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Science, Work, and Worktime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Anson Rabinbach
Anson Rabinbach
Affiliation:
The Cooper Union
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Extract

In the beginning was the Theory. Even before the collapse of Soviet communism, the glow of Marxism in American (and European) universities was beginning to dim. Now we look back on our own investment in Marxism, not always with satisfaction. At best, the theory did not so much fail historians, as historians, in their efforts to redress the lacunae in the theory, wrote around it to the extent that theory ultimately became marginal to their enterprise. This is hardly surprising since Marxism, having given up pretense to science by the mid-1960s, became largely a critical theory in the sense that its main sources were European thinkers – Gramsci, Adorno, Foucault, Althusser – who sought to repair the crumbling walls and beams remaining from the wreckage of Stalinism.

Information

Type
Review Essays
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 43 , Spring 1993, pp. 48 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1993

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References

Notes

1. Honneth, Axel. “Logik der Emanzipation: Zum philosophischen Erbe des Marxismus,” in Wege ins Reich der Freiheit: André Gorz zum 65. Geburtstag. ed. Krämer, Hans Leo and Leggewie, Claus (Frankfurt am Main, 1989). 86–106.Google Scholar

2. For a more detailed elaboration of this distinction. see Rabinbach, Anson, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York, 1991). chap. 3.Google ScholarAlso see the interesting discussion by Seltzer, Mark, “Writing Technologies,” New German Critique (forthcoming, 1993).Google Scholar

3. See Michael, Rose, Servants of Post-Industrial Power? Sociologie du Travail in Modern France (London, 1979).Google Scholar

4. Gorz, André, Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism (Boston, 1982), 45.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 51.

6. See Claus Leggewie, “Das Leben André Gorz,” in Wege ins Reih der Freiheit, 31.

7. Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (New York, 1959), 125.Google Scholar

8. See Heckscher, Charles F., The New Unionism: Employee Involvement in the Changing Corporation (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Drucker, Peter F., “Are Unions Becoming Irrelevant?” Wall Street Journal, 22 September, 1982.Google Scholar

9. See Thurow, Lester, Head to Head: Coming Economic Battles Among Japan, Europe, and America (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

10. Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974), 171.Google Scholar

11. See Ribeill, Georges, “Les débuts de l'ergonomie en France à la veille de la Première Guerre Mondiale,” Le Mouvement social 113 (October–December 1980): 31–33Google Scholar; Fridenson, Patrick, “Un tournant Taylorien de la société français,” Annales, ESC (September-October 1987): 1031–60; and Rabinbach, Human Motor, 244–49.Google Scholar

12. See, for example. Ouchi, William G., Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge (Reading, Mass., 1981), 165.Google Scholar

13. Marx, Karl, Grundrisse, trans. Nicolaus, Martin (Harmondsworth, 1973), 693.Google Scholar