, both thc industrialists and the government simply let the neutered movement take WIthout state interference. In early September, the apparent its course; provoked some alarm, to be sure, but the ever more weary andconquest confused workers stayed politely in the factories under control of the unions and the left;" "communist leaders refrained from every initiative," reported Angelo Tasca ," The restless and anxious occupiers saw neither the outlet to expa d their action nor the energies by this forge new ones. The sezure of virtually the entire industrialpoint, toof Italy-not to I plant mentIon the extensIVe land takeovers-simply died away, a feeling of total defeat." Mussolini's accession to power followeleavingfiasco by d this less than TwO years. Recent historical analysis, especially that of James Gregor, has demonstrated the substantive continuity betweeA.italy's most militant n soclaiosm-syndicalism-and fascism, with the war serving as essential mode of tranSItIon. . The career of Mussolini, from activist and major theoretIcIan of syndlcaiosm to achvlst and architect of fascism, World War I, IS only one connection." Syndicalism, then by way of national
illal"Chl; d

1 )1 W \V I

1(1

of accIl a n t sYlldk;d ism. provide d tht.; con: social and CLlHlom ic content . r en e fascism. T h e co

I ',I I r-..l 1 N I';

( ,1 ,

I { I ' I ' I ISAI

ng u c hegins with a common mass-mobilization, ls of nascent ill(lustriali/.ation basis but docs not end there; the essentialucubrations, "the product of syndicalist fascism were, in Gregor's words, syndicalist sentiment, and syndicalist convictions. "'" werc swept At the end of the century, French socialists and anarchists of Dreyfus, treatment into the mainstream of controversy over the legal of the an army officer convicted of espionage. Thc armstion had republican been open family hence embraced new clements, whose integra nce of the popular (a question; in Dreyfusism we see an early appeara or otherw . ' front, the recuperative answer to reaction, real here that ise. Soclahst the . were quickly plumbed. It is The depths ideologIcal brand Millerand, scandalizing the slow, becamc the first of his had been recently government, by the way, that to enter a government. A disgraced hy the infamous Panama finance scandal and which counted asr une. Mmlste its minister of war General Gallifet, butcher of the Commofficials, later ist of prewar of War Millcrand would be the most chauvin s, wartime minister of joined by his Socialist colleague, Albert Thoma munitions. It is not a surprise that so-called revisionism led to nationalism, nor alienate the oppressed that this course and its electoral methods would many signs of a wide with its crass opportunism. In fact, thcre were n-point social reform spread disinterest in politics; C1emeneeau'sseventeeresponse.'] An acutc program of 1 906, for example, elicited no popular to the fact that the Cabinet instability began to emerge, due in part for MafX1sts to enrages of the far left made it increasingly harder the workmg class cooperate with the center left. Oron Hale averred that radlcahsm m the movement drifted away from parliamentarism towardperiod that Sorci, five years before 1914.42 And it was just before this e wh ch escapes all I with customary acidity, warned: "A proletarian violenc may jeopardI ze n, all measurcment, and all opportunism valuatio everything and rule socialistic diplomacy."" But even in terms of orthodox political maneuvering, light is shed upon ng such the threat to the existing order. An order, one might add, exhibiti nt financial scandals. The amazing murder of signs of decay as persiste the editor of Figaro by the finance minister's wife brought these to new heights in March 1914. . lOg The April elections, whose chief issue was the 1913 law prescnbthe pacific chamber three years' military service, returncd "the mosl ." The conscrip country had ever known," in the words of Alfred Cobban candidates, had lion law, by the complete failure of nationalist-rightist
.

1 :>- I

Albrecht-Carre, Taylor, and others have spoken of t h i s shin away 110111 militarism at a time whcn Francc, according to von Bulow, " was I h e only Europcan country in which in ccrtain innuential quarters, not in I ll\' people, it was justified to talk of 'war [ever."''' Prince Lichnnwski, German ambassador to England, provided a still more complete picture i n a diary entry of April 27: hc described the French people's calm and "thoroughly pacific mood," while noting the difficulties which internal affairs presented to the governments," Thc April polling "proved," in Cobban's words, "that even i n th" existing state of international tension French opinion was profoundly pacific and non-aggrcssive,"" President Poincare, in June, was forced tll appoint a left-wing regime under Viviani. Reversal of the conscription law was the first order of business; nevertheless, the radical and socialist deputics agreed not to press for this in exchange for vague promises regarding future passage of an income tax law, an obvious betrayaL When the war crisis was played out in early August and Juarcs, dean of the left, was assassinated by a chauvinist fanatic, it was Viviani who issued the left's call for nationalist unity; at this moment of spontaneous anti-war demonstrations, he announced that, "in the serious circumstanc es through which our country is passing, the government counts on the patriotism of the working class," That the proletariat would have been the object of fear is evidenced by its growing militancy, Whereas in th e 18908 there had been hundreds of small, local strikes, there were 1 ,073 in 1913, involving a quarter of a million workers, A good deal of alarm was generated by the scale and persistence of the strikes, seen by many as "symptoms of a profound unrest and social sickness," according to David Thomson," Strikes of postal and telegraph workers in Paris called the loyalty of state employ ees into question, while agricultural workers' strikes often led to riots and the burning of farm owners' houses, Radical tendencies on thc terrain of work cannot, however, be attributed to prewar syndicalism with much accuracy, Syndicalist ideology proved an attraction tor a time, due to revulsion with the dogma of socialist reformism, but there was-according to Stearns and others-no positive correlation between syndicalist leadership and strike violence, for example," In fact, syndicalist leaders had to combat violence and spontaneous strikes just like any other brokers of organized labor, Syndicalist unions served the same integrative function as the others and manifested the same movement toward bureaucratization, It is hardly surprising that after 1 910 there was growing talk of a "crisis of

ht;CI1 dearly rcpuoialcti.

( ) ]{ lt i I N S ,'\ N I I M I " :\ N I N ( i ( II " W W I

,\'lHlica l i s l I I . "

'i.
.

.. -

against the officer class became quit e popular. wildfire to I Clie I l akv; saw that "no sooner conceived, it sprc ad like on the eve of war it was ",al lY countries out side France,"" He add ed that y,"" " sl i l l rampant in the rank and file of the French arm revolution as the Her ve, editor of i.a Cuerre Sociale, had called for esman, response to mobilization for war. But increasingly the socialist stat to be allowed when war came he climaxed his anti-war career by begging r the bier of to serve in the army, Recalling Viviani's pro-war speech ove biage and observe J uares, we find a fast evaporation of internationalist ver ng males of how thin some of this rhetoric had been all along, The you of the left the nation marched, leaving beh ind debasing contradictions with a scn se of relief. at a rate By the end of 1916 , however, desertions were occurring ace d n estimated at 30,000 a year, Spring 191 7 saw wholesale desertio repl military high by outright mutiny, causing open panic among the lved, for command, Whole divisions from the Champagne fron t were invo cers, and example, amid cheers for world revolution, for firing on the offi built up of " for a march on Paris, But exhaustion and a sen se of futility, ons and the war's mammoth violence and the long list of confusi the universal disillusionments that pre date d the war, were joined by so' 'guard united front of unions and the left, to enforce the war and class society. o every . France was the grand muti!ee of the war: 1,4()(),000 lead, one f 24 in the land, Out of all this, not even the post-war parodies of revolution would visit France, Although thc United States stands apart from Europ!" s traditions and conditions, it is also true that revolution, or ills approach, is a ....br ld phenomenon as of the era under scrutiny, Taking a very few words' detour, many fe atures paralleling prewar Europe are discernible in the American situation, Henry May found that "During the prewar years, passion and violence seemed to many observers to be rising to the surface in all sorts of inexplicable ways,"" And as in Europe, organized ideology could not find its vehicle in this upsurge, The tame Socialist Party was ebbing after having reached its peak in 1 912, and the IWW, syndicalist alternative, failed to have much impact at any point. The Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, sitting between 1 9 1 0 and 1915, concluded that unionization was the answer to a violence, in Graham Adams' words, "which threatened the structure of society,""
[ , ,Ial I l l i l i l ' " Y insu lTection

doctrine of I ) U l ' i ll )!, t h e firs! dccadt: of the cc:ntury) Gustave Her ve's

1 .")/1

( ) I.: I\ ;INS ,\ N I I M I :\N I Nt , t H W W I

I ' I I M I N I \ t Il 1 < 1 1

This rt.:commenuatioll was haill u hy Jllolierall': and radical ulliollists

11

,..\ 1

relations. In fact, government-sponsored unions established the control post-war strikes, those in coal, steel, and Seattle, in 1 9 1 9 . John Dewey had predicted that the war would introduce "the begin

' alike;\; and brings to mind tht: advice of a few that the I WW's industrial unionism was the specific brand needed to stabilize American capilal

dl'iciplilll': l i l " d i t" d o r his head w o u n d i n the last month o f t h e war,

apparatus of scientific management, under the War Industries Board, and

survived long enough to administer the crucial blows to the three major

, . , ,,

Novelllher I 'n x. Apollinaire recall s vividly the condition of Jake in I k l l l i l l gway' s "/I", Slln Also Rises, emasculated by the war. S h ort ly h efore the war, a group of young players, eventually known as
Ihe

I h,. 'hypermodcrn" school, revivified chess in practice and principle, as

mp l ifi ed most brazenly by Breyer's "After 1 . P-K4, White's game is in

nings of a public control," and defended it thusly as a needed agency of socialization.56 But America's entry was far from basically popular; Ellul concluded that U.S. participation "could be produced only by the enormous pressure of advertising and total propaganda on the human psyche.""
Zcman quotes a far from atypical, if anonymous, historian: "We sti l l

I h roughout culture, in every area, an unmistakable daring, straining at . li mi t s was underway. "More freedom, more frankness, more spontane'
h u n dred years," as Stefan Zweig looked back on it." mod erni st movement of the had heen regained (in the decade before 1914) than in the pre'

last throes."" This arcane case aims at underlining the point that

first battle cry of Dada in 1 91 6 was already really the end of it, and t dedicated and developed before the war.

The war drew a terrible dividing line across the advance of all this.

don't know, a t any level that really matters, why Wilson took the fateful of American rights functioned . . .to submerge the drift and clash of Before examining the two most developed countri es, Germany and
England, something of the depth of the prewar turmoil-and its pacifica

1 920s acted out a drama conceived,

provides an acceptab le if understated reply: "Perhaps a vigorous assertion

decision to bring the U.S. into the First World War."" John Higham

The most anti-bourgeois moments of futurism, all of which were certainly pre-war, prefigured Dada in content and also stylistically (e.g., the use of incendiary manifestos). "In postwar Dada, the Futunst

purpose in domestic affairs.""

tion-can be seen in even the briefest glimpse at cultural changes. Stravinsky, whose Le Sacre du Printemps vi rtuall y incarnated the promise of a new age, reminds one that the new music was noticeably more precisely, nationalism rece ded as a force i n music, as i t had i n other fields. In painting, the movement toward pure abstraction emerged simultaneously and independcntly in several countries during the five years preceding the war 6! Cubism, wi th its urgent re-examination of reality, was the most important clement of the modern school and by far the most audacious to date-notwithstanding the frequent and entertain ing accusation, in Roger Shattuck's words, that i t was "an enormous hoax dreamed up by the hashish-smoking, pistol-carrying, half-starved inhabitants of Montmartre."" Alfred Jarry's nihilistic anarchism, especially in supranational in its composition and appeaL" Between 1910 and 1 9 1 4 ,

W . Flint.'"

enthusiasm had been pacified, ironized and introverted," according to R . Shattuck mentions the "disintegrating social order" and a "sporty

proletarian truculence" inspired by the avant-garde." The lines of inspiration and energy were probably tlowing, most importantly, the other way around but the connection itself is valid.
In H.G. Wells' Joan and Peter the younger working class generation is described as "bored by the everlasting dullness and humbug of it aIL""

If Paul Ricoeur could ask, over 50 yearS later, "if there is not, in the

present-day unrest of culture, something which answers correlatively to

the fundamental unrest in contemporary work,"" his question also fits the earlier world perfectly. For that previous unrest of work, the technological speedup of 1914-18 gave the answer; the "struggle against idiosyncrasy," toward completely standardized tools and tasks, received its final, critical impetus from the war.lO "The time of full mechanization, 1 9 1 8-1939," to use Siegfried Gicdion's phrase,l! was inaugurated. Getting back to culture, a revolution of art forms gave clear testimony

constituted a one-man demolition squad, over a decade before Dada. I n Apollinaire, the new freedom and urgency i n poetry, especially i n French poetry, is obvious. Apollinaire, however, can also b e viewed as an art historical metaphor: having reached his height from 1 9 1 2 to 1 9 1 4, he volunteered in 1 9 1 4 and was wounded in 1 9 1 6 . His passion and spontane ity were drained away, replaced by patriotism and a sense of artistic

his Ubu plays,"

to the social crisis-not that the revolt against the rule of forms was always confined there.

German expressionism, a pinnacle of pre-war cultural revolt, aimed not only at shattering conventions but at the construction of a "utopian order, or disorder, believed to be freer and more life-enhancing than any to be found in the advanced industrial world just then approaching a new

h e i :'ll.i o f dewl{ I I )l I 1 e. n I, ...111 (he .!lH lge flll" " . . 1I1 ( I f I l illn ll I\.,.: IIIH . Sp I :: 1 he a Ir, lH)fi S and Inn occnc ' )f tllese revo l u l ltlll ary "art isls ' cruelly destroyed by the war. I n its w, ' , ,' protests of Georg Grosz and Ott D' attcrmath , th l. I1 1"ttn l'xWess i"" isl .. ment, as with the surrealist ni tmrbcspoke the shock and disi llus i"" es of Dal!. LIterature is annlhl'1 example of the same rcsult. Ef1. t, J others-without exception i; 0 oyce, Pound, Yeats and so m'"IY ro The authoritarian welfa:e stIPmaPhts of dccay and death. rck, several dccadcs from ils inception by the prewar ycars e a state of atfalfS in Germany which was far from secure. Th l aftcr 1907, aired intrigue' bl'ackma '1urg scandal, In two years of trial" . 1m med"late clfclc, causing state p res l and rottenness. 1 0 the K alser " ' .. ' capitalist, spoke to the government ti ge t0 SIOk. BaIlIn, the Hamburg .10 . 190 8 of "th e groWin g domeslic crisis," hoping that a tax dec se : mi'ght help defusc it." Already in March 1909 was the war alter Iv military Cabinet, con.sI'dcred an exte proPosed, as Lyncker, chief of the . nation out of "internal difticulf . ernal conllict deSIrable " to move the Pnncc von Bulow recalled ICS gen "a . eral disgruntlement, " whIch he . summarIzed in this way' "If in B ' . k' day pople talked of 'disgust with the Empire,' it was' now a c: O disgust which gained ground evei:a/ ust With the govcrnment'-a ' da ,,;g was this high-placed opinion alSo r \ , More .speclflcally portentous m mem I heard from Dusseldorf (hat Kl fI Son Oirs : "At th e end of 1 9 1 2 e of the biggest Rh cinish ind ustrialists...had declared that i; t ; another three years Ge rmany will have landed in war or revol '6 n In late 1 91 3 and early 1 9 1 4 the arr against civilians in Alsace onstit oan ge,tures of Geman officers ut, t e Za n InCidents aroused in Carol PI" kWO d , general indberation."" Ind," and ign grcat o;tcry went an v ted, Ibelt omewhat eed, a impotent Iy, a 293-54 no-confidence re: . occasion of waning governmenl:i . ames Gerard saw thI S as an pow people seemcd "to be aImost rcatdy er, and wrote that the ,German to To John FIynn, the Zabcrn huh demilitarize thems.elves , " deepening of a domestic s lit which bub mereIy contnbute'd to the cou.ntry. As he viewed it, EThere wa had already VIrtually paralyzed the . reSIstance to arbitrary tendenc'e ' ,,79 s a spmt-and a growmg one-of ' aboard the S.S . Vaterland at u I th IS. context the naval mdiscipline av 10 the spflng of 1 91 4 IS SImilarly revealing. Therc the bold spontan eou forced an immediate and 'uncond llio s aChon Of the 1,300 crewmen . recalling the revolt in the BraZl'1'Ian nal acceptance of th elf demands, navy of, late 1 9 1.0. Arthur Rosenberg described the polI'tI'cal and social tension of
. '"

( ) [':I( d N \ .' N I I M h \NINf . ( II

c (

\V\V I

"

,,74

"Ihe conniet "etween the Imperial government and I h e majmity of the German nation would have continued to intensity to a point at which a revolutionary situation would have been created,""' Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg on the eve of war complained of the absence of nationalist fortitude in the land, lamenting this as a "decline of values," and a "spiritual degeneration," Complaining further of what he saw as the ruling classes' "solicitude for every current of public opinion," he defined his war policy to Riezler as a necessary "leap into the dark and the heaviest duty."" At the same time, it is rather clear that this rising crisis, requiring tI war to stem it, was not at all the doing of the left. Of the Socia. Democrats and their millions of adherents a hollowness was manifest. D.A. Smart wrote of the "widely felt stagnation in the party"" in 1 913; Spengler, in the introduction to his Decline of the West, saw both the approaching world war and a "great crisis .. .in Socialism." Far from inconceivable, then, is the notion that the rulers fearcd a breakdown of their dependable official adversaries, not the party or unions themselves, especially given the signs of uncontrolled movement. Industrial anger, in the shipyards, for example, was on the upswing and was most often directly combatted by the unions. The alienation of trade union membership, which was to characterize the latter part of the war, was strongly developing: local groups were breaking away from the central confederation in textilcs, paint and metals " The Social Democratic Party, a function of thc trade unions, was a loyal handmaiden of the state; its support of government tax bills made possible the military alternative, guaranteeing a harvcst of proletarian cynicism. In 1 914, Austin Harrison put it another way: "All kinds of men, German bankers, for example, often voted for the Socialists."" The workers' penchant for "sudden, unorganized" strikes, which has puzzled many commentators, underlined the contradiction and its threat. During July, various Party leaders met with Bethmann-Hollweg, enabling him to reassure the Pruss ian Ministry of State on July 30 as to the left's abject loyalty: "There would be no talk of a general strike or of sabotage."" Utilizing the socialist tradition of defending war by advanced powers against less developed ones as progressive, "opposition" and government were in agreement on anti-czarism as the effective puhlic banner. While making plans for preserving the Party machinery, Social Democracy voted unanimously for war credits on August 4, with an accompanying statement which stressed imperialism as inevitably
w i l ho u l war in 1 '1 1 4,

( ; cl"lIIany

;IS

" typical of a pre revolutionary period,"

concl u ding that

I rll)

( ) I l ( i l N.\ .'\ N I ) M I :\ N INI . 1 )1 W \V I

l ' I I ' I\l I ' N I :

ill 11k
I I

( )j '

generat i n g war tllld explicitly refused a lloV I l's [ le J l 1 .s ihi[dy for t ill' W;II

hankruptcy ... of such enormity that it w n t far hcyond t h e crillls of

Rohrt l .ooker aptly termed this " a depth or polit ical ;tIld moral

particular leaders or parties.""

Rosa Luxemburg in early 1 9 1 5 wrote that "the collapse itself is without preccdent in the history of all times."" But it is intcresting that sh(' lIterally years untIl public pressure was overwhelmingly against it; similarly, she was neither in the lead of the rising of November 1 9 1 X. which released her from prison, or of the Spartacist revolt. which she grudgingly backed. The Social Democrats-and the unions-were co responsible with the army for managing the war effort in general. Their police role most importantly was the investiture of all the military authorities' security measures with a fading aura of "socialism" toward the prevention of popular uprisings. When Luxemburg wrote in 1 9 1 6 that "Thc wor SOCialism, upheld the war (as legitimized by its enemy of autocratic Russia) for

" I ('nllsoliti;tlitHl. Yet at this apogee its actual fragility was hecoming

NeVI'l"

: , -.;

ill ;11 1

hdoe l rl,:, ;Jilt! Ilowhere more so than in England, had powcr

,,'H

1': 1 1' 1 1...,..\ 1

' Il lom it', pi ) [ i l ical, administralive, military-achieved such a high degree i n the tende ncy, in England and across Europe, toward

I ,.,tpahk,

""kt tered and unpredictable mass opposition. That thcre existed a W i d espread challenge to the cohesion and integrity of nationalist states
I', t l l l m istakahlc,

Til crises since 1909 regarding North Africa and the Balkans, above

. 0 1 1 . have been mentioned; "foreign affairs" progressed into a much closer

l''Ir;dlcl to its "domestic" counterpart; with a n;ueh lager qualitative d i version finally needed to transcend the mounting SOCial disharmony.

, kvdopment. During the seamen and dockers' strike, which was marked
I,y unprecedented violence, especially in the ports of Liverpool and

Ihe Agadir, Morocco, crisis of July and August J 9 1 1 exemplifies this

8war has decimated the results of 40 years' work of European

It would have been far more accurate to say that war

t .ondon, the arrival of the German gunboat Panther In Agadlf became settled on emergency terms, thanks to the M oroccan issue. Thereafter, domestic industrial warfare and foreign crisis both seemed to grow with ('qual intensity.
' . Another area of outbreak in England was a reachon to bourgeOIs

revealed those results. And as if this role, in bringing on and protecting the process, werc not cnough, the Social Democrats, as the effective agency of state power surviving the war, drowned the abortive postwar As Lukacs recorded, "I witnessed the rise of fascism in Germany and I know very well that very many young people at that time adhered to fascism out of a sincere indignation at the capitalist system."" Returning for a moment to the actual arrival of war, there was indeed a sinccre "indignation" reigning in 1914. Part of this was a nihilist dissatisfaction by many of ruling class backgrounds. Hannah Arendt detected, among those most permeated with the ideological outlook and standards of the bourgeoisie, a common absorption-with "the desire to sec the ruin of this whole world of fake security, fake culture, and fake life."'" Frnst J unger expressed an exuberant hope that everything the elIte knew, the whole culture and texture of life, might go down in
At the "rink therc was a certain relief, as well, caused by thc decision . Itself. Wa r gave a release to the exhausted nerves caused by the tensi on

l l ie occasion for growing official furor. When railway workers joined the st rike, troops were called out and fighting ensued. The clash at home was

rebellions in hlood. Of cours e, the road to new horrors was widc open.

suffocation, as seen in the strange physical fury of the votes for women cause. The mad fortitude exhibited by feminists in the period of 19101 91 4-including pitched battles with police, and arson of cricket pavilions, racetrack grandstands, and resort hotels-ce :tainly belied the utterly tame objective of female suffrage, an obvIOUS reason for characterizing the movement as an outlet for suppressed energy. Reverend Joseph Bibby wrote of the suffragettes, "who set fire to our ancient churches and noble mansions, and who go about our art galleries

with hammers up their sleeves to destroy valuable works of art . " Having felt this explosion and the growing proletarian resolve, Bibby in 1915 . 94 welcomed the "chastening" effects of the war on th ese passions. The prewar Edwardian epoch was an age of violence wherein, according to Dangerfield, "fires long smoldering in the English spirit suddenly tlared, so that by the end of 1913, Liberal England was reduced to ashes."" The memoirs of Emanuel Shinwell also testifY to this quickening time: "The discontent of the masses spread, the expression of millions of ordinary people who had gained little or nothmg from the Victorian age of industrial expansion and grandiose imperialism."" The seeding time of 1914, in its ferment and fertility. seemed more

"storms of stcd."91

of weeks of waiting-followed, commonly, SOon afterward by a confused despair .".' I n Octohn 1 'i t 4, the diary of Rudolf Bindung, a young calvary officer

bad joke of I"'opies and their history .. Jt was the end of happy endings

reproach to 1I1,,"kind . . . everything becomes senseless, a lunacy, a horrible

already con t " i ll" " virtually the whole lesson of the war: "An endles

The social and parliamentary imp asse over self-determinatio n r .... Ireland-whether it should encompass the who le of the country or exclude Ulst er in the north-b oile d over in thc Sum mcr of 1 9 1 4 . Th,' south was ready to figh t for a united Irish homc rule, thc loyal ty of EnglIsh troops was crumbling, and it looked, to RJ. Evans, for i nstance, "as if Brit ain was at last brea king up through her own wea kness and dissc nsio n.n98 Colin Cro ss wrote, apropos of the crisi s over Irelandand the industrial strife and sum'age viole nce as well-th at "Had there been no Europcan wa in Summer 1 9 ] 4, Britain might wcll have laps ed , II1to. . . anarchy. As Insh wor kers and peas ants moved towa rd revolt a divided England appeared "nea rer to civil war than at any time since he 16th century," according to Cro ss." Thc whole Eng lish party syst em began to foun der at the time of the Irish dilem ma, especially give n the split in the army. Jam es Cameron sum med up this mo m ent with some eloquenc e: "From a hun dred obscure plac es in Brit ain, from small-tim e barbers and icc-cream dealers and Di .lom atie Secretaries the mes r sage went back to the European Foreign offIces: the Um ted Kingdom , if you could call it such, is ridd led with disse nsio n; inde ed, ther e is the considerable likel ihoo d of civil war."l00 Harold Nicolson saw the back ground of the industrial uph eavals of 1 910- 1914 , with its unfolding "revolutionary spirit," as crea ting veritable pam c among the upp er classes; this "incessant labor unrest" plus the hom e rule clash brou ght the country, in his view, "to the , brink of civil war., 101

istracted concentration upon hom e isslie s may w e l l have hrou ght iI revolution, especially, he thou ght, as refleeled by Ihe "prewar loss 01 balance about hom e rule .""

than ripe fur i n c reas i ng ly radi cal d i rect iol1s . I{ , C . l\... 1 ':lls0 J k i t l h a l ; 1 1 1 und

( ) JW , J N, :\ N J ) iv1 J ' , \ N J N ( ; ( I ]

W \V I

stlcial wc. l fa r e. L'llactllll n l . for e.x ample. the Nati( ! nal l n s u r;lI cc I 'J I I , sClveo only to i ncrease the discontent at the labonng ,Iasses. "" And it was this acl that accounted for growth in tbe trade
t\ J I I ; l jU1' ;\ 1 " 1 oi" u l l ions, as the union bureaucracies provided functionaries needed for Its

I ' I 1 r'>11 N 1 '., ( I I , 1\. 1 1 I I ', :\ I

."Iminislration. More distance from the workers, a greater closeness

l i r e franchise met with universal intlifference.'06

I,..tween unions and government. A 1 9 1 2 bill proposing to greatly extend . . The Labor Party, voice of the unions and proponent 01 SOCial

it:gislation, likewise struck no chord with the populacc; oWll1g largely to i t engendered no enthusiasm at all.

I he repulsion its bureaucratic nature evoked among the young espeCially,

. But the voracious appetites at large could be clearly seen In the many

major labor battles from 1 91 0 on-and in their propensity for arson, looting, and violence, as well as the strong preponderance of unautho "ver ing at times on anarchy," and dctermin d that it :,a "revolt not only against the authority of capital but agams! the dlscIphne of t:d, ,, unions '07-as if union discipline was not an essential clement of capltal s rized anti-contract wildcat work stoppages. Halcvy saw the unrest as

authority.

. . . By 1 9 1 2, syndicalism, and its close cousin, gUIld SOCialIsm, werc

attracting much attention. But popular exertementwas actually a brt more elusive not surprising sincc these projections, staffed by unron offiCIals and b sed on union structures, were all but indistinguishable from industrial unionism itself. Unexeeptionally, English unions, too, were strengthened hy the war, but worker rebellions managed to continuc, against high odds. The whole summer of 1 9 ] 6, for instance, featured much resistance throughout the provinces in England and along the Clyde to the north. By th,s !lme, and versus the disabling wartime array of forces, the struggles were not only against the state and the employers but especially in opposition to the union administrations. New mediation was callcd for and provldcd by the shop steward movement of union rdor?" a diversion essential to the containment of the workers. The WhItely Councils, a form of co determination which increasingly emphasized the role of unions, was another wartime dcvelopment aimed against proletarian autonomy. The parliamentary committees at work on a council formula recognized that the constant strire was the doing of the "undisciplined," not the unrons. They "wanted to find a cure for the malaise that, before the war, bad every year weighted more heavily on industry, and, In consequence, on all of English politics.,,!08 A "Triple Alliance" among the miners', transport workers', and

Plainly, class tensions were becoming unbearable, "too . great to be contall1ed in the existing social and world setting," in the wor ds of Arth ur Marwick.'02 In 1 9 1 1 Will iam Archer had conj ectured that som e "gre at catastroph e mIght be necessar y for a new , viab le world soci al orde r."103 For England, as elsewhere, the whirlpool of contestation had grown entreally turb ulen t over the four years lead ing up to m id-s u mm e r 1914 . "The cry of civil war is on the lips of the mos t responsi ble and sober mll1ded of my people" Geo rge V warned participants of a Buckingham Palace conference on July 2 1 , 1 9 1 4.'04 Ind eed , it can be argued that to look more closely at the attitudes assembling the social crisis is to see nothin " less than a nasc . D ent refu sal agamst the whole mia sma of modern organizational mediatio n.

. I.111 '.., I leading not few I IIll,.h.ll lllc d (IIOIl111Unll< "I SI" III): ."I/I IIIIH' r of I I' H, . p'l "dIC l I I I ,I I ' occurred in the fall, bu f0: tl war, as ' till' ,clIlIrllin a . wOllld h avl' wave This thCSIS totally confuses tht: official enemie l iu l I of (Ill' s l rilr " s ( ) r d mi na t i will i its rel ones. In fact, the strikes wer def " InItIated ' ', architects of the Alllance,e hut initelY not case ' ,bro hy Ulllon i cadns, m every unofficially The All'Jance was not, according ke out Iocally alHI " concessIon to the pressures of rank and f'le ml'I' to G"A PhI'lI'IPS' , a I't was deSl'gned specifically to controI and dIscIplIne on the contrJrY. , . Itan, cy'' such mil ' itancy, " Union officials forged th new structure ou t ' overriding need to avert work acti ns, not tacliita of an Immed'late and ' " proclaimed that "every ctIo t h oce d te them. Its constitutioll create effective and complee otr Of e'heamong the three sections to ' respectIve Concernmg the actual arrival of war, teven as the bodIes ' ,, 109 axe an "Nobody was 'for' th or cared t least to be expressly begd toto fali, hel be so, and great numbers :::; rgen artIculate judgment of Cameron ;cgmal ;ndnd graspe ly against it," in the d the groundwork t{lr the event: "Probably fo the s d f :e U tion the war cae, above all, as a re r( P i! (; s l an!b sl m st dangerous discontents of 20th-c o : t: a ar canomzed civ the daily misery Ofcn;urymodilizaio' !,; th e ern , world, presenting its apotheosis of authority and technoIogy most precIsely terms of work Carl Zuckm ' . power's univeral message th:;osr::;e:e as a soldier summed up exhaustion, the unheroic mechanical'da -to.da monstros boredom, the fear, and death are inser;cd like the S t ,i' of y of war which terror, mg a timeclock in an endless industrial process,"112 In a world where the of OSI' , asserted the abolition of waspectacle and oPpcontIOn nowhere seriously , ge I abor Its text, this frontal assault was as possible as it necessary, pre It took 50 years or was recovery toThe in. war revolution was smashed' th e "eg
r;ril w;IY I I I l'Il ',,\
a (l t
.

ulli olls w; .."

( )I r( "N' ,

. \ N l l l\' 1 1

,\NI Nr ,
. .

( H ' \\/ \.V I

.

1C

J- ' I

. ".

;llId

. .sI l l

("

()1l

TAYLO R I S M AND UNIONISM

'

..

110

'

III

III

Jenkins has observed that "The impression has "egun to get about that the Industrial Revolution is not going to work out after all."l In light of the profound malaise of blue and white collar workers, the decline of output per worker since 1 973, and increasing signs of a pervasive anti union sentiment complementing antimanagement restiveness, Jenkins' remark does not seem so shocking, The 1973 Health, Education and Welfarc report, Work in America, remarked, in a similar vein, that "absenteeism, wildcat strikes, turnover, and industrial sabotage (have) become an increaSingly significant part of the cost of doing business,"2 The location of this quote from thc HEW report in the section titled, "Thc Anachronism of Taylorism" is suggestive, Because of many mistaken notions about scientific management's historical role, much of industrial society is misunderstood, The genesis of Taylorism as "scientific management," and the developing relation of this system to trade unionism are especially crucial. When Taylor began his efforts at the Midvale Steel Company in the 1880s, several members of the American Society of Mechanical Engi neers were likewise interested in labor management. Industrial capitalism was running up against renewed resistance from the growing ranks of labor, still committed to a sense of work intcgrity and craftsmanship. Task management, or scientific management as it came to be called, began to take shape in the eighties as the way to break the worker's threatening resistance, The heart of this approach is the systematic reduction of work into discrete, routinized tasks, totally separated from any policy decisions about the job, Taylor realized that employees cxert a vital int1ucnce because they possess crucial talents needed in any productive process, As he put it in his Principles of Scientific Manage. ment, "foremen and superintendents know, better than anyone else, that their own knowledge and personal skill falls far short of the combined knowledge and dexterity of all the workmen under them.'" For capitalism to be firmly in control, it must monopolize information and tcchniques as surely as it controls the rest of the means of production, The worker must be permitted only to perform certain specific narrow tasks as planned by management.

1 1,1,

was control of production. In fact, at that time capital's prohkm was

indced not so much o n e of productivity. Giedion's comparison 01 G American and erman industry shows that Germany's greatcr reliance

geared directly to problems of profit and productivity, alth()lJh its ailll

Naturally, i t made sense to pu b li cly proillutc scientific lIlanagclIll' lIl as

1 ' ..\ '1 1 ,( Jln'>rYI ,\ N I )

l i N ! ! ) N I.';l\1

ill lhe per e nn i a l Till'. rrn r stems fro I'hi s ld b e muc h and file attitudes. It wo u . ro n fllsio n 01 lInt{)1l att i tude. Wit h rmk. . , . oppos ed scient ific to have ., y that workers seem ll1<1ro. accurate t0 sa . ly opp osed , but . , Ion s see m ed only brief , whil th Un

. .iudgt IH II.1 IS

.. . . . I HS\ .Il:. Il. .

Thus the introduction of Taylorism was primarily a social and even " political response, rathcr than a matter of economics or neutral"

on workcr skill was ch eaper than the American tendency to mechanize."

ma nag em ent all along have never

with an aura of i mpar tial ity, to cvoke a theoretical legitimacy useful to

capitalism as a wholc .'

technol ogy. The proponents of the new rcgimentation sought to invcst it

widely seen as "the degradation of workmen into obedient oxen under creative participation in their work."6 The public'S accu rate evaluation of Taylor and his followers held workers. Referring to his expcrience at Bdhlehem Steel, Taylor dcscribed the iron handler he encountered as
stupid, phlegmatic, and ox-like 7 Yet, despite attempts to downgradc their the direction of a small body of cxperts-into men debarred from

Society admitted with surprising candor, scientific managcmcnt was

the public rapidly developed a vcry negative view of it. As the Taylor

Despite these pseudo-scientific apologies for the Taylorist approach,

in thc pre -Wa r t ud es toward Taylorism u :ur ung example , . opposition. In 1889, for . anything but concerted eno , we :1nd . p . ' the Am cncan S OC1Cty 0f sented his ideas to pre when Taylor first . sldent of the Brot herh ood . John A Penton, ex-pre E n ha mer of Taylor's paper.. This for e ' . )ined th discussion ac . . , M o " e laVish m hIS praise . workman," was mor s . lg union oUleral, p e k into the han ds of g that the pap er be put ers. u gi than any of the 01 "perhaps the mos t t me d 1 employee Penton ter an every emp Ioyer . d . pathize . heard in my life. I can sym ' ver Its km remarkable thmg f of poli tica l field . h 10k, is a landmark in tbe paper, wit h every wo rd. HI S
I

/5") ; ;;

j: 5
1)12

>

scientific management practice finds its source in the contempt in which

slowly, due to workers' resistance. It was regularly repeate d that several basis ' The Taylor Society warned employcrs to expect strikes and sabotage, to proceed with cunning so as to infiltrate under false appearances, and to expect opposition at every step .' The struggle concerned progressive attempts to debase work . JO

subjects, scientific management tracts are full of admonitions to proceed

years are needed to reorganize a plant on the scientific management

evcryday experiences

clear that scientific managemcnt is the foundation of work organization Braverman notes that control assumed "unp reced e nte d dimensions" with Taylor and Braverman, Marglin,
it has engendered

Although a survey of management and personnel journals" makes it bring

the point home with painful clarity .

social/political control c s se nce of Taylorism. What is less understood, and the role of unionism in i t .

and

others

serious opposition. since

the

mid-70s

The wo rks
discuss

the

of

however, is the nature of the struggle between workers and control lers,

toward Taylorism before WWI, to a warmly receptive one thereafter.

The two standard works on the subject, McKelvcy's AFI. Attitudes Toward Prodllction (1952) and Nadworny's Scientific Management and the Unions ( 1 955) argue that organized labor switched from a hostile attitude

cconomy. . omotive Company c of the American Loc a AI . In 1907, DaVid v. ' uni on for the e molders' and blacksmiths wit sccu red an agreemen hops . . pany's U .S . and Canada ..s . . . lonsm rn the com mtro d ucfo n of Tav e prevented from hghlmg d blacksmiths thus wer Id o ists in Pittsbu r gh walked the unorganized machin e n r h 3 " 109" with anger 1 out, seeth' . unions' absencc of cardinal reason for the ons prov ded the Qmm of .. " .the unions have generally come to tbc poi nt hostrhty to Taylonsm . . leaving to is, to distribution. n t0 w ages-that r mm conf g thel attentio or N adworny on."" If either McKelvey f roducti emplocrs th :' reached prior to Worl? rgaining agree ments nc had eX the "management s st likely discovcred they would have mo War 1, 0s. contract until the early 198 . 10 every U .S . uni on ' . . nghts " clause found . n, work methods, Job d eSlg . he sole righi to set This clause vests t . fundamental importance m . manage ment , thlS is of . asslgnmcnts, etc . With scientific management or . . omsm could nol oppose un derst'an ding why um s easy to see why' when < 1. nagement system. It In any oth cr k d f ma . s could not have ssu e in 191 1 ' AFL official 1 bllC Ta lorism bec am e a pu when N adworny . for opposition." Thus, . , . hlstoneaI grounds found Plimpton Press and the . ent made between men non s the arrangem . . u nion agreed to accept . rn 1914 whereby the Typographical U mon shop recognition, or the . r m re tu' n for closed 1 lC sClentT m anagcment industry and the Internath New York garment . ge arranl me t b etw een t e..v ' 1 16, involving the same Garm e n . orker s U nion in 9 Ilona Ladles . aberrations. exchange, these arc not

; ; ; ;'
;Tll
_ .

;;:

I f , ; . 1 10 1 1 , wl l h III

' / , \ YI ( H\ I.',I\I ;\ N I I I I N I I Jr'I J ' ,1\1

,If

h('sl

I I H s "trojall horse" tactic of union mediation led Thompson to

".

1;t1. vdl hdi. u c

1 ' I " """. ', I(H' fi tt i ng the Taylorist yoke on th" workers. The efficacy

lis sl;IIHtlrd

I hl Waf Ihl' ide;1 "l1lallagcmelll's

ig ht s

h q '.; l 1 1
"

clause contrt.lcts, was (he

....I H cadillg I hal IIl1 io n i za

Il) have any real whe ther I hey will allo w you capricc Oil their pari as 10 res ults or not . ".'1)

1 ; 1 1 MI ' N I \ t l\ ' 1 { 1 ' 1 1 1":\1

I H " "'nhc lIldustrial unionism over the AFL's craft unionism as the best
w av I he secur th e Taylor system in industry. Describing "one plant wh('l"c
.

sCIentific management was fully developed and in complete

' I '('I""tlon, the management has itself authorized and aided the organiza as to urge recognition of I II HI 01 Its employees," Thompson went so ' I ';lylorism.17
s CI

" I "dl llll , m hnkmg all the workers, not only the skilled ones , to

I iI,' I lIdus n 1 Workers of the World, to secure "the necessary unanimity

far

The ostensibly radical IWW might seem an unlikely candidate for the
,Ph ()f Taylorizing workers, but several Wobbly spokesmen actually saw

I\merican Lcft, many other

01

illg production "after the Revolution." And from the rest of

III

e n tIfic management much of value toward stabilizing and rationaliz

" S I l for the system seemed to cut across ideological lines. Lenin's support

Socialist, denounced everything about the Bolshevik Revolution save 18 J ,cnin's adoption of scientific management.

r ayloflsm IS well-known, and John Spargo, an influential American

sympathetic voices could be heard. Enthusi

the

While the official union and radical spokesmen for the workers were

finding no fault with scientific management, the workers were acting

agamst Rock Island government arsenal in 1 908 was defeated by

OpposItIon It aroused. It is interesting that these "unorganized" workmen

did not appeal to a union for help, but confronted the setting of piece
.

It on their own. An attempt to introduce Taylorism at the hugc the intensc

(" unorganized") employees there in 1910 and 1 9 1 1 . In October, 1914, the 3,000 garment workers of Sonnenborn and Company i n Baltimore walked
o u t spontaneously upon hearing that Taylorism was to be installed.

", "

rates and the division of tasks by themselves-and immediatcly demand that the method be discontinued. Likewise, the beginnings of

I ayloflsm at the Frankford arsenal were defeated by the hostility of the

'.

workers, "organized" or not. If this is as close as unions came in practice . to Opposmg the new system, it is safe to say that they did not oppose i t at aU. When the idea o f Taylorizing Watertown first arose i n 1 908 T yl r system. "Anything short of this leaves such a large part of

111 1 9 1 1 clearly demonstrates the need for not confusing unions with

The case of Taylorism at the U.S. arsenal at Watertown, Massachusetts

a o warned that the government managers must

have the complet

the hands of the workmen that it becomes largely a matter of whim or

the game in

AFL mist ook the quie scence of the I t is ciL:ar that Taylor himself on the us arsenal workers, for passivity unio ns, whic h represented vario 1 9 1 0 "not seled a Watertown man ager in part of the employees. He coun write (sic) concerning our t the AFL to bother too much about wha he tried again to allay ch, 1 9 1 1 , just before the strik e, system," and in Mar AFL resis tance by pooh-poohmg any any management fears of the re.21 He ec ived in the futu correspondence which migh t be ented a clear fere; his elitis m prev unio ns wou ld not seriously inter . . attitudes appraisal of WIth rick, openly time d foundry workers When the time -study man, Mer unio n coming imm edia tely. Although a stop-watch, action was forth petItion unio n, but inste ad drew up a mem bers , they did not call the Bem g further Taylorist intru sion s. demanding the cessation of any foun dry, molder in ph Cooney, rebuffed, they walked out. Jose ee examining mitt in 1 912 to the Congressional com testitled the workers and any had been no contact between n system, that ther e tane ous. k e had been completely spon union official and that the st i ed of Watertown employees question Though an overwhelming majority ns had no p of workers) felt that the unio by a consultant (hire d by a grou " ional tific management, the Internat inte rest in agitating against scien to the proclaimed union oppOSition Association of Machinists publicly by the e. Because this public opposition system shortly after the 1911 strik is of pre solc evidence supp ortin g the thes lAM in 1 9 1 1 is practically the a close r look. it dese rves War unio n host ility in of scientific manage elvey notes, the initial features In 1909 , as McK sligh test prot est from the n, without the men twer e installed at Watertow 5 onal League of IAM . 2 At about this time, the Nati unio ns, including lAM, due to the to make inroads on the Government Employees began nization had r grou p's members. The rival orga of the latte " and th e IAM time of the 1 91 1 strik e, . drawn away man y members by the m Its of opposition if it wish ed to reta was thus forced to make a show Mold r's ar fashion, the Inter national hold among the workers. In simil WhIC h ort to a strike of Bost on molders Unio n had to give grudging supp unio n the loca l unio n. informing had occu rred without so muc h as ing their actual supp ort statements show lead ers involved frequently made Convention record, a careful reading of the 1 9 1 1 AFL of Taylorism, and unio ns, shows that Sam uel as evidence of anti-Taylorism by the l so any tly the new wor k system in Gom pers avoided attacking direc

worker

r e

knew

worker

early

the

Taylor's

Taylorism,"

the

dissatisfaction

The

cited

substantial way.

I III

I \ \ 1 ( l 'U'd\1 , \ N , I I l N I ! )NI' ,1\1

( ,
' "

l'm l)!" I 1 1 1 1 1 11' II l t i ll',C II H'II I and the l'<tlling ilW )I' un'on rncllIbcrs lu ) . .IV I , W.IS, a VIC tOrl ()IIS h'r roel . I 't II Taylorism. Thc. age 0l' the consumer beg l , '> . tion of much 01' the Ias t autonomy of the n from Ih e sys t e m a t ic dCS l l lIC . prod IIcer W'Ith Ih" IOv" luah lc aid of unions, a health share of h con tent 01 work Iives had Iw,," removed. Rorfy saw th/lack of mil t:ncy . and ml tl atIve lrom worker the ear ly 193 0s s tem mm ' ' g directly from the technoi ogl'cal proces s ill ses 1 < , which they were enslaved " The r ;cent . . a life o f qualify and me a' IS Iil,o rm re-awakenlng of the struggle for mg ed ' at Itself I.S the maj or issu e It s unIiortun wIt h the knowledge th' work ate that the confusion ahou! Taylorism and unionism on/ It bears heavily on an understanding of wh a t t rade
' . ' <

The 1 ')2() s, with l I l l iDlI islIl 's plIh lic

,Il"l ( l

1' , , ' ,
Sl
-

'

..

1;1
.

>

UNIONIZATION I N A M ERICA

' .

'

:: . :

lire

'/hroughout the l.eft there s a wrong impression of the labor struggles of i Depression, which obscures our understanding of the nature and origin (II the increasingly anti-union "{'evolt against work" of today.

Trade unions in the 1920s were generally in a weak and worsening position. While union membership constituted 1 9.4% of non-agricultural workers in 1 920, only 10.2% were organized by 1930. The employee representation plans, or company unions, of "welfare capitalism" were being instituted as substitutes for unionism, in an effort at stabilized, peaceful industrial relations. There were some, however, who even before the Crash realized that independent unions wcre essential for etfective labor-management cooperation. In 1925, for example, Arthur Nash of the Golden Rule Clothing Company invited Sidney Hillman's Amalgamated Clothing Workers to organize his employees. Mr. Nash explained it this way: " I had a job that J could not do, and I just passed the buck to Mr. Hillman." Gerard P. Swope, president of G e neral Electric, tri ed as early as 1926 to persuade the AfL to organize a nation-wide union of electrical workers on an industrial hasis. Swope believed that having an industrial union might well mean "the difference between an organization with which we could work on a husiness-like basis and one that would be a source of endless difficulties." In 1928 George Mead wrote "Why I Unionized My Plant," describing in glowing terms his bringing the paper makers' union to his Wisconsin employees. Also in 1928, Secretary of Labor Davis asked that year's AfL convention to eliminate jurisdictional squabbling and get on with the kind of mass organizing that business desired. Another example of the pacifYing, stabilizin g possibilities of unionization followed the spontaneous strike movement of Southern textilc workers in 1929. Commenting on AFL efforts to organize the union-less and uncontrolled mill workers, the Chicago Tribune in early 1930 expressed its support: "The effort of the Federation to organize the mill workers of the South deserves th e endorsement of far-seeing businessmen throughout the country." But with the onset of the Depression, the weakness of the AfL and its

,I

came

Crash, moreover, did not awaken the eraft unio ll 10 a ew awareness of the chan ging industrial or Nol hllsi lless man Edward Lou is Sullivan classified the AFL dasr. simprd ly the arly 1 930s , some labo r leaders became involved with a group r s igh e d businessmen who saw the need for mass unionization . I ,. I .ewis and Sidn ey Hill man, destined to play major roles inJohn lmmlilation of the Nationa l Recovery Act of 1933 and the formationthe of I h e CIO , came to realize by 1932 that government and business might be (' IIlist ed in the cause of industrial unionism. Gerard Swope, the above llIen tion ed pres iden t of GE, unveiled his Swope Plan in 1 93 1 with the 11<"11' of employcrs likc Chamber of Commerce president Hen ry r. I l arri man . Self-governm ent in industry, via extended trade associations whi( 'h wou ld operate outside anti-trust laws, was the basi of the plan. An ('ss( ,lltia l facet was to bc the unionization of the basic sindustries with possessing the same kind of trade associations would exerdisciplinary poweralover thc wrkers cisc individu firms. I II their enthusiasm for a controlled, over nalized corporate syst ratio t l \('sc lahor and business lead ers were as one. "Lewis and Hillman, in em, the 'lId . differe d little from Ger ard Swopc and H en ry I. Harriman," in the words of Arth ur Schlesinger, Jr. President Hoover labe plans " s h e e r fascism, " By 1932 , in fact, the government stoodled these ed to committ lahor's right to organizc, Pre-dating the NRA by a year, l .aGuardia Act not only outlawed the "yellow-dog" contract the Norris i- inds of injunctions but fully sanctioned the right to collective and certain bargainin Section 7a of the NRA became the focus of attention afte g. enactment in June 1933 , however, and the reason seems two-fold . r its The lIarantee in 7a of labor's right to colleetivc bargaining had the weig ht 01 a stro ng resurgence of labo r unrest in 1933 , as compared to the relativc quiescence of 1 932. 812, whereas only 243,000 had strucFully1932. 000 workers struck in 1933 , k in The second reason for the utilization of Section 7a was that it was part of whole stabilization prog embodie the Swopc thlnkmg on the necd for ram, whichtelization dof business Plan-type a near-car and ('urtailment of much competition. Swope, not surprisingly, was one the of the N RA 's mai n architects-a long with John L. Lewis. With the NRA, the full integration of labor into the business system a step closer to fruition, In the context of a continuing depression
1" ,,,ln s
n e "rc; tcli( mary," III
-

('I a l l I I l I i l l l l : l p p r ( ):lclr / W e: I I I I I' ('V('I 1 I 1 l ( lI'C ohvi ollS, W i l h l IH' I rl'llt l low: l l d il'wc r s k i l l e d wpr"'L' rs, r ht' h ' ( k r a t ion's a t te,mp ts to sell i tself t ( ) i n d u s l i V as ; 1 fra l kly peace k ee ping i list i t uliol l were incr easingly o u t o r touc h w i 1 ,'1 j l s capa hiliti es. The

I '. I I M I N I :-" ,I lid ill('l l'asill).', wor"'n hostility. n

a,,1

" t ta

, " I i , 'liS

; I S I I I l'

the need for industrial linionim became ove rnme nt leaders. onald Rlcher?, a hOi of hoth Norris-LaGuardia ami NRA, decned craft umonlm s l a i l u re to o rg a ize more than a small minori, and sa:v in dustnal umons . ; " the kq to industrial stabil i ty . As lab r wnter Ben]amm Iberg put iI his "A Government in Search of a Labor Movement, ,The old lashioned craft leader is through, for he is helpless to express the i ncreasing restlessness of American labor." And Stolberg knew that . !'resident Roosevelt saw the nced for unions, in order to safely contam I h a t restlessness: "NRA was wholly an administrative measure .... It shows that Mr. Roosevelt believes that what American industry needs desp 7 r, ately is the recognition and extcnsion of the trade union ovemcnt. Concerning FOR, there is ample evidence that Stolberg IS correct n d that Roosevelt consistently held to a basic belief in collective barga1l1111g. As Assistant Secretary to the Navy, he sat on the executive board of the National Civic Federation, that early and important orgamzallon of heads of business and labor formed to promote amity through contracts and close communications, As Governor of New York, Roosevelt had een impressed by Swope's arguments and "had talked to Joh Slhvan of the State Federation of Labor in New York about the posslblhty of umons bcing organized in plants like General Electric," according to Frances iliru . Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor, recounted the Pr.esident's adlce to a group of businessmen: "You don't need to be afraid about umons . ... You shouldn't be afraid to have them orgamze your factory. They don't want to run the business. You will probably get a lot bet,ter production and a lot more peace and happiness if you have a good Union organization and a good contract." It was not surprising that Roosevelt's choice to head the NRA, General Hugh Johnson, "appreciates that industry cannot functIOn Without organized labor," in the judgment of Stolberg. Nor th opl.on f Fortune, that most prestigIOus of busmess penodleals, surpns 1I1g as . regards the NRA as vehicle for unionization. In December 1933 /'::rtune implied disapproval of the Ford Motor Company as bem ruled prim arily by fear," while noting that firms umomzed under NRA s 7a had thc joint strength of both NRA and union offiCials to hmlt stnkcs. The phony, staged strike bceame a safer bet at thiS time, oW1l1g to the NRA presencc. In August 1933, for example, the ILGWU staged a slnke of New York dressmakers, carefully arranged by union and NRA offiCials to last exactly four Jays and bring the unorganized dressmakers into the union and under an NRA code.
1 1 10 ( (' and l I I \ l n. apparent to g

( n'

l{ j I ! IS/\1

I !I

ill

111

IS

I II

' I I('[ "l' 1 1 ](' A l l . d i d IItli a l k mpt sLt / '( . I l l ." 1 I 1 . 1 / ,\ I I 1 r I!.. {'S, I I wo r k e d I I I d d e a l icgililllatt w a l k -oulS' . I .OUIS !\ ( I , l i l l ie ("( l I lchJ(I ( ' ( I I I l;t 1 "'1'1 Il' h' d e l ;! _. '
, spontaneous movements in

tum as a whole

I I f\JI( I N r / . \ I It IN If'! ;\ r.. I I ! ! 1 4

. ' '

'

ges movement on the COilSt." I I ruhber. Thc one exception was the Brid'
:,

IS far from clear, however th t ev;n one exceptIon occurred, Under the leadership of H: r dges, th organizing of West Coasl longshoremen had culminated ith;amos an FrancIsco general strike ' ' ' , d that the only "benefit" obtaine' by the workers was thelr b emg broughl '

b ' i nh()t'lPl'd O[ slI p pressed a l l i r l l ilorl 'l I l t I all k ;IIH I . !" il' 01 ' 7. "'13 an<I 1 "Y}4 especmlly th osc III sted alld '
< <

Bern stein si"" "I' this k i n d , 1 I I ' ' ' l a C''H' ! l 1 "" l i u l i< l , , , d i,,'d lab< ll com mit San ""I i l ll purposc-to rnittc c se rved a " Bu t l ilt:. ('om , " And it was those with \ u l l i i n ucs: collective harga ining s employers til leading owne rs ! ' I '"Kisco' , notably the twO Uridge s and the lLWU ,

, Ml N '

' -

( 11 ' I 1 , 1 1'.,\1

way ",periono" with Roth , who led the m and Almon lines , Roge r Lapha purpose "the " I' s t e amsh ip which had as its Employers council yers to bargain I"nnillg the Sf right of the emplo exercise of the r"wllition and
,'ollectively ,"

of July 1934, Charl es Larrowe th e manlImc labor historian, concludes

e setUement made before the st' began, Looked at in th is perspective . .' ' i t might seem that the strike se,:,"d no purpose, But looked at in the ' " The settlement of the 1934 strike marked the begmnmg at a change in ' ' consciousness for San FranCISCO employers' though wat er f'rant strife , C<lntlllued sporadically until 1 937 th e employers had begun to see that ' . l al l u nion officialdom rea ly want e d was the closed shop, :Vlth th c dues ' an d power over memhership it e tal I ' ,A nd far thiS, UnIon discipline ' ' from the longshoremen "
I csson rather earlier; hi s Secretary f, Labar, notIng the lack ot White "nion officials over union

stn kc was settled were similar t

' Ull d er union contract' "The terms under WhICh th e pro 1onged, vIOlenl , '

b e sure, to some of the proposals t()r

and necessary,"

larger contcxt of collective bargammg, the stnkc was both unavoidab le

could then be put to the service

I iouse alarm over the SF;:; : s,ke', commented on the power of : s enslble labor leaders advised [sic]

Rooseve1 t as indicated abave, Iearned this 0 ,

guaranteeIng an absence of trouble

the men to get back to work that this was n.o tIme tor an unconsidered

Fortune viewed 'B rI'dges as one 0f the "gl'fte d, temperamental, power' , , ' Wielding leaders of Amerlcan mafllIme I abor WI out whose compliance 'th 110 decrees of the Maritime Comm' , s ' on arc l ke ly to keep the peace, " I a d ther labor leaders tor their The pro-Bridg e s article praised hi IIl IIoduction of stable, regularized lab 0 re atlOns to ShIPPIng and other
Industries, , ry of DepreSSion labor, tells us that in 1 93 7 "the town's leading b en or ed the Committe e of Forty ne :::. f t u s to JOIn In a program to stabilize ' I 'h r c e, hoping o persuade t ' la l1(lJ' rclations , The labor peop1 e dcclmed , " Th e UnIon chiefs declined ne cessity of unionization as th Bernstein, in his authoritative" San Francisco employers had come, by 1937, to fully appreciate the

sympathetic strike even if it' was alsO In t helf own interest."

iS

to a dependable work force, Irving

i t should be added , because they feared membership reaction t '

can manage , that only unions control over workers Given the effective oyers should have San Francisco empl out o f place that coordination i t was n o t at all the promotion and bargaining, nor that d for collective . strive the Pacifi c Coast d up and down acts quickly sprea toward labor of contr ening trend 1935 saw a decp Toledo Meanwhile 1934 and Auto-Lite strike in bloo dy Electric amon g and violence, The militancy truck drivers were ng Minne apolis , In t warfare of striki and the stree strike rs were killed year in which 40 acular of 1934, a winter 1933 and the the most spect the summer of months, between important point is less than eighteen sixteen statcs , The were called out in might stall and of 1934, troop s activis m; though it not control this organization that t the AFL could tha ovide the kind of , it could not pr unio n and sell out the workers , industry-wide worke rs into a single enroll all of a firm's the conserva could g, Workers resistcd collectivc b ar gainin bickering bring p e ace und er ant jurisd ictio nal zation and the const zational form of organi tive craft with new organi to experiment plants mpani ed it and began that acco and Olds mobile local s in Huds on example, union forms , For repre sentatives from st, 1934 , to elect the AFL in Augu all Street Journal secede d from cratically, The W and negotiate demo pendents for several their own ranks alism of the inde ulatio n as to the radic "Disaffection discus sed spec the Secession" and such as "Mo re on ling figur es: "By days , in articles provid es some revea partisan Art Preis Spreads," Labor s had dwindled from ral auto local p of the AFL fede 1935, the membershi NRA took a poll in an Board of the When the Wolm of plants in 100,000 to 20,000 , ation' in a numbcr portio nal represent for unaffiliated 1935 to dete rmine 'pro , 88,7 % were 163,1 50 votes cast Michigan, of the AFL federal locals," for leaders of a semirepre sentat ives; 8,6% ded to fix labor "into on 7a were inten NRA and its Secti plan," in rnment If the was part of a gove whose organization the public unionism to make good on in 1935 yet hoped words, Washington petus, the im Stolberg's of industrial peace, the point of view bill 1 933 beginning, From whe n the Wagn er stronger by 1 935, on seen, was certainly as we have like Lloyd Garris of the meas ure, dered , Supportcrs was being consi

I< I!c as rriv lld (lr I l l e worker, in order to comhat worke r di li 1 .('011 K('Y'lTlill :, legislative assistant to Sena movement, an d Saw a goaltor Wagner, feared an uncontroll ed lah ol which could reduce conflict of government-spon.sored lab or rciatioll!-i and together in concert with governm induce labor and husiness to work ent. Thc preSsing need for a governmen t guarantee to unionism was appreciated and the Wagner bill breezed through the Senate in really a 62- 1 1 margin , None theless, May hy all of assert busin ess' steadfast oppositio the standard accounts continue to The eminent business historian n to the bill in spite of the evidence, Tho the old thesis, only to admit that mas Cochran, for example, reaffirms mild .... All this is hard to explain "the struggle in Congress appears very By this time, of course, leading, " saw collective bargaining as impe elements of business and government rative for the steadying of the order, Secretary Perkins is worth industrial surprising to some people to quoting at some length: "It may be conservative branch of the Roos realize that men looked upon as the evelt bringing about a new, more moder administration were Cooperative in part of employers toward collecn and more reasonable attitude on the tive bargain ing agreement Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad, Carl Gray of the sames, Averill Daniel Willard of the Balti railroad, Standard Oil Company, Thommore and Ohio, Wal ter Teagle of the Myron Taylor of U,S, Steel, as Lamont of J,P, Morgan and Company, Robert Armory, a textile manu Gcrard Swope of General Electric, and facturer, were amon for help from time to time in difficu lt situations, g those whom I asked where the proble m was to start collective bargaining negotiations, Roosevclt knew people had helped and Was alw that these ays "marc reasonable attitude" merely very grateful to them," Nor was the a privately expressed one, instances which could be cited, is the speech of Henry Heimann,Of many the National Association of Cre head of dit Men (WaLl 1934 ), whieh called for the aban donment of theStreet Journal, Augu st 21, company union idea and the control of labor in strong, national bodies, By the time of the 1935 AFL in auto, rubber, radio, textile Convention, the stage was set: workers bad faith and collusion with s, and steel were furious over the inaction, vast majority of General management that they saw in the AFL. The continued membership in anMotors workers, for example, regarded agent of GM, according to AFL auto local as proof of being a paid Wynd stood in dire need of replace ham Mortimer. Craft-style unionism ment by newer forms if union s were to
un ion ism a n d /lo rtr ay ing I Ill' ra ca s lll
.

ilnd I l any M i Jji.-; , p I l I for l l l importance of ass is ti l lg

I IN II IN I/ . \ I I' J N IN '\ I\ I I . I I' \

Iile
".

q f(."/ y

IlicaS lll e " Iht',)I Y, :1'1tJi llt 111("

1 1 1 r.. I Hn , I I'

I WO'l: I:S: ,t;WIS, thL" CllllSLI v,llive, .:I:I rll t h l lss h e ad of the United Mine W"r k ns, was 10 lead I h , mov , t w e e o a industrial uniooism. A Repuhlican ', " I ' to a n d dunng th e 1 932 presld en t laI campaign , he ruled the often . ' , I " ,islanl miners by dlctatonal m th0d The servility and corruptIOn 0f ' Ihe union begat constant revolts :o he ranks against Lewis, A miner illterviewed by Studs Terkel test;f e to this state of affairs when he spo ke of a UMW fleld reprsen I being tarred and feathered "for I ryin' to edge m WIth managemen:" d declared that the "chairman of Ihe local was thIck wllh th sue;intendent of the mine," In October 1 933 Fortune related the mmers h t d of Lewis during the 1 920s and the "Lewis Must Go" campalg 0f ;;2 ' Generally quite pro-Lewis, the , ' IS ',trtide mentlOned "h' , repressive tacltcs tn the union," and concluded with the judgment that the prospeel of organIZIng 30,000,000 workers dl'd not frighten Lewis-nor, by very strong imp lication, should it frighten business, With Lewis' famous-and no daubt calculated-punch to the jaw of . Bill Hutcheson, boss of the Carpenters Um'on and a major craft unionism ' spokesman, a split from the AFL was signaIed, The blow, at the 1935 , AFL convention, enabled leWIS to represnt himself to the hitter and , , distrustful tndustnaI :"or,kers as a new ktnd ()f leader. "By attacking Hutcheson, he was attacktng, the trade unionism these workers so bitterly hated.... Hliteh es'on symbolized to ml'II'Ions, of frustrated workers, that , , craft-unionism policy that had defeaIed their spontaneous orgamzatlOns, ' in the words of Saul Alinsky, ' , Wlthtn a moth .0f the Octoher conventl'on, the Committee for , Industrial Orgamzabon was for d b Lewis and a few others m the Z unions. By early 1 937, locals of Federation who , headed mdustr those unions affthated WIth the W IO were expelled from all city and ' state AFL counctls, mak'tng the break fmaI and 0ff'c'al, ' ' II Th e CIa began with a feudaI struct re in which all officers were ' ' appomted by LeWls" giving It an ImpoU ant advantage over its AFL rt predecessors, Whereas the AFL ofticials necded decadcs to emasculate the fairly autonomous CIty and IaI central councils and estabhsh ' t centralized naltonal power, t he C ci ct's established complete control over collective bargamm 'trike sanction almost from the outset. Leaders of both the AFt, IO v.:ere "agreed on the necessity for circumscribing the mcreasmg ml'litan in the basic industries .... No one in the AFL or 10 the CIa was unde7any illusions that Lewis, Murray, Hillman, and Dubinsky were out t0 bU1'ld a radically new kind of movement," as Sidney Lens put I t .

t Jl l t a i l l t h e l a io l l s

1 { 1 1 1 1 \ 1
.

1 1/

. l o l i n I ,. I

'

"

, IS

I I N I I ) N J / , \ I I I IN I N A M I IW
,

\
. .

was organized and the left-led United ' Eleetncal Workers hegan to "
a d y :vope as "well-led, the discipline good." Radosh " in fact ':C U de s th al It was the more p0l't' 11y radical r ls ' 1 Ica . UnIons that led the integration of l abor Illto thc corporate structure. " ' Worker action continued to deve]op howcvcr ' III th e reI atlve absence ' ' of unions Ihroughout 1 935 and 1936 , New forms 01 struggle and d d Roald Radosh;, Swope, Ihe NRA architect, informed one f i G ;:e _presIdents that If you can't get along with these fellows and se ttle matters, there's something wrong ' . '

organize GE, Gerard Swope re'oi

not alter th e p icture , and n(lt a I'cw .,HISIIlCSS leaders timIcrslood the allti , ' , '. " , radical character of th e new Ofoamzatlon For cxamp I e, " when the ClO '

The

, Sl" '(,-, 11rl:" . '"

_

0"

( 'I.H11 llHl I l I StS

_

'

a n d oH I I. I - I lrl i' s. t s. W I I I I I Il t i l e ( ' I t > dIll'S

.

I l l i l i d s oj

with you " The UAW

organization were adopted which de epIy f' h tened bus mess, government, fIg

fifth fender or leave untig ne every sixth bolt to protest intolerabl e , . job conditions. Rapidly the l me would come to a h' lt m complete a . . contUSIon, with enraged but hel pIess foremen at a loss to single out the ' . utilized was, of course the sitdown s tn , e. LIke the skippy it more often 'k than not was employed by the " unO rgan zed, " in fact, the sitdown re fl ects l . worker suspicion of u nion structure and control As Lo UlS Ad amlC put it . . ' so we I I: "Most workers distrust if t nsClouSly, then unconsciously ommlttees, even when they have union officials and strike leaders a elected them thcmselves The beau participants.

management to der Ill e th e nature of the Job The "s'k'PPY, " lor Instance, c I was a very effective form of defian e th" was spJlltaneously adopted by at . the man on the assembly Ii W rers mIght qUIetly agree to skip every

ependent unions sprang up, and union superiors alike Em I P- ; often employing radical tctics " ged the tradllIonal nghts of I

The most threatening device and the one to become very widely

f the sItdown or stay-in i s that there are no leaders or fficials to i here can be no sell-out. us : t T eedure as strike san on IS hopelessly obsolete when Such standard pro . workers drop their tools stop th elr a mes, and sit down beside them, The initiative conduct", and con t come directly from the men ro
. The sitdown seems to have first bee me an establIshed tactic in the , Betw 93 and 1 3 t became a tradition rubber factories of Akron en 1 9 6I in Akron, developed I ar oely be ause th e umon had tarled to resist the
<>

involved.'"

that the grievance "mentioned most frequently... and upper-most in the

speed-up. The spe ed-up appears to have been the eh Ie f smgle cause of discontent ' ' throughout mass production. A 1934 stu dy 01 the auto mdustry revealed .

e n wo r"'- rs we re tak e I I up w h the abse nce of union the work proce ss, in the te rihl to control absolu . The ch all en ge to ement prerogatives in '111l."tioning manag solute the ab interest er fatigue felt over t only ou t of the she t spe ed -up came no ction worker was no because the produ ction, the n, bu t also er in wh ich rate of produ determine tbe mann of his work and to free to set the pace battle over wh o was joi ne d the ed. In the factories e al issue; as it was to be perform job . Th is was the r workers' life on the ou t eq ua l wa s to control the content ca me in ab e auto workers' dis ry Vorse pu t it, "th ind ust ry. " Ma ute autocracy of the ed -up an d the absol pa rts from the spe rkers, of co urs e, bu t only by the au to wo e struggle was waged not Th rtant fig hts , An d the one of the mo st impo workers wh o wa ge d it wa s GM ships, rather tha n as of existing relation un ion as conservator role of the text of the gre at GM arly see n in the con of the m, may be cle challenger sitdown strike. to spread r apid ly that was be ginning sitdown movement ne Actually the tics. It "sprang sponta thing bu t a part of ClO tac labor lea de rs by latc 193 6 was any All American ed maSS of workers, ously from an an ger po sed to the d instinctively op cked, scared, an up he av al," uld have be en sho wo erly revolutionary al of thi s disord tiation or approv ini Alinsky. som e according to Saul ber 28, 1 9 3 6 , when n began on Decem Fis he r 44 -day GM sitdow The , Two days lat er workers in Fis he r pla nt struck ly 7,000 at Cleveland's us movement quick an d the spontaneo , 2 in Fli nt sat down l, Body No nging it to a standstil the G M system, bri spread throughout stated flatly that the . ond Walsh economist J Raym The former Harvard h eommand ... tri ed strike: "The ci a hig t called the pu bli c, CI a had certainly no n Ro e wrote: "To the strike." As Wellingto in vain to prevent the more to do wit h lly Le wis ha d nO its originator . Actua at least, Lewis wa s ugb, as Jam es of Pa tag on ia." Altho tha n somc native itation of a the sitdown str ike "h e gave a superb im grapher, recorded, Wecbsler, Lewis' bio advance." d everything out in du ced man who bad worke assembly line that pro k of control over the GM str ike Again, it was the lac Kr au s's bo ok on the auto workers, Henry it wa s the sitdown among organized Flint, as S the spe ed- up tha t sed it thi s way: "It wa n ba sis mo expres rs that fou n d a com life of all the worke the on e ele me nt in the of res en tm en t." sitdown movement, red the un dis cip lin ed union officialdom fea Th ou gh ho pe d to st move fast if they realized that they mu Lewis and the CIa Lewis declared on r it. Hence establish control ove keep up with and

lik e lile sitt inw the spe cd tip ." Tac1ics I h( )Sl' wil l) tl'slifil-d is llenge the em plo ye r's fell they ha d to cha

I /1 ,

ll

l SI )

I I N I ( ) N I / ,\TH ) N I r,J ;\' 1\ 1 1 1 1 1 1

I kct'llIh l" J I , v e ry ('<lrl y i l l l l it, slrikt', , 1 1 ; 1 1 " I I " , ( ' I ( ) ; I : t l l ds s q u ; I I( ' l y h e h i l l d t h e s i t dowl1 s . "

ISI Rcglllatiu ll of

Before centralized authority was effecte d, many radical possibilities remam ed open. Sidney Fine's authoritative Sitdown rccognized the l downers' reslstancc to hierarchical procedures, comme nting on the herce mdependence" displayed by the workers. The situation prompt ed .I homas Brooks to assay that "for a brief time, the CIO teetere d on the hnnk of the revolutionary industrial unionis m of the Wobbli es." Alinsky states sl rlarly that "the General Motors strike bordere d on revolut ion." The sltdowns in rubber, which had occurrcd, from Louis Adamic's observation, "without encouragcment from any rank-and-f ile organizer,)) , much less from any unron, and which were almost invariab ly successful reached a very important climax at G M . And inasmuch as the G Sltdowners were so vitally concerned with controlling the assembly line as the key Issue, basIc antagonism betwee n workers and union was implied from the start. The CIa had to attach itself to the sitdown phenom cnon and, at least initially, make a show of supporting the workers , actIOns, but therc existed a vast chasm between the attitudes of that movcment and thc rcspect for managem ent's rights of the CIa. CIa leaders tried from the beginning to find a way to squelc h the occupatron of. G M property. In a revealing passage, Secreta ry of Labor I'erkms tells us: "The CIO came to support the automo bile workers althoug h I know for a fact that John Lewis and Sidney Hillman and Le "ressm an, CIa counsel, made great efforts to get the men to leave the plan!. ... But they would not public ly desert them. " CIO officials had no interes t in taking up the issue of speed. up.

revoked just as soon as the C/ O could ge t away with it. Lcn DeCam Cia's Union News Service, stated that "as a matter of fa et I h e first experience of the CIa with sitdown s was in discouraging them. \Alhen the G M stnkc began, very few employees belonged to the CIO. . "Ihiiated UOited Auto Workcrs; in Flint only one in 400 belong ed to the l I AW. It was not, apparently, an easy matter for the CIO to achieve control over the strike. Kraus 's account contain s several instance s of the d t l hcultles encountered, including "the strike committee had not yet mmpleteIy established its authority and there were accordi ngly some reSIstance and fnctlOn at first with a tendency to anarchy of action." Wyndham Mortrmer, another very pro union source, admitted that "a very dlsturbmg factor on the union side was that several membe rs of our negotiating committee were convinced that no one in the leadership could be trusted, from John L. Lewis down."
e d i t or of the
'

T h i s tactic was essentia l a t t h e time, tho ugh appr()va l o f sitdowns was

'

suhmitted hv the UA W to G M on January 4. Prcdletah iy, the February recognition and not at I I selllcme;lI dealt almost exclusively with union The union had been granted sole -bargainingagent all with speedup . status for six months in the 17 struck plants and lOOked forward to any rivals . consolidating its positio n in thc enforced absence of strike committee m Fisher Body No. When Bud Simons, head of the 1 was awakened and told the terms of the settlcment, he said, "That . on't do for the mcn to hear . That's not what we've b een striking for " the strikers, distrust And when the union presented the settlement to to speed of the line, mounted in relation to the unanswercd questions as authority on the shop floor, and working conditions.

till'. speed of the line was listed as cig lh D f e ig h t lkmand s

V:

The workers' forebodings were borne out by the n egotiations which w as "above all, to followed the evacuation of the plants. GM's policy the productive process , particularly over preserve managcrial discretion in of the stnke-to the the speed of the line." The fundamental dcmand of the spe e d of production, strikers-had been "mutual determination" but under the contract signed March 12 local manag Cl1:}ent was ensured

Jr. , GM presidcnt , "full authority" in thesc matters. Alfred P. Sloan became satisfied that the union was not out to challen ge managem ent's p owers to manage . " rights, and reported "we have retained all thc basic thc union became the effective agency for suppressin g In addition, workers ' direct action against speedup or other grievan ces, pledging that until every effort has "therc shall bc no suspensions or stoppages of work through thc regular grievance procedur e, been exhausted to adjust thcm and in no case without the approval of the internatio nal officers of the

union." Workers were plainly dissatisfied with the outcome of their sitdown, a fact usually ignorcd in the many accounts of the "victorious CIa breakthrough" of the GM occupation. William Knudsen, G M vice

president, said that there were 170 sitdowns in GM plants between hegemony. Union officials scurried from place to place to quell these stoppages, which thcy considered a very serious threat to union authority.

March and June 1937, as workers who had become conscious of their great power did not automatically submit to unionmanagement A New York Times article called "Unauthorizcd SitDowns Fought by C.I.a. Unions" described the drastic efforts used to end the sitdowns, including the dismissal of any union representative sympathetic to them. are as willing in some cases to defy their own leaders as their bosses."

The samc April 12, 1 937 article ascribed the sitdowns to "dissatisfaction on the part of the workers with the union itself," and reported that "they

I I H ' ( '( ) l I t I t I ( 1 I 1 1 -.; l s ' . Wl' I C ., 11,<.;1 .IS ( )l I t . ' . , jll { )p c r o r d l' r V I<I l l l l t d W ' l h It'slt l ' tr'J(lir 0 1 1 .- 1 I UlJlo n l/ illl'1 , ' s t r u c t lJ rl" S tiS. ;II1YOllt' , ' I '.Vl:1l I : 1Il:1l l: Lyon t'/Sl' ill r h e ( 'I( ). s ' hySl ell'e.1 I '/1 , , " " . . . u: N"d /)(,Cl/de wIlieI I I'ollnd " everythlllg III the I " a l mDs ' Y3(Js to be party' , ' , co ntrolled did SItdown move . no t try to say thaI ment was Red-ms : Ill<' ' , rre or dom mated p ' 'd A sitd .own wave mov e d with amazing ra and busrness in the M. P id" ty to a/l typ es of mdustry I spring of 1 93 7. N elV asses of May 4 strikes of the Woolw note d that "th orth and Grant . . ulrls gave a st u nmn to th err emp lo g surpn sc both yers and to th e Warkrngclass ' b . , movemen t, " Eve Iyn . . seam stress mter Fmn, a viewe d by Stud, . s Terke l, told at the sltdown mvolved in: "The . she was boss w ' s gom cra y The un o n ' a off i als came down' i . They went crazy' too ' I t z . ic . was a h1 lano us day. " he cndlng of ' T the m ovem ent . could e eIIeCllvely and engm eered only . lastingly from the inside ' IB e"are busm ess '. form ulate a solut and gove rnm ent ion the umon co uld ' eaders themselves . Sltdowns. An indu had put the lid strial relal'O S' e on ert on th e ub ect too easy a tactic s j : "The sitdown is for gOO selp Ill c . .. b ecaus e grievance seltle work ers can secu ment by in terru : re p ,g pr d u ction hro m ay even tual ly ugh a sitdown, th e t think' what's th . y . e use 0 f J om m g a unro n and I /. we Can gel paying dues what we want this way'?" The Sltdowns were ended with the u . n ro ns cooperating ment in the ouste with manage. r of the work . ers for of cours mten tion of helpin t he cia had g emplo e t no k powe r over k ' theIr own jobs, official Mi e. Widm As CIa an put ' ' N Y nlon expenenee direction of the taught me that the . worki ng fofce IS 0 veste d In man age . t abndge that ment. Th e u n ron ' 11 right, so Iong as shall . . th ere I' S no dlsen ness . " mrnatl on o r unfair . Walte r Lipp m an, in the sprin of 193 7, warn ed recalc men "that the itran t business. more they tra t r. WIS and the 10 be resisted CIa as public enem at all costs th ies e more Imp OSSIbl e th ey make Lewi s to develop it for M r. discipline . n d a ' . . . sens e of responSI I a I> th,s tIme, oy .'b' I' ty III the I however, many m ranks .... " ore employers were peacefully sign with the CIa, ed up In March 1 93 7, alter thre e month s 0 f secre t negot Myro n Taylor signe iations, US Steel' d a rec s oglll Ion agre emen . 't' . t with LeWIS, ""ny Ind ustrial ists ' typIfying the impressed with . CIa usetul ness. . I deW'am repo The New York rted that "tw0 tOO W orld. . manclers closely lI11e rcsts said ide ntI .l e d WIth T . Ihey had onI Morgan Y praIS e and ' I .cwis . . . appa admi ration for rently thoro ughl Mr Y III accord on the m ain Ihem e i l l " u stri al oroan that complet ization Was mevlt <0 , abl e" they h m t ' ed tha t othe ,,"ade rs may be r industrial us t as rec ep IIve ' , to UllJo nrzatlon of their plants as is
1 1 I / { ' / t ' <.; l i J l I'lv ' "
' ' . _ , , _ .

j ' N H I N I / , \ I l f I,"'J I N ,'\1\ 1 1 1 , l t

( hganizing

1 1 0 1 losl Oil employers. In the steel industry, the CIa's Steel Workers'

i\l vltl(\

Th,' ' " iti"a[ ( : 1 l 1 role i n quelling or preventing s itdowl1s was certainly

( ', Tavlor, c h i e f of Hig Stee L "

I 1 1 ' l\ l I ' N I ',

( II

I { I I ' I I .,\ I

lll anagcmcnt 's inability to control i ts employees unassisted. Charles ment awareness. Stability was desired and hence the employers "were

Committee

found

many

willing

customers,

due

to

rioneering steel families of Amcrica, was represcntative of this manage asking the SWOC to straighten out their labor difficulties," in Mary Yorse's words. The hloody "Little Steel" strike was clearly an exception to the

I r aines, producer of steel-making equipmen t and a member of one of the

quickening trend of the employer acceptance of unionism. Concerning the Little Steel strike, by the way, the cia could have been successful, and others agree that the killing of pickels and demonstrators would

to the use of the sitdown. Labor commentators Preis, Levinson, Lens,

at least could have avoided the score of dead, had it not been so opposed

have been ohviated by the use of the sitdown tactic. And more than one unarmed strikers-and the likelihood of their being sh ot-wa not s

writer has wondered if the whole "Memorial Day Massacre" march of planned by union leaders to produce u nion martyrs.

;:

Steel Company have repeatedly and publicly attested to the satisfactory character of their contractual relations with the unions," reported Robert contract is adequate protection against sitdowns, lie-downs, or any other kind of strike." Professor of labor relations Benjamin Selekman observed that "union Brooks. John L. Lewis was to the point when he said in 1937, "A CIa

employers were appreciative. For example: "Major officials of thc U . S .

A contract with SWOC was a safeguard against work actions, and

JL

leaders have sought to calm down the new members with their seemingly insatiable demands." Likewise, Carroll Dougherty judged that "The induction of large numbers of raw recruits untrained in unionism made guidance from the top necessary," adding, almost as an afterthought, "yet there was danger that such guidance would develop into permanent

dictatorsh ip." [t did not prove easy for the unions to impose discipline on the many were never uppermost in the minds of the union leaders; labor leaders them in union representation. "Only later does the union seek to instruct process . . .. Individual members must come to realize that they cannot take must appear to support worker demands, if they arc to initially interest the individual member in his responsibilities, and such education is a slow

new memh e rs. As we have seen, their "seemingly insatiable demands"

I I I ;I / l n ;

/1II/lIs'ri,,/ f)enwcmcy that unions neetl power anti responsibility to

,

: " , , 1 I { u l tt'llherg, two SWOC offic ia ls cantlitlly argue in 'IIII'

I l i sl i t u l iPIi hv wllich I lll' l I 1 1 i t l lJ t'nforces control of the wllrf... c rs, ( ;oldc l I

I ,' ..;dll:-.ivt" h:l I g;l i ll l l l1', ;11',1 " 1 1 1 s l a l us. o r t he closed shop, is I ht' p r i m a r v

I l i l t l 1 iiI" I I 1 1\\1 1 1

1 i , l l Id; , " wlull' .Iu h l l I ) l l l I l l l p _

f)ynllmic.\ or

" " , i l l i a i n d i scipl i ne . With the closed shop, the union acquires, i n effect,

.J

-'

"

>

o t h e r u n i on spokesmen, point out that the union is likely to make noise

COllie'S

IIII joll, he is dropped from his job. Golden and Ruttenberg, as so many

I II(' power to fire unruly members; if a member is dropped from the

.'
, ''

" " l i l it ga i n s the closed shop arrangement, and that management rapidly
a

O RGANIZED LABO R VS. "THE REVOLT AGAINST WO RK"

Serious commentators on the labor upheavals of the Dep ressio n years seem to agree that disturbances of all kinds, including the wave of sit down strikes of 1936 and 1937, wcre caused by the "speed-up" above all.' Dissatisfaction among production workers with their new CIa unions set in early, however, mainly because the unio n s made no efforts to challenge man agem ent s right to cstablish w hatever kind of work methods and working conditions they saw fit. The 1945 Trends in Collective Bargaining study noted that "by around 1 940" Ihe labor leader had joined the business leader as an object of "widespread cyn ici sm to the American employee .' Later in the 1940s C. Wr ight Mills, in his 'J)" New Men of Power: America's Labor l"eaders, described the union's role thusly: "the integration of union with plant means that the union takes over much of the company's personnel work, b ecoming the di scip line agent of thc rank-and-fiIe."; . In the mid-1950s, Daniel B e l l realized that unionization had not gIVen workers control over their job lives. Struck by the huge, spontaneous walk-out at River Rouge in July, 1949, over the sp eed of the Ford assembly line, he noted that "sometimes the con strai nts of work explode with geyser SUddenness.'" And as Bell's Work and Its Discontents (1956) bore witness that "the revolt against work is widespread and takes many forms,'" so had Walker and Guest's Harvard study, The Man on the Assembl Line (1953), testified to the resentment and resistance of the y men on the li ne. Similarly, and from a writer with much working class experience himself, was Harvey Swados' "The Myth of the Happy Worker," published in The Nation, August, 1957. Workers and the unions continued to be at odds over conditions of work during this period. In auto, for example, the 1955 contract between the United Auto Workers and General Motors did nothing to check the speed -up or facilitate the settlement of local shop grievances. Immedi ately after Walter Reuther made publ ic the t erms of the contract he'd just signed, over 70% of GM workers went on strike. An even larger percentage "wildcatted" after the signing of the 1958 agreement because
' " " "

"I'

shop,

co nt a i n e d and

to s ee the n e e d for a strong (closed shop) union, in the inte r est

work force. The price of cooperation is thus the close d

i t satisfies both union and management.

"pposed collective bargaining as guaranteed by the Wagner Act. It

By I 93R, according to Brooks, only a "small minority" of employers

'.

t",mmes ea.;,y to sec why. Union leaders were "anxious to demonstrate 1 0 I he management their responsibility, and their willingness to accept I I I(' burdcn of 'selling' the contract to the rankand-file and keeping the

di"jdcnts i n line," according to consultants Sayles and Straus.

As busin ess carne increasingly to the awareness of unions as indispens' ahk 10 t h e maintenance of a relatively stable and docile labor supply, the
ral lks of lab or exhibited more and more dissatisfaction with "their" new

organizations. Th e 1945

Trends in Collective Bargaining study note d

that

"hy around 1940" the labor leader had joined the business leader as an
I lh.ict of "widespread cynicism" to the American worker. Similarly,
Dougherty reported that workers were chafing under the

lack of

st ructural democracy in the unions: "There was evidence, by the end of ( to, were s t arti ng to feel the "closed system" nature of compulsory , , " ions. In discussing union-management cooperation in the steel
i " d ustry,

I ')40,

that the rank and file were growing restive under such conditions."

Workers, after some initial enthusiasm and hopefulness regarding the

CIa

offic ials Golden and Ruttenberg admitted, for example,

I h a t "to some workers" the cooperation only added up in practice to "a

vi{'julls speed-up,"

","rkers in the 1930s struggles. And Richard Lester seems to be quite WHect in concluding that "the industrial government jointly established" I'"ssesses "disciplinary arrangements advantageous to I I' ,"kring worker rebellions more and more difficult." management,

Thus we return to the issue uppermost i n the minds of industrial

the union had again refused to allyli l i ;Ihou l work i l sdt'. r sam rcason, the auto workers walkedl l golT t h e i rl l johs ag;lil l illhH()(li ll., I l closing every GM and a large number of Ford plant s " Paul Jacobs' 'flte State oJ the Union.\ Paul Saltan's 'I he Ih"""c/wnlt'ti Unionist, and B.J. Widick's The T riumph, and F ailures o Unionism in tl,,' f United .States were some of the book s written in the early 1960s by pro umon figures, usually former activists, who chanted with what they had only lately and partially discoveredwere disenrole of the unions. to be the A black worker, James Boggs, clarified the process in a sentence ' "Looking backwards, one will lind that side with the fight t, control productIOn, has gone the struggle side byrol the union and that; to cont the declinc has taken place simultancously on both front;.'" Wha displcased Boggs, however, was lauded by business. In the same year thatt hIS remarks were published, Fort rican capital's most authorita :,ivc magazine, featured as a coverune, Ameits May, 1963 issue Max Way's story in Labor Umons Are Worth the Price," But by the next year, the persistent dissa beginning to aSSume public prominence, and atisfaction of workers was Fort reflected the growing pressure for union action:June 1964 ly-linune article "Assemb e monoto ny, . a cause reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's Modem is reVIved as a bIg Issue In Detroit's 1964 negotiations,'" it1Imes,rted .being repo . In the middle-1 960s another osio ome was dramatically and VIolently makIng Itselt felt. The explphenns in non black ghettoes appeared the to most to have no connection with the almost underground tight over factory cond,t,ons. But many of the Watts, Detroit and other cities were participants in ,the insurrections in records .' The struggle for dignity in fully employed according to arrest work certainly the black workers, whose oppression was, one's all other areas, involvedthan as in greater that at non-black workers. Jessi Rees kers' n organizer desCfJb d the dIstrust his felloweblackse, a Steelworhim asunioagent of the, felt toward an unlon: To orgamze that black boy out there today you've got to prov e yourselt to hIm, because he don't believe nothing you say."lO Authority was resented, not color l' Turning to more direct forms an ntrolled and alien job world, we encounter theof opposition toriencuncoBill Watson, intriguing expe e of who spent 1968 In an auto plant near Detroit. Disti post-union praelIee, he wItnessed the systematic, planned effortsnctlythe workers in to substitute their Own production plans and methods torof e of manage thos ment. He described it as "a regular phenome brought out by the refusal at anagement and the UAW to listennon"workers' suggestio to as to modIfIcatIons and improvements in the product. "The contradins cI
l

dD

1 1 1 - t\lH I , ! l l - 1 { 1 ' 1 ' 1 1 ,'\ 1 I LI l i l S ( 1 \ p l a l i l l i l l l

' .

Ix I

deals lntoldcd ti n and assemhly and be tween assemhly and tnm, each w i l l i planned sahotage ... the result was stacks upon stacks of motors "waiting rcpair. . .it was almost impossible to move ... the entIre SIX-cylInder ""cmoly and inspection operation was moved away-where new workers w\'le h rou ght in to man it. In the most dramatic way, the necessIty of . laking the product out of the hands ,,1 laborers who insisted on planmng of 1 he product b ecame overwh Iffimg. 2 . The extent and coordination of the workers' own orgamzatl.On In the plant described by Watson was very advanced indeed, causing him. to wonder if it wasn't a glimpse of a new social form altogether, ansIng from the failure of unionism. Stanley Weir, writing at this time of similar if less highly developed phenomena, found that "in thousands of industrial establishments across the nation, workers have developed informal, underground unions," due to the deterioration or lack of improvement in the quality of their daily job lives ll . Until the 1970s-and very often still-the wages and bcnehts dImen sion of a work dispute, that part over which the union would become involved received almost all the attention. In 1965 Thoma, Brooks observed that the "apathy" of the union member stemmed from precisely this false emphasis: "... grievanees on matters apart from wages are either ignored or lost in the limbo of union bureaucracy."" A few years later, Dr. David Whitter, industrial consultant to G M, admitted, "That isn't all they want; it's all they can get."I' , . As the 1960s drew to a close, some of the more perceptIve busmess observers were about to discover this distinction and were soon forced by pressure from below to discuss it publicly. While the October, 1 969 Fortune stressed the preferred emphasis on wages as the Issue m RIchard Armstrong's "Labor 1970: Angry, AggreSSive, Acquisitive" (while admitting that tbe rank and fik was in revolt "against its own leadershIp, and in important ways against society itself"), the July, 1970 issue carried Judson Gooding's "Blue-Collar Blu s on the Assembly Line: Young auto workers find job disciplines harsh and uninspiring, and they vent theIr feeling through absenteeism, high turnover, shoddy work, and even sabotage. It's time for a new took at who's down on the line." With the 1970s there has at last begun to dawn the realization that on the most fundamental issue, control of the work process, the unions and the workers are very much in opposition to each other. A St. Louis Teamster commented that traditional labor practice has as a rule involved "giving up items involving workers' control over the job in
I ' c l wn o l l i l l sp e c o
I I ' J,.{S, (v{" l I t u a l ly hecamc- a source of angr.,.teJllPorary C
. . . ' _

: 1 1 1 d produci1l g Illlur q u a l i ty , heginning as t h e Sl,ull llf

1 HI ) I XX

( )H ( ;,'\ N I / I ' I J J .,\ IIC IH \' S " " ' 1 1 1 , 1, 1 ' \' 1 1 1 ' 1 i\ l i, \ J N \ 1 ' \-\i1 1 l ' 1\. "
h l l l t l l h : d i ( )1 \

i exchange fur cash and fringe hem' l i t s . " ', Ach.ll()wkdging t h e disciplillary

function of the union, he cluboralcJ on this t i lllc-hollored b a rga i l1i n g :

the organization of work itself, and summed up the issue thusly: "The

Bell wrote in 1 973 that the trade union movemcnt has never challenged

union i n return for the union's guarantee of no work s to ppages . " Danid

"Companies have been willing to give up large amounts of money to t h e

crucial point is that however much an improvementthere may have been in wage rates, pension conditions, supervision, and the like, the condi design and layout of work-are still outside the control of the workcr
himsclf."17

tions of work themselves-the control of pacing, the assignments, the

Although the position of the unions is usually ignored, since 1970 there has appeared a veritable delugc of articles and books on the impossible few national magazines: Barhara Garson's "The Hell With Work," 1972; and "Who Wants to Work?" in the March 26, 1973 Newsweek, to ignorc rebellion against impossible work roles, From the cove rs of a
,

' ten the tlniOll . dg,lIIlS \. work" has . . . reyOI t .. C worker " , " I li l" t ( )\ "the lS I pi I h l ll lU tl l l l 1 t , ( ' lun k at some t'e 'ltur cs of spccill ' . , ' hncl . .' " d lS r ll SS 'O " S, ' . lI comments made o u l " t I h l'. p underline the h I 'nl will hel ,I ct lO 1 l S I null I lnll l h l ou g .1 ' ' - ' ()n nature of this revolt. a unl , ' ' 'cessan Y antI e rl ll n g tlH II t: ': defiance ': ye e s, in .... ;:.b ' ,'(' C () \1 c .k , l emplo stn e 0f Posta , , , ' a WIldcat 'h l l !'. M a l.e " 1 970 l IOJunc!lons, t )lIn " d federa law, an I-S ' mployee ant' tnke ) Ie PUt r e than 200 CitIes , " I I l 1 i l l " o " ic rs , post offiecs in morc 109 " ry' dlsabl' ' u, s " ' I across the count ',t " ,'at the strike began' an effIgy 0f G ' New Yor , wh e at , 1 1 , , 1 \(lwns " In local there, was hung a iers union dent of th e union leaders I " h ll so n, preSi where the natio nal l Ol1 S mehng"on workers deCIded . 1 t 1IIflultU ' many locations, the e S ',,19 In called , , rats and cre and only th e were their work action, as part of handle buslOess mal , jor is su e s I" not d e d th e strike ' ma smen en ' fonal Guard nds f N aI worke rs and ousa
t ru s l r a t i t l 1 l , .
.

;uIII

li se

Harper's, June 1 972; U e magazine's "Bored On the Job: Industry f

Contends with Apathy and Anger on the Assembly Line," September 1 ,

i s definitely not confined to industrial workers, To cite just a few: Judson " Gooding's The Fraying White Collar" in Ihe Nation of September 13, Papers," in the December 27, 1971 Sail Francisco Chronicle,

Other articles have brought out the important fact that the disaffection

1971, Marshall Kilduffs "Getting Back at a Boss: The New Underground and Seashore and Barnowe's "Collar Color Doesn't Count," in the August, 1972 Psychology Today, focusing on the growing discontent via portraits of nine blue-collar workers, Ihe Job Revolution by Judson Gooding appeared in 1972, a management-oriented discussion of liberalizing work management in order to contain employee pressure, The Report of the Special Task Force to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare on the problem, titled Work in America, was published in 1973, Page 19 of the Terkel i n his Working: People TalkAbout What They Do All Day and How the cost of doing business," The scores of people interviewed by Studs study admits the major facts: "",absenteeism, wildcat strikes, turnover,
orkers, by Kenneth Lasson, was a representative book, In 1 9 7 1 The W

and industrial sabotage [have J become an increasingly significant part of

They Feel about What They Do (1974), reveal a depth to the work revolt

that is truly devastating, His book uncovers a nearly unanimous contempt for work and the fact that active resistance is fast replacing the quiet desperation silently suffered by most. From welders to editors to former executives, those questioned spoke up readily as to their feelings of

numbers of 0 1a off of large ec d to renew "t' which were the proJ po s tal worke rs tried 7 1 ' ew York work 1n July" made by the new lIlethods of contract propo sal :ace f a stormy strike actlVlty m the 0 I h e ir At the climax of a , nt Sombrotto ' 'd r presl ent" VlOcc werc chased fr?m Idte r carne and a lieutenant s, Sombrotto d umon g of 3,300 worker meetin escapi ng 200 enrage narrowIy 2.0 down 33rd Street ' halI membershIp, \ he . g out" the ed them of "sellin accus in 16 cIties memb ers, who 100 000 Teamsters , Of 1 970' contract ' ning to the Spnng Retur vert urn a national ' d M ay t0 o e 10 betwe en March an wildcatted The ensuin g violenc t Fitzsim mons, " 1BT Pres, d Clcveland signed March 23 by extensive, and in ast was West and West thoroughfares the Middle de of main city th,rty-day blocka cd no less than a 21 involv ' damages, in ' 'II ' uctIon workers 67 ml ,on dollars and of hard-h at constr large grou Pace College May 8, 1970, a On Street and invade d P 10 waII f not peace demonstrators assaulted others suspected 0 and , ' ; t:dents Itself to aa fact, was and City Hall , m war. The riot, in Vietna t n d umon rtlOg the prosecutlo suppo ' flrm executives a I ' construet' o n an d d,rected by from themsupported ker hostility away wor' I , I aod to chann e Ie , as pubI' 10 aII I'ke I'h leaders, n of th e incident w compreh cnsm ' Perhaps aI one 10 its merican D re a m selve s, nd its " G re a t A Y rk) ' producllon on (WNET, New televisi segment of that A 1 , e" progr am , a,red Machin underlay the aHair. at aparentlY ' gneva ces t ' ered the real Job at "commie uncov "w " very fv minutes , th eale d' 10 a ring of ent quCS!lomng rev Intellig outb u rst , as an outpou of their , not wholly the caus pace, th e punks " were ' fons , th e strain of the work g con " recor ded, about unsafe workn gripes moment, etc" was at any g,ve n they could be hred fact that

of th

\ f
'

"

:t ; h

The h e ; , , 1 of t he New York 11I l i ld i l lf', I I ;Idcs I I l 1 i o l l , P,' k r Bl'l' l I l l a l l , a l l t i l l i s l I l I ioll offi(,ial colleagu es were feted ' I I I h c W h i l e I iouse 0 1 1 May .'IJ fOI their pat riotism - -and t(Jr d ive rt ing thc wor k e rs ! a n d Brclllla n as l a i n
'

I J 1 ' rl.J l ' N I ', ( I I 1':'1 ' 1 ( 1\;\1

[ 1 \' 1 1 w i l I I l 1 iol1 l lll'sidl'llt's resisLllllT to pllas for action, gave

appointed Secretary o f Labor.

worker at a Detroit Chrysler plant pulled out an M - 1 carbine and killed plant incidents within weeks of the Johnson shooting spree, and that in May, 1 97 ] , a jury found Johnson innocent because of insanity after

In J uly, 1 970, on a Wednesday afternoon swing shift a hlack aulo

three supervisory personnel before he was subdued hy UAW committee men. It should be added that two others were shot dead in separate auto

< I I ivl'ls ravaged a Tcamsters' Union mecting hall in Manhattan i n I {'sp"nsc I I I their union officials' refusal to yield the floor to rank and file In January, 1 97 1 , the intcrns at San Francisco General Hospital struck, solely over hospital conditions and patient care. Eschewing any tics to I l l ganized labor, their negotiating practice was to vote publicly on each
point at issuc, with all interns present. The General Motors strike of 1970 discussed above in no way dealt " with the content of jobs. Knowing that it would face no challenge from Ihe UAW, especially, it was thought, so soon after a strike and its
,
,

" " " I illg. A l so ill New York, in the t(lllowing March thc Yellow Cab

hi m a puhlic

:-;pt'akers.

visiting and being shocked by what they considered the maddening conditions at Johnson's place of work." The ' sixty-seven day strike at General Motors by the United Auto Workers in the Fall of 1970 is a classic example of the anti-employee nature of the conventional strike, perfectly illustrative of the ritualized manipulation of the individual which i s repeated so often and which changes absolutely nothing about the nature of work.
A

cathartic effects, G M began in 1 9 7 1 a coordinated ellort at speeding up the making of cars, under the name General Motors Assembly Division, or GMAD. The showplace plant for this re-organization was the Vega works at Lordstown, Ohio, where the work-force was 85% white and the average age 27. With cars moving down the line almost twice as fast as in pre-GMAD days, workers resorted to various forms of on the job resistance to the terrific pace. GM accused them of sabotage and had to shut down the line several times. Some estimatcs set the number of deliberately disabled cars as high as 500,000 for the period of December, affirmative vote of Lordstown's Local 1 1 1 2. But a three-week strike failed to check the speed of thc linc, the union, as always, having no more desire than management to see workers effcctively challenging the control of production. The membership lost all confidence in the union; Gary Bryner, the 29-year-old president of Local 1 1 1 2 admitted: "Thcy'rc ]O angry with thc union; when I go through the plant I get catcalls." In the GMAD plant at Norwood, Ohio, a strike like that at Lordstown broke out in April and lasted until September, 1971. The 174 days 3! constituted the longest walkout in GM history The Norwood workcrs had voted 98% in favor of striking in the previous February, but the UA W had forced the two locals to go out separately, first Lordstown, and later Norwood, thus isolating them and protecting the GMAD program. Actually, the anti-worker efforts of the UAW go even further back, to Septembcr of 1971, when the Norwood Local 674 was put in receivership, or taken over, by the central lcadership when members had tricd to confront GMAD ovcr the termination of their seniority rights. I n the summer of 1973, three wildcat strikes involving Chrysler facilities in Detroit took place in Jess than a month. Concerning the successful one-day wildcat at the Jefferson assembly plant, UAW vice president
, ,

why union and management agreed on the necessity of a strike. The U A W saw that a walk-out would serve as "an escape valve for the frustrations of workers bitter about what they consider intolerahle working conditions" and a long strike would "wear down the expectations do understand the need for strikes to ease intra-union pressures are many company bargainers . . . . They are aware that union leaders may need such strikes to get contracts ratified and get re-elected."" Or, as William Serrin succinctly put it: " A strike, by putting the workers on the street, rolls the steam out of them-it reduces their demands and thus brings agreement anel ratification; it also solidifies the authority of the union hierarchy."" Thus, the strike was called. The first order of the negotiating business was the dropping of all job condition demands, which were only raised
i n the first place as a public relations gesture to the membership. With

Wall Street Journal article of October 29,

1970 discussed the reasons

,.

of members." The Journal went on to point out that, "among those who

i : I

. '

1 9 7 1 to March, 1972, when a strike was finally called following a 97%

this understood, the discussions and pUblicity centered around wages and early retirement benefits exclusively, and the charade played itself out to
i t s pre-ordained end. "The company granted each demand [UAW presi

dent] Woodcock had made, demands he could have had in September."26 I lardly surprising, then, that GM loaned the union $23 million per month during the strike ." As Serrin conceded, the company and the union are
llot

even adversaries, much less enemies.'"

I II Novemher, 1 970, the fuel deliverers of New York City, exasperated

PI,'

I ) l,c , \ N l / I J I
_

" 'k M'll ;\VCIlU!; W'! I K()lI t was dte ct. lvdy supp ressed wht'li , a crowd o f "UAW loca l unl'c)n 0 1:1"Icers and commItte e m e n, armed wi t ll work C l s" alld thl',
. ., . ndseb ,tll
> , .

" " , I )o u)..'' Fns t o r s" I H I ( ' 1 Jryslcr had made _

1 . \ 1 11 ) 1 ' \ S .
. \ ,

"

11 1 1

'I

I, , V c l / I '

. I Il ,\ c(t' .- I I I l l. s take I II " af'lxasilll' II,l' h

' "

/\t

\ I N ' ; 1 \\/( 11.: .... "

1 ', I I , t\l I N I , t l l

work 'crs to return.'m

. brought th C slgmng of a new three-year contr:lct . . nmg appeared fresh between Ford and the UAW. B ut wIth the . ' e 'd ence that workers intend 0 IOVO ve themselves 1 n deClSlons conccrn-

. SI'g VI t ' I 't mg th elr work lives ' "Des I e the agreement, about 7,700 workers left . ' ' their jobs at seven Ford p ants wh en the strike deadrme was reachcd . . so me because they were unh appy WIth the secrecy surrounding the ne
October, 1973
.

. ' bats and clulls gathere d outsIde of the p I ant

"

gates to 'urge' t1w

r. ,

Hell strik 11 calle Ll a Worker s' u11io per ( '(llll lllll nical i(l1l eed 3 1 to 32 " , ' a rs. 1 1 1 l ' was that "we n poin t at issue (lnly alkout, U I lci111'. that Ihe After a six-day w
i l ll'. ; 1 III I I . f{ v i ' Tl SyS l l' l 1 I

"wr I h i l wa.l iune as\" ulTn ul a .\0':';, e, puhlicly

1 1 1 , ' 1'.:\1

a l i I lO

'" .
'. " ..
"

eph Bcirne put yees to n p resi dent Jos ring all emplo ( T I I 1 ."'" as ullio Bel! policy requi and re main i(lin the union

it.

a new y gran ted, as was ition of e mplo I Ill' I % was ing as a cond in good stand s,

. .... ili

'.

agreement.""

since the mid-1960s: I' stnkes during 196R, 1969, and : 971 was extremely high, and that ony he years 1 937, 1944-45 and 1952, )3 showed comparable totals ' M are 111terestmg IS thc growing tendency )l1 racts negotiated for them. In those of strikers to reject the l b contracts in which the Fe ; e e lalIon and Conciliation Service took IStICS a hand (the only ones f'or whIeh t h ere are tat" . ) , contract rejections S rose from 8.7% of the cases in 1964 t lO% 111 1965, to 1 1 % in 1966, to an amazing 14.2% in 1967' leveIi.111g off S111ce .then to about 12%0 annually." And the ratIo of wark stoppages occurnng during the period ' when a contract was in effect ha h anged, WhICh IS especially significant when it is remcmbered that s cotracts specifically forbid strikes. Bureau of Labor Statistics fi u e reveal that whIle about one-third of all stoppages in 1968 occurre ; un der eXlstmg aoreeme nt , " an alarming numb cr, ( almost two-fifths of them) ' 1972 took place while contracts . wcre effect. [n 1973 Aronowltz provided a good . summary: "The the history of canf Igration of strikes sinec 1967 is unprecedented .
. American wage-earners SIdney Lens found that the numb r
J 4

let us try to arrive at . sam e un derstandmg of the overall te mper af

With these brief remarks on a very s mall number of actions by workers'

.\.. f

t f. '

'i

WI

Amencan workers The number of stnkes as a who I e, as well as rank. ' an d f"'1e rCJectlons of propos e d umon settlements WI 'th employers, and 1 ' . . . _ 'ld cat actions has exceeded that ' any s md ar pe riod in the modern l era ",' And as Sennett and Cobb made clear, the period . . ' has involved "the most turbul ent rejectIon of orgamze d umon authority .
_ .

III

,,]{j

J7

111

'"

s,

III

among young workcrs. "" . The 1970 G M strike was mentioned as an example of the usefulness of . a sham struggle in safely relea I g en up employee resentment . The ': .te o-July, 1971 is another example natIOn-wide telephone worker and the effects of the rising I'de a antI-u1110n hostility can also be see
1 s

WIIt111g 111 1971,

statu "unio n-shop" the standard CWA was gr anted pline agent the role as a disci llIent. But while fulfillment of its return to step for the ers refus ed to r nece ssary " rathe telephone work A thou san ds of e, defiance of CW 01 th e work forc out for weeks in cases staying some Iheir jobs, in large st 15 w as in llrde rs. e free ze on Augu ay wage -pric the 90-d independence, The calling of unr ulines s and ate of worker e to the clim ed econo mic part a respons . Asid e from relat e workers ed because defi ant phon rols were adopt typified by the the ensuing cont the free ze and workers. Sham aining the considerations, help in restr government play their unions needed loyee s refuse to the ness if emp their effective lose their own . strikes clearly le, on strike on -price aining, for examp ed roles rem been callin g wage assign AFL- CIO, had a head of the August 15 had George Meany, weeks prior to he was and in the " Though freeze sinee J President N ixon . the meetings with etely unfair to of very private number ze as " compl decry the free for an call publicly compelled to he did not even big business," ce "a bonanza to anent wage-pri worker" and gly for a perm com e out stron tax; he did ver. excess profits ce on it, howe d for governand labor's pla control board erstood the nee leaders und ed that " A r that business article proclaim 11 see ms clea , a Fortune . In Septe mber b reaking hope for ment assistance rds is the best ce review boa have been m of wage-pri and employer s syste al unions m that individu nsation for entu partial comp e cost-push mom try to make . "" As workers wage s and erless to resist anding better pow by dem nomic omy on thc job auton obviouS eco thei r lack of ns, they create roved concessio M. Louis, in only app benefits, the perio d. Arthur ials an inflationary cially in on labor offic pressure , espe heat had been lized that the shore ne, rea of long November' s Forl1l us rank and file" of the "reb cllio President Nixon time . Speaking ong before for som e ers, he said, "L and steelwork were calling for men, miners, labor leade rs fre eze, many wage -price announced his the hook."" themselves off the fall, a if only to get stabilization, predicted that by uary d the labor edito rial of Jan occur an A Fortu lte es" might well Meany of wildcat strik resign." In fact, national "wave ol board w ould tripartite contr members of the

96941

held

the

(1972)

anlilanor wage pol icies of t h e ""anI. Though h l /.s i m mons or thl' Teamstcrs stayed on, and the controls continued. through a total of liHlr "Phases" until carly 1974, the credibility of the controls program was crippled, and its influence waned rapidly. Though the program was brought to a premature end, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave its ceiling on wage increases much of the credit for the fact that the numnel' of strikes in 1972 was the smallest in five years." During "Phase One" of the controls, the 90-day freeze, David Deitch wrote that "the new capitalism requires a strong, centralized trade union movement with which to nargain." He made explicit exactly what kind of "strength" would bc needed: "The labor bureaucracy must ultimately silence the rank and file if i t wants to join i n the tripartite planning, in the same sense that the wildcat strike cannot be tolerated."" [ n this area, too, members of the business community have shown an understanding of the critical role of the unions. 1n May 1 970, within hours of tbe plane crash that claimed UAW chief Walter Reuther, there was publicly expressed corporate desire for a replacement who could continue to effectively contain the workers. "J t's taken a strong man to keep the situation under control," Virgil Boyd, Chrysler vice-chairman, told the New York 1lmes. " 1 hope that whoever his successor is can exert great internal discipline."" Likewise, Fortune bewailed the absence of a strong union i n the coalfields, in a 1971 article subtitled, "The nation's fuel supply, as well as the industry's prosperity, depends on a union that has lost control of its members."" Despite the overall failure of the wage control program, the govern ment has been helping the unions in several other ways. Since 1970, for example, it has worked to reinforce the conventional strike-again, due to its important safety-valve function. In June 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an employer could obtain an injunction to force employees back to work when a labor agreement contains a no-strike pledge and an arbitration clause. "The 1 970 decision astonished m any observers of the labor relations scene,"so directly reversing a 1 962 decision of the Couft, which ruled that such walkouts were merely labor disputes and not illegal. Also in 1 970, during the four-month General Electric strike, Schenectady, New York, officials "pleaded with nonunion workers to refrain from crossing picket lines on the grounds that such action might endanger the peace."" A photo of the strike scene i n Fortune was captioned, "Keeping workers out-workers who were trying to cross picket lines and get to their jobs-became the curious task of

d lle

; 1 I 1 d Wllt l t l n ld. q u i l l i lt" l ' ;lv I tl l;u d ! l l u d l r : l l l i n i l l t h e V<.':II I ll a l l 1 11 ; 1 1 .

precisely I" I h l' r"n and li , , " 's I "' "sal I I I slIpporl

I h l' plainly

l ' I I M I , N l .... t ll ' 1 { 1 1 , 1 1 ,,\ r

'., ht"lIcd;ulv pOlln'lIll"n. '.

, ." I . , 1 '1Il1(' rl I h e spectacle of union strikes. Four California Teamsters . W("l l' onkrcd reinstated with five years' back pay as lea unanimous

,,\

SllprClll' ( 'OUr!

de cis io n i n 1 ')72 indicatcu how far tatc power will

,,'

( ;.,vernmcnt provides positive as well as negative support to approved

walkouts, too. An 1 8-month study hy the Wharton School of Finance and ( . ,mmerce found that welfare benefits, unemployment compensation,

'' ''1 J1l'IllC Courl ru led (November 7, 1 972) that it is unfair labor practice I , ' I all employer to firc a worker solcly for taking part in a strike.""

.
,

assumed a significant share of the cost of prolonged work stoppagcs."" But in some areas, unions would rather not even risk official strikes. The United Steelworkers of American-which allows only union officials 10 vote on contract ratifications, by the way-agreed with the major steel companies in March, 1973, that only negotiations and arbitration would he used to resolvc differences. The Stcelworkers' contract approved In April, 1974, declared that the no-strike policy would be i n effect until at least 1980." A few days before, in March, a federal court threw out a SUIt filed by rank and file steelworkers, ruling in sum that the union needn't he democratic in reaching its agreements with management.S6 David Deitch, quoted above, said that the stability of the system rcquired a centralized union structure. The process of centralization has been a fact and its acceleration has followed the increasing militancy of wage-earners since the middle-1960s. A June, 1971, article i n the federal y Monthl Lahor Review discussed the big increase in umon mergers over the preceding three years.57 In a speech made on July 5, 1973, Longshoremen's president Harry Bridges called for the formation of "one big national labor movement or fedcration."" The significance of this centralization movement is that it places the individual evcn further from a position of possible influence over the union hierarchy-at a time when slhe i s more and more likely to be obliged to join a union as a condition of employment. The situation is heginning to resemble in some ways the practice in National Socialist Germany, of requiring the membcrship of all workers In "one big, national labor movement or federation," the Lahor Front. In the San Francisco Bay area, for example in 1969, "A rare-and probahly unique-agreement that will require all the cmployees of a public agency to join a union or pay it the equivalent of union dues was reported in Oakland by the East Bay Regional Park Distric!."" And in the same area this process was upheld in 1973: "A city can require its employces to pay the equivalent of initiation fees and dues to a union to keep their jobs,

;\Ild food stamps to strikers mean that "the American taxpayer has

h s directio n is certainly the puhlic employees, according the Department Labor. Their When Everyone Organizes" article implied the inevitahilily of (ola l unionization. Though a discussion of the absence of democracy in unions is outside the scope of this essay, it is important to emphasize the lack of control possessed by the rank and file. In 1961 Joel Seidman commented on the subjection of the typical union memhership: "It is hard to read union constitutions without being struck by the many provisions dealing with the obligations and the disciplining of members, as against the relatively small number of sections concerned with members' rights within the organization."" Two excellent offerings on the suhject written in the ] 970s are Autocracy and Insurgency in Organized I.abor by Burton Hail" and "Apathy and Other Axioms: Expelling the Union Dissenter from History," by H. W. Benson." Relatively unthreatened by memberships, the unions have entered into evcr-closer relations with government and business. A Times-Post Service story of April, 1969, disclosed a three-day meeting between AFL-CIO leadership and top Nixon administration officials, shrouded in secrecy at the exclusive Greenbriar spa. "Big labor and big government have quietly arranged an intriguing tryst this week in the mountains of West Virginia.. Jor a private meeting involving at least half a dozen cabinet members."'" Similarly, a surprising New York Times article appearing on the last day of ] 972 is worth quoting for the institutionalizing of government-labor ties it augurs: "President Nixon has offered to put a labor union representative at a high level in every federal government department, a well-informed White House official has disclosed. The offer, said to be unparalleled in labor history, was made to union members on the National Productivity Commission, including George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, and Frank E. Fitzsimmons, president of the IBT, at a White House meeting last week.. .labor sources said that they understood the proposal to include an offer to place union men at the assistant secretary level in all relevant government agencies ... should the President's offer be taken up, it would mark a signal turning point in the traditional relations between labor and government. "" In Oregon, the activities of the Associated Oregon Industries, representing big business and the Oregon AFL-CIO, by the early '70s reflected a close working relationship between labor and management on practically everything. Joint lobbying efforts, against consumer and environmentalist proposals especially, and other larms of cooperation led

arhilralnr Rohcrt I ':. Burns has ruled ill a prccl'dl' n tsl' t t i l l g ('ast' illvolvillg city of I tayward."!) T i nol l i m i ted to (0 of "Whal I lappells

I II"

I 'll

the Fall each other's co n enti ons iln Bladine, l Phi the AO Seplemher 2, the preSldnt \(8)!, AFL-CIO president Ed " I 1 '1 / 1 . ber on Scptem ' .: , l d d l 't. . . . I t Il AF L-C1 0' 0 many oth .ates, the A In California,was inlabor and er stmess lo W l l a lt" l1 spo ke h bus y much th. c .s"amc, ith and defeat efforts to ' patt ern has bce n ver 1972 ck conservatlOn;ts infor example." 'rki ng together to atta g 74 political campaln spcndcd;ellows'From Labor, Business Own Strange . the Als o revealIng pag the May ]5 , Wall Street inican Resort" arn. eIe on the front the e 0fding stockholders in the )",n lea ltney.. Amon . .I,," rna l by Jonathon KW plantation 1:n blic resort andary-treasurerare Dm1l of .O OO acr e Punta Cana, ret r:J and sec ( ;corge Meany and Laene Kirklae , 'Safaren't Un ion official, as well as ers I h e AFL-CIO, and K Ith TerP membcrs of I nc., which employs kading officers 01 Scatra1l1 L1I1CS, Terpe's union. the str cas of mounting businessNot seen for what they areand coo ikingtion es e largely bee n over. ' era hav Iahor-government .colaluslon .on to secPthat the worker is more and more . ' po looked. But those dal.siu ork life beyon d his control, also rcalIze that actively intolerant ot a nlyw nece ssary. In early 197 1 Personnel, the atIO even closer cooperm'enean M anagemcnt Association, said that "it is , . !' th e A magaz1l1e. .agc of convem. ence between the two [unions and . perhaps tIme for a maff!preservatlon f oder;'69 inting out however, that Po managementl"68for theo mistru t thc un ' : many members "tend , trust, as we a seen' is the historical refusal mIs The reason. for this WI'th anagements control 0f work. The AFL-ClO r." of unions to 1I1terfere an lederat!()L't, . d;:'1' tted labor's lack of interest gazine, The Americ arllc\e ma 197 issuc entitled "Work involvement in a d the t;i:iUalion 4position on the matter and is Here to Stay, Alas. An n Gra so D n of the School of Business kso is why, . in trn, C. Jacthern Me h0;;;t iversity and former chairman stratlon at Sou Admim 4 for union-management a a of the Price CommISSIOn, c111e . e f BrI;in197 Week contains. his call for e . coII boratIon. The January 2Issu 1976 "with the actual Slgnmg 0f a .IcatIon on IY 4 a symbolic ded /er etween labor and business, n documcnt-DeclaratIonof proddp. enddneee"b ' "inseparably linked in the houc;IZo sas of course fallen due to per ProductlVlty---{)utputand nrest A hasic indication of the continuing worker dlssallsfactron t higher productivity, such ai rcvolt against wo:t ared d'te:'tens forworkers efforts . A special Steel as the WIdely pu . IClze Buszness eek for September9, 1972, highlighted issue on prodUCUVlty
. . .. . ll spe ll k cl. s. I I I ;111 rxd l:l ugc pi eve
Sl l . . I I .

( ) 11

1 1 1("
w,

re

'

1.

66

, < " i l lrlll

I

IS

111.

IS

'

"

111

111 C u 0

ss

'

"

"

. , , , t, , , , , ,

I '

0 ,;" " '.\

\ , _

1 1 11'

"1 "

' 1 11 , 1

I \I . ;\ I I'I''' J

W t l H I\.

is the employee resistance to working overtime, even during economic prompted a Ford executive i n April, 1974 to say, "We're mystitied by the recession. The refusal of thousands of Ford workers to work overtime

baL'ked dr ive s of this kind .'11 Closdy rdated til low productivity, it seems.

l ilt, I H Dhlclll. PPi l l t i l1g u u t also t h e t lpptlsitioll workers had for union

N EW YO RK, NEW YORK

the Camaraderie is Much I,ooling this Time; Seeing the City / ll.mppcar. " - Wall Street Journal headline, July 1 5, 1977
"l1rnid All

experience in light of the general economic situation."71 Also during April, the Labor Department reported that "the productivity of American workers took its biggest drop on record as output slumped i n all sectors of the economy during the first quarter."n I n 1935 the N R A issued the Henderson Report, which counseled that "unless something is done soon, they [the workers 1 intend to take things unions of the CIO finally appeared and stabilized relations. I n the 1 970s into their own hands."" Something was done: the hierarchical, national

Tht: Journal went on to quote a cop on what he saw, as the great I lastille Day break-out unfolded: "People are going wild in the borough

" f Brooklyn. They are looting stores by the carload." Another cop added

later: "Stores were ripped open. Others have been leveled. After they looted, they burned." At about 9:30 p.m. on July 13 the power went out in New York for 24 hours. During that period the complete impotencc of the state i n our most "advanced" urban space could hardly have been made more transparent. As soon as the lights went out, cheers and shouts and loud music announced the liberation of huge sections of the city. The looting and hurning commenced immediately, with whole families joining in the "carnival spirit." I n the University Heights section of the Bronx, a Pontiac dealer lost the 50 new cars in his showroom. In many areas, tow trucks and other vehicles were used to tear away the metal gates from

i t may be that a limited form of worker participation i n management decisions will be required to prevent employees from "taking things into predicted in early 1972 that some form of participation would be necessary, under union-management control, of course." As Arnold out in the late 1 9605, ceding some power t o workers can b e an excellent means of increasing their subjection, if it succeeds i n giving them a sense o f involvement." But i t remains doubtful that token participation will i n any way assuage the worker's alienation. More likely, i t will underline i t and m ake even clearer the true nature of the union-management relationship, which will still obtain. It may be more probable that traditional union institutions, such as the paid, professional stratum of offici als and representatives, monopoly of m embership guaranteed by management, and t h e labor contract itself will b e increasingly re-examined'6 as workers continue to strive to take their work lives into their own hands. Tannenbaum of the Institute for Social Research in Michigan pointed their own hands." Irving Bluestone, head of the UAW's GM department,

stores. Many multi-story furniture businesses were completely emptied by neighborhood residents.

New York Times editorial of July 16 somewhat angrily waved aside the
the side of property. "Are you kidding?" the

Despite emergency alerts for the state troopers, FBI and National Guard, there was really nothing authority could do, and they knew it. A

protests of those who wondered why there was almost no intervention on

Times snorted, pomtmg out

that such provocation would only have meant that the entire city would still be engulfed in riots, adding that the National Guard is a "bunch of kids" who wouldn't have had The plundering was completely multi-racial, with white, black and Hispanic businesses cleaned out and destroyed throughout major parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Not a single "racial incident" was reported during the uprising, while newspaper pictures and TV news bore witness to the variously-colored faces emerging from the merchants' windows and celebrating in the streets. Similarly, looting, vandalism, and attacks on police were not confined to the City proper;
a

chance.

, " ,

I I

\\

"

" ' 1'. ,

' ''<; '

\\

"

' ' ' 1\

Rioting broke out in the Bronx House of Detention where prisoners started fires, seized dormitories, and almost escaped by ramming thmugh a wall with a steel bed. Concerning the public, thc Bronx District Attorney fumed, "It's lawlessness. It's almost anarchy." Officer Gary Parlefsky, of the 30th Precinct in Harlem, said that he and other cops came under fire from guns, bottles and rocks. "We were scared to death ... but worse than that, a blue uniform didn't mean a thing. They couldn't understand why we were arresting them," he continued. At a large store at 1 10th Street and Eighth Avenue, the doors were smashed open and dozens of people carried off appliances. A woman in her middle 50s walked into the store and said laughingly: "Shopping with no money required!" Attesting to the atmosphere of a ' "collective celebration," as one worried columnist put it, a distribution ccnter was spontaneously organized at a Brooklyn intersection, with piles of looted goods on display for the taking. This was shown briefly on an independent New York station, WPIX-TV, but not mentioned in the major newspapers. The transformation of commodities into free merchandise was only aided by the coming of daylight, as the festivity and music continued. Mayor Beame, at a noon (July 15) press conference, spokc of thc "night of terror," only to be mocked heartily by the continuing liberation underway throughout New York as he spoke, Much, of course, was made of the huge contrast between the events of July, 1977 and the relatively placid, law-abiding New York blackout of November, 1965, One can only mention the obvious fact that the dominant values are now everywhere i n shreds. The "social cohesion" of class society is evaporating; New York is no isolated example.

the same t h i n gs happened, a l b,' i t Oil a smaller scale.

M o u ll t VcrnOIl, YOllkers a lld vV h i l l' P l a i lls wefe a n H l Ilg s u h u rhs i l l wilirh

I ' l l rvl l

of..-.\ I I ) " l l s l 1 ,

I e)(},! spoke o r t i l l' "carnival l i k e ITVl'i or looting" ill Detroit, , l l L d I ' H lkss()! I ': dw a n l Banfic.ld commented that "N egroes and whites " ' " ' 1 ' 1 , ' ' ' i l l l iIe str,'ds (of Dd ro it) and looted amicably side by side .... " till' lIIai" difference is probably one of scale and scope-that in New \ , " k v i r t u a l ly all areas, even the suburbs, took the offensive and did so I " " " I he moment the lights went out. Over $ 1 billion was lost in the I ", ,"sands of stores looted and burned, while the cops were paralyzed. I l l i l ing the last New York rioting, the "Martin Luther King" days of I 'I(,, 32 cops were injured; in one day in July, 1977, 418 cops were I [l j l l r<:d. The left-all of it-has spoken only of the high unemployment, the I '0liee brutality; has spoken of the people of New York only as objects, 'lilt! pathetic ones at that! The gleaming achievements of the ' ' ' I mediated/un-ideologized have all pigs scared shitless.

r- I ',

e l l , 1 , 1 1 1 1',,\1

Of course, there has been a progressive decay in recent times of restraint, hierarchy, and other enforced virtues; it hasn't happened all at once, Thus, in the 1 960s, John Leggett (in his Class, Race and Lahor) was surprised to learn upon examining the arrest records of those in the Detroit and Newark insurrections, that a great many of the participants were fully employed, This time, of the 176 people indicted as of August 8 in Brooklyn (1 ,004 were arrested in the borough), 48 percent were regularly employed. (The same article in the August 9th San Francisco rhronicle where these figures appeared also pointed out that only "six grocery stores were looted while 39 furniture stores, 20 drug stores and 1 7 jewelry stores and clothing slores were looted.") And there are other similarities to New York, naturally; Life magazine

' I ' I I E REFUSAL OF TECHNOLOGY

( II collrse everybody had 10 be given a personal code! How eL" could x"!,('fIznzent do right by its citizens, keep track of the desires, tastes, I'I"IJ('r(l1ces. purchases, commitments and above all location of a ,,,"Iinenljul of mobile, f individuals? ree So don 'I d'miss Ihe compuler as a new kind of fetters. 'Ihink of il mtionally, as the most liberating device ever invented, the only tool capable of' serving the multif arious needs of modern man. 'Ihink of ii, for a change, as him. John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
Upon the utter destruction of wage-labor and the commodity, a new life will be situated and redefined, by the moment, in countless, unimagined forms. Launched by the abolition of every trace of authority and signified hy the delights and surprises of an infinity of gift-creations, freciy, spontaneously expressed by everyone. Concepts like "economy," "exchange," "production" will have no meaning. (What is worth preserving from this lunatic order?) Pcrhaps mobile celebrations will replace our sense of cities, maybe even language will be obsolete. But there are those who see revolutionary transformation in rather a different light; for them the Brunner quote is, tragically, not much of a burlesque. Consider-if your stomach is strong-the following, from a 1980 ultra leftist flycr, typical of the high-tech approach to the revolutionary question: The development of computer technologies, now a threat to our job security, could he used to develop a network of global communications. In this way, our needs can be directly coordinated with the available labor-power and raw materials. Leaving asidc the pro-wage-labor concern for our job security, we find human activity treated (electronically) as so much "available labor power." Is this the language of desire? Could freedom, love and play nourish along such lines? This computerized prescription is filled by taking "control of the global

be defin e d with some prcc is io n as the global social rcprodu('(ioll 0,1 wor" . Looking at the foundations of advanced tcchnolugy-- which " u r u l t ra l eft ists in their instrumentalism, alw ays wish to ignu r c- even the mo sl visionary of inte nt io ns would founder. High-tech as a vehicle, far from ai d i ng a qualitative regeneration, de n i es the po ss ibil i ty of visionary development. The "great height made possible" by comp u ters and the like i s, alas, on ly an expression of th e perverse logic of hi storical class rule. Technology has not developed neutrally as if in the right hands it co u l d benignly t rans form reality into something importantly different. The means and methods of social reprOlluction are necessarily in keeping with the stability of a social order. The factory sys tem expressed the need for a disciplined proletariat; more modern modes progressively extend this "civilizing" process via specialized, us ual ly centralized, technologies. The individual is everywhere reduced by the in st rument s of capitalism, as surely as by its wage-labor/commodity esscnce. The purveyors of " altern ative tech nology, it shou l d be noted, promote a different illusion. This ill usi o n lies in i de o logizin g fragments of p o s s ibl y acceptable technology while ignoring that which will shape all o f th e future, class struggles . Simple techniques (sec Fukuoka, Moll ison , etc.) for growi n g a huge amount of food in a few hour s per year, for instance, arc fraught with extremely significant implications; they present, in fact, some of the practical possibilities of living life exquisitely-as in a garden. But t h ey can only become real if li nk ed to the gigantic, necessary d e structio n of a world wbich i m pe des every utopian project. Cioran asks, "If 'progress' i s so great an evi l , how is i t that we do nothing to free ourselves from it without fu rther delay?" In fac t this "freeing" is well un derway, as seen in the massive "turn-off' felt toward its cont in u ance General Dynamics vice president Veliotis gave vent to a bitter ruling class frustration on the subject (summer 1980): 1, for one, woul d be delighted if our vocati o nal schools would bring us g rad u a t e s who, if not trained, were simply trainable-who could und ers tand basic manufactur ing processes, who could do shop math, who could use standard tools and gauges . More fundamental yet i s a growing refusal to p arti cipat e in education at all, given its direct linkage to "progress." The drop-out rate in NYC high schools is now over 50 percen t The d rop-out rate for all California high schools has risen from 1 2 p ercen t in 1970 to 22 p e rc ent in 1 980,
" " , , " , . .

social reprodudiulI l1elwnrk . . . . " Capil:tlisJl1. i t IllTd h a n l ly he ad( l t- d ,

Ti ll ' I { H ' I I'." 1 I I' ' 1 "1 '( l i N I n ( lI , Y

t I I - I\\I " ! 1 ' , 1 ' "

1< 1 ' 1 1 1 ' , , \ 1

.' \

r;1I1

1 , I I t'S,

llca l inn is al so al'l I' l l I t i ll" T he Irl a l i o l ls h ip hct we ell tcc hno logy alld e d h a lIsc l l l l , I I lhe hit ler pn lVid es. in its pro gre ssio n, suc " ,,," , , t h a i atioll of kllo wk dgr illio , ,"v iou s, ana logy to the forme r. Th e fragment . ode rn ulll vn sri v itu tes t he m .,q lar ale , art ific iall y co ns l ructe d fields co nst lou s diV ISio n 01 lah n!'. I h " a " d soc ial int e ll ige nc e in ge neral i n its rid icu re, in a s lll u c h ,IS t ana log to tech nology itse lf; rather, it is mo is till: perfec en IIld l dll al y work i n tan dem toward the ever-s unk !Jo th clearl : , 1 11\ . ed, fr actron ahze d scale of mtor m a l o n do m in at e d by a contnv . s us ot Kh ayat l s all uSl lll md i g n o r an ce thu s eng end ered and e nfo rce d rem , is said about our society excep t wll al II I S , to the un iver sity : "Everything o m ing i n fo rm a l il l I I ver nm ent thi nk er Wi llis Harman writes of the c Go h mie roc om pu ler s" ," base d on "re vo lut ion izin g everyday life wit society e ll as a fo re wa r n r n g 01 h o rr ib l e his tor y surfaces on the se words, as w A ben evo len t and othe rwISe : future as c as t by all sim ila r teehno-junlUes, ou r co urse the real ter ram , . 1 F inallv we n:t urn to the per sonal, wh ich is of Mr. Sammler's /'/111/(, ( r ev lu t ionary axis. A charact e r i n Be ll ow s the . wonders: on li fe ? Wh at if [we i Wl'l' l" And wh at i s co mmo n " about the "comm wil h matter? Fin dio g its to do with "common life" wh at Einstein did ene rge tics , un coveri ng i ts rad i ance. re wh en we are all I h a l Th e r ad i a nce and the e n e rge tics wil l be the zed sep ara tio n- and CVl'1 Y " Ei n stein : wh en every prod uct ivist sta ndardi by u s forever. dia tio n ("eoord ina tt: d or not) is d es troye d o t her me ltmg to det on ate . hi n g in the past and pre sen t is wa itin g, wa Eve ryt

::

"

'

"

"

"

"

ANTI-WORK AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL

The debacle of the air controllers' strike and the growing difficulties unions are having in attracting new members (and holding new ones decertitication elections havc increased for the last 1 0 years)' are two phenomena that could be used to depict American workers as quitc tamed overall and adjusted to their lot. But such a picture of conserva tive stasis would be quite unfaithful to the reality of the work culture, which is now so un-tamed as to be evoking unprecedented attention and countermeasures. Before tackling the subject of anti-work, a few words on the status of

porations and 1heir business might be in order. Bradshaw and Vogel's Cor Critics sees enterprise today as "faced by uncertainty and hostility on
every hand." In fact, this fairly typical book finds that "latent mistrust has grown to the point at which lack of confidence in business's motives has become the overwhelming popular response to the role of the large corporation in the United States.'" prominent students, as determined by Who 's Who Among American High An early '81 survey of 24,000

School Students, showed a strong anti-business sentiment; less than 20 percent of the 24,000 agrce, for example, with the proposition that most

companies charge fair prices.' Not surprisingly, then, are Peter Berger's conclusions about current attitudes. His "New Attack on the Legitimacy of Business" is summed up, in part, thusly: "When people gcnuinely believe i n the 'rightness' of certain social arrangements, those arrange ments arc experienced as proper and worthy of support-that is, as legitimate . . .American business once enjoyed this kind of implicit social charter. It does not today.'" Within business, one begins to sec the spread o f work refusal. Nation '5
a

Business strikes what has become

familiar chord in its introduction to

drudgery, off-hours are spent in a miasma of dullness."s Similar i s Datamation's "Burnout: Victims and Avoidances," because this disabJi ng

Dr. H.J. Frcudenbcrger's "How to Survive Burn-Out": "For many husiness people, life has lost its meaning. Work has become mere

trauma "secms to be running rampant" among data processors ' Veninga

. " IS

whIch may be very significant.

becom es ill by contac t with machi ne oil, the count less cmplo yees who seem to be accident-prone in the job setting . We are just begin ning to see some awareness o f this sort of pheno meno n, the consequences of
.

Th re is other relate d evidence of aversion to work, inclu ding this reactIon In Its hteral sense, namel y a growth of illness es such as job relate d allerglcs and at least a significant part of thc advan cing indust rial aCCIdent rate Slllce thc early '60s. Come s to mind the mach i nist who

Technology Interaction on Employee Work Satisfaction ," a n d Behling and Holcombe's "Deali ng with Employee Stress.'" Studies in Occupation al Stress, a series initiat ed in 1978 by Cooper and Kasl, dates the forma l study of tbis facet of organized misery ,

was condensed by the December ( 'IX ( IInu/,.,.\, / liM/'st. To contin ue in this bibliographic vein, it is worth noting that the sharp . lllcrease In scholarly article s such as Kahn' s "Work, Stress , and I ndividual Well- Being ," Abde l-Hali m's "Effe cts of Role Stress-Job Design

alld Spanlh-y's 'Ilw 'Vork

A N I J W i tH .... :\ NJ ) 1 1 1 1 S l l{ l ll d oi

1 1 1 1\ ( '/ lN I I.: , ) 1

.''In',,s ( 'O/ldition: 1 /1 1 1 1 ' 10 (

'

(III{' 11 ';1/, ./0" lJunlOlilJ

""(' d i l l i l l g produclivity rate a n d Ihe erosion of qual ity in indu:-itry have

calJsl'd grave cOl1ct.:rn in this country" and that ""industry i pouring more

" I t lIlt'Y t h an ever into training and development," while "the productivity
as

rate continues to fall." Further, "attitudes among workers themselves," at the root of the problem. Unlike many confused mainstream

including, most basically, an "erosion of obedience to authority," are seen

analyses of the situation---or the typical leftist denial of it as either a media chimera or an invention of the always all-powerful corporations productivity is the breakdown of the authority-obedience means of control"; this trend, moreover, "which is one manifestation of a broader social disorder...will continue indefinitely without corrective action," they say,l11 Librarian R.S. Byrne gives a useful testimonial to the subject in her our two professors can at least realize that "Basic to the decline in

<

'ii ..

'i : ,

compendious "Sources on Productivity," which lists some of the huge

"

outpouring of articles, reports, books, newsletters, etc., from a variety o f Institute, the American Productivity Center, the American Center for the Quality of Work Life, and the Project on Technology, Work and publication without being barraged by articles on the topic written from every possible perspectivc. " The reason for the outpouring is of course available to her: "U.S. productivity growth has declined continuously in the past 15 years and the trend appears to be worsening."" The August 1981 Personnel Administrator, devoted entirely to the topic, Character, to name a few. As Byrne notes, "One can scarcely pick up any

of antIpathy to work and a topic that has called forth a huge amount of recenr. attentIon from the specialists of wage-labor. Any number of remed,es arc hawked; Frank Kuzmits' offering, "No Fault: A New Strategy for Absenteeism,'" for example. Deitsch and DiU's "Getting Absent Workers Back on the Job: The Case of General Motors," puts is of increasing concern to management and organized labor alike."IO There are other v.:ell-known eleme nts of the anti-work syndr ome. The . Iflab,hty of some f ,rms to get a shift working on time is a seriou s proble m; this is why Nucor Corp. offers a 4 perce nt pay hike for each ton the annual cost to GM at $ 1 billion plus, and observes that "Absenteeism

And, of coursc, there is absenteeism, probably the most com mon sign

willing helpers of business, including those of the Work in America

declares that "Today poor productivity is the United States' number one ,, industrial problem 16 Administrative Management reasons, in George Crosby's "Getting Back to Basics on Productivity," that no progress can occur "until all individuals begin viewing productivity as their own , personal responsibility,, l7 "How Deadly Is the Productivity Disease?" asks Stanley Henrici rccently in the I1arvard Business Review.18 An endless stream, virtually an obsession.

further.13

confront the "staggering" employee theft pheno menon , observing that it has become "more wides pread and professional in recen t years. ,,12 Turnover (cons idere d as a function of the quit rate and not due to layoffs, of course), very high since the early 1 970s has inche d up ' All of these aspects come together to produce the much publicized

protes t, occasioning a great prolifcration of employee alcoh olism and drug abuse programs by cvery sort of compa ny." Tersin e and Russe ll

01 steel produ ced above a target figure, up to a 100 percent pay bonus for those who show up as scheduled and work the whole shift. The amou nt of drinki ng and drug-taking on the job is anoth er form of

drawn the Pope's attention. John Paul II, in his Jaborem Exercens

Dissatisfaction with work and the 'consequences of this have even

(Through W ork) encyclical of September 1981, examines the idea of 1V0rk

and the tasks of modern management. On a more prosaic level, one discovers that growing employee alienation has forced a search for new forms of work organization 19 The December 1981 Nation '.I Business has located a new consensus in favor of "more worker involvement in

productIVIty, or output per hour worked, crisis. Blake and Moulton provide somc useful points; they recognize, for example, that the

decision-making."zo James O'Toole's Making America Work" emphasizes

the changed work culture with its low motivation and prescribes giving

In a seri es of Fortune articles appearing in Jun e, July and Aug ust 198 1, the ncw system of industrial organization is discussed in som e dep th. "Shocked by faltering producti vity," according to For/une , America's corporate managers have mov ed almost overnight toward the worker involvement app roach (after long ignoring the considerabl e Northern European xpe rien ce), whic h "challenges a system of authority and accountabIlI t at has served most of histo ry."" With a rising hopeful ness, bIg capItal s leadmg mag azme announces that "Compa nies which have had time to weigh the consequences of participativ . e man age men t arc fIndIng that It mfo rms the enti re corporate culture." Em ployees "are no longer Just workers, they become the lowest level of man age men t,"" It says, echomg such recent books as Myers' Every Employe e a Manager. 26 . The bott0 hne of such pro grams, which also go by the . nam e "quality of work hfe, IS ne er lost SIgh t of. G.P. Strippoli, a plant manager of the TR W Corp., proVIdes the guid ing prin cipl e: "The workers know that if

dules and decide their own salar ies. The productivity crisis has clea rly led to the inauguration of worker participation i n a burgeoning number of co-determination arra : ngem ents smce the mId -70s . The May 1 1 , 1981 Business Week ann ounced the arrival of a new day in U.S . man agcm ent with its Cover story and spccial report, "The New Industria l Relations." Proclaiming the "almost unnoticed" asce ndancy of a "fun damentally differcnt way of managing peo ple, " it claimed that the "authoritarian" approach of the "old, crude workplace ethos" is definite ly passing, aided "im measura bly" by the growmg collaboratIons of the trade unions. "With the adversarial approach outm ode d, the tren d is toward morc worker invo lvem ent i n decisions on t h e shop floo r-and morc job satisfact ion tied to , productivity., 22 ' Shortly afte r this analysis, Bus iness Week's "A Try at Steel-M ill Har mon y" reco unte d the labo r-management efforts bein g mad e betw een the U.S : steel indu stry and the United Steelworkers "cre ate a cooperative labor ehmate where It matters mos t: between workers and bos ses on the mill floor." The arrangements , which are esse ntially produc tion teams mad e up of sup ervisors, local union officials, and workers, wer e provided tor In 1980 contracts WIth the nine major stcel compan ies, but not Imp lem ente d untIl after earl y 1 98 1 union elections bec ause of the unpopularity of the idea amo ng many steelworkers. "Th e participation tcam concept. . .was deVIsed as a mca ns of improving stee l's sluggish productivity growth rate,"" the obvious reason for a clim ate of disfavor in the mill s.

wor kers t h e free dom to desi gn t h e i r OWII johs , set t111'i r OWII wo r k . sche

countIy club . "'" I n effect in about 100 auto manufactUrIng and assembly plants, co managemc t replaces thc traditional, failed ways of ushing productivity. Auto with virtually nothing to lose, has Jumped tor the effort to get work rs to help run the factories. "As far as I ' m concerned, it' : the anI way to operatc the business-there isn't another way In today's world, committeemen and stewards arc kcy co-leaders WIth man ge drivc to "gain higher product quality and lower absentee s m .

there will he. a lil.:finitc no. I'm not here to give away the store or rlln a

I k l ' l t 1 H' I"l" s

IHl

1 '.I I MI N I ....

11- R I ' I 1 1 .... .-\1

!II

pay hack. lo t h e cOllipany i l l thl' s u l u t i u n I h lY arrive at,

;:

says GM President F. James McDonald.28 United Auto Workers

n;t n the

SImIlar

is the campaign for workcr involvement in the AT &T empIre, forahzed in the 1980 contract with the Communication Workers of America. The fight to bolster output per hour is as much the unions' as it is managements'; anti-work feelings are equally responSIble tor the declIne of the bodyguards of capital as thcy are for the prodUCtIVIty ensIS proper. productivity impasse the message that the time has come for a
]I

AFL-CIO Secrctary-Treasurer T.R. Donahue has found III

the enral
.

lImIted

partnership-a marriage of convcniene' ' ith business.30 Fortune ses . . . formal collaboration "interesting pOSSIbIlItIes for reversmg the dcehne of organized labor.

shop-tloor worker participatio and the rest of the QWL movement IS "taking root i n everyday life."L Along the same lInes, the October 1981

Business Week s "Quality of Work Life: Catching On" observes that

33

'

. IllVOIvement programs.

issue of Productivity notes that half of 500 firms surveyed now have such . . . William Ouchi's 1 981 contribution to the industnal relatIons hterature,

Theory Z, cites recent research, such as that of Harvard's James M edoff

and MIT's Kathryn Abraham, to point out unionized companies in thc United States have over non-umon ones.

the

productIVIty edge t h

And David Lewin's "Collective Bargaining and the QualIty at Work LIte" argues for a further union presence in the QWL movement, based on organized labor's past ability to recogmze thc slIpport the ultimate authority of the workplace " : . It is clear that unions hold the high ground III a growIllg number of

C?nstramts

of work and

these programs, and there seems to be a trend toward co-management at ever hicrher levels. Douglas Frazer, UAW president, sits on the board of directo s at Chrysler-a situation likely to spread to the rest of auto . and the Teamsters union appears close to putting its representatIve on the board at Pan-American Airways. Joint labor-management efforts to boost productivity in construction have produced about a dozen

?,l

Together), Denver's Union Jack, and PEP (Planning Economic Progress)

like Columbus' MOST (Management and Organized Labor Si riving in Beaumont, Texas. Rusiness Horizons editorialized in 1 981 about "the newly established lndustrial Board with such luminaries as Larry Shaprin

important local collahorativL: setups involving the building trade unions,

ilia liti l"s l'' t ( ) rn llH: r its ills lnl lllc . . - l i l h . . , I H I l i I l -yilJ r . I ; I" ; I 1 1 1 '. I O I l , . 1 I te r " IJer elll I y \V . to co " is " . ' . p.tS I its ',hility 'tW OI k. ul pro!;.'rams t I1L . i !W\ ";llI Sl' t Il ' S gla t ctical failur e or govcrn ' > " ,ncct thC pra . Its cuthac.::ks also ft.:.

I I I l\ 1 1 I I I

"

of DuPont and Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO" as a "mild portent" of the growing formal collaboration " The board, a reincarnation of the Labor Management Board that expired in 1978, is chaired by Kirkland and thc chairman of Exxon, Clifton C. Garvin Jr. The defeat in 1 979 of the Labor Law Reform Act, which would have

1 I 1 i 1 l l a )..',l, .ius t as n programs , lm' nl social pacificati( . k gr l of Mcanwhilc, the relusa e e un emP <"XI rcmcly hig h teenag

..

II I, I I I 1',,\ 1

,' I \

is the One final example \ Ol continues to climb "':e which ness that a very big g: wi g aware IS the obJ e ,,,,, ,,n g all groupS and rk, by the

greatly increased government support to unionization, was seen by many crisis, perhaps especially in light of generous union conccssions to the

as almost catastrophic given labor's organizing failures. But the economic

setting for a "revitalization" of the national order including a real institutionalization of labor's social potential to contain thc mounting anti-work challenge." There is already much pointing to such a possibility, beyond even the

auto, airlines, rubber, trucking and othcr industries, may provide the

huge worker participation-QWL movement with its vital union compo

institutions (with German "co-determination" by unions and management as its model)." Business Week of June 30, 1 980, a special issue on "The Reindustrialization of America," proclaimed that "nothing short of a new

spoke in very glowing terms aboul the development of neo-corporatist

nent. The 1978 Trilateral Commission on comparative industrial relations

social contract" between business, labor and government, and "swecping Thus, when the AFL-CIO's Kirkland called in late 1981 for a tripartite

wo k esp eeiallY low-skill a rejectlon 0f w) r ' teenagers ("\c'. me nt is sim ply deserihe the habits of are the reports th at V<lu ng.41 An d leo ion . ab sen t eetardiness a chromc . terIZe d bY habt ual the o do wo rk as charac wh , et . Which recalls eus . Isors and 1 'tomers lsrespect for superv es on , d . ism ew Per spectIv k H er b erg in his "N larger picture drawn by FredC flc . world . ation-all over the bl em IS wo k motiv ,,42 . to Work": "th e pro k the Will g to wor . r f people not wantm ching an It's simply a matte . ms now to be approa l-work situation see The gravity of the ant tism dales back to Tripar lO I r uctural counter :re mass unprecedented str t the addition of a e e ohdge 10 pc . World War 1, to Co al hypoth esi s. e erge as a nation u a IS Jus t beg1Omn t participation sch em tid e of nOI1. ccts with a political chon mters IS urse, th nascent. rca on for Of co. . ssive non-registrati . . ng voter turnout, ma 0 parhclpatlOn (e .., dechm, . withdrawaI, , . r culture of aSl( ) . The large wmg tax highly the draft rolls, gro s integration effort ke thi wor , Wl the state as from from re of capital's ore effective exposu pro duce . on matic, and may even proble ght ene d dep end enc e 1 t orgamzafo n's hei ion of life, given tha oroanizat . o . . hon. its victim's partlClpa
.

r: 0 :n

c; ;

;n

changes in basic institutions" could stem the country's industrial decline." National Reindustrialization Board, a concept first specifically advanced

are well in place. One of the main underlying arguments by Rohatyn and programs in its partnership with management.

by investment banker Felix Rohatyn, the recent theoretical prccedents others is that labor will need the state to help enforce its productivity Thus would spreading "worker involvement" be utilized, but shepherd

ed hy thc most powerful political arrangcments. Wilber and Jameson's

up. A good example is Germany's efforts to bring workers into a direct role in decision-making."" ideology of the Reagan government, but it actually would be quite in line the goal of renewed social control minus spending outlays. A change of this sort might appear to be too directly counter to the

"Ways must be found to revitalize mediating institutions from the bottom

"Hedonism and Quietism" puts the mattcr in general yet historical terms

with

P art 3

THE PROMISE OF THE '80s

of "midnight of the century," an arrival at the point of complete

demoralization and unrelieved sadness. What follows is one attempt to gauge the obviously unhappy landscape of capital's American rule and see whether there indeed exists no prospect for the ending of our captivity. To begin with the obvious, the public misery could hardly be less of a secret ; the evidence is legion. The March 1979 Ladies Home Journal featured "Get a Good Night's Sleep," in which epidemic insomnia is discussed. Psychology Today for April '79 is devoted to the spreading depression, asking rhetorically, "Is this the Age of Depression? " A month later, the UN's International Labor Organization reported that "mental illness affects more human lives than any other disabling condition," adding that the number of people suffering such disorders is "growing dramatically."
all Street Journal described In terms of the young, the May 17, 1979 W authority's concern over the dimensions of teen-age alcohol abuse and cited the raising of the legal drinking age in an increasing number of

For many, the

1970s were-and the 1980s bid fair to continue-a kind

states. Matthew Wald's "Alarm Over Teenage Drinking" echoed the point in the New York Times for August 16, 1979. U.S. News and World Report in the same week talked about drug use among the very young: "Increasingly, grade school pupils are being drawn into the ranks of narcotics users-often paying for their habits by taking part in crimes." Robert Press, in the August 17, 1979 Christian Science Monitor bemoaned the general ineffectiveness of parents' organizing efforts aimed at curtailing rising drug use. A two year study of Texas counties by Dr. Kenneth Nyberg, published in September 1979, indicates a universality to this problem, namely that kids' drinking and drug use among urban and rural areas is tending to occur at similarly high levels. Another noticeable aspect of the phenomenon was its reflection in the many dramas and "Afternoon Special" type television programs on young alcoholics, during the winter of

1979-80.

Of course, these references by no means exhaust the ways by which youth show the pain of living through this world. Nor do the young all

.' I S make it. S"oll Spell"er's "Childhood's End," ill May I 'J79 I1arper\ lells

I J I ;.M I N I :-' t ) l '

R I ' l ' I IS,\1

. I ()

us that the rate of childhood suicide is increasing radically. The scope of Spencer's concern is reflected in the subtitle: " A hopeless future inclines the young toward death." Nor should we neglect to include a staggering social facl dealing with the olher end of the age spectrum, before turning our survey toward the adult majority. Senility, according to several doctors i nterviewed i n Newsweek for Novembcr 5, 1979, is affecting millions, at far earlier ages and in a recent upsurge that qualifies i t as epidemic. The mountain of tranquilizers consumed i n the U.S. each day i s not a new situation, but by the late '70s the pressures against humans became more intense and identifiable. In general, this may be characterized by the Harvard Medical School Health Leuer of October 1979: " ... the concept of stress-a term that has become the banner designation for our human condition . . . ." 1 978 saw an unprecedented appearance of full-page ads i n national magazines for such products as "STRESSTABS," a "High Potency Stress Formula Vitamin." I n the first half of April 1979, the W all Street Journal ran a four-part, front-page series o n stress and its mounting, and seemingly inescapable toll on health and sanity. On May series of thcir own, called "STRESS: Is i t killing you?" The Novembcr

In late February 1 919 United Auto Workers Vice President Pat Greathouse told a Se nate Subcommittee that occupatIonal alcoholism th e widening use of drugs and alcohol, a growing menace to b u sines s . and

alone may be draining the economy by $25 billion per year. He spoke 01 industry, which has motivat ed recovery progmms being conducted Jomtly

by union and management. "More Help tor Emotionally Troubled

Employ ees " Business Week, M arch 12, 1979, and an August 13, 1 979 W all

Street Journal article by Rogcr Ricklef which deSCribed the boom

ID

all

inclusive counselling services being set up for firms' cmployees, are but
two storie s on the new measures needed to try to cope with the massive, physically-registered alienation.

but that what many social psychologists observe as a very high degr ee of with the social system. u.s. News and World Report, February 26, 1 979, suppress cd ragc pr evalent is surfacing in tcrms of consciou s disaffection

It is clear that we not only feel a high er level of everyday unhappmess,

registercd alarm in ils.. . "'Tbe Doubting American'-A Growing B re ed ."

of "faith i n lead c rs institutions and th e U.S. future," gOIng on to state valu es-and are skeptical about the qu al i ty of their lives .... " A case i n

The article, like perhaps hundreds of others recently, noted the dechne th at "many Ameri ans doubt the strength and even the validity of old

I ABC-TV's "World News Tonight" began a highly advertised four-part

1 979 American Journal of Nursing's cover story was Smith and Selyc's
Quite naturally, strcss and wage-labor emerges as a pressing topi c just

Three Mile Island nu clear plant ; as the Manchester Guardian correctly

as sayed: ". . .in the country at large, people were overwhelmingly certain

point was the public attitude concerning the spring 1 979 d isast e r at the

"The Trauma of Stress and How to Combat It." at this time. The tirst volume in a series of Studies in Occupational Stress relations from 1 978 and continue without let-up, through New

that the authorities we re lying."

s ubject, too, seem to fairly burst forth i n the literature of industrial

app eare d in 1978, Cooper and Payne's Work and Stress. Articles on the

confidence in ten key institutions, and depicting a general decline trom one was the object of "a great deal of confidence" from more than 25%

The May 1979 Gallup Opinion Index featured a poll m.eas u nng
.

men' in Occupational Stress, published by UCLA's Center for Quality of Working Life i n early 1980. That work is becoming viscerally unbearable is an idea rct1ected i n the popular press, as well as i n academic writings. Marcia Kramer's "Assembly-line hysteria-a fact, not fiction" recorded the incidence of stress-releasing mass psychogenic illness often occurring in monotonous work scenes, i n the May 3 1 , 1 979 Chicago Sun-Times. Nadine Brozan's "Stress at Work: The Effects o n Health," surveyed changing values and reactions toward work i n the New York Times of June 1 4 , 1 979. Another topical piece was seen i n the July 1 3 San Chronicle, in which Joan Chatfield-Taylor's "Job Burnout" described its timely subject as "a profound and lasting dread of work ... mental and physical depletion ranging from fatigue t o full-fledged nervous breakdown."

Develop

the already low degrees of trust these institutions attracted in 1 973. O nly of the public, and the three most distrusted-organizcd labor, congress, an d big business-could muster this rating from an average of ?ly 12%. May 15 provide d a specific example when the Los An8,des 1lmes an . nounced that the "Los Angeles Police Department has suf[ered a senous decline in public support .... " according to their own 7lmes poll. And May

21 unveiled a Gallup Poll which disclosed that "despIte the hest efforts of the Carter administration energy exp erts and the oil comp ani e s, " only 14% in the nation b el ieve that a real gasoline shortage existed while 77% felt it to be artificial, ccntrived by the oil companies. The poll results had been finding their practical expres sion as well, as eVIdenced
record levels of gas and oil consu mption had been reached despite all the
"energy crisis" appeals for r estr aint .

Francisco

by the dismay voiced on March 11 hy Energy Secretary Schlesinger:

Carter's popularity was assessed by an ABC News-Harris Poll; his job performance ratmg was 73% negatIve, lower than Nixon received as he

to saCrifIce; the essay appeared in the June 16, 1979 issue of "IV Guid,' and was a full-page reprint in the New York Times of June 14 Donald . Winks' "Speaking out-with a forkcd tongue" was an editorial in the july 2 Business Week, which reminded that "rising mistrust of big government" IS matched by strong public mistrust of business. On July 3 President

Iy by public distrust of government and its statements. "A Summ er of Discontent" by Walter Annenberg decried the American unwillingness

Coinciding with long lines at the gas rumps ill l int), 'noll" s J U IIl' I H issue included "Hoarding Days" in which the inciden ce of hoardif lg o i l H' I goods-and the likeliho od of its incrcase in the '80s- is caused prifleip al

' 1 ' 1 1 1 ' 1 1( )I'vI ISI ( I I

1 1 1 1 ' 'HI I.';

1 ' 1 1 ' r-. 1 I ' 1'I 1 ,

resl 'l ) 1 1 .... ( " .'>

( JI'

1 ':' 1 ' 1 1 1'.:\ ] .

.

is risi ng, " a typical S H ( S I I I Vt'y as "a war nin g tha t workt:r Llisc ont cnt 1 1 1 1 1 1 \I;t lin II. et Journal not ed den tally, however, the next day's Jun e 5 Wall Stre
. .

l and j lJ73 Thl ' l Ji I lll' I 'n7 wor ker s and tho st' lIlH 'rie l! ill I )hl) . this thir d natl lHla l of J U I I I " 4. I 'tTl) J1IlSill(,SS H'l'l 'k d is c us s e d t in: resu lts
(,,,i nci

wid er significance. It was . fl l i l her inte rpretation of the pol l data of even ham Stines, had recently drawn r< p"r ted that thc survcy's director, Gra cating that the dlss atrs .H, n l i nn to the "life satisfaction" responses, indi even greater tha n I . I < ' I i " n in this area (e.g. overall health, happiness) was see less separahon I I I lerm s of job discontent, and the workers ten dcd to . The appearance of 1 " ' l w0e n work and non-work desires for satisfaction which should proVIde all :t 1,<, suggests that life-and society-is a totality
1 ( , ,her t ag ger 's A

Little White Lie: Tnstitutional Division of Labor and 14e

left office in disgrace, the lowest for a president since modern polling began. There followed the exhaustively reported mid-July '79 crisis of the Carter regime, induding the Camp David "domestic summ it" from which talk of the mounting sense of "malaise" abroad in the land issued . His

Calling for dISCIplInary cfforts, he warned that a social order does not regenerate itself if the young gener ation is not socialized. A New York Times/CBS News Poll published November 1 2 found that two thirds in the U . S . kel that the nation is in worse shape than it was five ycars ago, . whIle hold .!l on to the belief that their pcrsonal futures look reasonably good. SIgnrflcantly, the young are most optimistic about their personal futu re. A survey by U S. News & World Report for the week of November 1 2 reported extremely similar findings. From late '78 through mid-'79 the conclusions of a major study by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan attracted much pubitc attention. Primarily seen as a study of job satisfaction "a marked and significant decline" in specific satisfactions was registe ed between

outlook was not seen to have changed, though the Iran situation provided a tcmporary deflection. Edward A. Wynn , writing in the October 4 Wall Street Journal ("Why Do We Expect Too Much ?"), carped that "utopin" cxpectations lead to cynicism and disengagement.

to destroy the social and political fabric of America." Allegedly, the source for much of Carter's remarks in this vein was an April 23 memo from his pollstcr Patrick Caddell, dealin g with a growing cYfll clsm and pessim ism in society. As 1979 drew to a close the general

spmt of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meanm g of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our natIon. The erosion of our confidence in the future is thrcatening

nationally televised July 15 speech included the following on the "crisis of confidence": "It is a crisis that strikcs at the very heart and soul and

..,

ent is more consCIOusly '" "lil ld fulfillment. That an authentic life is abs spheres of living. ' ''wi ous , as individuals dem and more from all to indicate the gen cra l ( :oncerning work, a few examples should suffice 's "Education and Job ""' ge of disaffection. Wright and Ha mil ton February 1 979 SocialoX)' Att itud es Among Blu c Collar Workers," in the "r Work and Occupations, demonstrated that "education and job er words, contrary to '.ali sfaetion are not significantly related." In oth ed who are discontentd. 'Iereotypes, it is not only the more highly educat cliche image of doclhty, Nei ther, apparently, do the "seniors" fit the Ind cpe ndc nt Matun , :!ccording to the 1 979 pub lication by Action for er Wo rker" Edward Harnson s ,,"t itle d How Do You Motivate the Old Ihe PersonnelAdminis" Discipline and the Professional Employee" from of management to 1mtor for March '79 announced the increasing nee d "rather rare" instnce s discipline professional workers, as opp ose d to the World Rep t depIcted in the pas t. Th e March 26, 197 9 U.S. News &: Workers proJectmg labor's "Big Crusade of the '80s: Mo re Rights for t by workers agamst the "mountain of complaints and litigation brough and charges brought to Ihe ir bos ses-court suits, grievances, arbitrations cle on food service l federal agencie s." An April Wall Streel Journa arti over and quo ted a job s, "Burger Blu es," reported extremely high turn bos ses: "W e have all cou nte r em ploye c in Texas as to his loyalty to his ney.... " Anxiety and lear ned how to successfully steal cnough mo r, was disc usse d in the resentment at AT&T, the nation's largest employe Similarly, U.s. News &: May 28 and June 25 issu es of Business Week. whIch World Report for July 30 and September 3, 1 979 features artrcles "Why 'Success' Isn 't further elucidate the decline of the work ethic. In ployers will have to What 11 Use d To Be" (July 30) , it counsels that "em g and motivating re-examine the traditional techniques for managin

t;

Wi ll l'rs htTilll.'iC pl'upk havl' a dil"krl'lI! way 0 1 1 ( I( l i-. i l l', til lift- . " Th,' Sep t e mher J " New Brccd of Workns" was a ('Ilvn slory i l l which 1 11(' ca rd in a l front, consider the role of the lie-detector in industrial relations. '17" , Moving from the general to more specific cases on the "anli-work"

, , \

adjcctives were

"restiess" and " demanding."

" I' the White ( '"lIar Crook;" the "typical offendr turns out to he

" ('XI'"rt "II r II1I' II IVI,[, n i llll:," was revealingly cntitlcli "Surrrising I'rofile

""Heone just like the normal citizen . . . . " Another aspect of the anti-work trend is the most obvious one: the ,'urrent and emerging ways by which the work as much as possible. Late J anuary 1979 provided a most extreme rase of rage i n the person of Chicago snowplow driver Thomas Blair.
,

Federationist (AFL-CIO) discussed the fact of hundreds of thousands of

variety of devices, in its January '79 "The Intimidation of Job Tests." Thl' piece cited the claim of Dr. Alan Strand, Industrial psychologist and

"labor

force" breaks away from

psychological screenings and polygraph examinations using an increasing

president of Chicago's Personnel Security Corporation, that 1 00% of drug store employees steal with 80% stealing "significantly." Benson and Krois' "The Polygraph in Employment: Some Unresolved Issues,"

screaming "I hate my job! I want to see my kids!" On a more widespread level are the findings of Caroline Bird's The Two Pay-Check Marriage, that men are losing their ambition and seek jobs which allow them more time with their families. Although inflation has forced a situation i n which there are now more couplcs in which both parties work than those in which the woman stays home, Bird has observed "a dcfinite dccline i n the work ethic, with mcn coming i n late if they don't like what is happening or even quitting." Another book in 1979 takes this theme further; Breaktime: Living Without Work in a Nine

Aftcr smashing some forty cars, killing one person, Blair was arrested

Personnel Journal,

September '79, also examined this new development.

Booming employee theft and falsifi e d job applications have drastically

increased lie detector usage, calling for some controls or standards, in their view. I n the same month, the Washington Post 's John A . Jenkins discussed the controversial voice stress analyzers, wireless lie detectors used more and more by businesses "concerned about the honesty of their employees. Lightly"
"

or

telling the boss to go to hell

In Lawrence Stressin's "Employees Don't Take Anti-Theft Moves

(New

ork Times, March 4, 1 979), resistance based largely o n Y

to Five World, by Bernard Lefkowitz, saw "average peoplc" dropping out in protest "against a work culture whose values they no longer trust." Breaktime de scribed the phenomenon as constituting a "quiet revolution
taking place in the mainstream of American culture." "Time Wasting at Work" in the March 5, 1 979 u.s. News

right-to-privaey grounds is seen, with the larger point that greater April 16 Forbes cover story "The Game Where Everybody Loses But Nobody Gains," by Richard Phalon, finds big business bewailing the staggering figures i nvolved : theft has surpassed the $40 billion a year mark, increasing at a compound rate of 1 5 % annually. More rational than its title, the article goes o n to credit thc Department of surveillance of workers has done little to stem "inventory drain." The

Report is representative of the recent outpouring of attention on "time thef!." I n mid-April, Robert Half of the placement service Philadelphia Inc. reported that the deliberate misuse and waste of on-the-job time was
costing the economy $80 billion a year. A further facet of work avoidance is the growth of part-timc employ ment. Barney Olmsted's "Job Sharing: an emerging workstyle" (Interna

&

orld W

with the observation that "Businessmen mistakenly assume that most account for the m ajor portion of inventory shrinkages." Commenting o n the "horrendous" statistics involved, the piece notes also that "the security industry. . .is now grossing $23 billion a year." This last datum is

Commerce

tional Labour Review, May-June '79) explored the "innovative U.S. work
pattern" of two people splitting one full-time job. In the same issue of the ILR, Olive Robinson found that the number and proportion of part time workers in Europe has been rising for twenty years. "Big Market for Part-Time Help" by Lloyd Watson (San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, significance to this trend can be grasped in studies like Miller and 1 979) points up the same tendency i n the U.S. What gives added

inventory losses are caused by shoplifters when actually employees

clearly reflected i n the full-page and even two-page ads by such firms as GTE ("Industrial Security") and INA Corporation ("Coping with White Collar Crime") appearing i n business periodicals from mid-1979 on. While the technical ingenuity of "computer criminals" is often mildly surprising to us, what is a real jolt to busincss is the great diversity of people robbing them. Associated Press writer Charles Chamberlain's "Spy TV turns Up Surprises in Watching Industrial Plants" (June 24, 1 979) U.S.

Terborg's "Job attitudes and Full-Time Employees" (Journal of Applied

Psychology, Fall '79), whieh found that "Part-time employees were less satisfied with work, benefits, and the job in general." The plight of the mass occupation of secretary is a reminder that antipathy to work has its
more specific targets. "Help Wanted: a shortage of secretaries" Clime, September 3, 1 979) took note of national aversion to the job, this severe

orld Report interview with News & W

Professor W.S. Albrecht,

undcr-s pply u c pitc a 6% uncmpl()ymcnt ra t e anti Ihe lll(}st (}Jl{'lIings li.r . secretanal pos1tlons of all the 300 Department of Lahor c1assifica tiolls. Thc 20th Century Fox movie Nine to Iive, which appeared ill early I ')XO, rcmforced the ,mage of such corporate work as degrading and emrty. The four-day week, touted in the mid-'70s, produced no improveme nt . m worker attitude Or performance, beyond a sometimcs seen initial welcome. Talk of thc thrce-day week, logically or illogically, has emerged from thlS fmlurc. It 1S the scheduling of work time that has most recently, occpied perhaps greater attention in management's h pes to quell the antr-work syndrome. "Flextime ," or the choosing by employees of wh,ch ho rs m the day they will devote to wage-labor, has not, however, ch1eved results much dissimilar to working fewer days in the week. S,m1larly, 1t leads to an extension of its basic idea-in this case to that of "flex-life" ! "Live Now, Work Later"-thollgh it may sound like a parody-was the quite scrious article appearing in the Financial 1Imes of London, early October '79. The idea of flex-time, already introduced m many hrs, 1S s1mply extended to offer "the same kind of flexibility" to the ent1re work-life's scheduling. Worker disaffection is likewise behmd th1s concept's appearance, introduced by no less a figure than FrancIS Blanchard, dlfector general of the International Labour Organlzatron. Work, to which we win return at length further on, is of course only part 01 the arena of pubhc d1senchantment and withdrawal. The steady declme of votmg, as discussed in books like E.C. Ladd's Where Have All the V Olers Gone? (1 978) and Arthur Hadley's T he Emply Polling Booth (1 979), ,s bnnglllg popular support of government to lower and lower levcls. Nor, by the way, does this phenomenon seem confined to the U.S.; the June and October 1 979 elections in Italy and Japan, respective ly, attracted the lowest turnouts since World War II. And the participation of the young is the strongest portent for the future ot the electoral diversion. Only 48% of the newly-enfranchised 1 8 to 20-ycar olds voted i n 1972, 38% in 1976, and 20% in 1978. Fall '79 saw the inauguration of new efforts by national groups to reverse this downward spiral, including that of the National Association of Secondary School Pllnclpals. A Umted Prcss International story of October 23 reported that registration is "down throughout the country for all voters, but most notably for those 18 to 20," and described attempts to register h1gh school semors III the schools plus provide a new "voting education curnculum" lIme (September 3) had also remarked On the steady decline f YOU?? voters and the consequent registration drives in high schools, as typltJed by the new state laws deputizing school principals and

J.) 1

! ( " I(.'hers as

As T.

ill r q i s t ra rs . Nonl:lh dess, Nove m h e r '7lJ electio lls produc ed, es. l J 1any places, such a s S an Francisco, the lowest turnouts in their histori

, ,. . . ,

W. Madron put it in the December '79 Futurist, the downward t rc n d threatens "the entire American political system." k Without its re-creation by the citizenry, the modern political networ that voting be made illlleed collapses. When Ralph Nader urges pation. mandatory, he is recognizing this essenti al need for partici fleshes out I:lernard-Henri Levy, in his Rarbarism with a Human Face, without this point a bit further: "There can be no successful dictatorship or the establishment of procedures through which people are invited forced to speak." nce, The great socializer, education, is also beset by an advanCing resista active forms without precedent in their which exhibits both passive and y '79 magnitude. Avoidance of school is seen, for instance, by a Januar , which discussed "the growing Oakland, Califor nia School District report cs." numher of truants" and the various costs of such "unexcused ahsenc tion heard school The May '79 Educational Press Association conven e." officials term the 25% high school drop-out rate "a national disgrac children The Lalls' "School Phobia: It's Real and Growing," in which rs experience panic and often severe physical symptoms in growing numbe resistance to tor, Septem ber, 1979), is another cxample of passive
(Instruc

school on an important level. This withdrawal, no matter what form it takes, is obviously a major ege cause of the continually declining academic test scores. The precoll res high-schoolcrs' verbal and Scholastic Aptitude Test, which mcasu tenth mathematical reasoning abilities, showed lowered scores for the average scores for year in a row, it was announced on September 8. The of the million high school seniors taking the SAT in 1979 are thus part ment of the downward current that began in 1969. The National Assess ts' Educational Progress, a non-profit organization which monitors studen to achievements in math and science, reported '79 declines comparable i n its , those of the SAT scores. The July 3 u.s. News & World Report g in U.S. Schools," and "Problems ' : Math skills "Science Skills Skiddin shing are down again," in the September 24 7ime registered these dimini levels. of Carl Tupperman's 'the Literary Hoax, dealing with "the decline an even more widespread reading, writing, and learning," suggests and tendency of aversion from society's "knowledge." With Hunter Harma n's
Foundation,

this turning away bccomes more obvious. Made public in September '79, the two-year study states that reading and writing

I the Ford Adult llliteracy in the United , 'wtes: A Report to

pro hlt'- Ill,'\ :lrc increasing , wil h as 1H,I IIy as (,, "'il lin" adu ll i l J ilt'r att' ....; '\1istrusl' of the ins titution s of the mainstrc!Ol cul tur e" is adv anc ed as a key factor in this "America n dile mm a." An d within thc edu cation al system the re are the most active ( )fms "f reb elli on paralleling the qui ete r "crisis in our sch ools." A bricf chrono logical sample will havc to take the place of an eas ily voluminous catalog of stu den t mayhem and teacher retreat. Early in '79 two 1 1 -year old schoolboys in Marianna, Florida, armed with a gun and a knife tried to take Over their classroom but were forced out, pol ice reported. On April 6, two Staffo rd (Conne cticut) High School stu dents were arrested for bombing a chemistry lab, which cau sed $ 100,000 damage. On April 24, four Isleton (California) Ele me ntary School chi ldren laced a teacher's coffee with poison; agc d 12 and J 3. They were later convicted in juveni court of attempted murde le r and conspiracy to com mit murder. Tb e May 21 u.s. News & W ld Rep or ort reported that "N ow It's Suburbs Where School Violence Flares : From ice picks to explos ives, a frightening array of weapons are contrib uting to disorder in the classroom-especially in are as once relatively unt rou ble d." Als o in May, the thi rd arson incident within a month Occurred in California's San Juan Unified School District, which brought thc sch ool year's arson losses to over $ 1 million. Th school dis tricts centering e around Sacramento and San Jose are among other California arcaslarg ely suburban_also reg istering extremely high arson and vandalism damages. In June '79 a San Die go Teachers As sociation "violence inventory" was comple ted, showing increaSin student violence; nearly g one-fourth of San Die go teachers had bee n physically attacked by students during the '78 -79 school year. R.M . Kidder's "Where Have All the Teachers Go ne? ," in the July 19 Christian Science Monitor dis cus sed the growing light tro m the field, owing largel to resistant stu den ts. y f Education periodicals feature articles like Le Cauter's "Discipline: Yo e u Can Do It!" and "Lesso ns in Anti-vandalis m," bot h in the Instructor Sep , tember '79. Meanwhile, even the mo st mass-circulation "enter tainment" magazine s are forccd to devote spa ce to the cri sis. People , Sep tem ber 10, 1 979 intervicwed Willard Mc Guire, p esi den t of the National Education r As sociation, in a piece entitled "Classroom Vio lence and Public Apath Why Teachers Are Qu y: itting in Droves ." Mc Guirc talk ed about the "growing malady of 'tea cher burnout'" a proble m he believes "threaten to reach hurricane force s if it isn't checked Soo n." McGuire's NE A had me t earlier in the sum mer of '79 and had inc luded one teacher, Em Williams, who understan mit ds rather well the meani ng of "teacher burnout," his homc was burned by one of his students. Phy llis Burch, a teacher wit h

T f l f - I ' I I Ii\H .... '

f I I 1 1 1 1 'HO',

I
I "

I I I MI ' N I S I I, 1 (1 ' .\1l' ; 1 I"S ' _ q l ( ' I H' t 1 t T I I I

I, I I I I ',:\ /

- . . . . Cod in the Octoher 1 0 SUII t(lUl . st.'t(' S' . 'issa'Yn ' '' (: . /;1;111('1.\,0 I '.XliIlIl1/( ., . tint the IO! cmos t ch ,' g in the schools since the ' . . ' . . ms " , I I l 1 d - ()()s IlaS "een "the mllshroommg probl e . , of violence , yandaIlsm, .I . > " , H I drugs 10 the cl assroom. " Put more m, dly, "A survey by the . American Federation of Teach s n d. ates disruptive students are the ; 'ers:' reported the Novcmber 20, main cause of stress expenence y eac 1 979 W ll Street Jo a urn al. I t 'S not a big surprise then to find Neil . '. . . Postman, author 0f T:echzng As a SubverSIve ACllvlly 10 1 969 , to have . written Teaching as a Conservl.ng A ctll"iy n 1 979-or to find his "Order . . In the CIassroom' " in the s cptemb er I '79 Atlantic . Work, political . . p articipation, educalton all e t b failing grandly as pillars 0f our : . as domestication of the young . society, espeCIally perhaps i t ir . I ess subtle devices must be projected to It is not surpnsmg that newer, come to the rescue 0f a rotting social order. . . . . . Such a program was unvetled m MId -Februa '79, with the Committee for the Study of National Service, s reprt titl:;; "Youth and the Needs ' o . th e N t n " I t declared that umversaI service for American youth is . . f a O . . nceded to I curb ". CYOlClSffi and selfishness that can destroy socie ty. " "Too many.. are a nftmg w t out p u pose and their apathy or self d r l: . i eenteredness is seldom cured y sch I10g " t added Actually, of course, ;ion of Civilian duty, in slums, th this is a retur to the draft, w: : parks and the like A ide from or results in terms of a national h . S I S OP l socializing force, It IS also abund antly c ear that the volunteer army, . . . 1 InSf1utcd in "1973 has been "a disaster velgmg on a scandal" according . ' to Congressman Robm Beard m N vcmber '79 spoke of "sevcre problems of The EconomIst, March 0, J 97 . ' th mmediate backdrop for .r discipline" with the vOlun I v ( en ithout leave), training, and of reviving consnptlOn. attrition are major problem e, , . h t rnover very high in combat : . er inishing their first term of units and a third of all soI e . , enhstment. P entagon sources h ave mcreasngly been callina the overall 0 status of the volunteer Army "h peIess ", allegedly only a few elite UOlts . . f have any semblance of mra e or d ct cation 'to national defense. Beginning in May '79 a recrUlhng scnd:1 pread involving the cnlisting of th ou and of unqualified recrUlts, hun dreds ;f Army recruiters have . been re leve 0f duty for their illegal efforts at shoring up a growm . shortage of volunteers. In mld- S ept mber the Army announced It woul take enlistees With less than a tent-grade education due to manpower de!iciencies. Educational bonuses o u t $6 000 were announced f Pn November 29, 1979 in a bid to attract qua , i d b dies in the face of the shortage. . .
_

Ol s

O t

talk
,

1 1 1 l\ I I NT ( l I 1 ':' 1 : 1 - 1 1:-',\ 1

,) .HI

/1"/{'rlnlll
on

the hlurring of work and non -work areas of life. Segal, Lync h a l l d Blair's contribution to the AJS, "The Changing Amcrican Soklicr: Work related Attitudes of U.S. Army Personnel i n World War I I and t h e 1 970s," observed a comparable level of dissatisfaction between W W I I AWOLs and typical soldiers in the all volunteer force. Within the '70s job satisfaction was seen to fall even more between February 1974 and the cnd-point of their data, August 1977. Aside from a suggested decline in military values between the 1940s and the '70s, it must also be recognized that there has been a "secular decline in job satisfaction in American soeiety generally." Seth Cropsey's article in December 7 9 Harper's laments the severe shortage of volunteer troops, and makes a similar connection bctween the condHion of the services and a larger trend in society: namely, that there exists a strong anti-military, anti-draft sentiment which shows no signs of changing. A more vivid illustration of anti-military hostility could be seen from within the Navy. Blaine Harden, writing for the W ashington Post in late June '79, chronicled the many fires aboard the carrier John F. Kennedy, believed to have been set by disgruntled sailors. [n July, Naval officials announced that the period of April-July '79 contained twice as many suspicious fires aboard Atlantic Fleet ships as there had been during all o( 1977 and 1978 on both Atlantic and Pacific vessels. At th!! beginning of November th!! Los Angeles 1imes' Robert Toth noted the almost $5 million fire damage to ships during 1979, po s t u l at in g "de!!p!!r morale problems" involved. Leaving the subject of national service and th!! desperately ailing military, the above cases of arson bring to mind that it is the nation's fastest growing crime, up "900% over a 16-year period," according to San Francisco Fire Chief Andrew Casper in September '79. August 3 1 had seen a $20 million apartment complex arson in Houston, the worst fire in the city's recent history. And less than a wc!!k later, an IS-year old was arrested for starting a 5,000 acre fire in California's Los Padres National Forest. Sabotage, too, seems to be providing spectacular and unprecedented e.xamplcs of anti-society urges, and not only in the U.S. The St. Catharine's Standard of December 9, 1 978 carried, complete with photo, "Man Drives Truck Through Stores in Shopping Plaza." The story recounted the syst!!matic destruction wreaked by a man who drove an armored truck through 35 stores in the Montreal area's Carre four St. George, costing nearly $2 million. Crestview, Florida was t h e scene of a
,

i\ fll l l lH " I " 1 H " I S I HTlivl' l H I ( i , 1 . ;t l l i l tl t k s W;IS o l i"l - r n i i l l j i ll' f l l l v ,,/1)

.Iounwl of Sociology.

also tI rl' m i lH k r nr l I 1 e pc J i l l ! outed ;t!l( lV{'

. .

derailml'nt

I tn() of two dOl.en cars on the Louisville and Nashville R a i l '",,,t; sabo tage was strongly suspected due to track damage
OIJ

t\ 1 " i l I I),

,"aused by rifle butlets. On June 2, 1979 Los Angeles County Museum of Art officials said that eight paintings, including two by Picasso, had been slashed hy someone using a metal object. A bulldozer smashed five cars

ill the parking lot of a Houston plastic firm June 13; the driver, finally halted by a collision with a railroad boxcar, had been recently fired trom his job. Southern Pacific Railroad investigators announced on Octoher 8, 1 979 that saboteurs had derailed a 100 'car freight train the day before
ncar Santa Barbara; a barricade of lumber and concrete caused the

crash, which closed the main rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. If 1978 was a time when much national attention was given the fiscal perhaps be commemorated as the year in which its hope to survive as a survival chances of New York City as a public corporation, 1979 could

'

coherent social entity became an open question. As the highest point of American urbanism, it deserves at least the following few, random readings from the front pages of the

New York Times.

stories covering the alarming jump in subway crime and the consequent decision to station police on every nighttime train. March 15 disclosed that "New York's megal Garbage Dumping Gets Worse," as some roads in the Bronx and Brooklyn are "completely blocked" by mountains of unauthorized trash. "Graveyard Vandalism Continues," was another featured March topic. In May the Times front page for the 7th featured, "Vandals Ruin $80,000 Sculpture Outside A Madison Ave. Gallery." On the 10th Mayor Koch, in a "public safety" movc eliciting mostly laughter from New Yorkers, was announced to have banned the drinking of alcohol in public places, such as street corners. The next day found
, a

March saw NY !

woman reportedly attacked by rats near NY's City Hall; officials closed off the area to battle the rodcnts. May 21, 1979 disclosed the high monetary and psychological cost of vandalism; it had already reached a dollar price-tag of 8 million by the end of 1978, to the Education and Parks Departments alone. "Tens of Thousands of Derelicts Jam New York's Criminal Courts" appeared on the June 7 front page, within days of news stories on the description of drug abuse in city schools as "critical" by a congressional investigating committee. Narcotics Abuse Committce Chairman Lester Wolff said the New York problem "reflects

,
,

\
,

the state of affairs in all major metropolitan and suburban areas

throughout the nation."

Turning to the subject of contemporary forms of violence in society at

large, we encounter the "sniper." Lately it almost seems that every
,

II

.' III

n ews cast i nc l uu es a stury on someone who has "nipped o U I " i n l o " posturc of lethal hehavior, such as a man fi ri ng away fmm inside his barricaded apartment. A well-known case was that of Brenda Spencer. 16, who surrenden:d to police after shooting at an elementary school across the strcet from her San Diego horne, killing its pri ncipal and custodian and wounding nine students; "I hate Mondays" she offered following the January 29, 1979 attack. In latc April, a 64-year-old man opened fire on a group of seven police, wounding six of them and then killing two women and injuring more than 30 others who were present watching a San Antonio parade. A 30-year-old social worker shot and killed two FBI agents in their EI Centro, California officc on August 9, 1979 and then killed himself. As un-reasoned as these suicidal acts may be, they are clearly a part of thc syndrome of (often ill-defined) anger at authority, discussed throughout this essay. Marilyn Elias, in her June 1979 essay "Freelance Terrorists," lends a judgement that applies: "People seem willing to resort to drastic acts in an era marked by ebbing faith in such institutiuns as the family, the church, our economic system and the government." Despite an evcryday reality that enforces the calm of isolation and cntropy, acts of collective as well as individual violence mount. Outbursts shatter the facade and contain mixed elements in their released rage; the '80s will, for a time, most likely bear this varied imprint as seen in a scan of some of 1 979's group violence. A Wichita rock concert "just broke into warfare," said a radio station director, when police shut off the power at the April 15 event. Hundreds of police firing shotguns and tear gas required three hours to quell the riot, which saw squad cars destroyed by tire irons and four officers injured. San Francisco's "Dan White Riot" of May 21 caused over $1 million in damage to Civic Center buildings and looted stores and banks. A largely gay crowd of 5,000 also injured 60 police and burned 13 squad cars in an all - nigh t explosion which laid siege to City Hall; begun as a protest against the extremely lenient legal treatment of a reactionary County Supervisor who had murdered a gay Supervisor and the mayor, the riot included many other elements and quickly transcended concern with legality or politicians. On the same night, a crowd of 1500 attacked firemen and police with rocks and bottles at the scene of a million-dollar factory fire in Redwood City, 25 miles south of the San Francisco outbreak. Also at the same time, end-of-semester vandalism at the University of Connecticut left smashed furniture and burning dehris across the campus, in a rampage apparently caused by nothing so much as boredom.

1 1 1 I I N rs

{ II,

a nam ()nc synonymous with suburban confurmity and 1 r:lIlquility-in late June, involving 3,000 people and 200 arrests. Truckers
hloekaded the area and joined teenagers and motorists in burning gas

I .,.,vil t()wn

Two days of rilltillg tllTlJITeU in the famous Philadelphia suhurh or

t.:. I ' H lA I _

pllmps and vchicles, throwing objects, i nclu di n g molutov cocktails at

police and demanding more and cheaper fuel. Four furthcr examples from summcr '79 demonstrate continuing non i ndividual violence in an array of forms. The Chicago White Sox annual teen half-price night, July 1 1 , was billed as "Disco Demolition Night,"

hut the anti-disco theme proved the excuse for 7,000 r io te rs to overrun
and destroy the playing field. Red Lake Indian Reservation experienced two nights of arson and gunfire, including a three-hour firefight between Indians and federal police, On July 2 1 and 22. Onc man was shot to vandalism and rock and bottle throwing at pol ice. An August UPI Saturday declared a state of emergency and imposed a midnight-6 A.M. curfew in an attempt to break up street corner crowds. Mayor David Altrichter said the groups were at times, urinating and defecating on Main Street! .... Curfew was also imposed on the central Connecticut city of Meriden on September 6, 1979 following a teen-age gang's rock throwing attack on a police station. Mayor Walter Evilia said the assault carne from "Hispanics, blacks and whites" living in and around a downtown housing project; "It's going to get like New York City soon," he told a reporter. Dozens of melees could bc cited involving people vs. police, but it is also true that a brutalized populatiun is quite capable of brutalizing itself, death during a July 27 rock conccrt in Cleveland which was marked by newswire from Slatington, Pennsylvania points out that even hamlets are

not immune; it read: "The mayor of this tiny Lehigh County community

death. With both its liberatory and its backward aspects, however, we do fort with passive spectatorship. Steven Jenkins, in his mid-April '79

or the tragic storming of a Cincinnati rock concert entrance on December 3 , 1979 which resulted in 11 youths trampled to
appear to be embarking on the '80s in an increasing current of discom

as with gang violence

NelVsday piece "The Growing Spectre of Fan Violence in Sports," points

Almost any large gathering seems vul nerable, as if physical closeness reminds us, bitterly, how far away real community is in this buy-and-sell existence. Turning to specifics of the less graphic, everyday plane of the job, an unchecked tendency to stay away from it as much as possible is seen.

to the mounting fragility of all types of sports spectacles, for example.

u.s. News and World Report for July 3 , 1978, in its "World Business"

"u.

coming to work in an effort to check rising absenkcism; " Missill)!, workers are an old problem, but it's gctting worse." Allen and Higgills' "The Absenteeism Culture," in thc January-February '79 Pers(}ntu'l. typifies a flood of interest in the subject by specialists. Similar was thl" Seem Temporary_" And the 1 979-82 United Auto Workers contract increased the number of "paid personal holidays" to 26 from 1 2 provided under the previous covenant, bowing to auto workers' refusal to maintain attendance. Concerning the phenomenon in Canada, the November 13,
all Street Journal noted Manpower, Incorporated's report of 1979 W

column, observed that in the U nited Kingdom, nO ll u s l: s (.Ire ol'fered Ill!

' ri lL PH( )M1SI ". ( H ' Ti ll ' 'XO'

i l l h l (I.'. u r a l l i ulII I"Ul'l l'll"IllCllts at the Su rrey n u clea r p la n t in Richmond, V i q.', illiOl; lw() emploYl:cs were later arrested amJ convicted for the act.
I l U li n g

.' \ \

March 14, 1 979 Wall Slreet Journal article by James Robins, "Firms Try

"r the new cars, brokc the windows, tore out dashboard wiring and
st arted small fires throughout the plant.
he noted that strikes appear to be more often taking illegal and violent

: u l l ici r ating a two-week shutdown of their factory, ripped the vinyl tops

S e p temher 2 1 and 22 of the same year, 4,000 Chlyslcr workers,

Newer Way to Slash Absenteeism As Carrot and Stick Fail: All Cures

Unlike the general charade/catharsis nature of strikes-though it may

fllrms-workers obviously are opposing work in a thousand ways, from

I'lITely visceral reactions against it to the most calculated attacks. This opposition registers itself most fundamentally in tcrms of productivity, or (,utput-per-hour-worked. The history of modern civilization is, in an important sense, a story of the steady growth of productivity. Unbroken for centuries, the foundation of industrial capitalism, rising productivity has now gone the way of the work ethic_ And for the same reason: the falseness of trading away one's tife in order to p u rchase things is a transparently barren death-trip, 1974 saw this reversal surfacing really for the first time, as that recession year's overall output-per-hour showed a gain of virtually zero. Since then, those who have attempted to manage the fate of thc capital relationship have witnessed brief periods of small productivity gains being out-numbered by those of often substantial decreases. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a .3% productivity rise f or private business in 1978, a tiny advance clearly reversed in 1979. "Sharp Drop in Workcr Productivity" read the May 30, 1 979 Associat ed Prcss release, in which Labor Department analysis of first quarter

absenteeism'S $8 billion per year price-tag there, plus the "growing tendency for workers to take a day off just because they don't feel like working"; their perspicacious psychologists opincd that "frequent absentees may be trying to withdraw from life's tensions," The frequency of people quitting their jobs is a related, and growing, matter. Characteristically, this is seen in the literature: Farrell Bloch's "Labor Turnover in U.S, Manufacturing Industries" (Journal oj Human

ry Management, June '79), and Robert Kushell's "How to Reduce

workers decreased to an average of 3.6 years per job in 1 978 from 3.9

Resources, Spring '79), H. Kent Baker's "The Turnover Trap" (Superviso

Turnover" (Personnel Journal, August '79), for example. At the end of

April '79 the Labor Department disclosed that job tenure of American years in 1973, with the tenure apparently shrinking at an accelerating rate. The October 10, 1979 Wall Street Journal announced an Adminis trative Management Society survey which observed that turnover among Ice employees averaged 20% in 1978, up from 1 4 % in 1976. off In an early November '79 Princeton Features piece, "Revolution in the Workplace," Carper and Naisbett declared that a "growing demand for more satisfaction from life" has brought dissatisfaction with work to the point where "workers refuse to produce and even deliberately sabotage the products they make_" This point may be highlighted by a few of the more sensational acts of employee sabotage, such as the November '79 damage to three of the world's largest electrical generators at Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state. In what investigators called "an inside job," 19 of the generator's coils had been broken with a crowbar, resulting in "millions of dollars" of damage. On February 1 5 , 1979 a strike by mutuel clerks at New York's Aqueduct Race Track got out of control and all 550 mutuel betting machines wcre put out of action by sabotage, On May 7, 1979 it was discovered that lye had been poured

Post story announced that "productivity of U_S. businesses fell more

figures showed "the steepest decline since 1974." A July 3 1 W ashington

rapidly in the second quarter (of 1979) than it has since the government "Productivity in U.S. Still Declining," explaining that the third quarter drop was the first time since 1 974 that three consecutive quarters had shown declines. The overall trend has engendered countless article s , as society's defenders look desperately for solutions and the future of worker "efficiency" seems ever dimmer. February 5, 1979's 'time featured "Perils of the Productivity Sag," while the March issue of 1he O f f ice began to look at Northrup's plant design, "The continuing decline in productivity is considered a major problem in this country. . . . " Campbell McConnell's "Why is U,S_ Productivity Slowing Down'!" discussed the "unsatisfactory gap between output and hours worked," in the April/May Harvard

began keeping records in 1947," AP for November 29 proclaimed

May-June /lIJU carried "Protillcl ivity Iht' Behind the Headlines" by Burton Malhicl. /rulll.l'lty V"d o f May 1 ,1 spoke of "a new cmphasis on office productivity," in its "Rcmovill Ihe Cages from the Corporate Zoo." Meanwhile, unions and the left publicly exhibited their delusion, if callousness, on the subject. Befitting their roles as champions of "honesl toil" and the "good worker," the entire crisis is denied by them! The May '79 AFL-CIO Federationist and the June '79 Monthly Review, in "Bringing Produellvlty lOtO Focus" and "Productivity Slowdown: A False Alarm," respectively, disputed the facts of diminishing work output and ignored the individual's primacy in productivity. Returning to reality, Lawrence Baytos offered "Nine Strategies Productivity" in the July '79 Personnel Journal, John Niler wrote for "Diagnosing and Trcating the Symptoms of Low Productivity" of in August'S Supervisory Management, and the August 7 Wall Street Journal front-paged "White Collar Workers Start to Get attention in Productivity Studies: Employees Resist." On June 4 and September 10, 1979 Time editorialized on the plight of America, in "The Weakness that Starts at Home" and "The of Decadence," Considcring the mass circulation involved , Fascination here the growing awareness of how critical the changing workwe glimpse The June essay deals with "a damaging slackness...in U.S. posture is, society large" and locates a key part of the problem in "the state of Americaat n productivity, which after several years of declining growth has in recent months actually dipped below zero progress." September's opinion piece delar:d that "the work ethic is nearly as dead as the Weimar Republic," cillng the last busmess quarter's alarming 3.8% decline in productivity" as a symptom of decadence. It is a certainty that the '80s will see more on capital's productivity dilemma, inasmuch as it cannoteven be "solved" without the destruction of that wage-labor/commodity relation ship which is capitalism. Business Week of October J , 1979, fretted over "Why It Won't Be Easy to Boost Productivity," and in mid-Oc Theodore Barry & Associates (management consultants) reported tober their fmdmgs that the average worker is productive during only 55% of workmg hours. James Fields, of the Barry firm, said this compares with O to . 85% spent productively working around the turn of the century; the Imphcallons of that are staggering," declared Fields. The "team concept" of work improvement received a most negative judgement by Latane, Wilhams, and Harkins' "Social Loafing." Their November '79 Psychology Today article conclud ed that output- per-hou r actually declines in groups. And so on, into the new decade.
1101

IJusiness UIvielV;

.-> \1

the

Ti l l ' " I\( I M ISI ' f ll ' Ti l l ' xn....

Prllhlnll

( \ ' l 1 l l' r a l l d I l u mall h H" lists

li the demal ld hy Produc tivity I n s t i t ut shows s for thc l,:>XOs" h e l p . Simila rly, Sylvia Porter's column, " 1 .lo C"i.rcr atIon sY,stcms and the top two fields as "management mform " human resources" in which improving productivity is the "Iundamental challenge" of each. Corporate management has recently been forced toward a restrueturfor their bosses. Personnel in" as restive workers create more difficulties ed this in Lawrence Wangler's "The .I(1:rna February '79, indicat ive of the Intensification of the Personnel Role: The personnel executbe VIewed and new challenges, Will 1980s with increased responsibilities This as a ky decision-maker (and part-time magician) . "whichmajor expansion appear ise," is also seen in "Personnel Widens its FranchJournal for March ed In the reported February 26, 1979 Business Week; Personnel laws and a "new era" in federal industrial relations, dueontoa revIsed financial par with organization which put personnel administration Relations" column, zed in Julius Draznin's "Labor management; publici sector the this development was another spur to the pnvateManagement area, the ing Role of Personnel Donald Klingner's "Chang September '79) pointed out that a 1980s" (The Personnel Administrator, follow the fundamental change in the nature of the profesSIOn mustInformahon In mid-October major shift of values underway at large. Science, Inc. disclosed that a survey of 2,000 execuhves showed almost week to twice as many of them devoting from five to 20 hours adents also respon personnel matters as was the case five years ago; the antly. indicated that pay for personnel execs has risen signific meetmg of the . '79 Of personncl chiefs surveyed at a November 85% felt umons WIll American Society for Personnel Administration, rs during the '80s, have increased difficulty controlling their membe It is this sense of according to the November 20 Wall Street Journal. ng of personnel union infirmity which is bringing on the great bolsten union-manage departments, and, more importantly, pushing increased ment collaboration. disciplinary Whether or not unionism is seen as weakening, its vital,appreciation hip. The role is unquestioned by America's corporate leaders Lee of this role is exemplified by a May 21, 1979 Fortune arhele by ." It problem ement Smith, entitled "The UAW Has Its Own Managabout the top Auto mainly on the auto companies' worries focuses Workers' official who will be replaced by the end of 1983: "What the, inexperienced companies dread is a power vacuum created by a weak, of values, and Noting "sullenness," a shift and indecisive leadership."
Till'
p l t llifn a l it l l l t il l)ral1 il.<1li(Hl s e l l" t h e hlJSllll' SS m m

I"

"'1 I - N ! "', ( 1 1- \ , 1 - 1- 1 1'.:\ 1

I\IlICri r;1I1 1 ' I ( )dt1r i v i I V

. ' \',

.' \ /

Sl" H' I";tI

k n ow whether o r no t the L J I\ W kadnship ('<III ddiver " ma nage,,"'"

pres(,ribed <IS I I I l" h e s l d c fe l l s(' "ha i l l s l " \ ' 1 " " ,,, , " L l l l l l i "rl u n' l s "W<1111 Itl

d i . rll s l nf i n sl i l l l l H l I l S ; \ l l I t H IJ'. I I i(' Wt \l d ' I S . d ..

;1

S l h H l J'. u l l i n ! !

j,

( "

'1('I'd 1'0 ..
" l 1 ll l i

b u t for most unions i n this epoch has been the increasing disaffccl ion 01 the rank and file, and with that, an erosion of discipline," An Anachronism?" UAW and Communication Workers of America co

labor force," inasmuch as " a fundamental pmhkm not just Ii,,' I h e l 1 1\ W In the September/October '79 Harvard Business Review 's "Are Uniolls

'/lII/ .Iapan.

estern ""mpe, North /11111'1'1<'11, U,/lgllining lind bnpillyee Participation ill W

a

s s io l 1

III'W

pul>lisli<'d

I o l l l1lS I" (,( l I l l a i n the individual. I n

l a hor-managem ent cooperation, lest "the marvels of modern techllology ;",,1 raised expectations lead to disaster." The reason for capit a l 's I'1nbrace of the jOint approach movement and workers' distrust ( as showlI hy unchanged "performance" figures) i s the same, of COUIse, ' 1 '1,,' all Street Journal quoted University of M ichigall September 4, 1 979 W researchers that "the most common response that this country's labor

Task Force Report to the Commission. I IS s ummary caliI'd 1', 11

f{ob c rt s,

Okamoto,

and

1 '17') I hl' ' I ',ila' l a l

Lodge's

( ',,/1,'('//1 ','

management programs with General Motors and AT&T, respectively, were adduced as joint etforts to effectively control the workplace thai succeeded where ncither party alone could have, The piece speaks o f authority must be shared in order to motivate "this kind of employee to produce," Shared responsibility i s the urgently needed cure for a "growing sense of social entitlement" which threatens to destroy wage-labor and society with it, according to James O'Toole's " Dystopia: The Irresponsible Society" i n Octoher '79's Management Review, Similar was R . M , Kanter's fear of an "authority vacuum" and his prescription, "to expand power, share it," i n the Harvard Business Review for July/ August '79 ("Power Failure i n Management Circuits"), Management and unions have been advancing toward greater institutionalized collaboration, whereby joint management programs labeled "worker participation," "job enrichment," "quality of work life" projccts-aim at increased worker motivation , Business periodicals see the need for strong union partnerships i n these developing set-ups, just as they have, for example, hemoaned the "anarchy" i n the coalfields produced by a weak United Mine Workers Union, or applauded the United Steelworkers' partnerships with stcel companies in pursuit of higher productivity, Workers seem generally distrustful or cynical about such programs, like the major U A W-GM one at Tarrytown, New York, or the U AW-Harman International program i n Bolivar, Tennessee which dates from 1973 and is discussed in an early 1 9 80 U niversity of Michigan study by Macy, Ledford, and Lawler. But unionists show a greater enthusiasm, as evidenced by Ponak and Fraser's finding of strong support for union management cooperation in a study of middle-Ievcl union otficials, entitled "Union Activists' Support for Joint Program" (Industrial Relations, Spring 1 979), The highest levels of power also see clearly the stakes involved, the

"the new discontents" creating the "post-industrial workplace problems" which have been growing "for over a decade" and concludes that

unions make to the introduction of new technology is wi ll i ng ace,,! ' tance," This quote, from the "Labor Letter" of the WSJ certainly and ruled in the unions,

provides some of the reason for the opposition of interest felt by ruters wo rk life" co-determination seem "on the brink of important growth ill the U,S,," according to Business

The union-management committees and the other forms of "quality "I'

that representatives of 32 unions attended a Spring '79 Americall Productivity Centcr meeting aimed at such programs, The biggest top UA W trade-off of $500 million in contract concessions for a seat ""

Week,

September 17, 1 979, which no!<'d

level change, billed "a major breakthrough in U ,S, labor history," was the Chrysler's board of directors, Agreed to i n October '79 and consecra l e d by the fedcral government i n December, UAW president Douglas Fraser will obtain the directorship in May 1 980, prompting such editorials "Are Unions Knocking at Boardroom Doors?" (Industry Week, Novemhl'l' 1 2, 1979), The move also sparked discussion of a possiblc shift toward " the "social contract, in which unions and government agree upon and attempt to enforce various social programs at the national level; Frase" American unionism, following European examples,
as

for one, has declared himself quite i ntereste d in this direction lil/' social objectives than has generally been the caS(' Iwll',e, California's Certainly there already exist labor-manageme llt I>odies wi t h broader

founded in 1973 and is composed of hallkns, nil I'IHlIpany executives, nuclear power industry representatives, la lid , i o-vO' iopns ;IIHI I h e lik(', pi liS the Teamsters and the United Auto WI l' "c" i\ }',' I ' a l pown i l l Ihe s l a l l' CEEB characteristically and
has

Counci l on Environmental and Economic 1I;"a 1 1 (, (, , or ,-FFIl, was the heads of the state Building and COll s l ' ll('l i , " , ' I ' , , " k s I I llioll ( :OIlIlCil, nuclear
'" I < , ) I I ; "

capitol,

environmental laws

tIOlIl'
' "

1 ) "'1'1>

loward

reporting by David Kaplan in the S I I I I ' " "" this "form of Fascism" intends a l I a l " , " . d

"I ' /" 1 I I , I h l "

01

' , 1 ; , " 0 1 ; " 0 1,\ ,

I '.. " I ) " a l h ' I ) w i t I I (

I I I 'C"VI',cd I l , a l

I 11 VI' s l il'.a I iw ' 1 : 1 ; l is ,,-I

lownillg

up <icross the Coulltry a aIJ( )1I CoIorado pro-nuclear raIl Y )1l }orugust 26, 1 '17') org . " I ( A of .the United SteeI Workers and paid for b alllzed hv I . Xil'l i YR whIch operates the Rocky FI' ts, nucIear :"eapons ockwe" ll Illkrll"tll)))al, Institutionalized coo erati an h e caI level ls plat nCar Golden. InC Urban Lehner, in his fugust08 g ,"all Street Jou IsIvely discussed hy !? t ees 0t Labor and Management En'o 'n Resur rnal p,cce' "0)fnmIt. ' ' The Evansville (Indiana) Area Lao::J gemgence In Communities," in 1 975 and comprised of the local AOA ent CommIttee, forme d , Container managements plu s the local un ,on ehl, Whlrlp(ml and Inland one of a growing number of joint bodle wICh e!taInS, IS portrayed as try to solve communities' in-plant and at-large social robl ' ' t ge 0 n t ji;;;)r:: b;1:I )d:iVeano; :;:;::: a: a are other examples of such grOU; ' f;:t ng for Illustnal expansion S ' ' n new areawide com mittees have sprouted'scraJus t t e past year Or so, Ohio, and St, Louis, and a 10ngst dIng com nton, Pa" Portsmouth, ' begun expanding its operations 'Th e "r rea ml'ttee In P'ltIsburgh has Y flounsh.ng' says John H Stepp, an oflieial of thc Feder'i r IOn an which ,has helped set up a number 0Meh acommI d Conedlatlon Service, , t for ufllonism in fact has recent! fen ' crea ttees, " Government help . smg ' of helpful c,;urt deisions defeg : power, especially in the form of unIons ove their members and extendin th l. n' decY is an invaluable raspect of the class collaboratin i;e/iated ab ove . Congre s I'al'I ed to the for plcketmg , measure, inpass late "Lasbor Reptmm" bill"' or "common SItus '70 rom g,m a major shift away fromthe reciatio:of unlo' ns any to mtcrpret this as app business. The bl'll, d eSl'gned to greatly strength benefIts to the state and , en unions could corral new members and gam new the leverage by which JUflSdICtlOns, retains importance in light of continued nd o worker restiencss againits management and unions, D , QUin Mrl ;';faW d VIc st Reform" (Harvard Rusiness Re/e , M ay-Jun tOry m Labor Law S e 79), ' suggested that the victory was a pyrrhic one th t , u ":, e , eally avoid soured "labor relation:', e s, as reqUIres this "reform" to Labor must have help to unionize. D enied for a time m Meanwhile, there hsthis hel:stbec Y :easust as will be discussed below, bee n ea , e m government assistance unions on a mor to Ieve of, Ap,peals upheledday-to-dayIssaI I, fIn early. January '79 the U ,S, Court ' ' 0 an aellon bra ught b the dl y embers of ElectfIcal Workers (lBEW'sm cal 1 547 in A las.ka . ) Lo al union for its refusal to , ubml't terms of agamst the mternation a natIOnal contract to a
.

( .0 II I ' (

_ ' _

of I h i s sor l rccdls I I . ( J ( ) I( I( " I I , '

'

1 ' 1 1 ' fvll ' N I '; ( )I I I ' I " 1'.:\ 1

I 'l iosid("111 ",liCit I
;1

" '(';II

an

III

The ('ourl decided I i l a l I H EW Pillard was justifiL:d ill interpreting the union's constitution in way as to negotiate and implement the agreement without 'arly March '79 found a federal Appeals Court deciding against a '''l'lllhaship suit in St. Louis, that the UAW could give union funds to wlialeycr causes or organizations the "officers' discretion" dictated, At , Ii,' same time a New York Court of Appeals sided with the Communi <':Ilion Workcrs of America executive board who fired shop steward Dave Newman merely for criticizing union policy; the judgement concluded ,hat a steward's duty is to represent the policies of the "management of I he union" and not the views of the members who elect them . The Supreme Court, in the summer '79 JBEW vs. Foust case, ruled that uilion member could not recover damages over the failure of the union to fairly process his grievance, Although the right of fair grievance representation is guaranteed by law, and the individual was denied an opportunity to grieve his firing because the union would not represent his grievance within a time deadline, the OlUrt decided that interference would antagonize the union, would "disrupt peaceful labor relations, " The state has also slowly but steadily expanded the purview of union authority, In March '79 the National Labor Relations Board reversed a 1 971 decision and placed employees of condominiums and cooperatives within collective bargaining jurisdiction, This policy change was supported not only by unions but by Ncw York's Realty Advisory Board, an employer bargaining association representing over 1,700 apartment buildings. On May 1 4, 1979, the Supreme Court declared the availability of food to employees during working hours and its price to be subject to union bargaining, Next day the Wall Street Juurnal's "Labor Letter" said "Unions win expanded rights to picket and organize at shopping centers," noting that recent NLRB decisions have virtually overturned a 1976 Supreme Court denial of First Amendment protection to private shopping center access, And a continuing devclopment is the setting up of collective bargaining systems for public employees; 1979 saw Califor nia, for instance, add local government workers to the list of those subject to "agency shop" set-ups requiring them to pay dues to a union, along with state employees, University of California workers, and others already served up to unions by state legislation. The unions themselves arc moving toward structures and policies aimed at more effective bureaucratic control of their members. Thus in early March '79 the merger of the 25,0()()-member United Shocworkers of America with the 510,000 Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers
1 I I t ' I I 1 1 w rship r a l i ficalitHl vole i l l I t)77. 1 . l l i fication. a

. ,"

"

"

'

'' ' ' ' "

..

' "

"

"

""

AFL-CI0.

Food and Commercial Workrs jntrnalional l i nion, Ihe l a rgesl i n I I,,

Mat Cuttrs unions merged (0 form I I,,' I . .'. l I I i l l iolJ- nll'Jllhn I

l J l l i u l I WIS l"ITn:lllOltcd, lind i l l J lI l I C I l l<" l d ; 1 I 1

( 'kl i.. s

; t l l d ;\lJlalg; l I l 1 a l nl

2-11

ilJilc'.1

rSIII'1

Business

Week of March 5 , 1979 wrote of the impLO n d i n/t

nil " I

Clerks and Meat Cutters consolidation, noting that the Retail ( :krk.' president stated that his highly centralized union would bring importantly, "structure" to the operations of the new body. Arnold

Weber's May 14, 1 979 Wall Street Journal article, "Mergers: Union Styk" took place between 1956 and 1978; of this 57, 21 took p l ace since I'J7 I ,

disclosed that 5 7 mergers involving 95 unions and employee associations

evid ence of the quickening incidence of trade union amalgamation.

"Labor stability" i s thus promoted-which is logical on the part of Weher due to the diminished voice of the individual hrought about by making union bosses more powerful and more distant. In the July 30, 1979

y<,ar in a row. Thc percentage of union victories bas been declining: from 57',,, for 1968, to below 50% since 1 975. Drupman and Rasin's "Decerti I !Cation: Removing the Shroud" in the April '79 Labor I>aw Journal, I, "lnd that "In the past ten years, there has been a dramatic increase in I he number of employees seeking to deccrtify their collective bargaining these efforts are r <,pres entatives and become union-free ." Furth er, succeeding: "The rate at which unions are being decertified has increased continually over the last decade." Noting that a decertification petition may not be filed by an employer, it was delicately suggested that "today's

l u m her of charges brought against them by their members. h " I ,licki ng Turm oil," a front-page Wall Street Journal article of Marc sters. The 'J. I 'n'!. stres sed the "undercurrent of discontent" among Team N I .RIl's 43rd annual report, released in mid-March, revealed that Board " >lJ(lucted elections gave unions victories 46% of the time, for the second

Business

Week\'

"An AFL-CIO Without Me any"

the Kirkland-era

to 70 by 1990." In latc '79 AFL-CIO president Kirkland publicly invited the Teamsters and the UA W to re-affiliate with his umhrella body. These few words on directions i n unionism's structure bring to mind th e European situation and its possible relevance to American develop ments. In England a strong parallel suggests itself from these relations, int erviewed in by James Prior, Prime Minister Thatcher's minister responsible for union
comments

"One official predicts that the fe deration s 105 curre nt unions will shrink
'

Federation is said to be committed to a policy of spurring more m ergers :

Business

many unions. And a lot of them are much too weak in administration, in for example in John Windmuller's 1980 work, the
.

the shop floor." The steady movement toward global unions, discussed

ahility to get a message across. The unions have lost a 101 of control to

Week, April 16, ] 979: "We have too

employees do not consider unions to be a panacea for their concerns or l I CSlres, " Underlining this point further was "Approval of Labor Unions Sinks to Lowest Point on Record," featured in the June '79 Gallup Opinion Index. The Gallup measurement showed a decline of about 1 5 % among hath union and non-union families since June 1965 . The downturn has been a steady one since '65, having reached in '79 the lowest point of public approval in Gallup's 43 years of polling. The August 27, 1979 Fortune carried A. H. Raskins's "Big Labor Strives to Break Out of Its Rut, " with a subtitle which observed that Labor's ways "don 't appeal to

Unionism, has alre ady been fclt here Paul Shaw had discussed it is his M ay '79 Personnel Administrator offering, "International Labor Relations'
-

Shape of Transnational

Impact on Domestic Labor Relations," in which he saw its number-one

influence as pressure toward "much more in d u stry wide bargaining on a national basis." Working people, policed by the unions and aware of their ever greater collu si on with employers and the government, exhibit a rising anti by publ i c rulin gs that are outrageo us for their contempt o f members'
t he cases were cite d above; another tactic is to simply not process worker

younger workers." An interesting specific of the article dealt with General Motors' 1 979 decision to grant union workers preferenl1al hmng rights for jobs at any of 1 2 non-union plants, all but one of which were in the South. UAW President Fraser conceded that only this GM policy gave the union its edge in representation elections at the plants. Besides the charges filed (e.g. three times more NLRB grievance complaints than 10 years ago), and negative vote results, unions arc also being hit by work actions as never before. Richard Sennett, in "The Boss's New Clothes," New York Review of Books, February 22, 1979, stated rather mildly that "During the last decade, the number of wildcat strikes has risen-strikes as much against the union bureaucracy, for example that of the United Mine Workers, as against the managerial bureaucracy." The Supreme Court decided in December '79 that unions are not liable for losses caused by their members' wildcats, a finding very consonant with Sennett's observation, recognizing that such acts are not an extension of union activity but antagonistic to it. As with its denial of the productivity crisis, the left sees in this internal

unionism. The flood of workers' ch arges against unions i s being deflected

rights and their naked defense of unions' anti-worker activities. Some of

,puke out in '79 against peering over thoo shoulder" of the unions in the
"

complaints. NLRB members Pennello and Tr u esd ale, for example, both

!. I .'

' 1 '1 11 '

weakening of uniollism another t".videnn: ur I Ill' hopdl'SS l I a t lln' ( I f

PI ( If"I I"J ' ( 11 1 1 1 1 ' } ,()S

era. Fortunately close to extinction) ground away as a sc.;para l e force like so many other illusions, the l eft now mor" than ev"r shows its COllg!"1I ence with the world we must shatter. Like the basie rul" of authoritv. i t seeks to demoralize, confuse and divide that which proceeds past ideology, the painful-enough progress of the autonomous social mow ment. 1nsignificant in itself, we may usc its typical viewpoints to chart, then, the difference between lived truth and those in general who fear it. The image of ever-more security-conscious consumers, happily supporting the rules of the economy, is one maintenance of that economy-though this lie is so rapidly eroded by reality. I n fact, as being uninsured vies with the filing of personal bankruptcy as the greater commonplace, and "wrathful jurors' demands" push damage suit settlements against wealth "sky-high," respect for the commodity is obviously ebbing. Almost weekly, the assessments of the "subterranean economy" of "illegal" and/or unreported income seem to include more millions of people and billions of dollars; former Treasury Secretary William Simon said in November '79 that the refusal to pay taxes had rcached the level of notorious Italy, and reflected Americans' "thumbing their noses at the system." Meanwhile, '79 saw epidemics of bank robberies with records set in the major cities, looting to the point of requiring the National Guard after every hurricane or sizable tornado, and unprecedented, soaring shoplifting. And the "rightist trend" seen in the "Ku Klux Klan rise" scenario is also at strong variance with the fact that people increasingly feel "in it together," all sorely mauled by increasingly visible sources. Taylor, Sheatsley, and Greenley's "Attitudes Toward Racial Integration, " in Scientific American for June '78; the February '79 National Conference of Christians and Jews' massive survey; and the August '78 and '79 Gallup Polls, among other data, showed "dramatic" drops in race bias, a "markedly" growing toleration for persons of other races and creeds. The myth of impending economic doom, finally, is a favorite diversion among those who wish to keep the struggle to live contained on the already-won plane of survival. The March '79 Supreme Court decision upholding unemployment benefits for strikers and extending them to students typify the guarantees i n effect, and, in light of the collapsing capital relationship, lend more plausibility to the thesis that post survivalist struggles occur with the stakes of total revolution much more accessible. In 1970 Herman Kahn predicted a frenzy of social travel developing in the new decade. Ten years later, Stephen Papson's Futurist article, "Tourism: Biggest Industry in the Twenty-First Century?" sees its

(ltll

l)f th e need "t tl get ()I a l l l u l.:l ltx ." as ll1lhkl1l i\l i(, ,, v. 1\.I . 1 1 1 _ " 1 " , ',t h t h e l' I , 'w l h " ill t'. 1I0 t .j us t onc's work. rn ul . ' Iw ay frolH al l . . IOn corrod es . A way at . 'S, ,'t tllat easy an d th e frustr . h . 1 \ , , 1 "g d tlO g away .. " ' . , an . s e lve s Wit . dylOg b ut I rnay survive us . Armmg our 't . . , d "e at h IS fight with this alien ter-subjectivIty m 1t s compIex .LT lIr at c se ns e of our in

1 1, :\ 1 1 1 1 1\ 1 1 H I ', I I 1 ' 1 1 1

hard and w el l. is ne cessary to he lp us strike 1 ,I" cc

T H E '80s SO FAR

'

d['cay, only the incidentals of alienation have changed at all in the past l o u r years, A climate of (often mis-directed) violence is also greatly in ['vidence; as so many elements of modern life cheapen living, the tragic I clevancc of "life is cheap," once thought applicable mainly elsewhere, I'. merges around us, In the mid-'BOs the potential promise lies solely in I he conclusion that this world is even closcr to collapse, Society's negation has moved forward; and in the decomposition of the old world it is increasingly accurate to speak, with Sanguinetti, of that " false consciousness which still reigns, but no longer governs," As the ccntury runs down, so does, faster and fastcr, its store of effective illusion, There is no guarantee how much humanness will survive to replace repressive emptiness with an unfettered life spirit For an agonizing toll is being registered on all our sensibilities. As the refrain of John Cougar's best-selling record of 1982, "Jack and Diane," put it, "Oh yeah, life goes on/Long after the thrill of living i s gone," The supermarket tabloids also reflect the rampant sense of generalized pain and loss, with their weekly parade of features on depression, fear of pain, stress, and the like; and similarly, a flow of advertising for Stressgard, Stress Formula vitamins, etc. A September 21, 1981 7ime essay, "The Burnout of Almost Everyone" reads: "Today the smell of psychological wiring on fire is everywhcre .... Burnout is preeminently the disease of the thwarted; it is a frustration so profound that it exhausts body and morale." In the mid-'SOs this condition seems to be even more widespread, if possible; for example, Procaccini and Kiefaber's popular 1983 work, Parent Burnout, and Time's June 6, 1983 cover story, "Stress," introduced by a contorted, screaming face. A prior psychological and social stability is giving way to an assault upon the young by the realities of dominated life. Marie Winn's Children Without Childhood (1983) describes a fundamental shift away from the condition of children as innocents protected from the world, from a conception of childhood that was the norm until just a very few years

hih technology onslaught, to mounting physical pollution and economic

" rom new lcvels of boredom and the digital/TV screen mentality of the

seems to be worn down more quickly by tbe strains and deprivation of the twilight of capitalism. The 1980 census figures reveal a marked trend toward the one-person household, to the accompaniment of articles such as "The Reasons Men and Women are Raging at Each Othcr All of A Sudden" (Cosmopolitan, November, 1 982). Naturally, many of the young seem profoundly horrificd by what they arc cxpected to live under. "Suicide Among Preschoolers On the Rise" was thc topic of a May 15, 1983 UPI feature, while the US. News and World Report's June 20, 1 983 "Behind a Surge in Suicides of Young People" discusscd the suicide trend among youth. Newsweek for August 1 5, 1983 reported that the 15- to 24-year-old age group is the only segment of thc population whose death rate has increased in recent ycars, and that among 15- to 19-year-olds, suicide is now the second leading cause of death, after traffic accidents-many of which, in fact, arc suspected suicides. Anorexia nervosa (self-induced starvation) and bulimia (a pattern of gorging followed by vomiting) are rapidly spreading phenomena among women. First registered in the popular media in the mid-'70s, the growth of these aftlictions has been discussed in such articles as "The Binge Purge Syndrome" (Newsweek, November 2, 1981) and "Anorexia: the 'Starvation Disease' Epidemic" (US. News and W orld Report, August 30, 1982). The October 1983 Ms. asks, "Is the Binge-Purge Cycle Catching?" while noting that "At least half the women on campus today suffer from some kind of eating disorder." A sudden surge in heroin use among various social ciasses, from blue collar workers to Kennedy offspring, drew much media attention during the second half of 1983. Continued growth in the dimensions of alcohol abuse has brought a big turnabout from the '70s, namely, the tendency of states to raise the legal drinking age. A Redbook (June 1982) survey "revealed the startling news that problem drinking is increasing dramatically among women who are under the age of 35." The W all Street Journal of February 8, 1983 addressed the connection between brawling, failing grades, and drinking in "Colleges Try to Combat Rampant Alcohol Use, But With Little Effec!." The first federally funded study on the subject in fifty years, Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition, attracted attention in summer 1983 with its recommendation of a national

of such institutions as the nuclear family, religioJ} and govern m e l l t . Not only is t h c traditional family continuing to fall apart, b u t love itself

example, is a brutalizing conscquc ll('(' or j ill' awarCIH:SS of I h e l'aisl'lIl' s.'\

ago. I nt i m at e awareness of drugs a l l d v i l l i l ' l HT al V l' l y early ;1'.l'S, rOI

' ; I I \ l p a i g n to slash alcohol COllsumption.

devastating indictment of the American education system; the 1 8-month

h ' l I l:e in Education, issued in May, had been causing more of a stir by its

At t he: same: time, the re:porl of the N ational Commission on Excel

study warned of "a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very
future as a nation and a people," as kids have perhaps never been so

t u rned off by school. . Gambling has been multiplying so rapidly as to be measur d m fractions of the national economy and to cause some SOCIal cntlcs to refer to it as a curse that reflects basic changes in public attitudes toward work and money. "Gambling Rage: Out of Control" (US. News and

World Report, May 30, 1983) depicts a growing popular "urge to buck the odds and take a chance-on anything." Another development receiving scrutiny in the early and mid-'80s is massive avoidance of taxes. "The Tax-Evasion Virus" (Psychology Today, th March 1 982) employed a medical metaphor to opine that . epidemiology of cheating, there is ...contaglon-and no vacc1l1e 111 SIght. Featured in Business Week for April 5, 1982 was "The Underground Economy's Hidden Force," a lengthy discussion of the '.'startling growth" purpose of aVOldmg taxes, whIch of the refusal to report income for as its central element. Time's March 28, posits distrust of government the 1983 cover story, "Cheating by the Millions," also focused on evasion. Tim noted t at growing, open acceptance even of blatant tax 83 tax revenue lost to fraud tripled from 1973 to 1981 and project that over those of losses (possibly $300 billion) may entail a ten-fold jump

"I

the

In the military, reports of sabotage and the near-universal use of drugs lI continue to appear routinely, along with articles indicating the unrelIabI as mindless instruments of destruction. The total ty of enlisted persons fiasco of the April 1980 mission to rescue the Amencan embassy

1973.

hostages in Iran reflected, to many, the combat unreadiness of amed services personnel as a whole. During the following two years, pohhcal commentators of every stripe were astonished by the wholesale non compliance which met a pre-draft registration law, as about one million federal reqUIrement to sIgn up. (In the 19- and 20-year aIds ignored spring of 1982 an annual reserve duty call-up in the U kraine had to be

the

canceled when too few reported.) If the "New Nationalism" component of the still-horn New Right movement of the early '80s seemed to exist mainly as a media creation, like the Moral Majority, the alleged rise of the Ku Klux Klan also proved at non-existent. In 1925, 40,000 had marched in a Washington, DC rally;

their next Washinhton show of s t r e ngtil Oil Novnlliwi .' / , I l)X2, k we r than 40 appeared. And thc thousands of counterdellJollstrators on hand, breaking the confines of leftist ritual provided for them, used the occasion to riot, looting shops and injuring ten policc. The election of Reagan produced no social or ideological results for the Right; its efforts in favor of school prayer and creationism, and against abortion and conscrvation, clearly failed. A Louis Harris poll of January 1983 expressed Americans' desire for tougher anti-pollution laws, counter to the Reagan administration's hopes to usc the depth of recession for a severe weakening of environmental statutes. Meanwhile, articles like "Behind the Puhlic's Negative Attitude Toward Business" (U.S. News & World Report, July 12, 1982) and "A Red Light for Scofflaws" (Time Essay, January 24, 1 983), which editorialized about the "extreme infectiousness" of the current spirit of gcncrally ignoring laws of all kinds, are published frequently. In a Fcbruary 1 983 Louis Harris poll on alienation, a record 62% registered a bittcr estrangemcnt from the idca of the supposed legitimacy of the rich and powerful, and leadership in general. "Clearly, alicnation has cut dceper into the adult population of America than cver before," concluded Harris. Robert Wuthnow, "Moral Crisis in American Capital ism" (Ilarvard Rusiness Review, March-April 1983), analyzed an unprece dented "fundamental uncertainty about the institutions of capitalism." And as the percentage of voters declines still further, young people are demonstrating an utter disinterest in politics. "Civics Gap: Alarming Challenge" (U.S. News & World Report, April 25, 1983) fcatured former Commissioner of Education Ernest L. Boyer, who spoke of an "upsurge of apathy and decline in public understanding" of government among students. In the world of work, or should one say anti-work, the '80s continue to evidence a deepening disaffection. The reports and studies fuel countless stories on high turnover, the chronic "productivity crisis," growing "time theft," and the sharp increase (since 1974) of people interested only in part-time work, as well as on-the-job stress, unemploy ment insurance "ahusc," etc.-the aspects of work refusal are virtually countless and unabating. Dun's Business Month for October 1 982 dealt with the $40 billion a year "High Cost of Employee Theft," describing it as a "major cause of business failures," while in June 1983, followed with "How to Foil Employee Crime: Inside Thefts Can Destroy a Business And Often Do." The continued strong growth in the use of lie detectors by employers is onc obvious corollary to this facet of thc vaniShing work ethic.
,

Ti l l ' 'xu .... :'-,( ) 1 -",\ 1,

1 . 1 I M I N l , ( J I \':' 1 - 1 1 1 ',:\\

l ' m phaSL"S, is referred to

i
"' '

terms of l1lid'Os i ll Nusincss lIorizons ' " Employee Suhstanc ,s Alluse: I :p ide mi e of the Eighties" (July/August 1 983), and by Newsweek Taki ng Dru gs on thc Job" coycr story (August 22, 1983), which outhned its "enormous" dimensions and cost to the economy. . The movement toward worker participation as a stabilizing prmclple gains ground against the backdrop of anti-work phenomena. Thc recession of 1981-83 was used by managers as a pressure to seek the best to terms for the new rules; it did not prevent their institution, contrary most predictions. Authority relations, in this area as elsewhere, WIll havc ("0 be increasingly participationist or they will collapse all the sooncr. In mid-September 1982, the first nationally sponsored onfercnc on labor-management cooperation was held, with some 900 umon, company, and government officials taking part. The Labor Department announced it would promote and encourage shop floor collaboration, a new U.S. ISCIphne. policy aimed of course at undercutting worker ,"d Chrysler Corporation Chairman Lee lacocca, m a December 1982 specch to the Commercial Club of Boston, spoke of the cruCIal necd to "get cveryone on the same team-labor, management, and the govem men!." H e repeated this idca on June 30, 1983 to enthUSiastIC umon representatives as the first businessman to addrcss Michigan's AFL-CL convention in its 25-year history. Similarly, the "Let's Work Together serics of spots by the radio and TV networks' Broadastmg I ndustry Committec to Improve American Productivity wcrc WIdely alred, and Ford's two-page ad entitled "A Breakthrough in Labor Relations Has Helped Create the Highest Ouality Vehicles in America" appeare d promincntly in 1983. Since the '70s thc new organizational model, at all levels, has been stcadily moving forward. The spring 1 982 Journal of Contemporary Business focused on "Theory X, Y, Z, or '!: Reshaping the Amenca ?, Workplace." John Simmons and William J . Mares' "Reformmg Work (New York I1mes, October 25, 1982) reported a "dra:;,atically increase d employee participation in management and ownershIp aImed at reducI alienation and reversing the productIVIty dccllne, and amountI".g to quiet revolution ... taking place on shop floors and in offices acros America." The shift to trip art ite ne go ti atI ons m auto, steel and construe ), tion were examples of a tendenc toward collaboration that must be expanded, according to "ldcology Revisited: America Looks Ahead" by David A. Heenan (Sloan Manax"mclil lil'vil'lV, Winter 1982). Its stress on implementing a "one nation im\ivisihk" solution reflects the owerfl . disintegrative energies at large and POlilts III the dIrectIon of a faSCISt
I\ lIllt hl'l prolllim' l I t part Ilf I hl' sYlidrulIle. ill
.

<?,

l'lh )in' t Il ;J! l c l l 1 :l l iv(".,\ . puh lical ions

cam e to power in late 1982 express ly to combat a severe Sov iet wor k rdusal. Of course bcfore the '80s thcr e were digi ta l watches, pocke calc t ula lors , anu Star W ars. B u t easily the biggest social impact of the early to Illid dle years of thc de cad e, occurring with the d evelop ing ch ange s in work organ ization, has bee n that of the high-tech exp s lo i o n with its prom ise of video games and comp uter s for eve ry business, dwc lling and scho ol.

d iscus se d an e mergi ng national policy emphas is i n this area ' ce nte ring o n the Industria l Policy Stud y Group mad e up of bankers u nion officials, polit ician s, and high-tech corporatio n head s, and mee tin a l Ihe AFL-CIO nati onal head q uarters. This corporati st tc nden cy (see han k He arn , "The Corporatist Mood in the Unit ed Stat es," Telo s No. )6 , us cfu l for its bibl iographic note s) is not confineu to the U . S . ; on I\u/.: ust 1 , 1983 a new USS R "Law on Work Collectivc s . " featuring wnrker parllclpa llon , was enac ted unde r the direction of And ropo v, who

M"/iuzine

magazmes had devoted muc h space to Harvard's Robert Reich, a I )cmocratic Party advisor, whose "The Next American Fron tier" OIuvocates tripartite plan ning as an alter native to Rea gan' s nea -free market failures and beyond. The Aug ust 28, 1 983 Ne w York Time s

I\dv nsa rics 10 I\lIie s" i n Ihe Nov emh er I kcc mbe r1 982 !/llIv"rd /)".I'in'.>.I' ....inv. a nu D . Quin n Mill s' March 1 'i1l3 Mon thl Labor Review o fferin/.: y , Rdormlllg thc U.S. System of Collective Bargaining" which concluu" s I hal a ne w. official collaborative set-u p is esse ntial to avoid a high de gr" " of eco nom ic and social unrest" which wou ld be coun ter to t h e inte rest "of the Nation as a who le." Mea nwh ile. by the mid dle of 1983 . the newsweeklies and mon thly

A I l lOIlJ-', I lle

1 .l I MI N I :' I II 1< 1 + 1 1;-;:\1 _

l I I a uy

l l h( ' 1 N.

i l l l i l lc i l l i a l

an.:

l )oll; lld

:.I,

SCt lhd 's

"Bu sinc ss

refe rcnc es i n
and

Lahor-

fa irly

rece l l t
from
l-

'1 I IC. ad I l r I t JU Iwga l l , "There was a time when then; was tim e . Oncc wr.;

I I

ClOldd spelld l i m L' wi t h a new r i ccc of information," proceeding to boast (If I h" sp"ed with which its computer systems can deal with "trillions of bit'i of i n l 'n rmat i on . But the processing of data-" information"-has , , , , ' h ing 10 do with understanding, and what comes to mind here is the
"

s. w i al

"

lIoVel, hll,\Y Travel

affliction just around the corner suggested in Tom Mooney's 1982

I t is also becoming ever more obvious that technology renders each

to

Other Planets, that of "information sickness."

';"l'cccding generation more tcchnology-dependent, further separated I mm nature, more fully colonized by the inauthentic and cmpty. The ""lion of people as appendages of machines, evoked in terms of 1 9th ,,,,. ntury industrialism, is even more relevant today. Apple Computer

"f It as a M aserati for Your M ind," in a debasement of individuality and ,Teation echoed by the claims that typing an instruction on a computer results in art or that word processors enable one to write. We be come
weaker, reduced, infantilized. Meanwhile this barren future's dawning is heralded, especial ly for the young who may be expected to have been prepared for this contrived world, by the ugliness and boredom of today's. "Computer Camps for Kids," reveals a July 19, 1982 Newsweek article, followed by a look at education in that magazine's December 27, 1982 issue, entitled "The Great Computer Frenzy." The Apple Company announced in July 1983 ils plan to provide free computers for evcry public school in California lhat asked for one, as colleges began to require that students purchase computers as part of registration. Howard Rheingold's "Video Gamcs Go to School" (P,'Jchology Today. September 1983) discussed the "profound classroom co mpu te rs. transformation" of education represented by the introduction of

, dIered its product to the late 1 983 consumer with the counsel, "Think

I'On sequ enc es to be mer ely accepted as facts of life. A two pag e IBM ad a nno unc ed the "new era" und er the hea din g, "Inform ation: The re ' s ( ' rowing Agr eem ent that It's the Nam e of the Age We Live in." A TR W,

Man of the Yea r for 1 982. The outl ines are w.c ll -known to everyon e, even thou gh the m e an ing of I h ,s late st technological wave has bee n p ublicly disc usse d alm ost not at a l l . S ud denly we are in the Information Age , its ben ign-and inev itab le

1. '182 was the full i n augurati o n of this blitz . as obse rved by such artic les as " Compu ter s for th e Mas ses: The Revolution Is Just Beg inni ng" early I II the year (U.s. News & W orld Report, January 3, 1 9 82), an d Ii'me's J a n u ary 3, ] 983 cover story, "A New Wor ld Dawns," whic h proc laim ed

Benjamin Compain's "The New Literacy" (Science Digest, March

1983) matter-of-factly states that the ability to manipulate a computer will soon be the criterion of literacy. One can pcrhaps already sec some of the products along this line of high-tech culture, such as the vacuous USA '/ 'oday, "the Nation's Newspaper via Satellite," which aniveu in impoverishment is stunning. And occasionally it is almost funny, as in the case of CBS-TV's July 7, 1983 presentation, "1984 Revisited." The program zeroed in on the rise of the computer state and the consequent loss of privacy, etc. and was sponsored by Exxon Otfice Systems, whose frequcnt commercials featured a view of endless video display terminals

Ihe

co mputer

empowerment as promised by further "progress" and its real sterility and

J 983. The irony in the contrast between the claims of fulfillmcnt and

,.
,

,
"

TI l l ' 'OS SI ) " ,\1,

C(lvcr t l l

lined up in a huge, facelss office, which could h;IVl" graCl: d the any dystopian noveL Amitai Etzioni's An Immodest Agenda: Rebuilding America

21st Century ( 1 982) takes aim at an individualism that in the view of Ihis

HeJim:

threatening American society itself. The search for self-fulfillment, which

sociologist, has disastrously advanced since the '60s to the point "I

IIII'

' Hll sl" ,"\ aq_'.t". Fr on : rI ( , f a 1 I 1 t ) ( t ' 1',C IH' I"ClI , i.( ll a l i l l" j l l l :, e all d is als l l pa ur h( m rci l c.d rn f1h ,lsI S on i l l pm"-- p l'I'S OIl lio llsl'lio lds to lnc tll j U lIlP adge r an d th e hk e, .:r" eq uip me llt , portable mU SIC he snt( : r l a i l l l l l c n t cL' l l h r social selves. High technology 10 he sh rin kin !; away from ou w, . SI" ' 1 l l

1 1 1 ' 1\1I ' N I , 1 11 1'1 1 1 ' ....

\1

involves a "retreat from work" and an "inability to defer gratification," affects 80% of the population and, according to Etzioni, is crippling virtually all the institutions that mediate between the individual and the state. While this "Immodest Agenda" is essentially a warning and a wish by one hoping to preserve and even renew the present order, others can see in high-tech the tools of uniformity and "objective" restraints necessary to do precisely that. Computer entrepreneur Steven Wozniak staged an "Us Festival" in Southern California over the 1982 Labor Day weekend, intended to help transcend the threatening forces of the "me generation" by introducing the 400,000 music fans to a giant computer pavilion and such high-tech wonders as fifty-foot video screens. Steven Levy's "Bliss, Microchips and marriage of rock and computer technology." The efficacy of this Rock & Roll " (Rolling Stone, October 14, 1982) called this effort "the

spectacle may be doubted, however, especially considering the fate of the second Us Festival, also held in San Bernardino county, during Memorial Day weekend, 1983. Several injuries occurred, and part of the crowd tore down fences, thrcw bottles at shcriffs deputies and rammed their cars into police cruisers. Certainly the project of computerizing work in the neo-Taylorist direction of quantifying and tightly regulating employee output, is a major part of technology's combat with troublesome and capricious humanity. John Andrew's "Terminal Tedium" computer-systematized work. Workers in 6, 1983) is typical of many articles describing the strong antipathy to a Blue Shield office in Massacbusetts, for example, denounced the electronic set-up as simply

r,

.,

19 83 ad for the e of false self-sufficiency; an early ....'-'. ier a!" s a se n s ed ne w breakthroughs In cum of Sciencc an d Industry cit ( I'n'gon M us us pr ed lclt n that including th e no t wholly unserio I " HIl c computers, If nO-one els e WI 1. ur refrigerator will talk to you even " Soon yo ents of all kmds (n ot ite th e great barrage of enticem An d yet de sp and els ew he re , ing economic pressures) in the schools, the media I< ,rett eXIsts. Smce Ha ro ld resistance to th e computer age " ' llGh popular recent works have so un de d n's 1 976 work, Teehnophobia, more I t ell ma (19 81 ) by Sa mu el C. e, for example, Blaming '/ 'echnology l i le same th em M or e re ce ntly, Anxiety (19 81 ) by Je ffrey V. Mallow. I :Io rm an an d Science mathematiCs, as we ll as es have shown that girls still avoid lot s of articl st of t chnology tai l a probably sharply growing dI tr vid eo games, an d de ber s Selence 83 ask ed , us groups throughout society. Septem ;lIn on g vario ered why mo re th an d to Be co me Scientists'!" an d wond .. Ar e Ki ds Afrai of science and ma th by th e U. S. high school students drop ou t ilalf of I Otb gr ad e. ormulted an d ys work and technology can be ref Be hin d all the wa re s ltant v.:eannss and stands their basic domination and the repackaged . It IS de fin ed by iversally today. A world IS faltenng frustration fclt so un on mU t be de ma nd ed If s an d so dr ain ing that our participati , absurditie IS sp nous. f as exist. The "is su e" of "quality of li te , it is to continue to Its en d, we more odious as It nears . Fourier said, "Civilization becomes but more prospects for Its en d. at least can see not only th e odium

( Wall Street Journal,

May

In the May 15, 1 983 New York lImes, Richard McGahey ("High Tech, Low Hopes") wrote of the oppressive, low-paid work, such as computer assembly, that underlies the clean, dazzling facade of the new develop ments and warned of "increased class tensions." With industrial robotics one detects high technology'S wishful thinking
that capital could reproduce itself while dispensing with an undependable proletariat. The growing number of "telecommuters," or those perform ing piece-work at home before computer screens, expresses some of this

an unbearable sweatshop and told Andrew they wouldn't be there long.

,;::. T

I ;
}"

"

P RESENT-DAY BANALITIES

When contestation publicly re-emerged in the '60s, after virtually a half century of dormancy, its militancy often betrayed a very underdeveloped sense of vision. Since World War I and subsequent depression and wars, hot and cold, this explicit renewal of the negative found itself on a new terrain and the spirit of revolt only scratched the surface before being diffused by a variety of factors. From the end of that decade a significant deepening in the erosion of the dominant values and orientation has taken place, escaping the notice of those who forget that political struggles are predicated on more inchoate (evcn spontaneous!) social developments. Hence, a few words arc in order regarding that which should be taken for granted as the minimum intelligence for any understanding of the '80s. To those whose comprehension of the "Reagan Era" is limited to lamenting the demise of the '60s, an apology for disturbing their slumber. By way of introduction, two sets of contrasts. In November 1965 a power failure darkened New York City but the law-abiding restraint of its citizens was evident and widely praised by authority; intcrnalized repression seemcd to be wholly intact. When a similar blackout occurred thcre in 1977, however, "the party bcgan from the minute the lights went out," as one participant described it. Massive and inter-racial looting commenced, even to thc point of the setting up of distribution centers of free goods, and the only rcported violence was suffered by those few police foolhardy enough to try to restore "order." When John F. Kennedy was shot in 1 963 the immediatc reaction of many was shock and tears. Upon Reagan's shooting in 1981, when it wasn't yet known whether he would survive, the laughter of children becamc the topic of scores of journalists' commentaries. Even anecdotally, then, the superficiality of the notion of a real ascendancy of Reaganism is immediately suggested. The efforts to introduce prayer and a biblical anti-evolution doctrine into the schools and to do away with abortion and environmental protection are, of course, in their failure, one measure of that, as is the November 1985 Roper poll which found that only 4 percent respect "Moral Majority" Falwell.

PI'.!

'.1 -N I

I ' \'

\-V I H ' 1 I t i l l' I l' I H k l 1cy i s IOW;l I d ;1 deept'l ;11111 the American D r e a m , a picllllT

only emphasize the extent of disaffection by its effo rt. Th e s ligh t ly morc of the acquisitive, middle-class eareerist, the Yuppie, whose euitu r, , 1 Takes a Psychic Toll," U. s.

Hollywood haH" a cen tu ry ago cannot he SlICCI.:sshdly prollloled a l l d wi l l

dlTIH'1 disil ilisiollllH'lI1 w i l h or A n i n i.,:! 1 1 i:11 was invl'lIlni ill

" H I \ I I 1 II " ,

' . ( I 1St. 'II) 1 ' I 1 l' , " I S I . II

modern angle of the Right's propaganda is the re-invention and cicvati"" dominance has heen loudly trumpeted. But already the articles detailing

the "dissatisfaction, anxiety, and physical problems" ("Life of a Yuppie' upwardly-mobile arc dellating this tiresome success image. Likewise, the once-touted return of martial spirit under Reagan has largely been exposed. Most important in this context was the vast noncompliance of young men in the early '80s to the instituting of pre draft registration requiremcnts. The failure of the military to attract enlistees is seen in the enormous recruiting campaigns currently needed and in articles like "Honeymoon Over for Volunteer Armed Forces'!" columnist George Will, also spoke (August 19, 1 985) of this vulnerability

News & World Report,

April 29, 1985) of tht '

(U.s. News & World Report,

June 10, 1985). Another conservative source,

by an important conclusion: "Thc more complex the military organization and the morc sophisticated the technology, the more the success of the system depends on morale."

polygraph or "lie-detector" tests by employers has now passed the one their employees are more likely to steal than ten years ago." Ward

A crucial parallel involves the world of work, where the usc of

million per year mark. A 1984 survey of merchants by American

Hardware Mutual Insurance found that "80 percent of store owners think Howell International, a national employment agency, disclosed that false resumes and misrepresentation of job qualifications in general, based on their 1985 study, is very widespread and on thc rise. Meanwhile, fast food chains are reportedly recruiting older workers at retirement homes because they can't find enough teenagers to fill shifts-despite the fact that 17.7 percent of U.S. teens are out of work. Along with these data are reports that drug use in the workplace has never been more prevalent, and a Novemher 19R5 announcement by the Labor Depart ment of the largest singlc ycar increase in work-related injuries and illncsses sincc such figures b egan to he reported in 1 973; the 1 1 .7 perecnt work a a major factor. s jump resumes an earlier trcnd and can be reasonably Iinkcd to rcfusal of Thc vitality of the revolt against work syndrome is seen in the

hty, If not tion of employees tor Its stabl " ' q u i res the volu n tary part icipa t lmportant a ency for se, provide the mos ',III vi val . The unions, of cour een the Umte Aut "lan dmark" 1984 contract betw I h i s "'" 'per"tion; the , access Toyota, for example, 1I1cr ease d Workers and General MotorsScience Monito/; June 27, 1985 ), and 1 < 1 plant decision-making" (Christian d With the AW dues increase was negotiate W"S also the first time a U workers. n delegates, which infunated auto 11< ,ss rather than voted hy unio agement ive, the judgcment that the man I ,'rom a social control perspect 111 a non e efficient than what prevails " I' information will be mor dation of the I formalion s the foun mmputerized economy establishe ement of thc 80s, a neo the Scientific Managcment mov Society. But rest by pho ne oper tors and all the I'aylorist monitoring of typists, ry product'v ty. The road to a satlsfacto computers, is providing no easy t filtmg mto the is one of anger, as humans resis overwhelming response rs less a Silicon Valley, Its new mecca, offe new rationalized future and ffs. The one of pollution and lay-o p ict re of gleaming success than er work nt of dally hfe might even rend possibility that the impoverishme , IS vacuum of substance elsewhere rdatively satisfying, due to the k. There progressive degradation of wor . . rendered unlikely by technology'S hide, and no one can miss thiS of authenticity, no place to . is no area lshmg IS b ltCr than r, "The worst day f commonplace. The bumpersticke , the also popular Different true, as does the best day working," rcmains

l II(I/"I-'(lf'(/ /lusinl'ss Un'ielV offe rin g put .l u ly AlII' lIst I 1X.1 r ' 1 is fu l l of vid ncc t t Cplta i n d u s t ri a l ;' ei 'l t io Il S lilcra t ll n.: Tht'
'1 ,

1 '-I I " rVl l " N I ;, ( J I " l < l " I I I:\1

steadily growing popularity of participative management systems, which recognize that the "workers themselves must be the real source of

. . day, same bullshit." . , . ' virtue arc not confmed mentaries about dechnmg CIVI.C Anguished com do so, entage of registered voters who to such data as the declining perc ent from a most also draw their cont or to miscreants on the job, but deals With culture. One favo rite m thiS vem irresponsible consumer plete n n the stones .of the. com increasing shoplifting, including mg. d with very VISible mCldents of steal involvement of shoppers pres ente testifies clectronic alarms on store e ts The n car-universal placement of erodmg non, as high tech vies With to the extent of the phenome l of rules. The present record leve allegiance to thc work-and-pay ry mama, and the unchecked state lotte prison population, the growing testify to the shift m valu s. the "underground economy" all growth of ice es from the Inter nal Revenue Serv Concerning the latter subject, figur over $ 1 00 bllhon as the gove rnment show that tax cheating now costs $20 billion at the end of the '60s. . compared to less than the young, 111 fection can be detected among A deeper visceral disaf 1985 rns. Psychology Today's January terms of re arkable hehavior patte

:a

the

j I H .... . N I j L\ \" 1 t.\N:\1 1 1 1 1 ' .

'lass ( ' h i l d I " C I l Sel I ill)..', Their Worlds on Fire'!" The alienation registere u hy widespread child arsoll is a lso evident in two November 1985 Gallup polls which showed thai I .' percent of teenage girls sutler symptoms of anorexia nervosa ( s c l l starvation) or bulimia (bingc-and-purge syndrome), a much higher figur than had been previously estimated. In June 1985 national Center Ii" Disease Control statistics were released that demonstrated a jump o f . I I percent in the suicide rate of young men aged 15 to 24 from 1970 to 1980. A September 1984 Gallup poll had found that only 23 percent of U.S. teenagers do not drink, the lowest figure recorded by the Gallup Organization, and Family Circle and the Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education reported in September 1985 that their four year study indicated a spread of drinking and drug abuse into the grammar schools. During the same week of September 1985 Bishop James Malone, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, declared that new emphasis on the teaching of sexual morality is "urgently needed," and U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett urged conservative activists to join him in a fight to restore a "cohcrent moral vision" to America's public schools. Reality offers little or nothing to support the idea that even during the high noon of Reaganism has there been any renewal of faith in the promise of American lire; quite the contrary, the increased enrollment in college business courses not withstanding. The idealist illusions of the '60s are mainly dead, and the failed counter-revolution of the Right is equally irrelevant. If the future is unclear, it at least seems obvious that a corrosive skepticism has dissolved much of the old foundation for repression and lies. One could reply that this negation has only left us even more miserable; look at the growing levels of emotional disability, as reported not only by the National Institute of Mental Health but by a glance at the covers of the supermarket tabloids, with their continuing attention to depression, loneliness and stress or the great numbers of TV commercials devoted to pain relievers, alcohol treatment centers and the like. There is even a refusal of literacy taking place, with about 30 million illiterate adult Americans, and some have discussed this in terms of an intentional aversion to the whole of modern life. Horkheimer's later pessimism could be cited to echo current references to entropy and despair, "the feeling," as he put it, "that nothing further can be expected, at least nothing that depends on oneself." And yet the psychologists seem to agree that we all have much rage
..

cover story askt.;d, " Why Are M iddk-(

I l L " i dl', ( l i l l i t h e re is. arguah ly, less than eyer for a tho 1 1 1 1 " ('()lllill llC(1 su p r es io . A se es e t
I"
:l

u rity rely on fO: p s n n c n order seems t? have o cards left, ore technolob'Y; nothing in its leolo,lcal pocket play, heyonu the late 70s, It no longer b i n g up i t s sleeve . As Dcbord wrote 'What appears good, what good promis es anythi ng. It no longcr says: pp c ars It simply says 'It is so.'"
""I m 10
.'

to

IS

IS

M E DIA, I RONY AND "BOB"

It i s not my purpose here t o lament t h e fact that culture h a s been

,"posed condition of representation in general.

postmodernism into the fast-food chain of expression and reflects the In its enervated, late capitalist decline, art is increasingly no more than

slyle itself enters a stage of bankruptcy; its incoherent banality turns

anything-they have nothing left to say. With postmodernism the idea of

liq uidating itself for some time now. Artists no longer want to tell us

a specialized colony of the media. The vapid acquiescence of, say, a

,.

of culture for the masscs exists not only to improve their negative public

understand that all art, at base, serves authority. Thus their sponsorship

Warhol has made it easier for corporations like Mobil and Xerox to

images but also to promote the artistic for its own qualities. Philip

workplace, in order to motivate and pacilY workers. Media-style art uses of a shared cultural unity between owners, managers, and workers. This

at the world's largest cigarette factory to create a culturally valorized

Morris, to cite a most instrumental use of art, employs oversized graphics

symbolS to drown out the employees' alienation and argue the existence intention brings to mind perhaps the deepest function that Muzak

explained that "Muzak promotes the sharing of meaning because it

attempts; one of its foremost psychologists and advisors, James Keenan,

80 million people a day, Muzak is one of the grosser tactics in power's struggle against the global devaluation of symbols.

massifies symbolism in which not a few but all can participate." Reaching

of consumerism. The fact that the world's best photography is expressed commodified culture striving to reach everyone. as TV commercials is a perfect illustration of the technologized, in its service, as it must when there are so many signs that the whole This would-be conquest by media easily puts all the goods of culture

achieving this aestheticization, and is no more than advertising and styles

gardism is nearing extinction; the ubiquity of art as manipulation is

aestheticizing life. Today this goal is being realized at a time when avant

The Surrealists, among other avant-gardes, set themselves the goal of

spectacle of simulated life is running out of gas.

H the spiritless melange in painting known as postmodcrnism implies,

[\/I I ' l l l: \ , 1 1{ ( l N Y . \ N I l " H i l l ! "

by its rcycling of elemellts from carlier lor;!.',;, I l l;11 tlt-vl'lupillelit i s at i l l l end, so thc tired current o f " i n stant nostalgia" successful representation of life now relics, for its last resource or energy, on the re-use of ever more rccent cultural memories_ Occasionally tht' mass media themselves even make this recycling explicit, as in a TV
commercial for lemonade: "Look what's happened to way back when.

condition for massified art, media and the spectacle in general. Tht'

i n d icates a similal

h l ' l p I l I l T t I Ill' art-lIl'ad dCllland for ]Jew a n t ic s hy his Church. The radical

"

r I r\11

i'l 1 :-. I

)].

1 ' 1 , 1 IS:\ 1

, ( " ( I ' (" or the very popular Suhgcnius cnsmhlc is not far from that of

" S a t u f'l]ay N ight Live," or that of Artjim,m, in which ready references to

,\<iOrJlO and Baudrillard can be found immediately following dozens of t);lgcs or gallery ads.
But if media, following art, and culture in gcneral, tend to swallow up
t he critical and blunt the negative, that negative is not to bc lost sight of.

Now eve rything old is new again." It is among responses to this manipulated Iifc, of course, that the deepest interest must lie, our weighing of the movemcnt and meaning of responses. [rony, for example, was possibly always diseonneetivc or defusing, in its tendency to substitute an easy joke for a too direct response to a loaded conversation or other critical situation. But if it was always in that sense "a form of appeasement," in Bill Berkson's phrase, for this undermining of dialogue, irony is now automatic and establishes complicity in a deeper sense. So much is "camp," and whatever subver sive potential that once might have resided there is long dead. An ironic or sarcastic response to the world is nearly always present today; it is a cliche, a convention rather than a sign of independence. Skcpticism-or at least its image-is built into the parade of images and roles, though the reasons why it is needed cannot be comforting to those who do not wish to give up the synthetic. If "nihilism" is as close to everyone's grasp as rock music or the seven hours of television consumed on average per day, one can sec, equally, that such "nihilism" is not enough and that the spectacle's strength is being strained. The further alienation must be represented and sold to us---consider "Miami Vice," for example, (and that it features cops is mostly irrelevant) with its ultra-hipness and angst-the more careful we must be to avoid its cultural-political recuperation and the more depth is required to do just that. The rock videos of MTV at times seem to threaten the very integrity of the subjective; their frequent surrealism projects more powerful images than the Surrealists achieved, with more power to colonize while enriching media; who would really be surpris ed to see explicitly "radical" angles presented there? Meanwhile, the Church of the Subgenius is virtually a cultural industry in itself and its digs at religion, work, etc. pack no more punch than Letterman. In fact, culture needs such farce to pep up its dying appeal. for Iligh Not surprisingly, "Rev." Ivan Stang, Subgenius founder, writes regularly imagination. David Letterman mocks the TV industry and h is own format

Despite the best efforts of hip, cynical substitutes reality ccrtainly apparent non-colonization, the refusal of work continues and deepcns.

remains problematic, eluding media's grasp. To cite just one area 01

'lime for April 28, 1986 bemoaned "A Maddening Labor Mismatch," in
which growing worker shortages coexist with continued unemployment. The rejection of jobs by the young stands out most of all, especially considering the higher teenage and young-adult jobless rates. The May

20, 1986 Fortune cover story announced a shocking failure, that of the
zero impact computers have had on output-p er-hour in the office: "U.S.

business has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on them, but whlte collar productivity is no higher than it was in the late Sixties." And blue collar productivity has presented an equally dismaying picture to authority; Wickham Skinner's "Productivity Paradox"

(Harvard Business Review, Ju ly/A ugust 1986) revealed that "American manufacturers' ncar
workers.

heroic efforts" have simply not gotten more work out of industrial [rony and images of estrangement, neutered as they arc by the limits

of culture do not contain our disaffection. That disaffection undermines, as it mus , the very basis of the ironic and artistic points of view.

formance: A Quarterly Magazine jar the New Arts Audience to Per

"
c'

AFTERWORD COMMENTARY ON FORM AND CONTENT IN

n',

"

'
. ,

.'

ELEMENTS OF REFUSAL Paul Z. Simons

immediately and with extreme prejudice, to the pyre,

lS my consldered opinion that

In the event that the powers that be ever re-institute book burning, it

Elements of Ref usal

will be consigned,

Elements of Ref usal (EaR)

broke onto the anarchist scene like a

hombshell. In the fall of 1988 the book had been making the rounds of the milieu in New York, with some extremely mixed reviews, and after
a Libertarian Book Club Forum I found myself in temporary possession
.f.:
;: i
.' ,'-'

of a copy. I finished the volume, cover to cover, in a single sitting of some fourteen hours and then reread it in a more deliberate, careful

fashion over the course of the following week, I recall distinctly the feelings associated with my first engagement with Zerzan's work, something like drowning in honey, inexorable, deliberate, overwhelming.
-

<' ';;.

'

At the time of the publication of EaR the state of anarchist theory was dismal, particularly the North American variant. My time was spent digging up dead authors espousing simplistic theories criticizing social categories that had ceased to exist. Re-worked syndicalism, martyrologies

. ,

of every stripe and description

(a one-woman show called "Emma"!), and

social ecology, if you had enough money to earn the degree. Further, by
,

this time many of us had begun to see through the situationist con; their lack of rigor in ascribing an immense array of social and cultural phenomena to "the spectacle," the ludicrous use of the most retrograde Marxist categories, the childish exampl e of their practical activity, and finally, their embrace of the Enlightenment project (the appropriation of Nature) without recognition nor discussion of the historical dialectic contained therein, As if to drive the point home, North American adherents of situationist ideas plunged head first into the same mistakes

i
, ,

listed above and tore themselves and their various organizations and journals to theoretical shreds before they could effectively publicize their ideology,

In a letter I received recently, a correspondent dcscrib ed the critical method employed by Zcrzan as an example of imman ent critique. This statement, while minimally accurate, misses the mark as to where Zerzan h s taken the method. Horkheimer in T Eclipse he of Reason-immanent cnlique confronts, "the existent, in its historical context with the claim of its conceptual principles, in order to realize the relati nship between the two and thus transcend them." Conceptually almost intuitive and not ' a particularly new nor sophisticated critical strateg y, it has been employed by theorists as disparate as Marx and Voltaire. The first generation of critical theorists merely refined the techniq ue and provided It With a philosophical and historical foundation. There are limitations to imanent critique, however, and part of Zerzan's innovative manipula lln of the technique stems directly from these param eters. Immanent critique, as the name implie s, situates itself firmly on the terrain of the system i t seeks to examine. It is maintained by partisans of immanent cnllque that this is the method's greatest strengt h. It may also be its greatest flaw. For while holding a system to its own claims produces (or should produce) a relatively high standard of consist ency and rigor, i t lso forces the theorist to avoid any criteria arising either from the sub jectIve or external sources, put succinctly; in judging what is (the dommant society) one IS restncted from using what is not (utopia). Another flaw c ntained within immanent critique is its reliance upon the conceptual claims of the system as criteria During the period in time . that the f ,rst generation of critical theorists werc writing such a meeha-

conclusion. In the process he introdu ced three i nnova t ion s that nnw fOr l l l the foundation of much of the theoretical discussion in N o n h Americ a" anarchist circl s. 1) Zerzan developed a method of dialectical critiqu e which IS both Immanent and extraneous to the phenom ena that he is examining. One of the sequel ae of the application of this metho d has been th reinvigoration of the project of philosophical anthropology. 2) EaR r lses the issue of criteria as regards insurrectionar y SUbjects. Zerzan s theSIS that those who have the most to lose invariably make the deepes t and most radical insurrectionary breaks with the past, while . empmeally sound, jetlisons two centuries of bad social philosophy, and 3) Zerzan argues consistently throughout the volume that violence ( riot msurreclion) has been (or could be) an effective and vital force for social change, in direct contradistinction to Leftist ideolog y whose general stance on the Issue has been a puritanical prohibition, justified by either morailsm or cowardice (your choice ).

FleJllI'l lf,\' Ir U''l;I,\'/l1 Ihe ll, was St l I l H' l h illl II('W; /.CJZ;(I I lI:ul P l i l led 0111 all the slops and followc u his lhcorel ical assulll tions 10 I he i r logical p

J ' c l I, rVI :\ N l l ( c IN I I I'l l

rH

J'I

r-. I I H I .',

l/

J \ I t ' l 1',,:\1

' IlIS!TI Wt H I\ !'t I ,

Iesscned ..... I w,11 . In the eurrcnt era and as a result of thc unements of both neo-conserva cpect at i( OIlS associated with the prono l have decreased to almost tives and nco-liberals, the claims of capita d myrIad, sweeplll ist nothing. Where before the critical theor . ,, chicken m every pot, s, statements from the "best of all possible world and statements made by bosses, grab bag to minor, work-a-day promises as cntena With which to politicians, and captains of industry to utIhze Today, ee cost of hvmg m judge the behavior of the ancien regIm e. negotlatlOns and corporate creases are threatened in collective bargammg old days of early cap,tailsm downsizing has brought back the good y workplace pheno cna such as including classic nineteenth centur . workday. Th,s Ideological immediate dismissal and the ten-hour one speaks anymore of the retrenchment has been global in scope; no that La Antigua, Guatemala developing countries, or uses thc argument from Hoboken. The global or Kinshasa will one day be indistinguishable mitant contractIOn 10 Its contraction of capital has meant a conco a decreased ablilly to abstract conceptual terrain, which in turn produces . tlOn of an Immanent enhcal criteria and utilize them in the impkmenta
;1 1 1 (
"

method. the critique has been to Zerzan's response to this weakening of empirical data, Istoncal and unilat erally expand the method to include . hybrid of in:'manent whquc. HIS ex anthropological, to strengthen his hve matenal, WhiCh, whlk pansion has also occasionally included ubJe ed ill the past by a number architectonical ly indefensible, has been jushfl alion, not only augments of other thinkers. Marcusc, in Eros and Civiliz firmly within its bounds, he the concept of reason by placing phantasy psychologIcal ap aratus also makes of phantasy a motive conceptual and descnbed as the Will to which, for lack of a better name, may best be e and confUSIon associated utopia." In spite of the problems, incoherenc construct used III definmg with Eros and Civiliultion, the philosophical less intelligent r carC!1 phantasy seems accurate and though with mischlcl and fooilshness, It theorists therc remains a great possibility of ist with a powerful to.ol. provides the serious critical theor . . cal empmcal data Isn t Inclusion of anthropological and hlston Zerzan doe WIth these particularly earth-shattering, however, . what a With which to judge capital referenccs is to use the material as a cnten species. Zerzan has been and the contemporary state of the human ts in nthropology datmg greatly assisted in this project by devel?pmen have lllclud ed diSCUSSions [rom the mid-1960s. Developments in thIS area of the San III the Kalahan as disparate as the diet of the !Kung branch sapIens and Homo to the taxonomic differentiation between Homo

cn;cus, "Vhrc all or I h i s acadell lic work has led

al

pre-historieal life as being "nasty, brutish and short," to an unders tanding of pre-agncultural humanity as living an existence of si ng u lar grace, . harmo y, sohdanty and health. The impact that these anthropological dIscussIons have had on critical theory are, and will continue to he, staggeng. In the idealis t tradition the concept of an original separation (humamty from nature, individual from society, subjec t from object) has always formed the foundation of its critical etiology , now anthropology has produced empmcally grounded speculation of the existence of just such an event. Anthropology has also provided critical theorists with a ghmpse of human life and society in that "Gold en Age," the Ur-phe n ?mena of the specIes. Zerzan was the first critica l theorist to put these . pIeces Into place and he did so in general categorical discussions as well as using the "Gold en Age" to establish a set of criteria with hich to judge the historical de elopmentof current social and cultural phenome na. It IS thIS foundation whIch grounds his discus sions of language, number, tIme, art and agriculture; which in turn has allowed Zerzan the freedom to tand outsid e the system under examin ation without losing . elth er hIS cntIcal stance or effective criteria, ultima tely enhancing the . . ablhty to level a WItherIng assault on the domin ant society. One of the fascinating, and on first glance seemingly tangential, sequelae of Zerzan's use of empirical anthropology has been to revivify the project of philosophical anthropology develo ped by Max Scheler a phenomenologist associated with political Catho licism, during the fi st two decade s of the twentieth century. For Schele r the goal of the work was to illustrate, in precis e detail, how, "all the specific achievements and works of man-language, conscience, tools, weapo ns, ideas of right and wr g, the state, leadership, the reprcsentational function of art, myths, rehglon, SCIence, hIStOry, and social life-arise from the basic structures of human existence" (Man's Place in Nature, 1 928). Of course, the completJon of ueh a task is impossible prima rily becau se the project assumes a statIc human nature divorc ed from historical and social CIrcumstance. For critical theory, however, if the projec t and problem statement could be appropriately re-formed there may be much to be learned fmm such an investigation. Horkheimer thought so too, and in an essay titled "Remarks on Philosophical Anthr opology," he frames the pf(Ject thus, "The project of modern philosophic al anthropology consists In h nd r ng a norm that will pmvide meaning to an individual's life in the world as it currently exists." Or to be even more clear, insight into human nature should, at a minimum, inform those who criticize the pres-

is a C( I l l I p k l l' I'cappr ili,..; at pre-agncultund human socir..: ty; from tbe classic I lohhr.;si an vi ew 01

I'( )HM

ANI )

( '( )N rl - NT

I N 1 ,' 1 I

t\-I J - N I ",

I II I I I

[ 1'-. ,'\1

e l l l ill hopes

the athropologl : o d d rcss t h i s in a negative, critical manner. R turmng to atIOn and InstItutions have organIz < ';11 data, if the vast majority of human time, and art then these not been characterized by language, number, needs and des res phenom ena must not be associa ted with satisfyi ng basic produc e a fmal ( h uman nature) . Such theoretical machinations may never IS, but they do ;""wer or series of answers as to what human nature is critical theory produce an outline of what human nature is not. This g falsehood. fu lfilling its promise; not illuminating truth, but excludm of the theory of oppOSItIOn, at least smee One of the basic tenets claim of the llabeuf s Conspiracy of Equals, has been the uncontested . Ninete nth century thought rroletariat as revolutionary subject were a few continued and refined this virtual article of faIth. There lumpen as holdmg great waffler s; Bakunin, for instance, discuss ed the the end, and under promis e as a potential revolutionary subject but i n . d thIS hne of pressure fmm his Swiss artisan supporters he droppe . ists for reachon conject ure. Suffice it to say that when even apolog . the danger of thIS (Hippolyte Taine comes to mind) accept and include and accepted, new social class in their writings the pomt has been made proletarian gospel continues dow to the Icft, right and center. The proletanat usmg situationists, who, unable to distinguish bourge oisie from ic class, redefined the battle hnes the marxist formula based on econom order-takers becam e so that order-givers morphed into bourgeois and and the have-nots IS as revolutionary subject. The social war of the haves whIch should make old and accepted as the system that produc ed them, has come at the one wonde r just how accurate the description is. Zerzan one mIght expect problem from a very differen t angle, however, . and as scope. The s cond found the whole discussion lacking in both clanty and one theonst m the section of EaR contain s essays dealing with, what ." This label seems more than approprI milieu has termed , "lost history enough defImtlOn ate, if one adds the caveat that "lost" conveys a broad disappeared into the halls of to include both misplaced and

ur realizin g a 4uantitativc hreak wjt it. Zerzan's theoreti

1 ':1 I . M I NTS ( 1 1 , h!I:H JSAI

academia-never sighted again. . , . not, InsurrectIon Zerzan's historical essays then deal with examples of each instance the rioters have pnmanly and physical refusal, generally. are small property been person s of the middle classes, individuals who mtIes, and fmally, owners , person s of some standing in theIr commu to tear theIr individ uals with a great deal to lose, and very little motive ble to partICI respective societies down. This general statement is applica ctions throughout hIstory; Luddlles Regulators, pants in riots and insurre King Mob, the Whiskey Rebels, Rebecca and her Sisters, Captam SWIng,

In

Paris Commune or J '(1, 7 1 , M a k h novisls, I I I{". N e w York ( 'i l y Il( '()p, ic- I i l l ya puke party and power outage of 1 '177, t h e M LK assassination riots, May '68 in France and so i()rth, While not all of the abovt: events arc discussed in EoR, investigation into these occurrences revcJls s i m i l ar findings as to their participants; the vast majority were employed, or employers , artisans, weavers, farmers, mechanics, sailors, officer catkts, studcnts, merchants , tavern keepers, local elected officials; they were not solely nor even conspicuously the industrial proletariat. Throughout the historical essays in EoR, Zerzan makes this point, implicitly and explicitly
using primary sources. Zerzan isn't the first theorist to unCOver this

.l. 1O

. h l l M :\ N I I ( ( I N I I N I I N 1 I I kl l N I .... ( I I 1 { 1 . I . l l ....:\1

1 1 1 {l. 1 I I I I ', I I I

' \ [ I I I ,. \ [

V i ( }il-IHT h a s hTII a l l I"SS(' l l l i ; t I !";HTI Ill" historical refusal.

information. Crane Brinton, a colleague of Marcuse's at the Office for Strategic Services (forerunncr of thc CIA), in a study of the rcvolu tionary milieux during the Terror, found that the Jaeobins presented t()r a brief period of time the spectacle of men acting without regard for their own material interests. Brinton, an apologist for the dominant society with a sneaking admiration for revolution, seems cle ar ly stunned by this and fails to follow the insight to its logical conclusion. The potential impact of this thesis regarding the insurrectionary subject, particularly in the context of a post-industrial economic situation, is shattering.To enumerate just one development, it provid e s some empirical substantiation to Camatte's thcsis that humanity, in the years since the Second World War, has been utterly proletarianized, altering the insurrectionary project from one of class versus class to species versus society or specifically, social concept. There are many other implications of this thcsis, to be workcd out in the coming years by theorists who have as yet to find a voice, a method (and a publishcr). Violcnce, as tool for social change, fell into disrepute in the mid twentieth century, and has yet to regain the prc-eminent placc it formerly held in the revolutionary milieLLx of the nineteenth century. It is some ti m e s forgotten just how enamored our political ancestors were of violence. Albert Parsons' publication of Johann Most's article on dynamite in The Alarm, indeed Most's popular pamphlet, Revolutionary Military Science, contained recipes and use instructions for everything from fulminate of mercury to prussic acid. Beyond the printed word, the global wave of assassinations, bombings and bank robberics, that virtually defined anarchist revolutionary activity during the last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth centuries. Somewhere, however, all this was replaced with the gospel of non violence, civil disobedience, non-cooperation, etc, lt is only recently that viol cnce has re -en tere d serious discussion in anarchist milieux. Zcrzan in many of his essays draws the proper conclusion when he finds that

In addition, he I l i l i l l i s o u l I l i a l viole llCl seems to have just as great a propensity to . deliver the goods as other metho d s of redrcss or refusal. P.M., the SWI SS ; I u l hor of holo 'halo, an anarchocommuneist utopian blueprint, discusses vinlcncc in detail as an integral part of his post-revolutionary society ( requiring its own institutional resolution), framing the argument in allthropological terms. This seems a proper next line of inquiry and returns us once again to the project of a philosophical anthropology. The rc-valuation of violence also indicates one of the final breaks with the "New Left" of the sixties, and its failure to achi eve even a sing le positivc outcome. Finally, it should be noted that the Unabomber has focused much discussion on the debate about the re-valuation of violence . As one might expect many who once endorsed propaganda by the deed are now running for cover as fast as their trcmbl i ng leg s can carry them (hfth b'late, as an example), while there arc those who, in spite of the problems with the choice of targets and the possibility of collateral casualties (a handy term providcd by the nation-state to justify its random violence, why not ours?), support FC, in some instances, for no other reason than the fact that someone, somewhcre finally and r ea lly did something. For those who would doubt the efficacy of violence, the Unabomber also presents a powerful cxample of just what a political bombing campaign can produce; the FC Manifesto (Industrial Society and Its Future) has been translated into dozens of languages and read and discussed by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of persons. It should be clear as well that the project that Zerzan has outlincd is far from finished. Indeed, in many of his essays he leaves more unsaid than explicated, more questions remain than answers given. In some cases this is unavoidable, in others it indicates a necessary working out of some of thc more basic philosophical questions. An example is the issuc of identity. Theorists currently working the critical fields fall, to my thinking, into two general categories, those who abhor the identity thesis and those who uphold it. Adorno in Negative Dialectics forccfully raised the issue of identity and the conundrum continues unabatcd. To my knowledge Zerzan has as yet to wrangle with identity, though it's difficult to contextualize any critical statement without understanding where the theorist stands on this most central issue. In addition, Zerzan identifies division of labor as one of thc single concepts responsible for the dominant culture This is accurate, howcver, an examinatio n of division of labor, particu larly in the context of post-industrial society needs to be
.

!-"I m r"" l\ NI ) ( " 'N / I - N '

I N ' ''"

' " . N" . , I I , "

,\ '

1 ' [ 1 \, \1

uo ne . T hi s, no t on ly lo str cl l,J.', th l'1 I hi .'i Ilr ('v it )u s {,S S'I V' " 1.' . , 1 " , I PI.UV H I (' . a fou n d" lon fo where . at _ ,other Iheorist:-; w ill un do uh te dl y ,go, . Leavmg both mnovat.ons an d cr iti qu e he hi nd ' h(,w" v" . v ..... , /" ./('''U'nls (1/ . Rej aI remaInS a semmal book III ' 'us the critical tradition . I I . ',. st< ( c<I m an y " ' . . People th' nkmg an d movIng II I ' I directions where they , . were loathe to '0 It has re-fram ed vlrtually the entire critical proj ect as it enters the twen y : first century, an d provid ed re newed vigor to a dialectical examm al to n 0 1 the dommant culture ,
" ' , " < , ' "

NOTES
I kginning of Time, End of Time
l. L I,

, '

Oswald Spengler, The De.cline

Ii.

Guy Debord, Sociny o the S f pf'clacie (Detroit, 1977), thesis 125.

Fii(Js Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York, 1 962), p. 397.

'l . .

Max Horkheimer and Thcodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklanmg (Amsterdam, 1 947),

o rhe f

W t vol. [ (New York, 1926), p. 131. es ,

eioran, not to mention a host of nnthropologists, makes this confusion; it is one reason he y could say, "There is no going baek to a pre-linguistic paradise, to a supremac over me ( Chiago, time based upon some primordial stupidity." E.M. Cioran, 'fI,, Fall Into Ti a 1970), p. 29. Another reason is the failure to imagine this "goi ng back" as necessanly
social transformation on the order of the most basic "revolution."

p. 274.

..

7. Herbert Mareuse, Ollr.-Dimemionai Mall (Oosten, ] 964), p. 326 . e 8. Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Primitive Memality (New York, 1 923), p. 93. Paul Hadin's Primitiv ..ary co rrectiVe to phe.r (Ncw York, 1927) is, it should be noted, a neccs. hilmo Man As P t a d Levy-Bruhl's view of early thought as non-individuated and dominated by " mys ic" n "occult" patterns. RCldin demon strated that individuality, self_expression and tolerance mark early humanity. 23. f ntellectual Adventure. o Ancient Man (Chicago, 1946), p. 9. H. and H. A. Frankfort, 711e I 10. Marie-Louise von Franz, Time: Rhythm and Repose. (London, 1978) , p. 5. 1 1 . Jacquetta Hawks, Man
011

6. Spengler, op. cil., p. 390.

Earth (London, 1954), p. 13. . Time (Middletown, Conn., 1968), p. 1 3; Mlfcea phy and 12. John G. Gunnell, Polirical Philoso Eliade, Cosmos and History (New York, 1959), p. 86. 1 3 . Cited by Thomas .T. Cottle (Iud Stephen L. Klineberg, Th e Presmf of Things Future (New
York, 1974), p. 166. 14. Ibid., p. 168.

15. The hunter-gatherer mode occupied more than 99% of the span of human 16. Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhi'llder, Hunte.r Gatherer Foraging Straugws (Chicago, 17. See, [or example, Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age. Economics (Chicago, 1972). 1981), p. 4.

lfc.

18. G.]. Whitrow, Along fhe Fow1h Dimension (L ondon, 1972), p . 119. yth and Reality (New York, 1963), p. 51; E.R. Dodds, The Ancient 1 9 . Mircea Eliade, M Concept o Progress (Oxford, 1973), p . 3; W.K.C. Guthrie, In the Be.ginning (Ithaca, f 20. Norman O. BrO\\'n, Love's Bod (New York, 1966), p. 148. y 1957), p. 69.

21. Walter Benjamin, l1luminatiom (New York, 1978), p. 328. 23. Loren

22, Mircea Eliade. Siulmanism (Princeton, 1964), pp. 508, 486.

25. Grinnell, 0p. cit., p. 17.

24. Claude Uvi-Strauss, Structural Anthro pology (New York, 1976), p. 2R. 26. Grahame Clark and Stuart Piggott, Pre.historic Societies (New York, 1965), p. 43.

Eisely,

T he Invisible Pyramid (New York, 1970), p . 113.

.' I I
27. Erich Kahler, Marl th,' M('tI.nm (New YOlk, IlJlJ.i), p_ .1'1. -' 28. Leslie Paul, Nature-. Into Hi:)'wry (J. ondon, FI)7), p. 1 7lJ .

29. Kahler, op. cit., p. 4U.

33. Cited by Adolph E. Jensen, M h and Cult Among Primitiv('. Peoples (Chic<l[!,o, P Hd), yt p. 3 1 . 36. Elman Service, The Hunters (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966) pp. 90-81. Recent work Sl:t'Il)S 37. Perhaps e.<;pccially Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (wndon, 1949). 38. E.M. Cioran, The Ne.w Gods (New York, 1974), p. 10.
" " . " ..

32. Citt!d by Kahler, op. cit" p. 44.

3 1 . Arnold Gehlcn, Man in the Age' o Technology (New York, 1980), p. 1 3. f

30. Roderick Seidenberg, Poslhistoric Man (Chapel Hill, 19:5 0) , p. 2 J .

34. Emile Durkhcim, Elemt'.ntQry Fonns o Religious Life (New York, 1965) p. 22. f yth and Reality, op. cit., pp. 9596. 35. Eliade, M to bear out this picture; for example, John

,cr, ill ( " riun:l tlu, ' '1.'0), p. /74. ( iustav Uilrill/-' , \ h lIsl 1\.;II 1I<1I I1Wl.... , . 11,,' h"'.I: \ /" \,,, Il,,({/('. I medieval to the modern age as a I t lC I KlIll s, :tlSll lIlIlk l ';I,,,, d Illl' l'h:! llc 110m the \'h:l llg(' in IIH', 11:111 11'(' ul t i mt'. . in the Midrl.Ie. llge.s (Chlcago, 198 0), p. 51Culture. (,.1. .I:H':4uCS I .d ;011', 'fiml', Work and n, 1948), p. 44. ,,. S. Lilley, Mat, Machim'il ami fTiswry (Londo op. cit., p. 14. e t,h Mumford T chnics and Civilization, as of Kilrl Marx: (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., La Engels, January 28, 1863, Tile ulf

(,7: Marx

1979) p. lG8. . Cioran's Fall into Time, op. Cll., p. 10. (IS. Charles Newman, introduction to f Te.chnology (New York, 198 0), p. 94. (19. Arnold Cohen, Man in the. Age o

Pe.ople. ill the Philippine Rain Fore:;t (New York, 1975).

Nance,

The Gentle Tasaday: A Slone Age

41. Gale E. Christianson, The. H'iJd Abyss

.

40. Morton Fried, "Evol ution of Social Stratification," [rom Stanley Diamond, ed., Culture in Jlistory (New York, 1960), p. 715. 42. Lawrence Wright, Clockwork Man (New York, 19G8), p. 12.

39. Horklicimer and Adorno, op. cit., p. 14.

Le.isure (New York, 1962), pp. 310 -3]1 . 7 1 . Sebastian de Grazia, O/ Tune, Work, and 1054-5. n. John Milton, Paradise Los! (Oxford, 1968), X, k, 1973), p. 1.46. n Octavio Paz Alte.rnating Currwts (New Yor strial Capitalism," Past and Present . Thomp on, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Indu E.P

70. Horkheimer and Adorno, op. cit., p. 7.

(New

York, 1978), p. 20.

#38 (December 1967 ). . 1976. allsm and DomestlCatIon, Fifth Estate., Apnl, 75. For exa mple, John Zcrzan, "Industn September 2, 1792. Year One .of the new 76. Time re-began for the new Republic on . k holtdays had been cut In half, a radically calendar disclosed that Ihe number of no-wor
. . . .

74:

phy o Time (Oxford, 1980), p. 56. f 43. G J. Whi trow, The. Natural Philoso 46. Martin P. Nilsson, Primitive. Time-Reckoning (London, 1920), p. 1 .

f 44. Henry Elmer Barnes, The. History o We.stim Civilization (New York, 1935), p. 25. 45. Richard Glasser, Timt'. in Fre.nch Lif and Thought (Manchester, 1972), p. 6. e 47. William Irwin Thompson, The Ti m(! Falling Bodies Take. 10 Li ght: Mythology, St'Xualiry ami f the Origifls o Cuirun (New York, 1981), p. 211. Walter Benjamin's well-known "There barbarism," could be said to apply first and foremost to the calendar. is never
it

77. Benjamin, op. cit., p. 264. (New York, 1956), p. 273. 78. Georges Poulct, Srudies in Human Time. ue. and Oihe.r Pape.rs (New York, 1893 ), 79. Robert Louis Stcvenson, Virgiflihus Pue.risq

unpopular idea!

document of civili7 .a.tion which is not at the Same time a document of

49. There sems to be a striki ng parallel here to Marcusc's profound valorization of memory . "Anamnestic Totalization: Reflections on Marcuse's Theory of Remembrance," Theory 50. J.B. Bury, The Idea o Progress (New York, 1932), pp. 8-9. f 51. Christianson, op. cit., p. 86. (even

48. Mircc!! Eliade, The F0l8f. and the Crucible. (New York, 1971), p. 177.

IIlcludlllg a mutual endorsement

of the cyclical view of lime). Sec

& Society vol. 1 1 (1982): No. 1.

Martin Jay,

pp. 254-5. 80. Benjamin, op. cit., p. 253. f Advertising and the Roots o til" Consumer f 81. Stuart Ewen, Captains o Com'ciousness: Culture (New York, 1976 ), p. 198. Wa r I," Telos 49 (Fall 1 98 1 ) , p. 97-1 16. .Tohn Zerzan "Origins and Meaning of World 82. racter a.f History.." in Raymnd Khbansky and ic 83. Raymond Klibansky, The Philosoph Cha Ems! Cassm:r Festschrift (New York, HJ. Paton, editors, Philosophy and History: The
"

1963), p. 330. 196 0), p. 112 . 84. John Rerger, Pennanent Red (London, rrying to awaken," James Joyce, Ulysses (New 85. "History is a nightmare from which I am

54. Glasser, op. cit., p. 54. 55. Lewis Mumford, Interpretations and Forecasts, 1922-1972(New York, 1972), p. 271. 56. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York, 1934), p. 16. 57. Gl asser, o cit., p. 56. p. 59. The celebration of the Feast of Fools, whieh reached its height in Europe at this time, f 58. N orman Cohn, The Pursuit o the Millennium (Fairlawn, N.J., 1957), p. 186. mock ing of religio us aUlhority It involved a grotesquely costumed figure
.

he. f 52. Nicolas Berdyaev, T Meaning o History (London, 1936), p. 1 . 5 3 . Wright, op. cit., p. 39.

!
,

York, 196 1), p. 34. . rgeois Perception (ChIcago, 1982), p. 117. f S6. Donald M. Lowe, History o Bou icity (Evanston, 111., 1973 ), p. 88. f ,. 87. Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon o Authwt k, 1939) and 11mI'. Oil'S the Swan (New Yor 88. For example, Huxley's After Many a Summer Must Have a Stop (New York., 1944). k, 195 5), p. 163-4. s 89. N.J . Berri!!, Man ' Eme"iflg Mind (New Yor (Chicago, 1979 ), p. 74e. 90. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-1916 (New York, 1954 ), p. 23. f 91. Joost AM. Meerloo, The Two Faces o Man y Life. (London, 1975), p. 220. f 92. Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution o Everyda

was a

representing the higher clergy, led into church seated backwards on an ass with garments inside out, and dancing or reversing the order of the liturgy.

60. Jacob B ronowski, The A:"celll of Man (Boston, 1974), p. 78. 61. Yi-Pu Tuan, S pace and Place.

13481350, was in a sense a massive, viscer<JI reaction to the attack of modern time.

Also, it i s not inconceivable that the Black Pl ague, which decimated Europe from

62. Fernand Braude1 , Capitalism and MateJia{ Life J400-.1BOO (London, 1967), p. 60.

(Min nea polis,

. . 93. Ibid., p. 228. t whet er It IS 1980) Sy:,tem (Ne Yor i 94. Consider Jacques Ellul, TIle TeciUlologcal baSIC, soclety-dommatlllg tralt he time or technology that "L"Omes firsr." Ali of the e of time. Perhaps a re l-tale sign that attributes to technology are, more basically, thos . the s?atlal carac:er f remove away from the most fundamental level IS he is still one e where form and belllg are Identical, his conclusion that "technology is the only plac

?S

1977), p. 123.

95. Service, op. cit., p. 67. M (E. Laming, 1961), p. 16. 96. Richard Schle?,cl, Time and tilt'; PhY'ical Wo,

p. 231.

.) /f,

Language: Origin and Meaning

Francisco, 1982). p. slar/ler (S an 1. 105. Aldous Huxley . , Af r M n,'1 a !JU! te tv,a . mer Dws the Sw an, op. cit., p. 11 7. 106. Theodor W. A . . dorn' f'tlaflve D . law.cllcs (New York 1 97 . ' 107 BenJamln, O . cu 3 ), p. 370. . P ., p. 263 . . ... 108 Clled by Soengl ' er, 0 ' cit" P- 10 3, '1' 109 For example, Ju lian Jaynes Th 0 . ' . 0 ConscLOusnes.\ / in the. Breakdown Bicame.ral Mimi (B o the f oston , p. 11 0. William Mor . t , New F. ' m Now IS ro he.re (London, 19 15 ), p. 278.
-

103. Christopher La sch The 104. BUrl Alpert, G ett;,;g G

lIl : llH:r H{Tk( lI . lViIIIIIIX ;;" ' ;"rI,,1 ( N l'w Y U( I.. ' 1 .'/ ) . 1 1 ' 1 '. 1.1. JtOrgc W. Mor.r.:all, 'fIw flullltlil 1'l/.1111 . . W1/,'fI/: Ih\,\ plllfllJt/ III/rl H'hulf'lIf'\'\' ( " 1968)" P 4 J . . . 99. Loren Eisely, Th e. Invisible.. l'yram/(, op. ' (:/1 , p. I ()2. J 100. RObert Lowell . N b 10 1. Herbert Marc (ew York 1 9(9), p. w. se o o ; :?:atlOn (New , :IVI tz York, 1 955), p. 2 13 102. Norman 0 Bro w , l e ga msl D eath (Middletown, Conn. A , 1.959 , pp. Ys, eKample.

N ( ) J I ' ,

,u

v' "C a

(UT

'lItiS. <;,1111.,,1 .. ' 1 1 . . .. \...

, ', I;,.M. Ciurall, '/I1f' hili /,,1.. '/'i,m' (Chicago, 1970), p. 12.

I'UI\C"I: (Nt'w \'1)11.., I ' / ' , j ) , 1). ItI.t

....d wlu.UV 1II1111..t Ilicit ' 1I1JtI:I;';." ( ;t( )/,/!,c Sanl;(yan;!, I)Olllil1lllirlfl-l" {/I/d

I 1 1 ll'Nr ( II 1{ 1 ' 1 ' I IS:'1

.'II

L ic

II

. . C it o CISSlsm ( New York, 1(78 ), p. 53. d;/ oat. !:a; nt!t/ Jog . lo lg llg Journal nlrough Jfo /

re.

J(U , lUI

I !\.
1'1,

I t . M;(x IIorkhcimer, "The End or Reason," Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, eds., Tht!

Hllj;uHi Barthes, " I .itnature and Sign ification," Cultural Essays (Evanston, 1972), p. 278.
J.\'.\ential Frankfurt School Reade.r (New York, 1978), p. 47.

( assircr,

Mayra. Bloom, "Don'[ Teach Your Baby to Read" (letter to editor),

Quarterly (Winter 1981), p. 102.

o cit., p. 25. p.

Co-Evolution

m. The fairly extensive literature on the upposed ability or animals to learn language i not s
relevant here; the efficacy of training primates or others only demonstrates that it is possible to domesticate them. The nature and origin or language as dome-<;tication is Noam Ziv and Jagdish N. Hattiangad, "Essence vs. Evolution in Language,"

1977)

.' l ,

not thereby addressed.

)"l. "The beginning of communication by symbolic languages in mankind cannot be dated,

23. Bernard Campbell, M ankind Emuging (Boslon, 1976), p . 193. attributed to Tallcyrand, diplomat and stalesman even approximately." Vanne Goodall, The Quest for Man (New York, 1975), p. 203. 24. "Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts, " Appropriately, this quote is

Journal o the International Linguistics Association (August 1(82). p. 86. f

Word:

1 . Claude Uvi-Strau ss lh Sa\la Mid (Chicago, 1966), p. 245. 2. Theodor W. Adorn . ' m a 0rtlha (Londo n, 1974 2 ), p. 7 . :n, i 3 . Friedrich Nietzsc Th . W / j pown (N he, I to ew York 1967), p 4. Paul A. Gaeng, In . 428. . troduction to the P rinclples o Language. (N ' f 5. Rosalind Coward ew York, 19 71 ) , p, and lohn EllloS, Lang L ' uage and MaIena,ISm: D . evelopme.nts in St'!mioiogy and the Themy / the Su bject (London 1 97 0 7) , p. 1. 6. HanS-George G adamer, T.rul and . 1 l Melhad (New York, ' 1982) , p. 340. Also, Langer, Philosophy Susanne K. in a New K , (C m ' ey .a brJ ge., 1980), P -d . . 10 3 "I..anguage IS, . doubt, the most mom without a . entous and <It the same tIme mysterio us product of the hu mind," man 7. A.S. Diamond, Th e History and 0 . . f L anguage (New Yor k, 19 59 ), p. 6. The philosopher David ph),sicist. Bohm ha p ed a ew mo el o anguage called the fl d n " rheomodt:," aimed at reversing th O IS deveI opmen . . t by re. establIS h' verb. H' ai m IS to ' mg Ihe primac IS y of the . reduce the s b ctJe ob' Cl sp Jt, so Je pronounced in the Descartes and incr West since easingly an a ea 0f . contestation by o th . . er .such "h0IIStIC" sc we/I' such (IS Fnt]of ' , ientists as Capra and David D . . ossey. 8. BenJamm Lee W hOrf, "Sc' nce and le J-inguishcs'" S I. Hay akawa, ed., Languag (New York, 19 41 ), e in Action ' pp. 3 1 1- 31 3. 9. H. E. L Mellers h, '[he. Story o {1:ar f E ; l Mall (New York, 1960), pp. 106-107. 10 . Arnold J. Toynb ce A Stud a Man (New York, 19 47), p. 198. 1 J . Ernst Cassirer, An say o ' all ew Haven, 1944), p. 12 , It may be worth 135. referring here to th e hermeneutic mou . o Iha t "Man IS expressIVe of the dr language .. ift toward a ''ImgU ' . ' lstlc" phenomcnolo . ' gy WIth IIcl'degger R oeur. In Being alld Ic . . . and Time He'd speCIf cally maintains what il is onl)' with that perception become respect to t e un a en i s tal COntext of language an that all experience d Ricocur f ds is l:dready med- ,ed vi . in la . a a world of symb J 0 s. See Don Tf.chniCS (Albany, 1983 Ihde, Existential ), p. 145. 13 . George Steiner, After Babel: As fets o L f anguage. and Translation (N !p . p. 224 ew York, 1975),
,

:;

2-5. Peter Caws, "The Structure of Discovery," 26. Olivia Vlahos,

Human Beginnings (New York, 1966), p. 140. 27. Emile D urkheim, Division of Labor in Society (Glencoe, 1960), p. 50. 28. Julian Jaynes, The Origins o Consciousness in the Breakdown o the Bicameral Mind f f
29. Jaynes sees language emerging no soaner than the Upper Paleolithic age (c. 40,000 B.C.), when stone 1001 technology experienced an accelerated development. But even among thoe whose conception of language puts ils emergence at a vastl), earlier epoch, the Upper Paleolithic, it must have undergone spectacular change.<; afterwards." John E. Pfeiffer, Tht'. the late Stone Age is understood as pivotal; e.g. "whatever the stale of language before (Boston, 1976), p. 130.

Scie.ner. No. 166 (1969), p. 1380.

(t 7541838).

;:

p Cnativt'. Ex losion (New York, 1982), p. 7l . 30. Frederick Engels, The. Pan Played by La/JOT in the. Transition f rom Ape 10 Man (Peking,
1975), pp_ 4-6_ too great a role to the sexual divi ion of labor would also be a mistake, one which s seems to be routinely made. Consider the apparently contradictory tvlO sentences by

3 1 . This is not to deny there is some division based on sexual differentiation. But ascribing which a leading anthropologist sums up the matter: "The division of labor by sex is Production?" Cali o f rnia Journal o Anthropology (Spring 1981), p , 15. f
Freud (London, 1953, 1974), Vol. 15, p. 167.

Es

virtually universal. Men hunt and gather; women primarily gather and hunt small game; both sexes fish and gather shellfish," Richard B. Lee, "Is there a Foraging Mode of 32. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition o the f

Complete Psychological Works o Sigmund f

ef8c

34. Mircea miade,

33. Jacques Lacan, The. Function o Language in Pl f ychoanal y,is (Baltimore, 1968).

35. John Zerzan, "Beginning of Time. End of Time", Fi.fth 36. Russell Frar;er, (New York, 1978), p, 328,
s i

Shamanism (Princcton, 1964), p. 99.

37. Walter Benjamin, "On Language a s Such and o n the Language of Man," Rej1eclions 38. Norman O. Brown, Lows Body (New York, 1966), p. 257. 39. "A name 40. Mikel Dufrcnne, Language &

The Language of Adam (New York, 1977), p. l .

Estate (Summer 1983).

the vastesl generative idea that was evcr conceived." Langer,

Philosophy 7 (Bloomington, 1963), p. 101.

op. cit., p. 142.

7.

!. "the ideu of number implies the sim Ie in " i r t r which H. n:'O; :: : n, 1i I;(r 2. i :,mfp:; d r o ' Joumai, Va.!. .' 3, Max Horkhei XXV[, No. 1 (1928) mer and Theodr p . orno, The Dlale. 1972), p. 2 1 . r:ric o Enlight f e.nmet ('Ne Y , . or"" 4. Robert C. NeVJ:!le, Freedo m and Cosmology S. J.D. Berna l, (New Haven, 1 974), p. 83. The. Ertension o f Ma (Londo n, 1 972), p. 27. 6. Hermann \Veyl T e p h m ".

Number: Its Origin and Evolution

Yark, 1968), p, , Cassin!r, op, cif., P, 8 7. 10. 49. Max Muller' " 'Ille Ph' llosophy of Mythol . . ogy, " addendum to on I tr duction n o ndon, 1 8 73), p. 353. 10 fhe. Srif llf'f' III (J..o. 50. p : I er, op. Cll" Cha pters 8, 9 51 , A"S D' lamond, The History ' and Ogms of La V' ri . 52, Willard Van nguage. (New York, 1959), p. 2 Orman Qume, I ri . . 67. ror and ObjcI (New 3 J 5 york, 1960), p. W riting and DW 170. 1f.n ce (Chicago, 1978) 1 m " 54. SIgmund Freu , p 4. d, or rutu of 1 , r: f Ie r e a 1// (New York, 1955) 55. Claude Uvi-Sl . rauss T. ' " p 10 . mtes 7' pzqur ro s (New York 56. Jacques ', 1961), pp, Derrida, Edmund fill ' . 292, 293. sserl s o Geolne 'Y f J pp. 87-88. (Stony Broo k ' New york, 19 7H) , 57, Eugenio Trias, Philoso phy and its S hadow (New 58. II is notew York, 1 983) p. 74. onhy that rh', r IS Iterary . revolt against 1 SII'r nc resista nc angua ge has coincid d .l e e with a very time as well ProUt, yc lrlma Woolf, Borge Pa s os, Faulkner s, among olhe h , Gide tIme. me o ' d a [ne to ehaJlenge the givcn . d ImenslOn ' 59. Elias Canclti T e D o bc lence h C ,"' o Words (New f 60. Hoben Harbiso York, 1 979) p n e I erall! 142, " RP-gression (N . 6 i . R,D. I.aing, York, 1980), p. 77le Politics o ' XVi. nc ( N w Yo hanks Alice r if pent! , e c Special t rk, 1967), p. I i . Pa m an or aSSIsta nce throughout.
.

46. Mano Pei, The . S/o or l' an a 'J '8u ge. (Philadelphia. 47. ROland Ranh 1 965) , p. 199. es' n m .vt' e it r_ .gre Zero (New 48

. David R H. . arns, AI1Crn[ivc d ed . n8ms ofAgn'culture (The HaPathwa0' TOW<1nl Agncullun;," 45 ee ' gue 1 7) p Max Hor . khcJmer and Th eodor W d , r l RO- J 8 1 . A orno,
R
. ' .. "

43, RB. Lee, op. cit.' p. 14. 44. 0 UOled by .

11.'1 rt'a:/!'. hal II.Ullt' Ih(,l II. C;csb II.I :IS ( ':t It'lti, 42. Q y lIrrc
WI'

01 / .

( l.'i\\!:tld . flc"II,'I I ' I , 17I,' I ),,h , lll ..r lll - / 1 ' . . / . "
( )',-

Llas lrc..\

'IIlf' lI/mulIl "'01'1111' '

.

Soc;!'ly Ap'flllW till' . , '

d('h;' '- " I1)('::'1\' Y'. ', I. . 1'1.11) . /', 1 .1 \ ":\III III;lI ,III : ( Nt', ',:" I, ,;:fd '/':11 Ill:,}" 10(' wh}' I hq ,
," m,'
'

(Ncw

01

I "''l ), fl. H . Y, u k . PITI) , p, l ilt l.

(

p. 2. .

'

Wi'>'.(

Dinkcl/(; o i:itlighl f mmcnl

"

'

'h:u-ks 1\
' I

(New York' I l l , ),
.
,

:t

'

.. cques

Derrida,

'

..

"

U lmi S Ongl/l
'

:a

to
.

"

Dos

'

10

ew

;;

u,. 4

37. Sahlins. /I}id., p. 82.

Arcnd I h-ylillJ.;, qUOIn! ill Cla ude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago, 1966), p. 248. 1 ,1. Karl Vosslc:r, 'Ih, S ' piril of Language ill Civilization (London, 1 932) , p. 212. 1 '1 . Thcodor W, Adorno, Negati.ve J)ialectics (New York, 1973), p. 148. Il,. Ibiti., p. 5. 1"1, Michel Foucault, 1'Iu'. Archaeology of Knowledge (New York, 1972), pp. 188189. 1 x. Quoted in Mor ris Kline, Mathemari(..f: The Lo o Certainty (New York, 1 980), p, 99. ' f I 'J. Franz Iloas., T Mind o Primitive M lte f an (New York, 1938), pp. 218-219. ,Ill. Tobias Dantzig, NumiJer: The Languagr. o Science (New York, 1 95 9), p. 5. f .' 1 . c.R. Hallpike, The Foundations of Primitive Tllouglll (Oxford, 1979), p. 267. n. Raoul Allier, The. Mind o the Savage (New York, J929), p, 239. f 23. Cited in Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Languagf!, alld Life (New York, 1982) , p. 1 53 24. Leslie A. Whi te, "The Agricultural Revolution," from A Re.flriu in Cultural Change, vol. 1, edited by Ivan A. Brady and Barry L lsaac (Cambridge, MA 1975), pp. 101-102. 25. Dorothy Lee, .. Rcing and Vlue in a Primitive Culture," The Journa l o Philosophy, f vol. XLVI, No. 1 3 ( 1 949 ) , p. 403. 26. Max Wertheimer, "Numbers and Number C nce pt"! in Primit ive Peoples," A Sourer! Rook o o Gt'.stalr Psychology, ediLed by Willis D. Elli.t; (London, 1 (38), pp. 265-267. f scoveries in Mathematics (London, 1972), p. 12. 27. Bryan MorJ;3n. Mm and Di 28. Alex Com fort, I and That (New York, 1 9 79), p. 66. 29, Erie Partridge, OrigilL'I: A Short Etymological Dictionary o MOIirm English (New York, f 19B3), pp. 435-436. 30. Dorothy Lee, "Lineal and Nonlineal Codifications of Real ity, Psychosomatic Medicine, vol. 12, No. 2 (1950), p. 96. 3 1 . Marshall Sahlin, from " Discussions, Part n," in Man the. Huntf!T, edited by Richard B. ue and Irven DeVore (Chicago, 1968), p. 89. Sahlins, Slone Agf! i::collomics (Chic.:go, 1 1972). p. 10. 32. bacH.:, Glynn L., "Chronology and The Temple of Cul t ura l Change during the . Pleistocene," in ' 11t! Calibration of Human Evolution, edited by W.W. B ishop and J A, 1 Miller (Edinburgh, 1972). 33. Sahlins, Stone Ag Economics, pp. 27R-279. 34, Albert Spa ulding Cook, Myth ami Lan8uage (Bloomington, 1 9RO), p. 9. 35. C.S. Belshaw, "Theoretical Problems in Economic Anthropology," in Social Organization, edited by Maurice Freedman (Chicago, 1967), p. 35. 36. Pierre Clas lres Society Against l.he Slate ( New York, 1977), p. 7.
. " ,

I t.

I '

' I I MI N I :-. ( )I ' R I t I IS:\ I

"All hUlIl:lII In, ,wl,-''/'.(" I',

ll'ifl fa l'IIIn'1 ( N e w Y ( l l k , 1967), #530

l'l

l l t n c.'lipt.' rit.' I1l'l'

(p. 288).

Dr

. IR<l lhemalics." I ' ri('drkh N i!:_L"I''it'lw, '111,'

38.

..

o the. f 8. Max R ack alure o f ' aJhl'.matics (London 1 9. H. Levy, 933) , p. 4. e mVI'./'Sf! of , , CleIlCI'. (New y ork, 1933), p. 82. 10, Charles Parson , U h s, mal f.l7lQtfC S 1II Phi!o o h s p Y (Ithaca, 11. Alfred North 1980), p. 1 76. Whiteh ead , L" " int'. nfurung ' In r/.' Atathematik Ie (GenCrahly and (Berne, 1 928), pp will to generaI' , 41 47. it} nor dIscussed in . , Eng1' h edItIon.) ' IS -

p. 144. ,., e numberiang aJik

th

'

..

O wa

Th

uagc 0f a mathe matic and the Spengler, The Decline

',osophy Of A au 'J ' l e.nUltl'cs f

the

w,.a7aJr (
.

alld Narural Scienc .e .

.

tongue arc strUCturally ew York, 1929), p. 56.

a

( P . e ton, nne

39. Lewis

J949)'

40. Jacques Derrid a, Edmund Hussuf's Origin of Gr.ometry: An Introduction (Stony

,

John E. Pfeiffer, The Crf!arive Explosion (New York, 1 982) , p. 64.

41.

43, 45.

42.

44.

46.

47 Morris R. Cohen and I.E. ,

NY, 197B), p. 128. Hannah Arendt, TIle. Human Condition (Chicago, J 958), p. 265, Weyl, Ibid., p. 66. A.L Kroeber, AttthropollJID' (New York, 1948), p. 471. Carleton S, Coon, The Story of Man (Ncw York, 1954), p. 322. Frederick Turner, Beyond Geography: 11,r. We.\'tt'.m Spirit Agaimt the IVildunrs:>' (New York, 19BO), p. 66. Lawrence Kubic, Practical and Theore.ljcal Aspf!c/s of Psychoanalysis (New York, 1950),
p. 19.

Mumford

f The M ylh o thr. Machine (New York, 1967), pp. 139-140.

Brook,

Drabkin, A SourCl'hrx;k in Gruk ScitTice (Cambridge MA,

f a o I. nguage (Ne Yor , '1 944),' ,. :;d' J:i gn o the Number COn f Cl'pl (New York, 1(79 ), 1'. (, 53. Ihid., p. 9. 54. W'II' I /am . h'cns, Jr., Art and Geomelry (Cambridge, 1946 , ) , p 3 0. 55. Col. leWIS, Mind and WorM . .. Order (New York 1956), p. VII. ' 56. Olson, op. cit., p. 1 / 2. .'57. Plato predicated the beginning of the state on . . the ., atral. Inequalt " y refkc1Td ill divisioll of labor. Productiv e' endeavor is from th % e eglllnmg organm:d th rn u).!;h specialization and d' . . n IVISlo 0f work and the . s '. ' tate I o.t on !y denved fom it hUl acquires stability via this fragmenttion and coar dInatlUn. T Rt' ubhc, tnm he p sla(nt h' G.M.A. Grube (Lon don ' 1981 ), sect' Ion s 369 370. 58 rt can be cogentl} argu ed that PlatD and Ansttle share csscntla 11y the sa me redu< tlVI method For exa mple Burt ' Alrv>rt, I nV('rSlOns (San Fra n Y cisco" 1 973) chaptcrs 5 ,md 59 David S Land es Revo (, lutIOn In Ttme (eambn ' 'dgc MA, 1983 ), P 78 60 leWIS Murnford, The. M yth o the MachEnI'. (New f York, 1967) P 278 61. A C. Cromb ie, Me.dll'.val ' and Earl Modem CIP.nCe, y vol I (Ca mbndge MA, 1967 62. /but , pp. 74-75 ), p. t IH 63. Lewis Mumford, the Condition o Men (New Yor f k 1944) 176 64. Arnold acey, nle. Maz e. o Ingenuio/ ('a mbrid J ge MA 197' ogt:: Sarton, Sart l 011 the /li slory o Scimce f , Win Arthur Rurtt Te. Metap , h ' ' p. 96. hysical Fount/ati011::;, 0 .r M , adem PhY . SIcal Science. (LondulI, 1925), p. 56. Ka rl Jaspers, The and Goal o H ory (Ne f lSl w llaven 1 953) , Franz Borkcnau D Uber P 89 ie gang vom ,eur. aIen zum r. i burgerhchen W ' ,.,Jtblld (Pa ns, 1934 ) '1111' dIVIsion of lab r theSIS > IS centra , to Borkcnau's atte Pt to stab hsh the OrIgin of manufacturing penod's m enta lity Descartes ' vlcw r . 0 arllma as merely cle !li verly contrived mechamsmsmaehmes_ls a roduct ' for cxamPle, of the heig htened objectIficatIon Involved In the Jump In f:a gmentc d work. 69' Ca rI0 M. Clpolla, Clor. ks and Culture, J300- 1 700( New York' 1967) , p. :. 70 E -7 :,dmund Husserl, in" Cnsl s o Euro j pean .)cU'.J/ces and Tram crmdenlui Phenomenology (evanston, 1 970), pp 21 59 7 1 . Gera, d J. Galagan, The . f LogiC o Modernity (New York" J 982), p. 3l. n. Weyl, op. cu., p. l39. 73. R.G. Collingwood, A ' n F on metaph ,Slay " ysics (J...ondon .1940) 256 h e h : i (Pr'incelo, '96'0): p. 8 1 . :p :; !i:;;: a t was he seventeenth century, it is not accidental that these adva ' nces in mat provIdCd . so lutions 10 problem S 0f motIOn. ' S' .,arIy, <lnd mOre c Iml . oncretely probabI Hy an . . ,I ' T , d statlstlC<; ongmated at this t with the complexities of ime [0 deal in g . Ips. SUri . 76. There IS much validity to the claim that the mam . ' [I eus t of modern Inte J llectual lif is to have "followed Plato and e Dcsc rtes Ovcr th e aby a . ss l0 the Insane delUSio 'n . true essence of man lies in n that the . . disembof d mentaI actiV . ity. " Norman 0. Brown, c Ie Agalnsl Death (New Yo L" ,e l rk, 1959 ), p. 34. 77. Q UOted rom Alexand p r Rustow, Freedom and Dominat on (Princeton 7.'1. Qu0,ed In atey, op. i ' 1980), p. 402. cu., p. 134. 79. Carolyn Merchant, The De.ath o Nature (San f Fran cisco, 1980 ), p. 288.

:c. ;:

;.
. . .
h

48. Joseph Campbell, O,"il' lllal i\1 y(Jwl() "ll1i' y: pp. 4 1 - 42 .

J %6), p. 3t1, n. 1.1.

N ( ) I I ', 1 .I I ' MINI S ' l l

1, 1 ' 1 ' \ ISi\1

2K l

ed (Ber . rnal, SCle.nce. En fh ory, vol. I (Ca mbridge keley, st

d Olson, Sci('e n.eifie.d, Science Dl'fi

MrI.I"J,, .\ '1 ( ,mI, . I

T;2eL;;

MA 1 97 1 )

, .flI. ' ( Nt w ) . 1 1 1 10. , I'/k . 'l.

19X2 ),
l

1)

p. 30.

4J..

'.

.'i t l. I/n'd., p. )0.'1. .'1 1 I ':' us! l :ilss;n:r, Jhf' I'hi/o.l"O hy of Symbolic Forms (Nw Haven, 1957), p. 341. p .'{,/ ( ; . 1 1. B;Jiliie, Clocks (md W atches: An Hi.uoncal Billliography (I.ondon, 1951), p. 103. .'1 1. Hicha rd Courranl and Herbert Robbins, What Is Mathematics? ( L ondon, 1941), p. 9. XI. Ernsl Cassirer, All b:.uy on Mall (Nw Haven, 1944), p. 217.
s .... . Silo

Alfred North Whitehead, Scie nce ami the. Mot/e.m World (New York, 1948), p. 37. n. Christopher lIill, Intellectual Ongins of the English Re'l-'olutiofl (Ox[ord, 1965), p. 245.

Burll, op. cit.,

p. 261.

s)t l .awrence LeSha n and I [eory Margenau, Einstein s Spaa and Van Gogh s Sky (New
York, 1982), p. 1 69 .

'12. A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modem World (New York, 1931), p. 49.

q(l, John Katz., The Will to Civilization (New York, 1957), p. 85. II I . 1 M Dubbey, The Mathematical Work o Charles &luuage (Ca mbridge, 1978). Dou gla s f . Hofstadtcr, Codel, Escher, Bach: An Ete.rnal Golde.n Braid (New York, 1979), p. 25.
<n. CJeorge Boole, Studies ( London, 1952), pp. 187- 188. '14. Thcodor W. Adorno, Against E pistemology: A M ar:ritiquf'; n

.tJ. Paul Bekker, The Story o Music: An Historical Sketch of the. Changes in Musical Form f ( New York, 1927), pp. 77-114.

'J5 . Bertrand

:. :

Onglll

(C mbridge ...a

rJ:A Jn6)

96

%. Paul A. Schilpp, editor, The Philoso phy o Be.rtrand Russell (New York, 1 9 5 1 ) . See f especially Russell's "Reply to Criticisms," p. 694.

Russell, Introduction to MathE'malir:al Philosophy

(Cambridge MA, 1983), p. 55. .. (J ,ondon, 1919), p. 194.

97. Cassirer, 1957, op. cil., p. 387, quoting Hilbcn from the (Jerman. 'f1le principal effort at the bcg inning of all thought and that it should be thought of as "an csscmially langu<lgeless activiry of the mind hav ing irs origin in p. 4.

was Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematic.a ( lon don, J91O-1913). Anoth er try

is f und in Brouwer's intuitionist approach, which claims Lhat numcrical thinking stan s o d D. Van Dalen, editor, fJrouwers Cambridge Lectures on Intuitionism (Ca mb ridge, 1981),

the perception of a move of time."

\1M. Yi-Fu Tuan, S pace and Place (Minneapolis, 1977), p. 200. YY. Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point (New York, 1981), p. 74.
101. Horkheimer and Adorno, o (:it., p. 24. p. 100. Gillispie, op. cit., p. 87.

103. Morris Kline, Mathe.matics: The Loss o Cenaimy (New York, 1980), p. 3. f

lOS. Ibid., p. 1 0 1 .
108.

;:

: :

!{g:ti { ;

106. Jurgen Habermas, Philoso phical-Political Pro files ( Minneapolis, 1983), p . 100. 107. Raymond Firth, Symhols: Public and PrivatE'; (Tthl'lca, 1 973), p. 82.

104. Ernest Nagel and .Tames R. Newman, GodE'l 's Proof (New York, 1958), p. 1 1 .

102. Rudy Rucker, Infinity and thf. Mind (Boston, 1 982), p. 161.

109. Concerning the inevitability of the 'information environment," we are told, even become part of our consensual reality, the better for everyone...:'
etc.

Jagjil Singh,

Great Ideas in Inf ormation Theory and Cybeme.tics (New York, 1966), p. 7.

1 1 2. Ala n Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind, vol. UX, No. 2%.

110. Amiel Feinstein, Foundations o Inf f ormalioll T heory (New York, 1958), p_ L 1 1 1 . The sharp rise in the number of single-person households since the 1Y60s, the fact

threalened, on all sides.

For example: "The sooner this fact a nd its consequences

(early 1984) that American's daily consumption of television is more than seven hours,
(1950).

1 J3. Br uce Mulish, "The Fourth D iscontinuity, " Te.cJmo/ogy and Culture, vol. 8, no. 8. 1 lA. Ma rt in Gardner, Logic MachinE'S and Diagrams (Chicago, 1982), p. 148 (January 1967), pp. 14-15.

' J L 'l . John I laul!.(:land, " M:llla lltjl: bl!-\incs: Au l u l mdlH'lillil vr, 19R1), p. 1 .

1 1 6 . Martin Heidegger, Introduction 1 0 Metaphysics (New Haven, 1959), p . 49.

Philosophy, }'.\ )'cholog}', Arfjjicial Imelfi gf'llcf', cditc Ll by John 11;l llgelalld ( MUIlIJ',I IIIlI'1 " . Reinvellling M an: The Robot Becomes Reality (New York, 1983); McCorduck, Machinc>s lliho Think (New York, 1 79) ; Crf.ative

["

MllIll l ksi";Il," .tf/lld I 'nl"

J 17. For example: Hofstadter, op. cit., pp. 677,

Erik 1'. Mueiler, "Wou d An Intelligent Computer Have A 'Right to Lifc"!" 1':llIu'l;I
1983): Geon S m ns, Are Com puters Alive?: Evolution and New Life Fomu (1\IISIIIII.

696;

Igor Aleksander and Picr. Il II I'ILI'I I.

special isuc of Psychology Today, December 1983.

1984)-a very tiny sampling. A more popular example is the " Affecrionate Madlim',"

i o

CompuliflR (AU!-\lISI

Raben

E. Mudll'l alltl

tur," Edwin T. an Sy!>tem' of Manu(ac . V d u ', " The 'Americ . .ca (New York, 1973), p. 54. /11. hI!' nl.ampk. \{tlbl.:_l\. S, \ ()(l b r) . , in Amm logy llmi SOCial Change d I .aytUII, .I I-. , \; " Techno . 135. : The Search for . . n. Cochran, FrolitirTS, p . . the Nineteenth Century Bntlsh TeeIInOIogy in bakkuk Amencall and J." . lIJ . Ha ) 28 . . , , .OnS (Cambridge, 1 9 67 ' p. 1 ' ' t dictated by Labor-Saving Inventi . . Illery was in large par ' tor's des to substitu te mach' 'ire . iness propne ody else. A lathe e bus someh
}.9, "Th the m p. 55.

RFI '{ ISA I , 1 ': 1 J '. M I "NT S ( ) I '

2X.1

? 3Q, Hugo A. Meier, "'111 L bor In 3 1 . Foster Rhea Dulle!>,

32. Foner, Ibid., York, L961), p. 26.

stayed put whi or drilling machine

Axis Point of American Industrial ism

2, Merle Curti, Social Jdea.\ o Amfrico,n Educator..- (New York, ' f

3,

I , Sam uel Rezneck, nl4sine. Depressions and Financial Panics (New York, 1968), p. 24.
1984), pp. 25-26.

7. Cochran, op. cit., p. 74.

8. Norman Ware,

6. Hounshell, op. cit, p. 43.

5. Retncck, o dr., p. 38. p,

4, Thnmas C Cor.;hran, Frontiers o Change: f

p . 53.

1935). p. 98. David A. Hounshell, From the American S ysre.m to Mass Pruduclion, 1800-1932 (Baltimtlll',
.

Early Industrialism in America (New Yor k, I 9X I ),

9. Victor S. Clark, History o Manufacturt'.s in the U f nited Stat('.. 1607-1869(Washin!?ton,

10. Edward Evcren, "Fourth of July at Lowell

1 1 . Marvin fisher, Unitni Stalt'.s (Cambridge, 1982), p. 292.

(1830)" in Mich ae Folsom and Steve D. Lub ar, eds., The Philosophy o Manuf f actures: Early Debates Over I ndustn'Qlization in till'

1916), p. 264.

The Industrial Workr,

1840-1869(New York, 1964), p. x.

I
'

in ig ns of Class Conflict . 'ke of 1824: The Or and the St(I . "Pawtucket Village . 33. Gary Kulik, . N 1 (Spron 1978 , p. 24. ,ISIOI')' Revu', o 7 dy, lcaI H , le Mills: A Case Stu Rhode [sland," Rad New Eng\and ext 0 Ea "'The Socml. System orkin.g-Ciass Aml"Jica: 3 4. Jonathon Prudl:!, Walkuwitl., eds" W l H. Fnsch and Dale 3), p. 15 . 1812-1840," Michae A e a ocit'. ty (Urbana IL, 198 Essays on L.abor, CO''I1nulli ?, " . .xljl Manu ac tu e in Philadelphw, 1 800- /885 e f e pnetary Capita Ism PhIl p Scranton, pro

p. 94. ology " Layton, op, cit., of e Ideo1 of Techn Philip Foner, History . oJ ork, 1960), p, 32; Vol (Ne York 1947), p. 101 . I New In the Ul1ed Sea,le.s, v erpris('. (New the Labor Movemnll 1e Th(! Age of Ent I I hran and 'w\ ram MiI , p. 108; Thomas L Coc

arU . i p<ltlence 0f the knowled!l,eablca fllle gunsml'th ml'ght not." cochran, Frontu'.r$, le . 'th n WI working (or .

Aenca

35.

p. 88. p. 3 6. Meier, o cit.,

p. 79. (C,mhridge, 1983),

i.

, Jacksoman Amenca 37. Edward Pessen 29. 38. Dulles, op. cil., p. . . ment armory w s

Industriafizarion, 1830-1860(New ork, 1967), p. 38. 1.2. Thomas C. Cochran, Business in American Life: A History (New York,

Workshops in the Wilderness: The European Re.rpOflS(! to American

veniently '" in 1798 and con uthorized by Congres. . pany. " For more than s primary govern Com 39, Thi , shington's Potomac onging to Ue g Wa . kers from situated on land bel strial disc pl ne on wor ble to mpose proper 1ndu, was impossi a gen erat on it ntiers, p. 74. a." Cochran, Fro the surrounding IiTe p cit. w York, , 40. Merritt Roe Smith, op. iafizingAme.rica (Ne and Society in lndusrr : man, Work, (,u lure, 41. Herbert G. Gut

' \YJ S ; ; :

i ) T i

(Homewood"

IL 19 7 ) , p. 1 1 9 .

i i

15. Ibid., p. 22.

14. Merrin Roe Smith, Harper Feny A nrwry and the New Technology (Ithaca, 1977). p. 22. s

13. For example, Brooke Hindle, "The Exhilaration of Early American Technology: An
Essay," Brooke. Hindle, Technology in Early America (Chapel Hill, 1 9 66 , p. 3.

1 972) , p. 38.

19 6), p. 58. 7 . cit., p, ed" Riot, ROUI, and 42. Page mith, op. 27 . Ph' ladelphia," John J. Turner, Jr., I erg, "The Crowd m 43. Michael Feldb

;56.

17. Philip Taft and Philip York, 1969), p. 281.

16. Page Smith, The Nation Comes o Age f

Outcome" H,O. Graham and

18. William Faux, "Memorable Days in America," Reuben Gold 19. Ibid., (Nov. 6 and 3, 1819), pp. 227,

Ross,

"American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Characler, and

20. Jane Loui!>e Mesick, The English T rovdlerin America, J785-1835(New York, 21.

T mvel; 1748-1846, V Xl (Cleveland, 1 905), p, 141. ol.

p. 306. 2 15.

T.R.

Gurr, eds., The Hi story of V iolence in America (New

(New York,

1981), p, 795.

Thwa iles, cd., Early JVfstem

1922),

22. Br uce Laurie, Working People o Philadelphia, 1800-1850 (Philadelphia, 1980), p. 33. f

23. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Natjonal ExperienCf'. (New York, 1965), p. Ca rl Russell Fish, The Rise. o the Common Man. (New York, 1927), p. 9 1 . f Z 5 . Clark, op. cit., p. 401.

Ibid.,

p. 152.

24.

26.

, C:1', 97 .. al Tu.mult (West\ ood and Factory Life in Rur t -llb .'l U.I na :der: Tuwn J 8 The Coming O n 44. Jonathon Prude, 225 dge, 1 9 ), Massachusetts, 1810_J860(Cambri . 83 PLab . i Colonial B oston ," Labor Hi,\'wry, or n hetory e Failure of Femak 45. Gary B . N ash. "Th . No. 20 (Sp'in 1 979). k 1966), p. 529. . . enca! Vol 2 (New Yor evilte, Democracy n Am Theodore . 46. Alexis de oc u ary Kulik, 'Roger Parks, ' pIeee," G nufacturer s pocket ). ., e, 1982) , p. 326 Wlilton F e1eIl, "The Ma ridg 47. _, " 1790_1860(Camb vl'/l t cngland j' ' Villag('. . Z. Penn, cds., The. New XXIX-XXX. oduction, [bid., pp . 48. Ouoted in Intr ng," Carroll . 354-35 . 49. Ibid., pp " . .hlt ey and the American System of Manufacturi ' . ), pp. 5 1 -53, SO. Merritt Roe Smith, (Cambridge 1980 " lechnology In A mmca W Pursell Jr.. ed., 7' ork, 190G ' rx, Capital (New 1 "Ma J 5 1 Qu ted in Karl ston 1 904) p. 455. Wa ld 'merson, o . f ks o Ralph . 52 The Complete Wor w York, 1 977 ) ,' p. 66 ' eil Rf:ade.r (Ne . W ' '" rk," The Simone ""o 53 "Factory rs, p. 136. ctures 1]836/ 54. Cochran, Frontie f . o Ame.rican Manufa It' J ue1 51a rer, T F.a ther f hite, Memoir o Sam 55. George W. p. 1 22. (New York, 1967),

T q

!l W

ti

\V

87. Marvin Meyers T e " h JaClW"oman Pe.rsuasi 1. on

82. Paula Raker, "Th e Domeslication of Po!" ltl . Wo e and Ame . 178 0- 1820, " American H s orical nean Political Society, m n ' it Review' o1. 89, No. 3 (Jun e 1984 ), pp. 625-626; Page Smith, o cit., p. 13. p. 83. Gary B rown e Baltimore in (I N ' 1 6 (Chapel Hill, 1 980), p 84. John Mayfield, Thl' N w N . 97. 18 atiol1, 18 e ' 982), p. 99. 85. Quoted by Pesscn , op. cit., p. 50. 86. Curti, op. Cil., p. 51.

. 78. Peler Dobkin Hal ' l TI. ! 0rganlzall.on o Ame U f n'can Culture, 1700-190 0(New York, 1982), p. 89. 79. Page Smith, o cit., p. p. 114. 80. David Grimsted, "Rio ting in Its Jacksonian Sen . . ing, " Amencan Htstory RcvU !w, Vol. 77, No. 2 (April 1972), p. 370. 8 1 . Ibid., pp. 371-374.

enchra n, Frontir.rs, p. 77. 76. Fisher, o cit., p. 33. p. 77. Coch ra n, Frontir.rs, p. 123.
75.

p. 10. 73. Prude, Coming, p. 138. 74. Alex lnkeles and Dav

Steve D unwell, The Run a the. Mill (Boston 1978 f ) p 1 5' 71. U?t Y Rola nd Berthoff, An U nse.uled Pt'.o l ' S . . 'Pe Oc/a rder and Dtso .. . rder m Amt'.rican H mary (New York, 1971 ), p. 167. 72. James Michael Cudd , T . Chico . M,anu acu . he . 1'te .r. mng Company, 1823 J -1915, (Wilmington 1974),

70.

aven, Fmnily Time and Industrial Time (Cambrid e' i982) f r a e EngIand caSe study of the ' "t im109" 0f a 11 i1spects (he new framework. Pa . of lift: in . ralleling the heJgh[ened tJ me' ' onSCJousncss was "a prelion with pun ctua lity, mea occupa_ , . . sure'ment a ccordmg to an .early 1 83 s 0 English traveller, Thomi1s Ha milto. ohenl Calculating Peop S pread O Nunzeracy in Earf le: Th f y America (Chicl'lgo' 118 1 ,) p. 5. 67. Clark, op. cil., p. 540. 68. Prude, Coming, p. 47. 69. Co chran a n d M iller , op. cit., p. 19.

S6. White, ill Kuli k, ("/ Ill., up. ,-il., p . .1.'1 1 . 57. Hex Bums, .'UCCl'.\,I' i ' ll Amalea- 'I'll,' )'j,Oil/till {11,"((111 (/I/(/ ( fill' l"rI/lsf/iul U,-".Hflll (Amherst" 1976) , p. 91 AI .1II so . WI'II ' . : A' u11IV[J, n1f /ndWJ'l'-illl S _ lY ()rkl''' l!l " 1'1111,1-1'11" 11111" 1800-1840(Harrisburg, 1 955)', p. 50' " ...1 i3l . h ' I ' Was beginning to be felt [by the 1830 I ovcrpowt:: nnu sense (If d cl-',ral;'11(111 whwh sJ by [arge masses of wo rking people . " 58. From 'f' e N.aflOnaI L h ' ' aborer, April 23 1836 59. Arthur H. Ca lhoun , A Social HislO ) if the F. I 11 (Cleveland, 1 9 I 5), r V Matthew, Ruf s Choate. I I'), I. ,III u ( Ph ila l hra 60 Habakkuk, o CIt, p pp. 5455; Carolyn W, re T h Y New England COllon Manu}f/( 1'lIr (Boston, 1931 ), p. 8, Barb ara M Tu cker ':Thc ercha nt, Ihe Manufacture Factory Manager The r, .md Ihl Case of Sam uel Sia ter " UYlneSj H ' Istory RevIew (Autumn pp 310- 31 1 . John F Kas.' J I),,,! J ), mn' C1))[I/.Zing the Machine (New Y k, 1976), p 102. 6 1. QUOled In Peter N Carroll and David W. N 0bIe, T e F ee and the h r Unfree (New York , 1977 ), p 153 62. Kuli . et al., " F c[ol) ' Rules and Regulations (184 3)," 0 . cit., p. 463. rp 63. Ment t Roc SmIth, op. c it., pp. 65, 271. 64. Kulik, et al., "TOWil Clock (J828) , " op. CI ., p. 265 'l ) . ' . 65. Leu Mar, Th('; Mac/nne. . In the Garden (New Yor " k 1964) p. 248. 66. Page SmIth op cil p 821 Se Tamala 'K. Har

qUOh.: d

lum

lc

;;;)Y' V;' ; : irt J

q 1 . 'J1i('. Diary of Philip Hone., 1828]851 (New York, 1851), p. 142. n. Pish, op. cit., p. 54. In Glyndon Van Deusen, The Jackson Era, 1828-1848(New York, 1959), pp. 66-67.
94. 96. Paul A. Gilje, "The Baltimore Riots of 1812

H:-!. Sydlley N : I I l\:IIIS, lJimid Wrl)sla and Ja.cksonian DI:mocracy (Baltimore, 1973), p. 48. "N. I\:tn T;lTIill, nil' Jack!oollja.n }:(xmomy (New York, 1969), p. 18. ')0. (harlcs A. Lowery, James Barbour, A Jeffersonian Republicall (University, AL, 1984),
pp. 217-218.

or

95. Howard Zinn, A People's History of the Unitr.n States (New

Rray Hammond, Banh ami Poiitics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
(Princeton, 1957), p. 238.

97. James B. Agnew. gg Nag Riot: The Christmas Mutiny at W est Point

N:

(San Rafael, 1979), p. ix. 98. John J. Duffy and H. Nicholas Muller, HI, All Anxious Drmocracy: Aspect" o the 1830... f (Westport, cr, 1 982), p. 4. 99. Sean Wilentz, "Artisan Repub lica n Festivals and the Rise of Class Conflict in New York
1 01 . Pae Smith, op. cil., p. 746. 102. Gilje, op. cit., p. S64. 103. 104. 105. 100. Theodore M. Hammen, '"'Two

Mob Tra ditio ," Journal o Socjal History, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Summer 1980). f

and the B rea kdown of the Anglo-American

ork, 1980), p. 59.

a;ar;;Jlon,

Journal of American llistory, Vol. LXn, NO. 4 (March 1976), p. 867.

City, 1788-1837," Frisch and Walkowitz, op. cit., p. 54.

Mobs of Jacksonian Boston: Ideology and Interest,"

Paul Owen Weinbaurn, Mobs and fHmagogues: 11le Res pons to CoJiutive Vioienet'. in
New York City in the Early Ninr.teenth Century (An n Arbor, 1977), p. iv.
1961), p. 371[[

Y
Uflt

Michael Chl'lvalier, Socie.ty, Manners, and Politics in the United Stales (Garden City, NY,

/0

, . .

107.

id H. Sm Ith, Becoming . Modern (Cam bridge, 1974 ).

110. Richard a Brown, Mooemizalioll: The Tr01uf ormarion a Amr.rican Life, 7600-7865(New I York, 1976), p. 1 5 5 . p. 90. 112. Ruraha ugh, op. cjt., p. 169. 1 15. R orabl'lugh, op. cit., p. 15. 1 16. Rorabaugh, op. cit., p. 8. 114. Tyrell, o . cit., p. 127. p

109. Jan R.

108. W.J. Rorab a ugh, The Alcoholic Republic (New York, 1979), p. 25.

106. Lee Benson, The Concept o Jacksonian Democracy (Princeton, 1970), pp. 1 5 1 - 152. f

Michael Kaminen, People o Paradox (New f

Walter Hug ins, Jachollian Democracy and rhe W orking Class (Stanford, 1960), pp. 45-46.
1800-1860(Westport, cr, 1979), p. 107.

York,

1973), p. 253.

Tyrell, Sobering U From Temperance to Prohibition in Anrebellum Amp-rica, p:

Ill. Foster Rhea Dulles, America Learns To Play: A History o Recreation (New York, 1965), f
Culture ( Westport, LI, 1979), p. 106.

113. Bruce Laurie, "Nothing on Compulsion," Milton Cantor, ed., American W orking Class

Lawson

; ;; : :: :
(Sta nford,

1 17. Joseph R. Gusfield, "Temperance, Status ContrOl, and Mobility," David Brion Davis, 1 1 8 . Rorabaugh, op. Cil., p. 187.

ed., Ante-Bellum Ref oml (New York, 1967), p. 126.

119. This generalizalion does not mean to imply an ea or y

Concerning the severity and persistence of this phenomenon see

1957), pp. 12-1 3.

1 2 1 . Michael B.

]20. Ronald G. Waters, American Reformr.rs, 1815-1869(New York, 1978) p. 209.

smdy of nineteenth century Cincinnati, Drink and Disorder ( Urbana,

Industrial Capitalism ( Ca

complete end of the issue.

1984).

.led Dannenbaum's

Katz, Michael J. Doucet, and Mark J. Stern, The. Social Organization of Early bridge, W82), p. 349.

/Hh
122. Miclwd B. K;I(Z,

127. Katz, et aJ., op. cit., p. 90. 130.

126. Carl F. Kaestie, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and Ame,ic(ifl Soril'" /780 1860 (New York, 1983), pp. 96-97. 128. Clifford S. Griffin, " Religious Benevolence as Social Control," Davis, o (;it., p.90. p. 129. John F. Kflsson, Civilizing the M achine (New

124. Frederick Marryat, A Diary i n Amcn(;(j (New York, 1962), p . 352. 125. Curti, op. cit., pp. 80-81.

123. Faux, op. (;it., (August 5, 1819), pr. UO- Il l.

Irony of Fmly Sc/Uh,/ Ulj,mn

( '<lmbe idj.'.I.:, I %H), p. .wii.

, 1%2) , p. :-ill). . . .' ,\i,j/" ,II 'Im (N(.;w )'Iuli: War I " 1'11"11" ."11. I '''''I ''" " "" . ()ri"ilts of World 0 b!lf'lprefallOn 0{ [hC ' I. '>II /'"u.w': All (. , '/1It 1 1.. 1 1HII'tIHT 1 ;1 1 , 11 (l'hiIaJdphia, IIJ(JS), p. l). . Y rk 1973). The fAustna-Hu (I,! N l:.;nd o , cJ!'>., 1914: 13. Leo Va lia i, The i Laqueur and Masse

I I I , M I ' N I :-' e l l '

J<1 ' 1 \ 11\ 1

'X I

131. Pa!!,c Smith, Daughters o the Promised Land: W f omen 132. Quoted by Coc hran, Busine:. p. 9 1 . p. 26. 1970), p. 64.

Rorabaugh, o p.

Rothman's important The Discovery o the Aylum (New York, 1971). f cit., p. 213.
n i

York, 1976), p. 73. Also David .T.

(r . 14, 0 Ie noarv and II (.rtSlS t> ' J Sl 14. Norman ," one, "I-{u " k' 1970) ' p. 147 . J World War (New YO f Hapsburg Rule, Coming o the Firs . 0cietics under the Non erm aolC S 15, Peter f.

134. Carl Degler, At

133 . Steph en Nissenbaum, Sex, Diet and Debility in Jacksonian America (Westport, Present (New York, 1980), p. 251.

American History (Boston,

1.35. Nissenbaum, o . cit., p. 28. p 136. Jayne A. Sokolow, Eros and Mnde.mizalion (Cranbury, NY, 1983), pp. 12-13. 137. Degler, op. cit., p. 250.

Orids: Women and the Family in Ame.rica from the Revolution to the

cr,

191-10),

of Sugar, "The Nature (March 1963), p 29. p. 448. Slavic Review, XI: I I u (London 1963), 11 ou . f k i968), p. 492. 16 . Edwa rd Crallkshaw, Thf Fall o the H s;8 7_ 1 0) . (N W Yor , Hapsburg Monarchy" Marxist leader Max 11 Arthur J. May, Tllf. . xfor " 1978) p. 132: AU.I'tro-Marxum (0 ' more an d U00de, eds" , " ( 19 1 5) warned that "the clas." standpolOt of the 18. Bolto to defend the e tdcol?r.J' of the W. ar. Adler, in "Th natural inclination , ' . I S dutv and In any W(lY dlmlnlSh s proletariat doc not

138. Page Smith, The Nation, p. 714. 139. Gerda Lerner, "The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status Of Women in the pp. l 1 -l2. (Minneapolis., 1980), p. 107.

144. Lee Clark Mitchell, W itnesses

142. Ibid., p. 13.

141. Michael Paul Ragin, Fathers and C hildren: Andrew Jackson and the Sub jugarion o the. f American Indian (New York, 1975), p. 165. 143. Quoted by Maj or

140. Richard Drinnon, Facing West: Metaphysics o Indian-Hating and Empire-Building f

Ae of Jackson," MidconrinmtalAmerican Studies Joumal, Vol . X, No. I (Spring 1969),

L. Wilson, S pace, Time and FTI'fdom (Westport, L 1974), p. 12. 'T

to a Vanishing America (Princeton,

1980).

Origins and Meaning of WWI

1976 77), p. 116 2. Guy Debord, Society o the. S ec/aele f p 3. Elie Halevy, 1 . Jan Patocka, "Wars of the 20th Century and the 20th Century as War,"

4. V.

6. Pierre van

9. Stefan Zweig,

gotiators (New York, 1971), p. 46. 7. Z.AB. Zeman, The G/:ntieman Ne 8. L.1'. Hobhouse, The World ill Conflict ( l.ondon, 1915), p. 15.

5. S.A. Sal ,anov, Remini scences: Fate ful Y ean, 1906-1916(I.ondon, 1925), pp. 123, 140.

R. Rerghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in

World Crisis of

Paasen, Days of OUT Years (New York, 1 946), p. 46.

The

1914-1918, (Oxford, 1930), p. 1 7

(Detroit,

1977), thesis 97.

Telos 30,

(Winter

1914 (New York, 1974), p. 14.

1 1 . This general idea is sometimes mentioned in passing, rarely explored or developed. David Thomson saw lhat "The established authorities were everywhere subject [by

The World of Yesterday (New York, 1943), p. 197. 10. H.G. Wells, T Salvaging o Civilization (New York, 1922), p. he. f

1.

of mass revulsion a!?,ainsl the exactin disciplines of industrial urban civilization,"

1914) to a rcurrent challenge which struck at the roots of their power-the challenge

f(l therlan P 146 148 19 Zeman, op cit, ndon, 1932), p von Bulow Vol 3, (Lo f , MemOirs o Pnnce p. 243 20 Hans von Bulow " r Cn Cltv N Y 1963), (Ga f I'all o [he. DyntJs1U'.s pp 452 451 21 Edmu nd Taylor, 1hl'. ( o nd o , 1976) ' { o tile Winter " alace. ' L l I 'l nkshaw, T l'. Shadow P 453 2 F:.dward Cra (Garden eIly, N Y" 1953) 2 'd The Fmiand StatIOn ld Wa r " Drody and Wnght, c S , 23 Edmund Wllson, T0 Flrs: Wor er, "Oomestlc Causes of the 24 Arno May Lo 1 9(i 7), P' 207 ' Change (New York, f ( ndon, 1925)' p. l69 [;/ements o PaMcal Fore.lgrt Courtv DIpIomtlcy (md ) P 17. 25 Menel Buchanan, n City N Y 1959 (G ut 26. L eon Trotsky, The Rwman Re\iO llm : ( 1 78), p 1 18:119. rk, 9 N Russwn Anarc [Its 27 Paul A\'nch, The. 10. , 28. Zeman, op. ciJ., p. rkcley, 1.971 ) , p . 20 . Rise. of FaSCism (13e 29. F.L. C3rsten, the 30. Ibid., p. 45. cil., p. 254 31 von BuloW, op. rd, p. 10. munism (Stanfo . 32: Zeman, op. cit., Origins uf Italian Com , oniO Gromsci and the John M. Cammelt, Ant 33. in Odober 1914. 1967) , p. 36. . . t signet! publishcd article, ' IS a tttlUde LD h' firs Gramsci expressed thiS 34. . 42. , msci (L.ondon, 1 977) jamES .loll, Antonio Gra I 10 ialt F?scism (Lo don,. i, l[al 1975), pp. 74, 76. 35. Giampero Carocc . . ation of the actone.3 Spriano, The. Occup 36. Paolo no, Ibid., p. 77. 37. Quoted by Spria 4. (Berkeley, f sten, op. cit., pp. 535 l Origins o Fascism 38. Car . r ' and the intellectua The Young Musso ml 39. A. Jmes Gregor, p 0. " 1979) . nceton, 1979), . 9 mtal Dicttltorship (Pri . LSm and D I 40. Gregor, Ita/ran J'aSC , 197 1), p. 202 . e:v 9- 14(New York 9 Greal Illuston, / 4 1 . Oron Hale, 11u. 78. 42. Ibid. . (New York 194 1), p. w ectIOns orZ Ie' Ienc 1963), p . 104. 43. Georges Sorci, Refl 'ranee., V0J . . (Middlescx, A History of Modem 44. Alfred Cobban, Cit , p. 1 . . 45. von Bulow, OP. : w York, 1928). p. 362 ' f' dmg r. tI Abyss (Ne nowskl, llea7 jor 46. Prince Lich . \02. 4. . 47. Cobban, op. ciL, p . ( Oxfor , 1969), p. 17 Fran e Smc mson, Democracy In 197 1), p . 69. . 48. David Tho . nch Lab or (Rutr,ers, an Fre "d olutionary Sy lca ISm 49. Peter Stearns, Rev

."

..

d :\

4) ItaiyPi920(LondOn,

50. Hatevy, op. cit., p. 14.

51. Ibid., p. 20.

1870

,0)),. T,lylm, op. ( "if., p. J..I K . ( ' . . 53. Henry I;" May 'IhI'. FIl(I U /I11I(,I"Wall J"I/(J(:('llt'r ( Nt'\\' YOlk , liJVi), p. .1-14 . if . ; 5 4. Grnham Adams lr"' Th ,. Ag{ () jf1(Ius!naI V io{[,!lC/', jl)j() N l 'i (Ncw York ' J 9() () ) , p. ) .r ' 5" 'd j. IbI 'J p. 219. 5 6 . Christopher Lasch, Tltr. Ne.w Radicalism i n Amnica' 1889-1963(Ncw York , I t)(l.'I ),

II

'JK,

162. 59. John Highm, Strangers in fhe Land (New York, 19(8) , P , 1 95. 60. Ha!e, up. elf., p. 163. 61, Ibid" p, 1 53 62. Rc,gcr Shattuck, The Banqun Y ean (New York, 19(7) ' p. 283. . 63. /bul., p. 279. 64. !"larr:r Golumbek, The. Game a/ Chess (london 19)4), p 222. 65. ZweIg, op. (:il., p. 195. G6. R.W. Fl in t, ed. Marinerti (New York, 1972), P. 14. 67 Shauuck, op. cit., p. 353. 68 Discussed by Carolyn E. PIayne, ThI" M!umses of Nations (London' 1 925) , p. 49.
>

::,8. Zeman, or.cit., p.

57. Jacques Ellul' The T,PoehnoioglcaI SOClcty (New ' _

pp. 202-203.

York' 1 9(7) , pp. . - -. ) \J . 365 36'

r, 1905-1914 (London, 1(63 1)'1. ( 'oliu ( 'I OSS, 'lJ1I I.iI}('ral.\ in Powe York, 1959), p . 21. lOll. James { :'1 Itll.:ron, 1':)i4 (New on, 1952 ), p 163. King Geo'1:e the Fifth (Lond . 101. Ha rold Nicolson, or War (Roston, h Socir.ty and lhe First W M ur Marwick, The Deluge: Britis p. 46.

ILL I '\'.111'.

/I,.' ! 'It'lm;(01 /l,!W (I

I " , .M I N I :-' I II 1< 1 + 1 /\,\1

Hudon, 19)0),

), p. 171.

102. Arth

19(6), 153.

103. William Archer, The Great Analy On'gins of the. 104, Zan S. Steiner, Britain and the
fl8li.h People, f l O S . Elie Halev)', A History o the.

p, 10,

sis (London,

106.

107. Ibid., pp.

N.Y. , 1965 ), p . 106, f o Tyrannie' (G arden City, 109. Elie " Economic History Rf':vit'w, Triple Industrial Alliance in 1914, 109. G. A. Phillips.. "The XXIV J (1971), p, 63,
1 1 0. Camcron, op. cit., p. 46.

Ibid., p.

436. 446,45 1 . Halevy, The Era

1977 ), 457. 1905-1915 (London, 1934), p.

, First World War (New York

1911) , p. 19.

p.

28. 1 1 1 . V.i. Poun d, op. Cil., p.

69' PauI R' , lCotUr, Hwory and Truth (Evanston 1%5) p 213. ' " 70 ' DavId. La nd es, 'rle lf nhound Prome!heus (Lon on" 1 969), p. 1, . . l
. .

78. James Gerard, M Four }'j ears In GermallY (New York t917) p. 75. Gerard saw [he J u Ie ma popular reaction to the Zabern mCIdcnts as " perhaps the f' 1 faetor w h' h decided the " . advocate of Ihe old milita r)' sYs(em of Germany 10 favor of a European war" (p. 91). s . 81 79. John T. Flynn, As W.I" Go Marchmg (New York 1973) SO. Arthur Rose:nberg, impenal Ge.nnany (New YOk, 1 970f p. 58. 8 1. Gordn Cnllg, Gf'-rmany, 1866-1945(New .York' 1978) , p. 337 . . 82. D.!\. Smart' Pannelwe.k and GOTter s Mar:nsm (New York, 1977) , p. 20. . . . 03 . Ib'd., p. 21. I o 84. Austin Harrison, TJu K aiser's War (Lon do n 1914) p 197 Jamcs Jail, The Second International (New York, 1956) pp. 166-167, ' . . . Robert Looker, ed ROl'a Luxembu18 Seluted Polmeal W ritings (New York, 1972), p. 40. " 87. Ibid., p. 197.
.
> ,

1980. 73 . Berghahn, o cit., p. 78. p. 74. Ibid., p. 8 1 , 75. Yon Bu [ow, op. dt., p. [03.
77. Playne, op. cit., p. 88.

316 . II ' r 7 1 Siegfried ("aIon, M hamzullOn Takes Command (New Y rk" 1969) p. 41 . ec o , '.Xaminer-Chronicle7 October 12, . ' . 72 Hilton Kramer' "German Expressloillsm, " .san Francisco T " d

s and 12. Quoted in Eric J. Leed's "Clas

r 1 978), Modf.m iILItOry, so (Decembe

f War I," Journal o Disillusionment in World

p. 691.

Taylorism and Unionism

2. Department o[ Heal 1 973). p, 19,

1. David Jenkins, lob

70, Ibid,. p, 102.

, p. 32. l1nagemt'fli (New York, 19l1) of SCientific M 3. Frederick W. Taylor, Principles York, 1945), p. 38. C. Bertrand tion Takes Command (New 4. Siegfried Giedion. Mechaniza eli ed out the absence of comp point in 1917 when he point 'Thompson made the same "for the reason that most nt, employing scientific manageme tive pressure behind firms i there s no neces:>ity -monopoly position in which n ow using it sta nd in a quasi of them SCientific Management f :lice o "] See hi!; The. Theory and Prar: to reduce their prices .... ( Bostoll, 1917 ), pp, 88-89, gement, ed that w it h scientific mana r Society, for example, claim 5. Mary Follett of the Taylo chy of position thus "has little to do with hierar tion" and "aut hori ty is derived from func Manage.ment in Amoican
tific ty, H.S. Person, Editor, Scie.n as such.... " {Sec Taylor Socie ed that it embodied ypical pronouncements claim T ), p. 436] Induslry (New York, 1929 lSee unveiling of scientific law, " h stemmed [rom the "a new kind of a uthority whic and that it substituted joint i l plf (Chicago, 1964), p. 25] U . J Samuel Haber, l: flci(lU:Y and obedience to person al workers "to fact and law for obedience o[ employers and ent and Labor (New York, klin Hoxie, Scimlific Managem authority." [See Robcrt Fran ith his er w and manipulating the work uring, 1915 ), p . 9.] The time-study man, meas Scimrific Manageme.nt y, hable data." { Horace D Drur stopwa tCh, relies on " unimpeac (New Y ork,

r Democracy (Balt Power: Blur. and White Colla in America (Cambridge, :ducation and Welfare, Work th, r

imore,

1974 ), p. 9.
Mass.,

88. Ibid., p. 222. , 89 The0 p. mkus, ed., Coner.sa!lolIs with Luk(ICS (Cambridge 1 975), p. 1 48.
90. Hannah Arendt, Totahrarianism (New York"

92.

91. Quoted by Arendt, Ibid.

Hannah Hafkesbrink'
pp. 30-32.

J. 1968) p. 26'

U nknown Gmnany: An inner C hronicle (New Haven,

1948),

6. Taylor Socicty, op. cit, p. 46.

93. Reginald Pound, The ost Gme.rarion (New York' 1964) p 73 . L . s 94. Joseph Bibby, The. War, Is Unseen Cause and S t if " . . , 91 n . o d L or Vlll. 95. eorge Dangerfield, Thp. Strange Dr.ath of Liber ;(d [:,::; L k, 1961) p.5) p 12 on 1 , 96. Eman uel Shmwcll, I've Lived Through II All (London' 1973), p 12 97. R.C.K. Enor, England, 1870-1914 (Ox[ord, 1 936) , p. SS7. . .

e of aylor's lead ing disciples, spok p. 59. RL. GoOU, one of T 7. Taylor, Prineiplr.s, op. cit., tea ching and training, as "the standard method of implementing the task system 1919), p. 122.} Since "the worker agl's tJ.nd Profits (New York, chi[dren." lSec his W e, it follows easily that he hands," in Jacques Ellul's phras became an obj ect in Tayl or's part of the justifica ild by the Tayloritcs, Another or a ch would be seen as an animal a worker's real motivation is the "economic man," that tion was Taylor's notion of Study in P(>onality and ir Kakar, Frede.rick Taylor: A and nothing else. !See Sudh
money lnnovation

1915), p. 59.J

(Cambr idge, Muss., J 970)

p. 99.J

,'f 1 1 11).',11 I i"L AiH,I'II. IIn'/"II.''''' ,1/ 1 l ;J/,'lf,,,.,, .In,'u,,1 ( I .lIlIloudl'.I. r\b".. 1 " hOI PI' I I ' I ". 1 10. I S. 1 (. 1 , fill' n;l!ll p[(', 9. Taylor Soci.:,ty, op. cit., pp. 44 7, 1::l0, 1Yt 10. ThaI the fight to control work was the hC:lrt of the contcsl (.;,111 bc Sl:CIl ill slJch :11 r j("k n_ "Who's Boss in Your Shop?" rrom the August, 1 9 1 7 Bulletin of the Taylor So,i,I). III fact, tlc first effort of Taylor to lay out his theory, in "A Piece-Rate Syskm" ( I XII " q
11. See, for exampl e, H. Jack Schapiro and Mahmoud A. Wahba's "Frederick W. T:lyltll 1 2 . Taylor, " A Piece-Rate System," op. eit. (Discussion: Mr. John A. 13. Drury, op. (Ca mbridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 27-28. model, in which money is the prime motivator, still (sic) obtains. ram'aeli(m,v of" f/" . and e.mployeT. [Sec Frederick W. Taylor " A Piece Rate System," T Ammean Soc-tery o Mechanical Engineers (New York, A. S. M. E., 1895), pp. S9r .'N," .] f underlmes that fact that the problem to b e solved i s the antagonism between wOlkt.,'j

."lIl

the mista text or hihlitlgraphy. This suggests that

nil'

years later," Pe.rsonnel Journal, August 1 97 4, which argues that the "economic man"

'"

14. John . Commons, "Restrictions by Trade Unions," The OWlook, October, 1906.

15. Surveymg the notes and bibliography sections of McKelvey's and Nadworny's book on s

cit.,

p. 197; Milton Nadworny,

Seiemific Management and the

Penton), pp. 88H.9.

Unions

ntific ManagemeD,t and , . \Vith Peter F. Meiksin's "Scie Taylorislll has become an axiom on thiS tOpIC . 13, No. 2 ( March 1984) , erro Society Vol Class Relations," in Theol)' and of the earliest oppo 184: " ... the A. F. of L. was one takes a quan tum leap. On page th ext7nt 0.( wrk while. observers disagree as to , . of scientific management, and, . nents 1lImsm IS some tnkcs . Taylonsm did p rovoke at least resistance, it seems clear that hqUldated ism IS all hut r yet, while rank-nd-file antagon thus elevated even a bit highc idence. Sad to say, even Harry ith which dispenses w the need for ev -an achievement f o Work in the Monopoly Capital: The Degradation Braverman's excellent Labor and of distortion; althh th work kind (New York, 1974) falls into this Jllury Twentieth Ce nce to <:Intl- l aynsm workers' struggles, his sole refere admittedly does not deal with nt " raised a storm of OPPOSition Scientific Manaemc (p. 136) is his judge.ment that " ' the early part ()r tIlIS cen tu ry. among the trade unions during

clt;y, I{{t'lTInll hy J udi th A, Merkle (lkrk . "I rlfr' IlIfI'lIlIIlrwwf Sl"if'llrifi(; MWII mCl:tioll Nad:-,)rny 111 the (pp. S, 29) without botherin to [ 1).'i O), ':'d.ll lll:d ('s this error .. ken theSIS o[ umon oppOS1l1on 10
, <"1" " \

16. Haber, op. cit., p. 67. 18. Henry

the subject, we find that McKelvey looked at only two contracts (signed in 1925 ami
1930) and that Nadworny examined none.

olt Against Work" Organized Lab or vs. "The Rev

Prt:ss, 1939), p. 272; r (New Haven: Yale University 1 . See Herbert Harris, American Labo Prcss, 1969), p. 55; M<:Iry rsity of Michigan Sidney Fine, Sildown (Ann Arbor: Unive

17. Thompson, o cit., p. 96 and p. 155. p.

Of Whl It was said in 1915 that "no one has done more to broaden t he scope of . s ,clehflc manageet . " was one of Ihe f irst spokesmen to publicly urge the Tilylor

especla!ly of course, Its Taylorist component. And Morris L. Cooke, a liberal Taylorit,{",

Gantt, a conrvative Taylor disciple, admired the l..cninist dictatorship,

SoclCty to rccognze lts natural partner in unionism, Cooke, not surprisingly, became ill

2 0 . Taylor Papers, " Taylor o r Ruggles."

2 1 . :lugh ? J. Aitken, l }lorism at W atertown Arsenal (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 67-68. . . 22. -Ieanngs Before SOCial Commi ttee of the House of Representatives to lnvestigste the workers' re. entmem was fueled by the anti-workmanship aspects of Taylorism. Isaac o,; Resolution 90," Vol. 1, p. 230. Other testimony made it clear, furthermore, that faylor and Other Syslems of Shop Managemcnt Under the Authority of House

19. Matthew Josephson, Sidney Hillman (Garden City, N.Y., 1952), pp, 1 1 1 - 1 1 2 .

the 19305 a promi nent CIO advocate. (See

Drury, op. cit., p. 153.)

February 17, 1908.

) , p. 5Y; Charles York: Modern Age Books, 1938 Vorsc, Labor'." Ne.w MiUionr (New r, (t aI., and Morale," in A. Kornhause ing Conditions Walker, "Work Methods, Work York: McGrawHilI, 1954), p. 345. ed"., Industrial Conflir.ts (New York: The , in Collectivp Bargammg (New mson and Herbert H,arris, Trpnd 2. S.T. Willia , 1945) , p. 210. Twcn1ielh Century Fund rs (New York: Harcourt, f m o POIt-e.r: America's l.abor Le.ade M 3. C. Wright Mills, The. New Rrace, 1948) , p. 242. ( New York: The free Press, f Discontents," The End o Ideology 4. Daniel Bell, "Work and [ts 1960), p. 24[).

S p

23. Aitken, op. cit., pp. 223-224. work and reduce their support thiS vIew.

Goostray and Alexander Crawford, for example, spoke of the pressures to slight their

24. For example, Haber, op. cit., declares that organized labor was solidly agai nst scientific 25. Jean Trepp McKelvey, AFL Alt iludes Towards Production (Ithaca, 1952), p. 16. managemet uring this period (p. 66), but only cites lAM statements

level of craftsmanship.

Free ress, 1969 ) , p. 3: r Revolt (Boston: , New England 6. Stanley Weir, USA-The Laho orker s Notebook (Ne\\ ulion: Pages From a Negro W Revol 7. James Boggs, The Amencan 1963), p. 32. York: Monthly Review Press, ne (June, 1964) , p. 1 Push More Bark Than Bite?" Fortu 8. E,K. fahermayer, "Is Labor's p. 1 Oxford Uni....ersity Press, 1968), Labor (New York: 9. J. C. Lcetl, C/as:., Race, and England Free New f 'tones o the Early CIO (Boston: Hi.I 10. Staughton Lynd, ed., Personal

(pp. 67-69) to

27. Richard H. Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams (New York, 1973), p.

26. Aitken, o p.

28. Whers Erving Bernstein's The 1.ean Y ear.i: A History o the American Worker, 1920-1933 f (p. 1 7), also citing McKelvey and Nadworny, Daniel Nelson's Frederick JY. Taylor and , the RISe o SCLentific Management (Madison, 1980) likewise repeats the myth of a pre f t o scientific management," more recent efforts repeat the same error. James (New York, 1960) spoke of the 1920s' "sharp reversal in the AFL's historic opposition The W orld o the W f orker (New York, 1980) quotes Bernstein to the same general point

cit.,

pp. 183-184.

200.

' . . . Pre.<;s, 1971) , p. 23. g Class ConsCIOusness f ise.s: The. Shaping o Amencall Workm 1 1 . Stanley Aronowitz, False Prom . pp. 44-46. . (New York: McGraw-Hili, 1973) , ," Radical Amenca (May-June, 1971) nter-Planning on the Shop Floor 12. Bill Watson, "Cou

R. Green's

'!lar "confrontation between scientific management 1I1to truce and then collaboration during the

and labor" (p. 164) which turned 1920s (p. 202). Management and Idl'.ology:

p . ?S. p. 1 3 . Weir, o cit., p.2. mporary Labor /ssues, r: The Rank-and-File Revolt," Con.te 14. Thomas R. Brooks, "Labo worth, 1966) , p. 321. mont, Calif.: Wads Fogel and Kleinganner, eds. ( B el 1971) , p. 73. bly Line," The Atlantic (October, 15. William Serrin, "The Assem lion (.luly-Auusl, 1973) , p. 33. Fringe ilenefits," Libera ., 16. George Lipsit? "Beyond the : BaSIC Books, 1973) , p. 144. f o Post-Induslria! Society (New York 17. Danid Bell, The Coming Press, 1972), p. 271. Francisco: Straight Arrow IS, Jeremy Brecher, Striki'/ (San , ashingCO'1 Pose, March 27, 1970 19. W ers World, July 30, 1971 . 20. Work 1 1 , 1.970. 21. Clew/and Plain Deall'.r, May

24. Cited by Brecher, op. cit., pp. 279.280. 25. Serrin, op. cic., p. 4. 26. Ibid., pp 263-264. 27. Ibid., p. 202. 28. Ibid., p. 306. 29. Roy B. Helfgotl, l,abor Econ omir::' (New York: Rand om House, 1974), p. 506. 30. Aronowitz, op. cit., p. 43. 3 1 . W Street JOlI.ma December all 9, 1972. 32. Michael Adelman, in Labor News/uter (February, 1974 ), pp. 7-8. 33. Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1973. 34. Siney Lens, U,e l.abor IV QT:\' (Garden Ciry, N..: Anc hor, 1974), p. 376. 35. R ard Armstron ' "Labor 1970 : Angry, Aggressi . . 9), ,P. 14 . Wllham and Margaret Westley, ve, Acquisitive," Fonune (October The Emerging W er (Mo . ork nrreal: Mc(:iill. Queen s Ulllve.rs,t)' Press, 1971 ), p. 100. 36. Harold W. Davey, Contem'PO . . . . ra'Y e lle.ctlVe. Bargmnln8 (New ,() ' York: Prentice-Hall, 1972) , p. I)3. 37. Norman J. Samuels, Assistan t Commissioner, Wagcs and Indu strial Relations' letter to author, Apn.1 19, 1974. 38. Aronowtz, op. cit., p. 2 14. i 39. Richard Sennett and Jonathon Cobb, The Hidden injuries of Clas s (New York' AJfred A . Knopf, 1972), p. 4. 40. RemMk by CWA president, Joseph Beirne, New York Tim",s, . July 18 ' 1971 . 41. AronOwItz, op. Clt., p. 224. 42. Sec Jack Anderson's "Merry -Go.Round" colum n, August 23 1971 , Ii or exampIe. 43. Robert V. Roosa, "A Strategy ' for Winding Down InOation " Fort une (September 1971 ) p. 70. 44. Anhur M. Louis, "l....a bor Can Make or Break the Stabilization Program' " Fortnile (November, 1971 ), r. 142. 45. Editorial: "Phasing Ot Phas e Two," Fonune. (January, 1972 ), r. 63. . 46. B eau of Labor Statistics , Work Stoppages in 1972: Sum mary Rf'port (Washington epartmeIl! of Labor, 1974), p. .' L 47. David Deitch, "Watershed of the American Bconomy," The Norion (September 13, 1971 p. 20l . ), 411. Quoted by Serrin, op. cit., p. 24. 49. Thomas O'llanlon, "Anarch y Threatens the Kingdom of Coal' " Fr.nune, (January, 1971 ') p. 78. ), 50. Arthur A. Sloane and Fred Witney, Labor Re.lations (New York: Prentice-H<l1I, 1972) p. 390. , 51. Fro n anti-union article. by John Davenport, "How to Curh Union Power, " (1abeJed 0 plmon), Fortune (July 1971 ), p. 52. 52. Ibid., p. 54. 53. l.os Angele Times, Novemb s er 8, 1972. 54. Armand J. Thieblm and Ron ald M. Cowin W aTl and el" Strikes-'Fh.. U .e o ,rp It; , . . .' . :i J Ubl t-un<is ' to Su part Stn .f'S ( phl/ad :p " 'ke , ' elphIa: UnIversity ofJ' Pennsylvania Press' 1973) , p. 55. New York limes, Apnl 13, 185 . . 1974. 56. Weekly People, April 27, 1974 . 57. Lucretia M. Dewey, "Union Merger Pace Quit:kens," Month ly Labor Revir.w (June, 1971 ),

. 2J.. l'red ( 'ouk, " l la n l ! Ll L .,;: '1'1 l(" 1< ;UlljI;lgUlg I 'aln. '!:-;, '" "J Ii.' {\.I"t" ," ( 111'11" ' '>, I'fI'Il. pro 712719. 23. William Scrrin, Tlw Company (lnd lite Union (NlW y(JI' : AI fred A. Knopf, Jln I ) ,

pp. 233-236.

'

"

62. Joel Seidman, "Political Controls and Member Rights: An Analysis of Union Constitutions," Essays on Industrial Relnrions R...se.an:h Problem. and Prospects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961). 63. Burton Hall, ed., Autocracy and Insurgency in Organized Labor (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1972). 64. H.W. Benson, "Apachy and Ocher Axioms: Expelling the Union Dissenter From History," Irving Howe, ed., The World of the. Blue Collar Worker (New York: Quadran gle Books, 1 972), pp. 209-226. 65. Times-Post Service, "Admin[stTation's Tryst with labor," San Frallci:.co Chronide (April 14, 1969). 66. New York Times, "Key Jobs Offered to l.abor by Nixon" (December 31, 1 972), p. 1. 67. Phil Stanford, "Convention Time," Oregon Times (September, 1971), p: 4. 68. Sec California AF L-CIO News editorial: "The Convention Caper" (January 14, 1972), for , example. 69. Robert J. Marcus, "The Changing Workforce," Personnel (January-February, 1971), p. 12. 70. Ibid., p. 10. 71. Business mek, "The Unions Begin to Bend on Work Rules," (September 9, 1972), pp. 106, 108. n. New York Timr April 27, 1974. s, 73. New York Times, April 26, 1974. 74. Quoted from Serrin, op. cit., p. 118. 75. David Jenkins, Job PUWI'r (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 319-320. 76. Ibid., p. 312. 77. lne San Francisco Social Services Union, a ralher a_nli-union union of about 230 public welfare workers, has emphatically rejected these institutions since 1968. This, plus its vocal militanr.:y and fTcquem:y exposure of "Organil.eu labor's" corruption and collusion has earned them the hatred of the established unions in San Francisco.

6 1 . San Francisco Chronicle, "lJnion Fee Ruling on City Workers," October 31, 1973.

pp. II I 111 ,'IN. New Yurk /1111t'.\', August 3 flnd 6, 1972. "i9. Confirmed hy I larry Bridges, letter to author, April II, 1974. (iO. Dick Meister, "Public Workers Union Win a Rare Agreemt:Ilt," San Francisco C hronicle.

(Ap,a 13, 1969).

Anti-work and the Struggle for Control

' Baq!,ainingT California Management Review, Fall 1981, p. 14. AIo Dollars and Srnse, "Union Decertification Elections," February 1980, p. 8. 2. Thornt(ln Bradshaw and David Vogel, eds., Curporations and Their Crilics (New York, 1981), p. xvi. 3. Nation 's Business, March 1981, p. 20. 4. Peter L Berger, " Ncw Attack on the Legitimacy of Rig Business.," Harvard flusiness Re.view, September-October, 1981, p. 82. 5. Herbert J. Freudenbergcr, "How to Survive Burnout," Nation s Business, December 1980, p. 53. 6. Merrill eherlin, "Burnout; Victims and Avoidances," Datamation, July 1981, p. 92. 7. Robert L. Vcninga and James P. Spradley, The Work Stress Conne.ction: l/ow 10 Cope with Job Burnout (Boston, 1981). 8. Robert L Kahn, "Work, Stress and Individual Well-Being," M(mthly Labor Review, May 1981: Ahmed A Abdel-Hallm, "Effects of Role Stress-Job DesignTechnology Interac-

L William E. Fulmer, " Decertification: Is the Current Trend a Threat to Collective

NIIII",
liull Il!\ Ewph 'ytT s;lIiI;lt"i, m," .. klll/n". "I !\I,w",I;"'''''1I1 .I,mll/"I, .l UlU: 1981; ( h blltl..

Jkhlin illlli I;. I)ou!!,l:is I \{lkp!lIhc, ., I kal l l!!, with 1 ':1I1ph)}'('\' Stress," MSU IJU.\i!If'.\.\ i
Topics, Spring I(,)H. 9. Frank Kuzmits, "No l;ault: A New Strategy for Ahsenteeism Conlro], " Personnel lmmwl,
May 1981. 10. Clarence A. Deitsch and David A. Dilts,"Getting Absent Workers Back on the Job: Tilt 11. Robert Holman'S "Beyond C..onremporary Employee Assistance Plans," Pe.rsonnel Case of General Motors," Business Horizons, September-October 1981, p. 52.

Administrator, September 1981, notes that more than 2,000 such EAP's were establislutI in u.s. firms between 1972 and 1978.
12. Richard J. Tersine and Roberta S. RusscU, "Interna l Theft: "foe Multi-Billion Dollar Disappearing Act" Businrss Horizons, November-December 1981, pp. 11-12. 13. Malcolm S. Cohen and Arther R. Schwart:l "U.S. Labor Turnover: Analysis of a New ....

)d ' "Y conflict and rising resolving work m er l . ( e 10t s of and SOCiety, . s," Theory . . about Union t IS ProgreSSIVe OSS, "Wha 38. George R ,1980, p. 1981), p. 639. ' . .zatlon of America" June 30 . , he RelnduSHlah Quietism , Sonety Business Week, "T "Hedonism and 39 ' eson, enneth P. Jam K. Wilber and K 40. Charles 23 , ng," November ber 1981, p. 28. . 0bs [or Youths Go Beggi November-Decem "Why So M any J World Report., . . 41 . US. News ami Administrator, .' , ork" Personnel 1981.. n the WlIl to W so "New Perspective . 1. Herfberg, 42, Fredenek p. 72. December 1979,

I?,\lWlllII\Clll will ent and m anagem

\? J l
to

stbl" 1

" co opera t ive

.

)!,UVCJ'1l1lJL'.1l1, \;\\1ot 1 IIllUl l).!, , n:.\atlotlS 1liT'

" '

;;

::> ...
__

Measure," Monthly Labor Review, November 1980.

14. Robert Blake and Jane Moulton, "Increasing I'roductivity Through Behavioral Science,"

Personnel, May-June 1981, pp. 59-60.

15. R.S. Byrne, "Sources on Prod uctivity," Harvard Business Review, Septe mber-October 1981, p. 36.

16. Personne.l Administrator, August 1981, p. 23.

17. George Crosby, "Getting Back to Basics on Productivity," Administrative Management, November 1981, p. 31. 18. Stanley B. Henrici, "How Deadly is the Productivity Disease?" Hurvard Business Review, November-December 1981,p. 123. 19. lJonald V. Nig htingak cites evidence of "growing employee disenchantment," such that "The modern work ofg,anization [aces mounting pressures from within and without to meet the challenge of employee alienation and dissatisfaction." " Work, Formal Participatioll, and Employee Outcomes," Sociol of Work and Occupations, August 1981, p. 277. 20. Nation's Busines.\, "Unlocking the Productivity Door," December 1981, p. 85. 21. .lames O'Toole,Making America Work (New York, 1981). Reviews by Amar Bhide, Wall

Street loumal, October 20, 1981.

22. Business Week, "The New InduSlrial Relarions," May 11, 1981, p. 85. 23. Buines.l"

Wn:k, "A Try at Stec\ Mill Harmony," June 29, 1981, p. 135.

24. Charlt:s G. Burck, "Working Smarter," Fonune, June 15, 1981, p. 70. 25. lJurck, "Wha.t Happens When Workers Manage Themselves," Fortune, July 27, 1981, p.69. 26. M. Scott Myers, Every Emplo)lt'.f, a Mano.gt'f (New York, 1981). 27. Burck, "What Hnppens ...," p. 69. 28. nurck, "Working, Smarter," p. 70. 29. Burck, "What's in it for the Unions," Fonune, August 24,1981, p. 89. 30. Burck, "Working Smarter," p. 70. 31. Burck, " Wha t's in iL," p. 89. 32. Bu.sines.\ Wek, "Quality of Vtiork Life: Catching On," September 21, 1981, p. 72. 33. Produclivity, October 1981. 14. William G. Ou chi, Theory Z: How Ame.rican Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge (Reading , Mas!'., 1981), p. 114. 35. David Lewin, "Collective Bargaining and the Quality of Work Life," Organizational

Dynamics, Autumn 1981, especially p. 52.

36. Business Horiwm, "The Eih(ies," January-February 1981, p. 7. 37. Rep. Stanley Lundine. in "Congress Takes a wok at Human Innovation and

Productivity," Entc.rpnse., December 1981-Janua1)' 1982 (pp. 10-11), predicts that

Appendix: Excerpts from Adventures in Subversion: Flyers & Posters, 1981-1985

The following pages include a small selection of the flyers and posters Of Anti-Authoritarians Anonymous, produced by Dan Todd and John Zerzan, which originally appeared in the booklet Adventures of Subversion: Flyers and Posters, 1981-1985, published by Oh! Press, San Francisco.

The word is getting out that folks are no longer mterested m conhnUlllg to reproduce this brutalized and brutally empy soc1ety. An erOS1On of the core values necessary for its SUlV1Val iS already far advanced, and the desperate if feeble response ofReagarfism has already flopped
In recent years the idea that there is a positive value to a lifetime consumed by wage-labor and shoppmg seems to have evaporated Productivity

(output-per-hour worked) has been declining smce the mid70's. Uruons are unpopular and mcreasingly a fom-el part of corporate management, called upon to shoulder more of the combat agamst the anti-work syndrome of absenteeiSm, contempt for authority, drugs, turnover, etc Since the '60's elections attract fewer and fewer voters; the humiliation of helpmg to mstall one's masters is widespread. Shoplifting and all manner of evading taxes are soanng phenomena. Since @id1980 over 500,000 19- and 20-year olds have said @no thanks' to mandatory pre-draft registration An 80-year old trend is now reversmg itself m the high schools, as the dropout rate climbs The anti-human garbage of a rotting system - from factones to computers to freeways to neutron bombs - must be destroyed and will be destroyed The nots, lootings, and bUlll1llg m Zurich, Amsterdam, throughout Britam, and m the cities of Gennany m'the past year will come to Amenca And it won't come soon enough for us. Breakdown begms at home
Th society that abolishes all adventur mahs th abolition oJthat socity the only ral adventure.

An
NUCLEAR MADNESS... VIOLENCE AGAINST WOM ...RIGHTIST MURDER IN EL SALVADOR...LEFTIST FASCISM IN POLAND
Today there is a sharp escalation of issues that call for protest. There is no doubt that these outrages must be ended. Our everyday, unspectacular confinement is also very much "", issue" - and is not necessarily confronted by responding to appr endy separate affronts to decency. Basically indecent is selling our lifetimes away to purcha,, survival, a proposition that is everywhere losing its appeal. It may even be that militancy over pressing issues is the last, best diversion from what lies beneath all the issues - the emptiness of daily routines. One yawns in the face of a professor, shoplifts instead of paying, is unable to face another day lost at work ... It is impossible to be fully diverted from paycheck/price tag captivity. We are steadily assaulted by it and try to draw away. The social order becomes more palpably oppressIve. All the marches can't cover it up.
ou,

Outsider's Guide to Bizarre Local Rites

WOW! WHAT A

The orsanizd loe.. 1 imag of opposition to the dom In.ln! order have this much in common; OJ complete f'O'\'crty of vision. owing to the fact that, undersl.:mding nothing. their boring partisans feci desire for even tess. The Fasters for life (Dieters for Headlines, more like) re\ponded to our flycr which Imputed to them iI public apology for their lame ilnel pious gesturism, by uphold. in{/.. in their counter.f1yer, every chataderistic we accused them of. As if to vaticlilte our picture of them as well b<>haved sheep who bleat piteously only for one com plelely unr,ldic..l requesl-sur.,ival at any cost-thc pacifist camp exhibited their mellows peak .wl lack of p.lSsion by caning us arrogant. r1C.'f,Jtive. judgemental. dc. and explicitly defending humble. happyface self crifice. Apparently there are those who will alwJys politely supplic.lle themselves before authority (and lV ColInera:.) and never h.we the urge to irJl"'6fonn everything. It ems tiresome to remind our wellfinanced activisB that the nuclear weapons (and only too many of them ..t that!) they incessantly salIVate over could-with the destruction of Siale power. nowhere on their agenda be dismantled in a matter of weeks, if that long. This be comes a teal possibility insofar as their prayers. vigils, leiters to eIled officials and boring demonstrations are M'en as laughable submission.

SELECT[ON!

The RCYB,

or Reillly Confused Young Bourgeoisie. ilS the punks ho1ve apt!}' put it. are classic Marxistleninoid rombies. Although it's possible lhal the Brigade, and Ihtit parenl, wouldbe commissars of the Rep, is iI go\'ern ment projt intended to completely discredit the idea 01 revolution, it is more likely that their rigid ridiculous ness is a function of severe emotional disorders.

More successful in theh efforts to support the line of bureaucutl('totaiit,uian rClmes from CubJ to Pol.md and Russia is the front group, Eugene Coun.;-il for Human Rih (read Stalinism) in Latin America. A rather lare group of supporters is manirulated with ease by a few cadrt' in the know. a situation initiated by Jn honest de slrt' to help victims of U.S.bilcked orpression, and maintained by the chronic rpfusoll of such \'olunteers to olcquaint themselves with re..lity. histoncal or curtpnl. Front groups of course always depend upon thp un wlnlnnns of Ihpir supporters to possess pitner rigor or OIulonomy, to stt rast the he th..t one must choose bt-. tw('('n tnc wisly tenor of military<orporale exploitoltion ilnd planned sl.lf(octien under SOciA Ii!;! democracy, to ilC! as ,uhlC'cis rather th.n wllIlf\Rly directed objects.

Meanwhile the extremity of alienated lifp is c':llJsing more J')('ople at large to begin to queslion Ihe validity of all aspeocts of t'veryddy life and of technological civilization itself. The film K,,!,,m'SI'!'*' exprl'SSCS the critiqut' of the laller and thereby Jlso exposes the madness of the former. At the other pole of cultural offerin WolS Filr I),'!' IIfln. weak olnc! banal. despite much heated publicity: no-one noticed the implicit contradiction conlaint'd b}' the fact that its main sponsor was CommodOl'e Comput. ers. Simply beCJust the drolma was so superficiJI. That IcrhnolO!)y is ravaging the earth <Inc! ii's speci and di, minishing us as Individuals in devastalint-; ,ays will have 10 be confronted.

Today more than ever only an a!tack on .111 forms of domlf\alu){'l is h' orth the effort; anything less can only aller details of an increasingly empty ..nd mutilatro sOCIety. if tn..t

Nothing Less Than Totality

Agricultur-e bas beeD and maillS a -catastrophe material and spiritual culture D.OW al all

levels, tbe ODe which

underpins the entire

destroywg us.

Liberation

or alienation is impos-

",",I..I

sible without its dissolution.

THE OFFICE AUTOMATION SYSTEM THAT RECOGNIZES PEOPLE WOULD RATHER N O T BE AUTOMATED.

IT WON'T BE SPA RED BY PEOPLE W HO RECOGNIZE THE PRES ENT AUTOMATED SYSTEM WOULD RATHER N O T BE ABOLISHED.

(.DataGeneral

If it's humiliating to be ruled, how much more degrading is it to choose our masters?

):> C'l :l:l m m 0 -i 0 C") 0 :2 0 m :l:l 0 2 :2

<-

):> en

:;:;

m
<-

0 :2 S 0 C'l m ):> :2 0 C"> 2 0 -< C") 2 0 -< ::I: ):> en :l:l m

.-

. l,ii
HP1:

'"
-i ::I: m

_ ,>

....

Hg!
:>""

l I ,.
,."

5,g '5- ooQ";;;o

l g-a;o i

:;:;

:::r . z< c <:I;3

,,<3

" 9 . ::: .0 'i g!g';: " ,?:_l" O O 1l&Q6

il

0 :l:l ;:0:
'T1

s1 !.

.-;
,;t5; ._ -< .. .... ...
0 , _ c "

;;!:!-:;''2.!>3-i:"

.-i
0.' 0

un

0 :l:l C") m :l:l m ):> 0 0 2

,&Q.3i '?

c:: C") -i ):> :2 -i

.-

g. ?-. gfQg. ;;; .. '6 g':g ?

-<

AN APOLOGY fROM TilE PEOPLE WHO STAGED THE FAST FOR LIFE
It's embarrassing, but we have to admit how right you were to laugh at us. The Fast for Life was an insult to your intelli gence, and our absurd claim that the Fast has led to a "political break in the momentum of the arms race" deserves nothing but contempt. Most of our support .came from institutions-churches and universities-known for the servility of their members. The self-satisfied impotence of non-violent protest matches per fectly this docility, at a time when so many others are ready to refuse the miserable roles and conditions allotted them by this society. It's true that political hacks at every level listened politely to our "demands." And at a time when politicians are univer sally despised, we reinforced their authority by giving them this chance to show how reasonable and concerned they are. More importantly, in using our spectacular sacrifice to make "demands" on Power, we hid the truth that only by the real sacrifices everyone makes each day does Power continue to exist. Now we know that only the demand for an end to all the sacrifices imposed on daily life is truly radical. A totally unnatural world of tedium and deprivation, where love and play do not survive, is crumbling. The Fast for Life was just another brick in the wall holding it together. Bon appetit!

The barbarism of modern times is still enslavement to technology.