Review - Time, Work Discipline and the Industrial Revolution

I am back in school, laying the groundwork to take another run at my P.h.D. The first time at American, I was trying to fix the budget process. Instead of admitting me, they should have sent me to therapy (also when I drank my way out of the program). The second time, I enrolled in Phoenix (without asking my wife - this ending my marriage). I was going to write on applying Cultural Theory (Grid-Group) to organization leadership. I am narrowing that focus in my third try to A Cultural Theory of (Authoritarian) Capitalism.

I am currently receiving SSDI, which covers my living expenses and, because I am over 60, my tuition is free under the Golden ID program. I thought this would be a selling point, because it would save financial support for younger doctoral students. Also, I have already been down the assistantship road. It is not an easy one. 

My first thought was to do my Ph.D. in Sociology, but the Director of Graduate Studies suggested that, if I did not want to work with a faculty member, I should simply write my book. In the end, I might. Currently, no one in the department works in cultural theory. Leadership studies, however, are in the Psychology Department, so I will apply there in December for the Fall 2024 term.  In the interim, I will be taking the required basic courses (although I have the statistics portion covered).

To start off, I am taking a seminar in The Anthropology of Work, which relates to my possible dissertation, but would not likely be part of the usual curriculum when I do go full-time. Our first reading is "Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism by E.P. Thompson (Past and Present 38:56-97, 1967).

Thompson talks about the shift from the craft and field to the factory in early modern England and Scotland. In those days, children worked the farm or shop with their parents. Capitalism did not invent child labor. A century ago in America, there were still plenty of people on the farm. My father related that in summers, his family would go from the city to his Uncle John's farm to help with the harvest. For one year during the Depression, the family went to Oregon to pick fruit. The lived the Grapes of Wrath. In the fields, their clock was the sun, as in days of old.  Fifty years later, at the end of my father's career, time was his business as the test coordinator for Global Positioning System receivers.

The main thrust of the article was how reformers wanted to inculcate Protestant work values and sobriety to the labor force in both field and factory. Saint Monday was to be excommunicated for the sake of both industry and temperance.  Note that the piecework of the old world has become the profit center for the capitalists, as workers have had to adopt time discipline.

Some of the focus on temperance was likely projection. It is not only the working class that has problems with alcohol. Most of the trust fund heirs I know have addiction issues. It turns out that multi-generational wealth is a myth. The story of the Goulds, the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers show how within a few generations, accumulated wealth disappears. 

I am the product of three lost fortunes. My paternal grandfather had been a commodities trader with a seat on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The 1920 Agricultural Depression, type II diabetes and alcohol sent him packing back to Iowa. 

My mother's paternal grandfather was one of the original founders of Land O' Lakes. It was founded as a producers' cooperative (and still is), so when Silas cashed out, he bought a farm in South Dakota and sent my grandfather (who also drank and recovered) and Auntie Bea to college. Enough money was left over for my mother, her siblings and cousins to go to college, but none of that got to me. In another timeline, I would be a butter billionaire. Silas' wife, Maggie Brown Allen, was a member of the Temperance movement. She and her husband agreed to disagree on that issue.

My mother's maternal grandmother was from Norway and married an alcoholic chef, who died, and then a scion of the Squibb family. Yes, that Squibb family. He suffered from PTSD and treated it with alcohol, so I am not a drug billionaire either. The family fortune did not last. The current endowment is only a quarter of a million dollars and it funds Baptist churches in Dallas.

So much for the sobriety of the upper classes. 

That salvation was part of the industrial revolution harkens back to the dawn of the agricultural revolution, when God-Kings provided order and built irrigation systems. Religion and labor have been linked for all of civilization. What is society to do now that the Nuns are gone and the younger generations and their parents have abandoned religion, even if they maintain spirituality - becoming the Nones. The Protestant work ethic is being replaced by mindfulness meditation.

One tactic that early industrialists used was cutting wages to assure people would work. This is effective because the supply cost of labor is downward sloping. The reason for this is that wages are synonymous with each worker's demand curve. You can see this in the Gig Economy. Of late, Uber and Lyft payouts have gone down for drivers. This is why it is now easier to catch a ride quickly. People are hungry. Keep them hungry and they keep working. My semester project will explore this issue and how it produces fatalism in response to authoritarianism.

The bottom 90% are losing ground to inflation, while capitalists keep productivity gains to themselves. The other reason for greater inequality (and the need for cheap imports and domestic productivity) is how we give raises. They are determined on a percentage basis. Because the price of goods chases the median dollar, not the median worker, the working class is worse off - especially in housing and major purchases. There is no great conspiracy here - just bad mathematics.

Gong back to my own circumstances, one of the reasons that doctoral students work with a mentor, aside from apprenticing is to do the work that keeps research and teaching going. After having no external deadlines for the past eight years, I now do assignments. When I am formally admitted, there will be a work schedule involved - although by doing the first two years informally, I will not have to face this right away. 

Once I start, I cannot do outside work - which is the mark of being a professional employee rather than a craftsman. Until then, I will be rewriting Questions for Employee Owners and recording YouTube videos with the content. If I get clients as the result of this, I may not go back to school full-time just yet. If interested in our services, buy a copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DBYPVRV We'll talk.