Standardized Mass Production

A man walks into work, takes his timecard and punches in. From there he proceeds to his spot on an assembly line and continues to do the same task over and over and over again until it is time for him to go home. There is not much thought that goes into his work nor is there really any skill involved. This is an example of what most work used to be like in the Industrial Age; the era of Standardized Mass Production. Standardized Mass Production was thought to be a way of making products for a mass market more efficient. A man by the name of Frederich Winslow Taylor thought that this form of production could be more efficient if those with authority used his form of scientific management known as Taylorism; a method which came under scrutiny by Harry Braverman, an American Socialist and writer, who believed that the Taylorism was not scientific management at all but a division of labor which destructed the simple task. By the 1980s a British sociological Marxist by the name of Michael Burawoy claimed that Hegemonic Regime was replacing Market Despotism in production politics and Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel, two professors at MIT, foresaw that Standard Mass Production was coming to an end giving way to what they called The Second Industrial Divide which they described as the rebirth of the craft.

What is Standardized Mass Production? To put it simply, it is the production of large quantities of standardized products for a mass market. In the 1920s, the steel and auto industries were best known for using Standardized Mass Production. In Standardized Mass Production, workers have one simple task to complete and, most of the time, don't know what they are producing or what it is for. Frederich Taylor went from business to business to influence managers to further standardize their production process. Taylor claimed that using his form of Standardized Mass Production would make the production process more efficient and allow the companies to increase production. Taylor refers to this form of scientific management as Taylorism.

Taylorism is considered to be more of an idea rather than a system. This idea is based on the fundamentals that management's primary focus should be to maximize the success for the manager and/or owner and also maximize the success for the employee. Taylor felt as though production was being compromised by many factors, one of which is the fallacy that the more work you do, and the higher the output, results in the loss of a large number of jobs. Taylor also refers to the "rule-of-thumb" method. The rule-of-thumb method explains how workers work. It states that the worker is doing the work the way that it was explained and taught to him. He doesn't question it, he just does it. Taylor claims this is completely inefficient because the way that he is doing his work is probably not being done as quickly as it could be, therefore not producing the maximum quantity. Another factor Taylor addresses is soldiering. Soldiering is when the employee works slowly to protect their best interest. According to Taylor, this is caused by a few factors. One factor is the ignorance of the workers who know very little about the history of their trade and believe that is it against their best interest to produce as much as possible in a day. Another factor is the ignorance of the employers to not know the amount of work that each worker is capable of. The last factor of soldiering is rule-of-thumb. This is the way that the job has been done generation after generation after generation and that is just the way it should be done. Taylor states that if a company were to "Taylorize" then they would be able to pay their employees more while increasing productivity and increasing revenue. Taylor made it a win-win situation which would be hard for any manager to resist.

While Taylor thought he had everything figured out, Harry Braverman believed there was more to Taylor's idea than what he claimed. Braverman was not a fan of Taylorism as he believed that it was a crime against humanity because it takes the simplest of skills and transforms it into a detailed, step-by-step task which stops the employee from exploring their human nature of learning, experimenting, and/or thinking. Taylorism makes the employee completely dependent on the employer and takes away their self-esteem and confidence. Braverman believed that Taylorism was not about finding the most efficient way of production, but was more interested in increased control. With Taylorism there is a division of labor which is imposed on the worker by planning and control. Braverman concludes that managers are more interested in ultimate control over their employees because with control you have control over conflict in the workplace and managers are more worried about conflict than efficiency. Efficiency is more connected to the owner's wants and desires.

Production politics