Taylorism There Are a Number

Taylorism

There are a number of different modern social theories regarding the nature of society, social change, human's place within society and the idea of how integration and alienation fit within a modern society. These paradigms combine reflexively into a notion of history through labor and economic theory. Many of these theories have been used to buttress political regimes, many social and psychological thoughts, and many simply to readdress the manner in which humans can more appropriate interact in a post-industrial world. A number of scholars and intellectuals have tried to explain society, all the way to the Ancient World, but certainly after the Industrial Revolution (Grint, 2005). For us to understand economic sociology, then, we must first understand some of the theory behind it.

The nature of the Industrial Revolution changed the manner in which labor interacted with management and raw materials. A number of people began to think about labor, about efficiency, and about the manner in which the two interacted so that manufacturing needs for modern developing societies could improve. One of these philosophical tenets, Taylorism, is also known as scientific management. This is a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized the process of workflow with the objective to improve both labor and economic productivity. This was also one of the earliest attempts (in the 1880s and 90s) to use scientific theory to improve industry. The actual peak of influence of this view took hold in the 1910s and 1920s, particularly during an era in which manufacturing and machines would take a new high. In general, scientific management requires a high level of managerial control over employees and their work practices. Of course this means a higher ratio of managers to workers than previous methods. The philosophy went out of fashion as the worker population became more literature, for Taylorism became known more as micromanagement than true detail-oriented management, causing tremendous friction between workers and managers, or the blue-collar and white-collar classes (Garson, 1994).

The idea of labor being integral to economic development was certainly not new, nor was the predisposition towards exploiting the working classes -- the proletariat. Karl Marx was one of the most influential political and social philosophers of the 19th century. He and Frederic Engels wrote "The Communist Manifesto" in response to working and social conditions in the Industrialized world, and their views were expanded by Russians Lenin and Stalin, China's Mao, Cuba's Castro and Guevara, and numerous other social thinkers of the 19th and 20th century. Marxist theory always sees class struggle, always exploitation of the haves vs. The have nots, and asks what economic systems cause societies to structure themselves in this hierarchical manner. Marx believed his theories about class struggle and historical materialism were scientific, and had the objective of developing a scientific analysis of the working class and its relationship to the owners. Marxist sociology asks: how does capital control the working class? How does the mode of production influence class? What is the interrelationship between workers, economics and the state? How do economic issues influence the inequalities in society? Thus, Marx views labor as integral but underactualized -- in a sense, Taylorism proves Marx's point about the conflict between classes.