LENIN ON AMERICA SERIES
Posted on 08/24/2009 6:22:53 AM PDT by mainestategop
U.S. capitalism is ahead of all. The greatest development of technology and the most rapid progress are facts which make old Europe emulate the Yankees. But it is not the democratic institutions that the European bourgeoisie is borrowing from America, nor political liberty, nor yet the republican political system, but the latest methods of exploiting the workers.
The most widely discussed topic today in Europe, and to some extent in Russia, is the “system” of the American engineer, Frederick Taylor. Not so long ago Mr. Semyonov read a paper on this system in the assembly hall of the Railway Engineering Institute in St. Petersburg. Taylor himself has described his system under the title of “scientific”, and his book is being eagerly translated and promoted in Europe.
What is this “scientific system”? Its purpose is to squeeze out of the worker three times more labour during a working day of the same length as before. The sturdiest and most skilful worker is put to work; a special clock registers—in seconds and fractions of a second—the amount of time spent on each operation and each motion; the most economical and most efficient working methods are developed; the work of the best worker is recorded on cinematographic film, etc.
The result is that, within the same nine or ten working hours as before, they squeeze out of the worker three times more labour, mercilessly drain him of all his strength, and are three times faster in sucking out every drop of the wage slave’s nervous and physical energy. And if he dies young? Well, there are many others waiting at the gate!
The capitalist cuts his expenditure by half or more. His profits grow. The bourgeoisie is delighted and cannot praise the Taylors enough!
The workers get a wage increase at first. But hundreds of workers get the sack. Those who are left have to work four times more intensively, doing a back-breaking job. When he has been drained of all his strength, the worker will be kicked out. Only young and sturdy workers are taken on.
It is sweating in strict accordance with all the precepts of science.
commentary:Again the problem with American workers then was that they were largely uneducated, mainly immigrants who were vulnerable to exploitation. The wages of workers increased because of increases in productivity. Europe on the other hand allowed fewer political liberties for those trying to improve their lot.
PING!
Thanks very much for your work. Lots of reading/catching up to do. Education BUMP!
Therefore, in Lenin’s view:
Any improvement in PRODUCTIVITY = EXPLOITATION of the worker.
Unaddressed is the fact that improved PRODUCTIVITY delivers more goods to the marketplace at a cheaper price, making it possible for a wider range of people to acquire said product. Here is unintended testimony to the intellectual bankruptcy of Communism and an explanation as to why it has uniformly FAILED wherever it has been implemented.
The Left is so fixated on an economic theory promulgated in the isolation of a 19th century London garret apartment by a disaffected radical polemicist and political exile who had NEVER himself actually acquired any experience in the real world of business or industry and who completely failed to grasp the fact that economics and social culture could be dynamic and changing entities completely outside of the sphere of his own artificial construct, that they completely fail to either recognize or credit the TRUE and FACTUAL achievements of FREE ENTERPRISE in improving the lives and lot of mankind.
I read this “stuff” and I am simply stunned by the mediocrity and insularity of the thinking.
"The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects.... "
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