Capitalism co-opted workers’ own desire for emancipation from the Fordist factory

Evidence

Yet there has been a sufficient record of sudden eruptions of discontent, even among affluent workers (in, for example, the General Motors plant at Lordstown shortly after it opened, or among the affluent car workers that Goldthorpe studied) to suggest that this may be more of a surface adaptation than a total reconstruction of worker attitudes with respect to assembly-line production. The per­ petual problem of habituating the worker to such routinized, de­ skilled and degraded systems of work, as Braverman (1974) forcefully argues, can never be completely overcome. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 801 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The treatment of pauperisation theory Adorno mentions in the letters to his parents and Horkheimer constitutes only one section of the ‘Reflections’ in which Adorno refers directly the Communist Manifesto and its militant conclusion: ‘Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win’. From Adorno’s perspective just under a century after those words were written, the proletariat seems to hardly resemble how it had been depicted in them: … The proletariat does have more to lose than its chains. … Shorter working hours; better food, housing, and clothing; protection for family members and for the worker in his old age; an average increase in life expectancy – all these things have come to the workers with the development of the technical forces of production. There can be no question of their being driven by hunger to join forces and make a revolution. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 662 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Class antagonism has moved inside each worker rather than between classes — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 74; Capitalist rationalization attempts to co-opt worker militancy through co-operative management schemes; Capitalism requires disciplining workers into accepting private property and wage relations — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 834 (+7 more)

Related

• Capital co-opted workers’ own desire for liberation from Fordist routine (similarity 0.84)
• Worker accommodation to Fordist labor remained a surface adaptation, not internalized consent (similarity 0.81)
• Capital absorbed workers’ own desire to escape Fordist routine, trapping the left (similarity 0.81)
• Neoliberalism succeeded by capturing workers’ desire to escape Fordist strictures (similarity 0.80)
• Capitalism’s own productive development raised worker living standards and defused revolutionary hunger (similarity 0.79)
• Capital absorbed the left’s own liberation desires against it (similarity 0.79)
• Factory occupation felt to workers like the working class seizing its own future (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Capitalist rationalization attempts to co-opt worker militancy through co-operative management schemes #expands (0.85)
• Worker accommodation to Fordist labor remained a surface adaptation, not internalized consent #complicates (0.85) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 801
• Capitalism’s own productive development raised worker living standards and defused revolutionary hunger #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 662
• Capitalism requires disciplining workers into accepting private property and wage relations #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 834