Capitalist Production & the Political Culture

The transition from a more entrepreneurial capitalism to one which is more monopolist took place during the 1900 to 1920 period. Herbert Croly, in The Promise of American Life and Woodrow Wilson in The New Freedom argued that Yankee science and government authority could and should be used to place "our businessmen and producers under the stimulation of a constant necessity to be efficient, economic and enterprising" (Wilson, The New Freedom, p. 22). Thus, in 1900 General Electric opened the first corporate industrial laboratory in the U.S. where "science gets down to business." In 1913-1914 Henry Ford perfected the continuously moving assembly line in Highland Park.

Such initiatives as that by Ford are symbolic of the introduction of "scientific management" in which planning was separated from doing or theory from practice, skill from activity, and thought from action (Braverman, 1974). The radical historian would argue correctly that this "Taylorization" stripped the American working classes of their skills, which aided the administrative regime of state bureaucrats and corporate managers in legitimating themselves as being w

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Approximate Word count = 1042
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)

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