Interwar experts feared worker resistance more than any productive inefficiency

Evidence

Privatization was meaningless if not accompanied by the “cooperative” behavior of those who were expected to labor within the capital order. As such, the unprecedented industrial mobilization of the interwar period would have sent a chill down experts’ spines: instead of working hard for increased production, a great number of workers were doing the exact opposite. Vissering voiced concern: “Th ey demand shorter working hours, without correspondingly improving their work which would permit of intenser production,” and in order to enforce these demands “they moreover frequently strike, which means a fresh drop in production” (Verbatim Record, Brussels 1920, vol. 2, 50). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 793

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth noting how the economic framing — strikes as ‘lost production value’ — became the discursive template for justifying austerity against labor.
• XREF: connects to: Labour’s corporatist crisis management disorganized working-class resistance to the crisis — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1100

Broader Connections

• Labour’s corporatist crisis management disorganized working-class resistance to the crisis #qualifies (0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1100