>CB: Yes it is more complicated than that. The class struggle is more than
workers trying to make their jobs easier. However, a much overlooked aspect
of the development of the instruments and means of production is the role
that working classes ( not just the proletariat, but the bourgeoisie and
the peasants in feudalism) probably played in inventions
yes. I was objecting to the notion that the outcomes are unreservedly positive or even have to do with "things" since what i'm arguing is that rationalization takes place on several different fronts and is a kind of "technology". it is a techology that involves the production of things, services, and selves since service work often involves selling our selves, personalities, attitudes, etc. although, one thing that i didn't bring up was Noble's comments in _America By Design_: inventions don't get anywhere without capital to fund and underwrite them. so, sure, i think it's unremarkable to say that workers contribute to technological innovation in order to make their work easier--alienated labor will kinda make you want to do as little of it as possible! it also true that the great man approach to history effectively erased the ground up, people's history more popular today. but, again, inventions don't get anywhere without capital backing them so they're extremely political in that sense.
>&&&&&&&&&
[I sure hope someday your employer gets on the ball and sets you guys up w/ some decent email software! eudora is free! and you get those nice >> thingys!]
>CB: Yes, the organization of production is a force of production. Marx
notes that "Cooperation" , a form of organization of production,
And what's happening here? Workers ally themselves with mgmt, with the very things created to control them. They like it! And they see it as a form of "class" struggle, as limited as that is, because the enemy is customers. That's the reality of the daily lives. The people who make their lives most miserable are patrons/clients/patrons. Not necessarily the boss. The organizational conditions of service labor encourage alliances with the boss rather than dissent and rejection of the mgmt technologies of control! in turn, this has a *cultural* impact, just as culture impacts the production process in other ways.
>Kelley's analysis below seems valid to me. Ironically, though, note that a
lot of what you say, Kelley, seems to be exactly workers making their jobs
easier for themselves ( what you said it is more complicated than above).
You actually give some good modern examples of workers making their jobs
easier for themselves, complicated examples to be sure, but examples of
what I said above.
well i were not disputing you on this ground, but rather on the suggestion that these were to be celebrated as good things--as the result of class struggle. cotton gin made life easier as do technologies of control embodied in routinization but they effect people in rather different ways. these technologies involve the manipulation of identity, the self, consciousness and, of course, they take place in a work place that's rather different from that of a manufacturing line or a cotton field.
furthermore, i was trying to point out that transformation in the forces of production [here, rationalization] don't always come in contradiction with the social relations of production as is often argued. rationalization of the workplace through technologies of routinization, standardization and control in *service work* are different --seems to me. in _Brave new Workplace_ the deskilling of labor through the use of computer technologies was rejected by workers who felt that what little autonomy and creativity they exercised on the job was being taken away from them. But this is different. Service work is "deskilled" leaving little room for autonomy and creativity and yet workers seem to embrace it.
>I bet more probing studies would find that a lot of the hardware in
McDonalds, and even the software , in the sense of the standard rap with
the 30 to 60 second customers and the way the shop is organized, comes from
the proverbial workers' suggestion box.
>
Some, sure. But i can tell you w/o a doubt from having been in the biz for a long time and having actually been involved in the research involved in choosing color schemes, furniture, musak, etc a lot of it's based on egonomic research. just pick up a restaurant trade mag. it's filled with this stuff. in terms of service labor, i don't think i've ever seen any of the waitstaff actually argue for routinized work rules. they are, effectively, imposed on them.
>
>CB: You say: " ...people
>actively manufacture their own consent to something that would appear as a
>form of coercive ideology imposed on them against their will "
> So, is this Butler/ Althusser Subjection ?
yeah! see, down to earth, concrete, everyday example and tied to the mode of production an' all! even considers the particular details of intra-class conflict yes? AND, the boner, for me, is this: I think what I described--Leidner's work is but one example--links up quite nicely with all these cultural analyses of postmodernism, the pervasiveness of the culture of ironic self-observation and sarcastic detachment: it has concrete, very real source i think. because, while macdonalds work is an extreme case [which is why Leidner chose it] we can understand how other kinds of more "respectiable" and professional service work operate in the similar ways. it also explains how we continue to hold competing ideas about "selves": they are at one and the same time said to be "authentic" and "outside of the social" and possibly an "inviolable core of self-identity" that we can retreat despite whatever crap is heaped on us and yet, there is also a pervasive notion that the self as plastic and manipulable: it's not "merely" ideational but might just have sources in concrete changes in the organization of production.
>The main thing you questioned above was my statement that workers have
been the source of workplace inventions through history. That would be my
saying the workers manufacturing their own workplace and perhaps consent,
which you then support me on with argument and facts below.
>
>But in general, the "consent" you describe below is under duress, as my
brother counsel Justin might say. It is a lot of McDonald workers making
the best out of a bad situation. That is not consent freely given.
all of it is. that's the point right? wage slaves, yes? manufacturing consent, a snappy title. [same deal in chomsky's case too, no] i'm talking about actively participating in and enjoying the very things that we, the ones who don't often do this work, assume must be a mind numbing horror and we wonder why in hell they don't get fed up with it. we imagine that bosses must impose this on workers. well, maybe not in quite that simple a way. and the point, again, was also extending a convo with carrol and just throwing this out there. it's what i do my research on, onlly in my case i'm focusing on real estate and low income home buying. Real estate agents' work is routinized too, even though they think of themselves as pros and not really like mcdonalds workers.
kelley