There is another division of work essentially connected to the first and quite familiar once we acknowledge it; but its crucial consequences are officially ignored. One aspect of the division can be captured by the distinction between dividing work and divided labor. More broadly, it can be delimited by distinguishing between work at the leading edge and in the wake of technology. Work at the leading edge of technology is devoted to expanding and securing the device pattern in order to provide more numerous, more refined, and new kinds of commodities for consumption. Commodities are more fully available if the supporting machinery is less obtrusive, i.e., more concealed and reliable. Commodities are more numerous if the machinery is more productive. The ground level of the technological machinery is industry which produces goods and services. This basic machinery too shows a tendency toward shrinkage and concealment. But the emphasis from the start has been on reliability and productivity. Both ends are served by the division of labor. Divided labor, however, must be preceded by the work of dividing. This was first accomplished by the individual entrepreneurs and inventors of the early industrial era and then taken over and perfected by the highly trained elite of research and development scientists and engineers, and of experts in law, finance, marketing—in short, by the group of people that Galbraith has called the “technostructure.”8
Work at the leading edge of technology is dividing for historical reasons. Technology did not enter an empty stage but a world that was filled with work and celebration, with hardship and joy. Human life is always full at any one time, and innovations can take place only by displacing some tradition. Thus, technology had to displace and destroy the traditional crafts. As pointed out in Chapter 11, a crucial accelerator in this development was the invention of the steam engine which provided a prime mover that was free of the limits of time, place, and vigor and encouraged the building of large and complex machines. These machines were not only more productive than humans but also more reliable since they liberated production from the uncertainties and burdens of training and tradition, from the risks of individual judgments, and from the varying moods of the workers. The total liberation from these human liabilities is accomplished through automation. The latter was the implicit and sometimes the explicit goal of technological production from the first.9 The goal is only now coming within reach on a broad scale for two reasons. One is the original lack of scientific knowledge and engineering expertise, the other the pull of the tradition where production had always been the work of humans who used tools, so that it was difficult to envisage the development of tools to the point where the users of the tools became largely dispensable. It was possible, however, to bring the human element closer to machine-like productivity and reliability through the division of work. Divided labor is more productive, and Adam Smith thought it was so because it favored dexterity, saved time, and led to the invention and improvement of machines.10 But this is to take a limited and misleading view. Divided labor favors dexterity only if we understand by the latter the ability to execute a simple motion quickly and reliably. If by dexterity we mean the manifold and trained ability of bodily timing, strength, and responsiveness, then the division of labor is the elimination of dexterity. And though the observations of people who performed divided labor might have led, as Smith has it, to certain improvements in machines, the goals of the division of labor, namely, reliability and productivity, are primarily embodied in machines, not in their operators, and primarily derive from their designers, not their users. As Marx saw much more clearly, the division of labor fits labor to the machine, not the other way around.11 This tendency finds its first culmination in the time and motion studies of Taylor and Gilbreth.12 The productive process, and human work in particular, was regarded as a force of nature that had to be conquered and rendered available like warmth, nutrition, or health. Thus it is the saving of time and the joining to machines that makes divided labor more productive.
The division of labor makes work more reliable because the simplicity of divided labor eliminates the need of skill, thus enlarging the labor pool and making workers more freely substitutable for one another. It also makes it possible to tie human operation to the speed of a machine or an assembly line, thus to pace work and to guarantee a certain output per time unit. To take a traditional practice such as baking bread and to divide it into steps that were sufficiently simple so that most could be turned over to large machines was a difficult, challenging, and rewarding task. Giedion has painted a vivid picture of this enterprise, of the seemingly insuperable barriers, of many dead ends, and of the final success. And he has given similar accounts of the mechanization of agriculture and of butchering.13 Boorstin has traced the corresponding developments for the procurement of clothing, milk, fruit, vegetables, transportation, and security.14 The latter case is instructive because here the device paradigm does not split an ensemble of things and practices into tangible machines and commodities. Rather a network of pretechnological social relations is displaced by an organizational machinery which yields a financial commodity.15 In a pretechnological setting, security in the face of catastrophes is had from the goodwill and charity of parents, siblings, or neighbors. But such security was sometimes unreliable and always burdensome to giver and receiver. Insurance technology first reduces security to the guarantee of a cash payment, then decomposes the resourcefulness and precariousness of society by mathematical means, and finally institutes a financial and legal machinery to insure the collection and distribution of money. The machinery of this device, especially at first, was not primarily a physical entity but a network of computations, contracts, and services. But it had from the start the concealed, inaccessible, and disburdening character of technological machinery. Accordingly, the commodity, though it was a regrettable necessity more than a final consumption good, represented commodiously available security, support that did not require asking, imposing, or begging but could be claimed through a call to the insurance agent.
The procurement of security is an instructive case also because it lies halfway between the division of work and the general division of life which is characteristic of technology. Except for charitable organizations, security from the vicissitudes of life was not the task of a certain class of people but a mutual responsibility of all. The insurance industry led to divided labor within itself and without, i.e., relative to social agencies and programs. But it did not divide the work of a certain guild. Rather it split off and took over a task from each of us and freed and impoverished us all at once. Thus the procurement of security stands midway between the division of the work world and the division of the domestic world with its typical combination of liberation and impoverishment. It is telling that both Giedion and Boorstin move without break or signal from the description of the one kind of division to that of the other. This suggests that the division of work is part of a larger pattern of division, i.e., of the device.16
The heroes of the division of work, such men as Cyrus H. McCormick, Gustavus F. Swift, Philip D. Armour, Gail Borden, George W. Pullman, and Elizur Wright, were the ones who actually built the technological society.17 They knew that they were at the leading edge of a new era. They were masters of a difficult enterprise, they loved their work, and they worked feverishly.18 The pride that they took in their work was justified by the liberating and enriching effects of early modern technology. But as I have suggested before, liberation has gradually given way to disengagement, and distraction has displaced enrichment. These are, however, primarily phenomena in the foreground of technology, in the area of leisure and consumption; and more will have to be said on this theme in the following chapter. Work at the leading edge of technology has led to equally profound transformations in the background of technology to which we attend in labor. Leading work is of course itself part of the background, and it occupies the best part. It is most skilled, most interesting, most humane, most highly regarded and remunerated. The last features are the more remarkable as the leading work inevitably leaves in i
ts wake a wasteland of divided and stultifying labor. Wherever there is a traditional area of skillful work, it is disassembled, reconstructed, largely turned over to machines, and artisans are replaced by unskilled laborers. This process leads to a continuing contraction of expertise and a corresponding expansion of unskilled labor.19
Such a development should cause deep embarrassment to powerful democratic societies. Work in the Western world, at least since Roman times, is regarded as a crucial tie between human beings and their world. In this country, hard work is still regarded as that activity that most surely bestows dignity.20 At the same time work is being more and more degraded and disliked. How can the significance of this development remain hidden from public view? The first factor in this concealment is the misguided view of technological liberation that we have first met in Chapter 8. As the quotation from Ferguson stresses there, technology unquestionably eliminates or meliorates dangerous, injurious, and back-breaking work though, unquestionably also, we do not go as far in this direction as we might. But here too we ignore the irony of technology and fail to distinguish genuine liberation from disengagement. Ferguson considers carrying water an insufferable drudgery.21 This is so only if we look at a pretechnological practice from a technological point of view where carrying water is seen as a mere means of obtaining water. On that condition, a water utility and plumbing system is of course vastly superior. But as Boorstin reminds us, Rebecca, going to the well, not only found water there but also companionship, news of the village, and her fiancé. These strands of her life were woven into a fabric technology has divided and privatized into commodities.22 This is not to say that the construction of modern water supplies could or should have been resisted.23 But this and the other examples of Ferguson’s show how, guided by the technological view of labor as a mere means, we exaggerate the liberating character of the transformation of work and thus cover up the concomitant cultural and social losses. We pretend that liberation is only possible at the price of the degradation of work. Thus we sanction that degradation even where the preservation or restoration of work would not lead to unacceptable dangers or hardships.
A second factor that hides the degradation of work from the common view is the belief that the commerce with sophistication must itself be sophisticated. The machines of technological labor are of course much more complicated and embody much more science and engineering than the tools of pretechnological work. Hence the general piety that “the changing conditions of industrial and office work require an increasingly ‘better-trained,’ ‘better-educated,’ and thus ‘upgraded’ working population.”24 More specifically, it is assumed that anyone who tends a machine is (at least) semiskilled.25 Craftsmen continue to be considered skilled though the perfection of machine tools has led to the dispersal and deterioration of the original skills. Not surprisingly, farm workers and housewives who command exacting but partially or primarily pretechnological skills are considered unskilled.26
Third and finally, we assume that the increasing length of average education reflects rising requirements of training for typical technological work. But this summary view fails to inquire whether education in this country, for instance, is also of increasing quality; nor, if that were the case, does it ask whether typical labor allows for the exercise of greater knowledge and training. The answer to both questions is probably negative. To avoid the consequent embarrassment of finding that much of our education is irrelevant to labor, length of education has been put to new purposes which are really foreign to its nature. Since desirable work is scarce, education is used as an obstacle course which is lengthened as such work becomes scarcer.27 Educational requirements are used as a device to screen applicants.28 And finally, educational credentials serve to solidify the privileges of professions and the stratification of society.29
Though trenchant critiques of the degradation of work and the evisceration of education have been put forward, we continue to conceal these phenomena from ourselves, and so do many experts. An example is provided by Eli Ginzberg and George J. Vojta, who advance the thesis “that human capital, defined as the ‘skill, dexterity and knowledge’ of the population, has become the critical input that determines the rate of growth of the economy and the well-being of the population.”30 They ignore the fact that it is not the skill of the population but of a small and shrinking elite of experts that determines the course of technological progress. Ginzberg and Vojta take length of education as “a measure of improvement in human resources,” ignoring the question of the quality and relevance of extended education.31 They exhibit the usual disdain for pretechnological skills when they say: “The upgrading of the labor force is also evidenced by the disappearance of 800,000 private-household jobs and a 2.5-million decline in farm employment.”32 Perhaps some of these workers became computer keypunch operators and so will be working with the most sophisticated kind of machinery modern technology has produced. But keypunch operation in fact needs few skills; it is boring and stultifying.33
To show how the degradation of work is concealed is not quite to answer the question of why we allow such concealments. There was in fact a period when the destruction of the work world and its traditional practices was vividly felt and resisted by the workers.34 It took a long, arduous, and sometimes violent process to discipline people from pretechnological work to divided labor, and the directors of this forcible development were the early entrepreneurs and capitalists. This suggests of course that the degradation of work is not the consequence of technology but the machination of an exploiting class. It should follow from that thesis that divided labor will not be found in industrialized societies that expressly combat the exploitation of workers. We know, however, that work in Russia is as divided as it is here. Braverman excuses this development as due to unfortunate historical circumstances, the need of Russia to obtain large and quick productivity gains and to arm herself against aggression.35 That is special pleading; and it is impossible to construct a general argument to the effect that industrial socialism would be free of alienated labor.36 To be sure, one can define alienated labor as “system-related,” as stemming from the fact that the means of production are not owned and controlled by the workers themselves.37 But if it is true of corporate capitalism, as suggested in Chapter 13, that ownership is largely impotent as regards the course of technology and that the latter is determined according to a definite pattern by a technical elite, then the same should hold for a technologically advanced socialist society. The latter may be more concerned to meliorate working conditions. But that concern is possible and growing in the Western democracies too as we shall shortly see.
Meanwhile it remains to be explained how it was possible to enforce the work discipline of divided labor against initially overt resistance and why the concomitant degradation of work came to be concealed. The answers are to be found, I believe, in the deepening entrenchment of the device paradigm, in both its mechanical and commodious aspects. From the start of the Industrial Revolution, as mentioned in Chapter 8, the promise of liberation and enrichment through technological devices accompanied and sought to justify the disruptions and miseries of industrialization. The advocacy of a new work discipline was the reverse side of that promise. Increased production of commodities was possible only on the basis of reliable and efficient machinery, and since the latter was impossible without human components, human work had to become reliable and efficient, i.e., regulated, as well. Thus “the habit of regular and continuous industry” was essential to the new age.38 It was advocated not just by capitalist entrepreneurs but also by preachers, moralists, educators, and town officials.39 And the moral complexion of these exhortations is plausible given that the goal of technological liberation was directed toward very real hunger, disease, and illiteracy. Thus the consistency and the increasing successes of the technological program eventually won over the workers and transformed their implication on the labor side of technology into the relation that in Chapter 15 was described as complicity.40 Just as
the broad middle class, being committed to technological progress, tolerates social injustice since it has become a motor and stabilizer of that progress, so it tolerated degraded work since at least until now it has been the necessary condition and counterpart of consumption. And indeed, the tie of degraded labor to technology has been more intimate and hence more disquieting than the tie of social injustice to technology. That may be the reason why the degradation of labor has been more hidden than social injustice. The unions always complain of the latter but rarely of the former.
To what extent the workers are aware of the degradation of work is a controversial question. In fact the controversy is radical to the point where in one view the lack of awareness of degradation is taken to be evidence that divided labor is not in fact inferior to any pretechnological work.41 The variety of the workers’ responses when asked about the quality of their work surely depends on the way in which the questions are framed.42 One may assume that inquiries of a global kind receive more favorable replies. Workers who are asked to judge labor as part of their total situation and entire life will naturally hesitate to pass negative judgment on what is basic to their existence and, as a single activity, commands most of their time. On the other hand, if one is asked to judge one’s work on specific days or when one is invited to reflect on one’s work informally and at length, it appears that divided labor causes dissatisfaction and resentment.43
If labor is largely resented because it has been degraded, we face, as said before, a deeply unsatisfactory situation in this country because what is being degraded is also held out as the one activity that most surely gains a person the approval and admiration of society. To be “a working woman” or “a working man” is to have dignity. To be unemployed, willingly or not, is to arouse suspicion and scorn as a rule and amusement and envy at best. But is this fault, that runs through most people’s lives, inevitable? Technology progresses, and two developments promise to reshape labor conditions fundamentally. One is the reorganization of labor relations and assignments so as to win the cooperation, loyalty, and enthusiasm of the workers. The other is the automation of much labor on the basis of the microelectronic revolution. Great claims are made for both. The restructuring of working arrangements is seen as “a turn of Copernican significance.”44 Of the import of the microelectronic developments it is said that “the human race is now poised on the brink of a new industrial revolution that will at least equal, if not far exceed, the first Industrial Revolution in its impact on mankind.”45 The more specific outlines of these phenomena have a familiar ring, however; but at least they promise finally to realize the brightest ambitions of the modern era. Christoph Lauterburg contends that the salient point of the new work world is “a new image of man.” But it is in fact the venerable vision of liberal democratic theory, based on the experience, as Lauterburg has it,
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