MASS PRODUCTION UNDER SOCIALISM

Comrade Turner, in stating his case against mass production, takes the example of bread making (a good one) in support of his contention. But one does not live by bread alone; and under Socialism only the best goods will be produced.

Let me take the case of mattress making, because it happens to be the work I am partly engaged in. The best kind of mattress made, up to date, for comfort and rest is the spring

interior mattress. Inside this there are up to 300 steel wire spiral springs, which are sewn

into pockets by machinery. Prior to this the wire has to be processed and tested, and later hair pads are sewn over the springs. In addition, a border is sewn on and finished off by cord piping. All this is done by machinery.

It seems to me that under Socialism. this

type of mattress is impossible without some

form of mass production. Housewives may

like baking their own bread, but I doubt very

much whether they are willing to make a

spring interior mattress to sleep on.

I should like Comrade Turner to explain

how such things as gas stoves, electric irons and

fires, wireless and television sets (let alone rail-

way engines with their 5,000 independent parts) are going to be produced without mass production. Articles made up of so many pieces are impossible to make in the home. Before Socialism is possible, as Marx and others have pointed out over and over again, large-scale production is necessary. Although we may abolish large cities, it does not mean we are going back to small-scale production.

Attractive Methods?

Comrade Turner wants to hear about the differences which make mass production methods attractive within Socialism. I will do my best to oblige him.

Under Capitalism a man is tied to a mattress machine for 8 hours—whereas under Socialism he works perhaps 2 at it, making it very much less boring and arduous. Also he is fed, housed and clothed better, and this makes any work more pleasurable. It is just the " excessive" division of labour (which under present conditions has become a curse) that is the means—the starting point—of the increased production and all-round development to which Marx referred.

All the machines I mentioned in mattress

making are easy to work. An operative working on one can change to another, so that over a period of time all the operatives are able to work all the machines.

It is easy to see that when this principle is applied generally it means an all-round development of each individual. Continually doing fresh things, he knows that when he finishes working in one field of labour he can soon turn to another. At the start people will, if necessary, decide among themselves by democratic vote who operates which machine. There is no difficulty here, because the operatives have full control of production.

In short, mass production, rightly understood, is seen to be beneficial to society instead of the curse it is today under Capitalism,

J. E. ROE.

WHAT IS MASS PRODUCTION?

FIVE main techniques, or methods, of production have been used in Britain in the last 500 years. They are as follows:

1. Handicraft

This is the simplest method of wealth production, in which a man works on materials with a tool, and produces whole articles, such as tables and chairs. Finger skill is essential in this method, and proficiency is termed craftsmanship. William Morris is the best known student and advocate of this method in recent years.

2. Manufacture

In this method, a number of workers are concentrated in a single workshop, and though each works on material with a tool, he does only a limited number of operations; he specialises and becomes a cog in a manufacturing process, for the manufacturing method consists essentially of a process of which all the working parts are human being. This is the type of mass production described and criticised by Adam Smith and his teacher, Ferguson.

3. Power-driven Machinery

This is the method of the Mechanical Era which started with the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Here man is a machine-minder, looking after a machine which consists of a power unit, a transmission mechanism and a working tool. The physical exertions of the man are replaced by a power unit, while the transmission mechanism controls the tool in place of his fingers. There has been some controversy in the past as to whether the transmission mechanism, which eliminates finger skill, is more basic than the power unit, which replaces human energy. But the development of each went hand in hand with the other in capitalist society, because the existence of a crude engine made the need of a transmission mechanism clear and vice versa.

In the mechanical era, handicraftsmanship is replaced as much as possible by machinery, and the craftsman of this era is the mechanic or engineer. This work can be just as interesting as handicraft work, though now a large proportion of the workers are relegated to monotonous machine operating.

This is the method of production analysed, and vividly laid bare by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

4. The Belt System

This is essentially the manufacturing method streamlined by using power to drive a conveyor belt, which carries the object under construction from worker to worker, each of whom merely repeats a few simple actions on each object as it passes him. The Chicago stockvards of the late 19th century, in which a pig was carried along on an overhead convevor. is a rudimentary example of this rnethod, but it came of age in 1913, when Ford introduced it into motor car production. The belt can easilv be speeded up, and to keep the v"+ers rra>«ive. thugs have been employed, of —hiah me Pirhertorj Agency of Chicago is an

example. Some of Upton Sinclair's novels, for example "The Flivver King", describes this method of wealth production.

The conveyor belt system may be regarded as a special case of the general analysis called Time and Motion Study, which is the science of treating man as a cog in an industrial machine. Such refinements increase man's slavery to machinery, in contrast to the introduction of machinery to eliminate toil.

5. Automatically Controlled Machinery

Once this type of machine has been set up, it will continue to perform certain operations as long as power and raw materials are supplied to it, testing the products, and if necessary readjusting itself, to continue producing products within the desired tolerance. An example of a very rudimentary control system is the thermostat on a home refrigerator, which switches the motor of the cooling mechanism on or off to regulate the temperature as desired.

This method of production is based on an understanding of the science of electricity, just as the power-driven machinery is based on mechanical science. Crude autocontrols can be hydromechanical, but only with the simplicity of electrical devices does it come into its own. We already understand enough of electronics to use thermionic (radio) valves and photocells to make most of the present-day productive processes automatic, though as yet such devices have only been applied to a few industrial processes. But guided missiles are being provided with these electronic controls, and there is no fundamental difference in controlling a homing anti-aircraft rocket and an industrial process.

Still the best non-technical exposition of the science and social implications of automatic controls is The Human Use of Human Beings, by Norbert Wiener, a leading research worker

in this field, which he terms Cybernetics.

* * *

From this classification the following points of interest emerge:

3.The term Mass Production could be applied to all but one (handicraft) of these methods.

4.All five methods are in use in the world to-day.

5.The Belt System is the Manufacturing Method of the Machine Age.

6.Productive processes have been simplified so that each man does merely a few simple manipulations, and then a device is constructed to perform these manipulations more systemically (because it is cheaper), needing man then only for maintenance and adjustment. The first half of this ' cycle' make man a servant to the "Iron Master", while the latter half tends to make him redundant to the productive processes, or in other words. liberates him from the necessity of toil.

7.It is necessary to understand current natural science to discuss such subjects as the relevance of mass production to a socialist society in a useful way, because production then will use the knowledge

of nature available to make life a joy,

not merely continue to use the methods

that were suitable for capitalist society.

We must use the past as a guide, not a

master, because if life is to be a great

adventure, it can hardly be a mere

reflection of mankind's sordid past.

Socialism

Amongst other obstacles to describing

socialist society, is the fact that we know only

the potentialities of our present-day knowledge

of nature at best. We are able to describe

socialist productive methods as they could be

to-morrow, but are largely ignorant of the

techniques that may be available even in the

near future. Here we break the vicious circle

by considering a few aspects of socialism as it

could be technically to-morrow. We need a

set of reasons why socialism should have certain

features, not a romantic description served on

a golden platter of elegant literary style, as

given so ably by William Morris in News from

Nowhere.

The potentiality of productive techniques to-day is such that automatically-controlled machines could perform a number of necessary, but tedious or irksome tasks, and much of the apparatus could be drastically simplified. Already in the search for robust circuit components for aircraft, rockets and tanks, etc., a new crystal rectifier has been developed to

replace the complex vacuum thermionic valve for rectification. In fact, new technical devices need be neither ugly or crude—that is only the -imprint of capitalist society, which injects a mad rush into present-day research, producing merely cheap appartus to serve the needs of capital, not humanity. Scientists, like other people, will be much happier producing elegant, aesthetically satisfying devices.

As a specific example consider the question of illumination. The writer submits that electric lighting (supplied by filament bulbs, fluorescent strip-lights or some similar device) driven by a generator (which could be a housetop windmill or solar energy absorber, coupled with storage batteries) would be preferable to an oil lamp, and why not mass produce such devices, using automatically-controlled machinery?

In the field of materials, plastics have become notorious as cheap substitutes, and so possibly some people would suggest that socialist society will have no use for them, forgetting that they must be judged on their intrinsic properties and not on their usage in capitalist society.. In a socialist society, shoddy goods will not be produced, and tools will not be discarded when they wear out or break, but the material will be reprocessed and so " dirty work ", such as mining, will be minimised. In these conditions, the large group of plastics which arc readily remoulded on heating—the thermoplastics—are likely to be very useful.

Speed

Although speed does not strictly fall within the scope of this article, the following points should be noted. Certain natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, necessitate prompt, swift actions if people are not to be maimed and lives lost. Possibly in the not so distant future, weather may be controlled by some leisurely automatic process. But at the moment the only experiments on controlling weather— cloud seeding with dry ice and other materials to produce rain—need all the speed of modern devices, such as aircraft, and have (if any) a very modest success. Therefore, the only defence to-day is provided by aircraft reconnaissance, coupled with radio warning services, and the introduction of socialism will not alter that. Similarly, while accidents will be less frequent in a socialist society, medical emergency services will still need prompt, rapid transport. To summarise, in a socialist society speed will be used to save life, not to destroy it.

In conclusion, I must add that I know that many discoveries to-day merely make more toil, but I suggest that is a characteristic of capitalist society, not the intrinsic nature of the discoveries. Once scientists are given the chance to build machines for a happy world, they will not fail; in fact, I submit that only then will craftsmanship escape from the bondage of handicraftsmanship,

ROBERTUS.

TOWN AND COUNTRY
Agreement on the Future

"BEFORE tackling the main subject, I must briefly answer two direct questions in Comrade Turner's article opposing mass production. Readers will be able to assess the merits of the other points without further debate here.

First, he questions whether a single, standardised process can relieve arduous toil. Remember, all I maintain is that some mass production is preferable to achieving a similar result by other methods. For example, except for special purposes, I cannot imagine society abandoning the use of screw-making machines —i.e,, mass-producing screws—and laboriously ~making each one separately. My case is that socialist society is not going to stop using such machines (assuming the end-product is still required) just because some people might prefer to make things like screws individually rather than use the hated standardised machine processes.

Turner wants to hear from members about the " differences" which will make mass-production. methods attractive within socialism. The answer is they won't be particularly attractive or repulsive for that matter. They may simply be preferable to the alternatives. I agree there is no question of socialism giving us repetitive jobs that require the use of only a small part of our nervous system and brain capacity. Machines will be used as a substitute for slave labour, performing monotonous tasks and leaving people free to do essentially human work.

Abolishing the Cities

The masters of scientific socialism advocated the abolition of town and country, asserts Comrade Turner. But the actual quotations from Capital and Landmarks only include the phrase " the separation between town and country"'. To abolish the separation is not necessarily to abolish every distinction between the two. When we say that socialism will abolish the separation between men and women in the sphere of work, we do not mean that

men and women will be abolished.

In order to get Engels' quotation in perspective

, one should read the preceding paragraphs.

The large cities which " will take much time

and trouble to abolish " are the factory towns.

Engels doesn't refer to socialism, but writes of

“the proportionate distribution of the greater

-industry throughout the country ". Earlier, in

a letter to Lange, he had written:

“ We start from the premise that the same

forces which have created modern bourgeois

society also suffice to raise the productive

power of each individual, so much that he can

produce enough for the consumption of 2, 3, 4, or 5 individuals. Then town industry, as it

is today,, will be able to spare people enough to give agriculture quite other forces than it

has had up to now: science will then at last

be applied in agriculture on a large scale and with the same consistency as in industry.

Selected Correspondence p.199

And this process has, in fact, already begun. The town has spread into the country—satellite towns are being developed and farms mechanised. True, the increase in productivity is to some extent offset by the more " roundabout " mass-production methods. On the other hand, the growth of universality, being brought about by the world-wide nature of capitalism, means that the gap between the city slicker and the country yokel is narrowing, despite the excessive localisation of production for a market. With socialism, it may still be convenient to localise certain production (e.g., of minerals), and to gather together populations in towns—but nothing like the kind Engels wanted to abolish.

Towns of the Future

Whether or not. William Morris and Belfort Bax are numbered among the ' masters' of scientific socialism, their ideas of the future are more reasonable than many, and do, I think, provide a sound basis for discussion: _

" As to the manufacturing towns . . . they would be superfluous, while on the other hand there would be no great centres of government or finance to attract huge populations or to keep them together. In the future, therefore, towns and cities will be built and inhabited simply as convenient and pleasurable systems of dwelling-houses, which would include, of course, all desirable public buildings."— —" Socialism—Its Growth and Outcome ", p. 314.

But whatever our particular concept of the towns or communities of the future, we must always keep in mind the significance that such speculation has for our propaganda. For, regardless of our personal preferences, the way in which we answer the question " what will sodalism be like?" will largely determine whether our audiences are made to feel with us, apart from us, or even against us.

Significance for Propaganda

Our main object is to get the people we address to agree that the things we propose are practicable and desirable. We all have different ideas about what the future society will look like, which we can discuss endlessly and to which we can convert each other. But remember that all this is sterile unless something emerges that will convince others, that will heb them to understand the principles upon which socialist society must be built.

We are accustomed to saying that we know the past, and indeed much undoubtedly accurate information about it is available. But the n:cture we piece together is not of what really took place—it is our picture of the past,

coloured by our present experiences. Much

more so is the future, of which we have no

concrete data, necessarily our picture of the

future.

The use of the scientific method demands that we ascend from the particular to the general. But with the future this is not possible—there is no ' particular' to ascend from. We are accordingly obliged to describe the future by agreeing upon generalities; seeing, as through a fog, the vague outlines of the new society, which become clearer as our audiences approach it in ideas and we all approach it in time.

What do most people want from life? Take away all the products of capitalist influence (difficult though this may be) and you have a residue of human hopes, desires and fears that is remarkably universal. Each of us, in becoming a socialist, integrates these feelings with the formal socialist case—though sometimes this process is painfully slow. Perhaps our propaganda has not been as helpful as it could be. There is so much common ground that we and our audiences share, so many ways to express and appreciate our similarities, that it seems a pity to accentuate the trifling differences.

Points of Agreement ?

Any summary of the ground covered in dealing with the whole question of future production must be inadequate, since its ramifications are so all-embracing. The articles on mass-production may be taken in conjunction with the extracts from "The New Vision" (Jan. Forum) and with the article on Wealth Production in this issue. From these I tentatively suggest that the following points will be acceptable to members:

1.There will be no belt-systems under Socialism. Machines will be used to perform tedious and irksome tasks, but not at the expense of making people into appendages of machines.

2.The division of labour will be such as to encourage the maximum all-round development of human potentialities. (How this will be achieved is a more contentious matter.)

:3. The separation between town and country will be abolished—there will be no vast cities like London to-day. Production will be to satisfy the requirements of individuals and society in a mutually complementary way.

4. There will no longer be a separation between work and leisure. Work will become the expression of living.

There is vast scope here for making contact with people. Let our speakers and writers go at it—and put some flesh and blood on that skeleton of production for use.

S.R.P.

PRODUCTION FOR USE—or Mass Production?

PRODUCTION FOR USE—or Mass Production?

What is Mass Production? It is that method of production where society is split up into more or less exclusive occupational groups and the work each group performs is broken down into its simplest process and each person becomes a detail worker.

To give an example—where most families

made their own bread, there was still division

of labour. But this simple division of labour

is not mass production. Mass production

methods are bread-making are only possible

when the vast majority of families, including the

mothers and daughters no longer bake bread.

Prior to mass production, thousands of mothers and daughters were making tens of thousands of loaves of bread, in fact plenty of bread—but it was not mass production of bread. Or.ce the mothers and daughters were taken into factories, offices, etc., other methods were required to produce the tens of thousands of loaves. A relatively few professional bakers and assistants were necessary.

In order that these relatively few people can turn out the bread formerly made by thousands of people, vast masses of machinery have to be made, machinery enabling the process of bread-making to be split up into its simplest opera-

tions and the labourers divided, classified and grouped according to these functions. These methods demand the centralising of the activity, such as is to be seen at Lyons' Cadby Hall, ' Hovis ", and " Wonderloaf " model bakeries.

Mass production methods demand a hierarchy of labour, from the labourer at the working-tool to the organising manager. It must be remembered that this splitting of the functions demands speed and authority in production and transportation.

Division of Labour

Comrade Parker, in his article " Will there be Mass Production?", writes, "division of labour is only harmful when excessive ". When he says this, he has granted me my whole case.

What are mass production methods but excessive division of labour?

Parker then says: " Further, however, it is argued that mass production necessarily involves pace-making, is exclusive to capitalism, and is inseparable from large towns. These are more controversial statements with which I for one, disagree."

Seeing that Marx has been quoted, may I be permitted some references?

" The foundation of every division of labour that is well-developed, and brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation between town and country." (K. Marx, Capital Vol. 1, p.345, Sonnenschein Edition.)

In case members doubt the wisdom of stating

bat the future will be regarding the manner

and methods of production within Socialist

society—that it is not "scientific" but merely

utopian:

" The abolition of the separation between town and country is no Utopia, it is an essential condition of the proportionate distribution of the greater industry throughout the country. Civilisation has left us a number of large cities, as an inheritance, which it will take much time and trouble to abolish. But they must and will be done away with, however much time, and trouble it may take." (F. Engels, " Landmarks of Scientific Socialism, p.244, Kerr Edition.)

" In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labour and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour has vanished, after labour has become not merely a means to live but has become itself the primary necessity of life, after the productive forces have also increased <vith the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flows more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banner from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." (" Critique of the Gotha Programme." K. Marx Selected Works, p.566, Vol. II.)

Whilst quoting Marx and Engels, I am prepared to agree that supporters of mass production may find other quotations that might appear to bear a different interpretation. This shows the futility of relying on any one person m expecting to find the 100% correct position in any one book. But what it does show is the childishness of the accusation that it is Utopian if one states that under socialism the excessive fivision of labour will not exist, and that town and country will be abo'.ished.

I sincerely hope that, now it is shown that Ac "masters" of scientific socialism advocated all these things, members will not dismiss the arguments by merely labelling them utopian. Of course, I am fully aware that "because Marx and Engels advocated these propositions” it does not make them correct.

Production for Use

In his article, Parker says: " There seems no reason why it should not be possible in a society in which people control their own conditions of work, for a machine to relieve arduous toil and yet not entail boredom." It would appear from this, that he thinks that machinery and mass production are the same

thing and, consequently, thinks that members who state that there will be no mass production methods under socialism are saying that all machinery will be abolished. This, of course, is nonsense.

In closing, he says, " but don't expect society to abandon social production of most chairs and tables." Here, again, it would appear that he equates social production with mass production—presumably there was no " social production" until mass production methods were employed!

I agree with Comrade Parker when he says he sees no reason why it should not be possible in a society in which people control their own conditions of work, for machines to relieye arduous toil and yet not entail boredom. But mass production methods preclude the operative from control of their work, compelling them to:

(1)Standardise the machine processes.

(2)Operate a single process.

(3)Standardise the products.

All three points of Parker's description of mass production, as contained in the encyclopedia to which he refers us, demand that people must submit absolutely to a central directing authority. To standardise the machine processes must produce the excessive division, of labour which Parker himself agrees is harmful.

To operate a single process produces boredom, and I certainly question whether it relieves arduous toil. Parker certainly gives us no evidence of this.

To standardise the product must mean dictation to the consumers as to what they must have. This is in opposition to a basic socialist principle—Production for Use. Production for use does not mean merely the absence of exchange; it also means that the needs of people will determine production.

Again, all these descriptions of mass production methods demand the development of mono-culture and the division of society into large towns and rural communities, which must prevent the all-round development of the individual.

Parker again shows that he does not know mass production methods when he sees them. When dealing with monotonous and repetitive work, he says, " Mass production is said to involve monotonous and repetitive work. So it docs. But so does a great deal of non-mass

production. I wouldn't like to argue that writing figures In a ledger all day is much less repetitive than operating an automatic machine."

Surely the clerk who is writing figures in a ledger all day is just as much engaged in mass production methods as the operator of an automatic machine.

Time Saving

Parker says, " Time is worth saving on any job under any system, because it enables us to undertake other jobs or to enjoy leisure."

Time saving does not mean the opposite of wasting time—it means doing everything in the shortest possible time. In fact, the people concerned with saving time are usually found trying to kill time. - Why does everybody want to do things in the shortest possible time? Because of the dictates of market production. It would be interesting to hear what Parker has in mind when he writes of leisure. Also, why should people within socialism want to " Save time from productive work in order to enjoy other experiences "?

The terms "productive work" and "leisure" can only exist when people are engaged in " getting of living ", i.e. productive work, and when a person is doing something for his own pleasure, hobby or recreation, called leisure. The terms have no reference to what is being done, but why it is being done.

Under socialism there will not be the condition* nor the idea of "getting a living". Socialism means to me a way of life in which people will have recognised that " the primary necessity of life is WORK." (Marx).

Then Parker tries his hand at speed. He says " Pace-making is certainly a feature under capitalism, but remember it is not the machine that sets the pace, it is the boss." Of course, it is the machine that sets the pace. Certainly it is the employer who agrees to the installation of the belt system, but once installed, the pace is set.

Mass production machinery and methods are a product of property society in which things and services are produced for a market. In society where there is no property, there can be no place for the whip as used in past society, nor its modern counterpart —• whipping-up machinery, and methods. People will work because they want to and will need no whips, no threats, no promises, no punishment, ho reward.

It is easy to write " There are many ways in which mass-production will be different: under socialist conditions," but nowhere in the article, or in discussions, have I been told anything about these differences which will make mass- production methods attractive within socialism. I do hope we shall hear from members about these differences.

From my point of view, mass production methods are even less attractive than the cartoon illustrating Parker's article. Some of us, however, can find solace in the fact that neither of these abominations will exist within society where ALL work is useful.

A. Turner.