Freeman ch. 7
sausage factory reference: “Laws, like sausages,
cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are
made.” This
quote by John Godfrey Saxe
is traditionally attributed to Bismark
Is this also true of smartphones?
China also asked the question, how should a communist factory
be different?
- started with
central planning and a 5 year plan to build more industry
- but suspicion
of bureaucratic experts led to a different approach in the
Great Leap Forward
- small scale
local industry still needed: "backyard
blast furnaces"
- more worker
involvement in factory management
- but this was a
failure
In the years around 1960 experiments were less
radical, but then came the Cultural Revolution starting in 1966
- if the goal was "maximum output to meet the
needs of society" (p. 278) was the way factories were
organized in capitalist countries the answer?
- but worker criticism of the elites was
politically powerful so managers had less control
- should factories be run for the good of the
workers?
shift towards allowing some private investment
and making more consumer goods starting in the late 1970s
- special economic zones where foreign companies
could invest and manufacture for export
- all about cheap labor, people moved from rural
areas on temporary residence permits--Hukou system
- families had 30 year leases to land in home
villages and limited rights in urban areas (for comparison, in
industrial revolution England most family farms had 19 year
leases)
- factories were generally modern but discipline
was harsh
how did this system compare to Lowell?
- workers went home after a few years, mostly
young women in company dormitories
- workers had be brought in from far away in
both cases
- the US had a general shortage of labor at the
time so workers had to be treated well
- not true in China
Why such large factories?
- because large brands are so dominant
- allows more quality control
- in a less developed country is harder to have
the technology to make identical products in different places
- you don't have to worry much yet about workers
organizing because of repressive government and surplus of
workers
why not more visible boycotts?