The Composition of Capitalist Society: Assembly Lines, Monopolies, and Labor Unions

The Development of the Assembly Line

Arguably, the assembly line captures the controversy of capitalism writ large. Specifically, the assembly line captures the struggle between management and labor. With regard to management, certain historians emphasize, and often praise, the amount of efficiency management could accomplish with the assembly line—efficiency being a core tenet of capitalism. To be sure, this efficiency allowed vehicles to be rolled off of the assembly line at a price that common people could afford. It would seem that historians such as David E. Nye are inclined to understate the unsavory aspects of management if this assembly line produced vehicles that the general public could afford. The fact that Henry Ford implemented a five-dollar, eight-hour day system for his factory workers also serves to justify this historiographical view, which holds the assembly line as a success story in the history of capitalism.[1]

With regard to labor, however, certain historians such as Craig Heron would remind readers that Henry Ford, his management, and his public relations team would want the public to remember his company and the assembly line for these wage increases and for the affordability of the vehicles produced on the assembly line. Ford would want posterity to hold him in a positive light. Ford would not want people to remember the harsher realities of his assembly line system, which first and foremost sought to exact greater control over the labor force by placing workers in concentrated rolls in the plant, where they served as extensions to the machinery of the assembly line.[2] Thousands of people left the plant within hours or within days of having been hired as they faced the monotonous routines of the assembly line. Fostering a culture of fear within his plant, Ford also depended on his security service to silence those employees who might criticize this alienating system.[3] 

Indeed, Karl Marx’s theory of alienation is an important concept to consider as one reflects on the legacy of the assembly line. As workers are placed in separate roles to accomplish minute, exacting tasks, they do not feel connected to the product they have been instrumental in creating, which has the potential to change the world. Marx would argue that assembly line workers, for example, have no creative input in a system that requires these workers to repeat the same action before another employee takes over the process and repeats his action on the line. This lack of creative input alienates the worker from the fruit of his labor. Ultimately, however, because of their surrender to the alienating process of the automobile assembly line, these workers deserved credit for lifting others out of their station in life. The reasonable price of the automobile enabled others to purchase cars and venture beyond their boundaries to seek better employment and thus a higher standard of living.[4] While capitalists benefited from the alienating aspects of the assembly line, the working class arguably benefited in their own right. This synthesis of alienation and social mobility is ultimately the legacy of the assembly line.

The Growth of Monopolies

An irony inheres in the concept of monopoly: businesses that compete in a market, which therefore strive to develop better products, increase profits, expand their markets, and grow in size, tend to monopolize as a natural consequence of this capitalist process.[5] Critics and proponents of capitalism and monopolies alike recognize this fact; the difference lies in the judgment they render as the process unfolds. On one hand, we have neoclassical economists who recognize theoretical problems with monopolies, although these neoclassical economists approach the problem from different political and economic perspectives. Marxist economists, for example, maintain that monopoly represents the final stage of the capitalist process; after monopoly, commercial life is stagnant, and, by implication, so is capitalism. Marxists laud monopolies as integral steps in the dialectic process from capitalism to socialism.[6] More critical of monopolies, non-Marxist neoclassical economists maintain that monopolies are similar to the structures one might see in a command economy, which do not depend on competition and self-correcting mechanisms guaranteed in a free market.[7] Monopolies are intolerable, anti-competitive, inefficient entities, according to these economists.

These criticisms have likely impacted popular concepts of monopoly, which tend to view monopolies as harmful to the core tenets of a market economy, the orthodoxies for which require businesses to compete with each other and therefore lower the prices of goods. Charles Geisst elaborates, detailing how businesses facing competition must adjust their prices in the consumer’s favor and how businesses must continually improve upon their products. Removing competition invariably removes the incentive to innovate. If a business, having removed all competition, having consolidated vertically and/or horizontally, has complete control of the marketing forces, then consumers will quite literally pay the price for items of diminishing quality.

While neoclassical views of monopoly might have shaped popular negative connotations of monopoly, many academics have questioned the orthodoxy that monopolies in general are examples of capitalism run amok. C.W. DeMarco takes a position different from the neoclassical one. DeMarco holds that that monopolies are not “necessarily economically odious.”[8] DeMarco argues that just because monopolies might have the ability to act inefficiently does not necessarily mean that critics can label all monopolies as inefficiencies.[9]

DeMarco’s argument would be more compelling if DeMarco produced examples of monopolistic entities that did not exhibit unethical, anticompetitive, inefficient behavior. DeMarco approaches matters from a theoretical standpoint, but he does not discuss monopolies in practice. Nevertheless, the fact that Standard Oil and American Tobacco were dismantled in 1911, while in 1919 the Supreme Court kept U.S. Steel intact, might indicate that these rules are dependent upon the political landscape of the time, not on a consistent application of antitrust laws.[10] Or, seen differently, these two different verdicts in 1911 and 1919 might indicate the Supreme Court applied logic that DeMarco later would later apply, namely, that not all companies moving toward monopoly are necessarily economically odious and inefficient players in the market.

If Americans insist upon having a market economy, which implies competition, which further implies that the forces of competition will invariably choose a winner among companies, then Americans should accept with less judgment that monopolies result from this competition. Americans are right to be skeptical of monopolies and their power, but this skepticism should not preclude monopolies from existing, especially when, as Geisst demonstrates, these monopolies have been sources of efficiency. Geisst specifically cites the railroad as an example of an efficient monopoly. Stretching from coast to coast, railroads facilitated westward expansion. Without these railroads, farmers could not have delivered their produce to the growing populations, while oil and steel would not have been distributed with such efficiency to provide infrastructure.[11]

Development of Labor Unions

Scholars have long posed a question on how labor unions should be defined: Are labor unions no different from monopolies and cartels, labels conventionally extended only to businesses? Albert Rees highlights the difficulties of maintaining this equivalency between labor unions and monopolies/cartels because, one, a union’s makeup extends beyond its economic character, as this makeup includes political and social characteristics; and, two, all of the gains a union makes are redistributed among its workers in the form of wages, meaning that the union itself does not collect these gains.[12] Responding to Rees’s difficulties, Morgan O. Reynolds argues that labor unions “behave in labor markets as conventional monopoly theory predicts”[13] as they attempt to capture as much wealth as possible for their members.[14] That members, not the organization itself, receive those gains ultimately should not factor into the negation of the equivalency, according to Reynolds.

Charles Baird accepts the equivalence between monopoly/cartels and labor unions, taking the issue to its next logical step: Why have labor unions been exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890?[15] Baird wants readers to understand that if General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and Ford were to make an agreement that eliminated competition among themselves and were to be prosecuted accordingly under antitrust provisions, then employees coming together across these companies, organizing a labor union to fix wages and demarcate labor, should likewise be subject to antitrust legislation.[16] 

The United States Congress, passing the Clayton Act in 1914, tended to disagree that unions had equal footing with firms subject to antitrust legislation. The Clayton Act was predicated on the notion that the “labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.”[17] As such, any attempt among workers to organize should be exempt from antitrust legislation because such legislation concerns the conspiracy to manipulate articles of commerce. Baird categorically disagrees with the Clayton Act’s premise, recognizing that labor is a commodity because people sell their labor services to employers (i.e., buyers).[18] Laborers who unionize manipulate the articles of commerce because adjusting wages in their favor impacts the price consumers pay for goods—the very stuff of commerce.

Although Baird’s logic is compelling, and while on many accounts unions meet the criteria that define either monopolies or cartels, one criterion seems to complicate the equivalence. If, for example, General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and Ford were to conspire to eliminate competition, they would be doing so ultimately with the intention to increase their profits. However, if employees among these companies were to conspire to raise wages and demarcate labor, they would be doing so with the intent to tap into the profits of the companies that employ them. But tapping into profits, and recovering money for those who face exploitation and unsafe working conditions, is not the same as generating profits.

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[1]. Craig Heron, review of America’s Assembly Line, by David E. Nye, Labour/LeTravail no. 75 (Spring 2005): 288.

[2]. Heron, review of America’s Assembly Line, 287.

[3]. Heron, 288.

[4]. Charles W. Baird, “Unions and Antitrust,” Journal of Labor Research 21, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 593.

[5]. Charles Geisst, Monopolies in America: Empire Builders and Their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000): 12; C.W. DeMarco, “Knee Deep in Technique: The Ethics of Monopoly Capital,” Journal of Business Ethics 32, no. 2 (May 2001): 158.

[6]. Geisst, Monopolies in America, 12; DeMarco, “Knee Deep in Technique,” 159.

[7]. DeMarco, 152.

[8]. DeMarco, 152.

[9]. DeMarco, 153.

[10]. Geisst, Monopolies in America, 11.

[11]. Geisst, 16.

[12]. Morgan O. Reynolds, “Whatever Happened to the Monopoly Theory of Labor Unions?” Journal of Labor Research 2, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 163.

[13]. Reynolds, “Whatever Happened,” 171.

[14]. Reynolds, 164.

[15]. Baird, “Unions and Antitrust,” 585.

[16]. Baird, 586.

[17]. Baird, 594.

[18]. Baird, 592.

Bibliography

Baird, Charles W. “Unions and Antitrust.” Journal of Labor Research 21, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 585-600.

DeMarco, C.W. “Knee Deep in Technique: The Ethics of Monopoly Capital.” Journal of Business Ethics 32, no. 2 (May 2001): 151-164.

Geisst, Charles. Monopolies in America: Empire Builders and Their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Heron, Craig. Review of America’s Assembly Line, by David E. Nye. Labour/LeTravail no. 75 (Spring 2005): 286-289.

Reynolds, Morgan O. “Whatever Happened to the Monopoly Theory of Labor Unions?” Journal of Labor Research 2, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 163-173.

Patriarchy, Prejudice, and Patriotism: A Historiography of Postwar Consumption

Images of content, nuclear, white suburban families feature prominently in the historical memory of the United States in the post-World War II era. This nostalgia, however, distracts from the fact that this postwar era, with its pervading culture of consumption, contains a varied historiography that touches upon gender prescription, segregation, and competing definitions of patriotism in the context of Cold War values.

Gender Prescriptions

Historians approach the gender implications of the postwar era’s consumer culture from different angles that tend to converge on the issue of women’s precarious place in this culture. Lizabeth Cohen outlines how the “Consumer Republic” strengthened men’s purchasing power in the family by increasingly offering men credit, which in turn increased men’s oversight of their wives and daughters who depended on their fathers’ name and good credit to participate in this culture of consumption.[1] This approach to consumer culture focuses on the increase of patriarchal power during this era, but Robert H. Zieger highlights the commentaries of the time that detailed societal worries about the increased feminization of the country in the wake of the “sybaritic softness” of consumption. Consumption, in other words, emasculated men who abandoned their rugged American spirit and instead provided for the comforts of domestic life—the purview of women.[2] Thus, the historiography shows men in a position of power over women, but this power represented compromised manhood. As the corollary, this historiography shows women placed in their historic domestic role, but they could not enjoy full agency to make domestic decisions because they had to depend on their emasculated husbands’ name and credit.

Racial Segregation

Cohen’s analysis of these consumerist mentalities ultimately arrives at the topic of segregation. Indeed, any study of consumer culture in the postwar era must account for this culture’s contribution to segregation. While this Consumer Republic enabled many Americans to enjoy greater material prosperity, and thus to enjoy a higher standard of living, market segmentation ultimately determined that not every American could participate in this new paradigm of economic plenty. Historians can observe this segregation in the housing market of the 1950s and 1960s, which Cohen holds as the “bedrock of the postwar mass-consumption economy.”[3] One in four houses that existed in the 1960s had been built in the previous decade, and these houses saw the rise of suburbia, which underwent a process of racial homogenization as white Americans more easily qualified for mortgages than minorities. Homes themselves became commodified, to be sold for profit, and the racial profile of the community affected how residents estimated their property value. The increasing localization continued to impact education, as local communities funded the schools in their area through property taxes, meaning that the disadvantaged did not receive ample funding for quality schools, funding which would have given them a better chance at acquiring the skills to be accepted into colleges and, ultimately, to receive better-paying jobs.[4]

These segmented housing communities saw shopping centers erected in their areas. These shopping centers brought in retailers that tailored their merchandise to the socioeconomic status of these communities. As these private spaces sought to create an ideal space for these white suburbanites to spend their money, these spaces also sought to exclude from their premises anyone who did not fit into the social group these shopping centers wanted to attract.[5] At this juncture in her analysis, Cohen draws a similar conclusion that Andrew Hurley draws in his study on how diners transitioned from working-class eateries to restaurants that catered to the wants and needs of affluent families following World War II, which prompted restaurant owners to privilege some families with access to these establishments while denying others this access.[6]  Hurley and Cohen respectively argue that denying African Americans, or any Americans, the ability to participate in this culture of consumption violated the rights of their citizenship and violated the principles of the free market and a free society in general.[7]

Both Hurley and Cohen thus maintain that the Civil Rights movement grew from the segregating implications of this consumer society. Robert H. Zieger, however, contends that the societal pushes for civil rights, particularly as they related to education, were tied to the topic of consumption only insofar as this culture of consumption left Americans unprepared for the perceived Soviet threat in the wake of the Sputnik launch. As politicians, pundits, and public spokespeople sought to address this threat, they sought to address the deficiencies in education across the country. Thus, the Civil Rights era, at least on the front of education, might be attributed to the mass panic that Sputnik induced.[8] African Americans rightfully demanded to be a part of this greater educational push.

Definitions of Patriotism

Cohen and Hurley highlight how postwar America regarded consumption as an important criterion for patriotism. Cohen in particular highlights the cultural mentalities that equated consumption with patriotism after the war. After years of rationing and frugality during World War II, and after having faced a decade of economic depression before the war, Americans accepted the marketing message that they could now enjoy the benefits of the country’s mass production capabilities, which had contributed to the country’s victory in war. During the war, the good citizen sacrificed comfort for the soldiers’ needs; after, the good citizen took on the role of the good consumer.[9] Consumption demonstrated people’s prosperity to their neighbors, to their colleagues, and to the nation at large. But it also demonstrated their commitment to the economic values that placed the United States morally and economically above the Soviet Union.

But Zieger highlights how social commentators in the postwar period believed that this culture of consumption interfered with the stuff of true patriotism, namely, the ability for citizens to be ready to meet the Soviet threat. Zieger, presenting American consumption and prosperity in a wider Cold War context, shows how Sputnik prompted an “immediate panic and longer-range reassessment of America’s character, goals, and purpose.”[10] Americans after World War II prioritized pleasure, leisure, and plentitude while the Soviet Union prioritized science education. Social critic Vance Packard lamented that Americans were satisfied with milkshakes and dysfunctional automobiles.[11] Meanwhile, the Soviet Union launched satellites into space. This perceived difference in values—and the fear held by politicians, pundits, and social critics—indicate that this culture of consumption might not have been widely held as patriotic. It was not one’s patriotic duty to accumulate possessions; instead, it was one’s patriotic duty to cultivate a martial attitude, a willingness to do what is necessary to meet the Soviet foe. Consumption thus distracted Americans from the martial attitude they needed to meet their communist enemies, who so far displayed greater rigor and discipline toward their goals.

Zieger provides important details on how politicians and pundits in the wake of the Sputnik launch viewed the culture of consumption in America. Nevertheless, while acknowledging these moral indignations of the time, and while recognizing how these indignations might have convinced Americans to give increased attention to science education in the wake of the supposed Soviet threat, historians nevertheless often cite the culture of consumption as a determinant in America’s ultimate victory in the Cold War because of its “liberatory potential.”[12] Often the perception is that America embraced consumerism as an ideological goal while the Soviet Union, suspicious of consumerism as a symptom of capitalism,[13] and eschewing bourgeois sensibilities, held other priorities to the detriment of the well-being of its people. In other words, historiography tends to frame the Cold War as a war between the United States and the Soviet Union, that is, as a war between consumerism vis-à-vis capitalism and anti-consumerism vis-à-vis communism. And consumerism won, according to this historiographical view.

However, Margaret Peacock’s comparative study of Cold War consumption and marketing in the United States and the Soviet Union reveals how this consumerism vs. anti-consumerism dichotomy presents a false dilemma. To be sure, consumption was an integral weapon of the Cold War, but it was not a weapon the United States used exclusively against the Soviet Union. Instead, consumption was a weapon both countries used against each other. Both sides came to embrace consumption as a means to fight the Cold War, as Peacock argues, “to show one’s commitment and support for the system that made one’s comfort possible and to contribute to the economic well-being of one’s country.”[14] In particular, Peacock demonstrates that the United States and the Soviet Union both depended on propagandists, advertisers, and politicians to advance this consumerist agenda, and their methodologies converged particularly as each side promoted the well-being and the happiness of children (i.e., the future of each country and its economic system) as their chief goal.[15] Soviet magazines in the 1950s featured images of children enjoying ice cream just as American magazines featured these images.[16]

Perhaps the politicians, pundits, and social critics featured throughout Zieger’s essay, who lamented America’s embrace of consumerism, might have argued still that the level of consumption in the United States, compared to the level of consumption in the Soviet Union, still indicated American’s lack of rigor and discipline. After all, Peacock’s comparative study would support this view as Peacock details how advertisers in the Soviet Union promoted a responsible, careful accumulation of consumer goods to provide for a modest, cultured living. Consumption was not to be conspicuous but was to be guided by functionality.[17] Americans, however, were not guided by conspicuousness.

Conclusion

The War on Terror in the 2000s might have resolved the antagonisms between these competing views of patriotism. On one hand, the Bush Administration promoted America’s military readiness to meet the threat of terrorism; on the other, the White House frequently urged citizens to continue being consumers with an enthusiasm that bellied the apprehension of the time.[18] Military readiness and consumption, which had competed for America’s legacy in the postwar era, seem to be accepted as equal facets of patriotism. Cohen recognizes that in the 21^st century, the emphasis has shifted from “What’s best for America?” to “Am I getting my money’s worth?” But these questions are not necessarily different according to the modern consumer.

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[1].  Lizabeth Cohen, “A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America,” Journal of Consumer Research 31, no. 1 (2004): 238.

[2]. Robert H. Zieger, “‘Uncle Sam Wants You to go Shopping’: A Consumer Society Responds to National Crisis, 1957-2001,” Canadian Review of American Studies 34, no. 1 (2004): 93.

[3]. Cohen, “A Consumers’ Republic,” 237.

[4]. Cohen, 237-238.

[5]. Cohen, 238.

[6]. Andrew Hurley, “From Hash House to Family Restaurant: The Transformation of the Diner and Post-World War II Consumer Culture,” The Journal of American History 83, no. 4 (1997): 1283.

[7]. Hurley, “From Hash House,” 1308; Cohen, “A Consumers’ Republic,” 239.

[8]. Zieger, “Uncle Sam,” 97.

[9]. Cohen, “A Consumers’ Republic,” 237.

[10]. Zieger, “Uncle Sam,” 84.

[11]. Zieger, 93.

[12]. Susan Strasser, “The Alien Past: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Policy 26, no. 4 (2003): 390.

[13]. Margaret Peacock, “Cold War Consumption and the Marketing of Childhood in the Soviet Union and the United States, 1950-1960,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 8, no. 1 (2016): 88.

[14]. Peacock, “Cold War Consumption,” 84.

[15]. Peacock, 86.

[16]. Peacock, 88.

[17]. Peacock, 88.

[18]. Zieger, “Uncle Sam,” 94.

Bibliography

Cohen, Lizabeth. “A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.” Journal of Consumer Research 31, no. 1 (2004): 236-239.

Hurley, Andrew. “From Hash House to Family Restaurant: The Transformation of the Diner and Post-World War II Consumer Culture.” The Journal of American History 83, no. 4 (1997): 1282-1308.

Peacock, Margaret. “Cold War Consumption and the Marketing of Childhood in the Soviet Union and the United States, 1950-1960.” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 8, no. 1 (2016): 83-98.

Strasser, Susan. “The Alien Past: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Policy 26, no. 4 (2003): 375-393.

Zieger, Robert H. “‘Uncle Sam Wants You to go Shopping’: A Consumer Society Responds to National Crisis, 1957-2001.” Canadian Review of American Studies 34, no. 1 (2004): 83-102.