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The Coal Miners in France During the Second Empire:
{Continued Subservience to the Capitalist Hierarchy}
In this paper I will explain why revolt by the labor
against capital in Second Empire France failed. To
explain the situation, I will use Marx's theory of capital
accumulation as he presents it in {Capital}. Also import-
ant in the theoretical description of this phenomena is
the role of tradition and the way its restraints deviate
from those of the economy in this French society. Based on
this description I will discuss how the function of manage-
ment is enforced by the economy and traditions inherent
in a society. From these considerations I will suggest
additional elements and relationships necessary for social
relations change to transcend the institutional conditions
in which they exist.
Terminology relevent to a theoretical account of an
event is given by Talcott Parsons in {The Structure of
Social Action}. Here, action is described as a system
that may be divided into unit acts. The unit act consists
of four elements. First there is an agent, or actor.
Second, the act has an end which is a future state of
affairs or goal towards which the action is oriented.
Third, there is a situation where the trends of develop-
ment differ from the end towards which the action is
oriented. The situation is composed of two elements; the
conditions are that which the actor cannot manipulate in
accordance with his end, and the means are that over which
he does not have control. Finally there is a relation
between these elements; where a situation allows alterna-
tive means to the end, the course is selected from the
normative orientation of the actor. (Parsons, 1968: 44)
In order to account for the interrelationships in the
historical event and to anticipate a successful change of
the capitalist structure, I will use the voluntarist
theory of action as presented by Talcott Parsons. This
theoretical approach, besides accounting for the unit
act, describes the process of interaction between norma-
tive and conditional elements. The normative elements are
positively inter-dependant with the conditional and non-
normative elements in a specifically determined way. This
is more specifically ennunciated by the cybernetic model
where there are at least two parts; energy and informa-
tion. The first controls or regulates the second while
the second conditions, or limits, the first. This model
may be used to find tendencial chang by showing the limits
and range where the variables of the economy, polity and
ideology interact. (Gould, "Marx=Weber":1-5) Analysis of
the elements and the tendencial interrelatedness should
present an accurate theory of social change.
The set of social relationships, patterns and
subsequent restraints between capital and labor as
described by Marx's rendition of the capitalist logic of
production are clearly manifest in late nineteenth century
France. Marx maintains that the capitalist is forced by
competitive pressure to maximize the surplus value present
in the labor power. This surplus value is the amount over
and above the cost to reproduce labor which is extracted
in the process of a working day. In order to achieve this
end, the capitalist increases production by either adding
new machinery or devaluing labor power.
Among the coal fields labor power is approaching an
extreme low in the pit of devaluation. The Company, as
generalized in Zola's {Germinal}, has isssued a change in
the method of payment for extracting coal from the
mines. Instead of paying the teams of workers for the
total bulk mined they propose to cut the payment for coal
and increase the payment of building the shafts. Because
of the greater time element involved in "timbering" the
shafts, the workers take an overall cut in wages. This
surplus is re-invested into the production process so the
firm may retain a competitive status in the industry. The
living standards are very low for the worker both relative
to the captialist as well as in an absolute sense. There
is a minimal of food which is provided by the company
store. Since the families are in debt to the store even
if there are other jobs available, they cannot leave the
firm. Marx writes that in order for the capitalist logic
to work, the labor will be paid enough to survive and
reproduce. The conditions of the workers are below this
level for several months. Prior to the Company's payment
alteration, the women had become sterile from the
malnutrition. There was no water supply, sewer systems or
heating in the overcrowded homes. (Zola, 1873) In the
mines, there were frequent fires from improperly
ventilated chambers as well as cave-ins in the shafts.
Because of a round-the-clock shift that workers demanded
to maintain a constant salary, the only enforcement of
safety was the sanction of a fine legitimized by the
system. Because of the already minimal wage, however, the
workers could not afford to spend time rendering their
conditions safer.
Within Marx's theory of the labor relations of
production the material conditions are such that the
proletariat may strike out against the capitalist. The
ideology is not, however, derived from these conditions.
The ideology is a latent element seperate from the
economy which surfaces because of the worsening condi-
tions. The from the ideology takes is a spokesman. There
has always, in the history of the coalminer-captialist
relation, been spokesmen who voice an ideology which
suggests radical change to be instigated by the captialist
for his long term security. These spokesmen had, until
this point, been sanctioned publicly for violating the
traditional, legitimized norms and thus been forced to
leave because of the monopoly the captialist had on the
power of employment. As the living conditions pass below
sub-standard, the labor force becomes less suseptable to
the existing sanctions because they have nothing to lose.
The workers have traditional needs and expectations.
When the living conditions become sub-standard due to the
competitive captialist economy the traditonal values may
no longer be sacrificed by the system since the system
from where the values are derived cannot maintain and
reproduce itself. Since the worker's traditional needs
and expectations cannot be met, the limiting structure of
the economy forces the values beyond material limits.
These are the conditions for a structural genesis;
traditonal values, at least those required for the
reproduction of labor, demand rational action beyond the
conditons of the economy.
The economy and the ideology both as independant
elements in society and, as they interrelate, show an
inevitable genesis of change within the system. If these
were the only conditions necessary for change in the
relations of production and society then it would occur.
There is, however, a condition not yet accounted for, that
of the polity, and its relation to the economy and ideo-
logy.
The polity is essentially embodied by the capitalist
hierarchy. Here at the top there is a president, the
board of directors, and the stockholders. The admini-
strators who actually enforce policy on the the laborer
are the district managers, the local managers and the shop
director. The structure at the time of the coalminer
strike was such that the top enchillon, in fact even the
district manager, was completely removed from the
practical activities of the industry. They are depicted
as setting profit margins and quotas of output. It is the
responsibility of the local manager to meet these
standards and the responsibility of he shop director to
motivate the actual production.
As the strike of the miners endured, it was first the
shop directors, then the local and district directors
that were immediately affected. The control of the
corporate directors, however, was never in question.
After several months of violent revolt and destruction the
corporate body, whose legitimacy had not been questioned
directly by the laborors, reinstitued the pre- strike
traditional norms with moderate concessions of minimal
safety standards. The workers returned to the mines; the
ideology receeded to a latent state easily contained
within the material limits of the economy.
What must the nature of the polity as independant
variable as well as an interrelated condition of the
social system be in order for a revolution that renders
it capable of transformation? Stephen A. Marglin, in his
essay "What Do Bosses Do?," suggests that social and
economic organization shape technology and that the
primary choices (by hierarchy within its means) with
respect to the organization of production has not been
technology, which is exogenous and inexorable, but the
exercise of power, which is endogenous and resistable.
(Marglin; 1976:17) This implies, in keeping with the
results of the coalminer strike, that the capitalist has
some control over the work process. This control is
limited by the economy, therefore I contend that a
revolution transforming the class division in society is
possible when the polity is as closely related to the
economy as the value system was in France where the plity
and value system are diametrically opposed and neither is
capable of maintaining its reproduction within the
economy. I suggest this argument as the reverse process
of what Braverman writes in {Labor and Monopoly Capital})
of the growing independance of the capitalist hierarchy,
"law and custom reshaped to reflect the predominance of
the `free' contract between buyer and seller under which
the captialist gained the virtually unrestricted power to
determine the technical modes of labor." (Braverman;1974:
60) A narrowing process on captialist freedom will
subsequently limit power. He goes on to suggest that this
power is limited by the inability to change the process of
production and that the captialist strives through
management to control the production process and laborer
(Braverman, 1974: 66,68).
Provided this insight is consistantly true, the
antagonism between the captialist and laborer should be
accompanied by social relations the limits tendentially
narrow, at an increasing rate, the production process.
Thus the economy and polity need to be mutually
restrictive and the ideology must be latent and conductive
to a structure beyond the limits of capitalist economy.
As the ideology is a genesis of the divergence of
traditonal and rational legal values imposed by the
economy, the polity must likewise blatantly induce the
divergence of traditonal and rational- legal values. The
independant conditon of the polity must therefore be a
hierarchy similar to that of the capitalist production
structure as well as forced by the economy to derive power
in order to reproduce itself.
As machine capital slows its expansion rate, a change
dictated by scarcity of raw materials, the polity will
also have a decreased acceleration. As Parson writes on
Weber, "With the use of a concept of authority there is
both (economy and polity) a clear recognition of the
importance of coercive power as exercised by a variety of
means, and a recognition that there is a definite limit to
the extent to whcih these may be made to fit into ordinary
economic categories..." (Parsons 1968 p. 718) Thus the
polity is limited in range by the economy.
A social change to maintained, the ideology of a new
legitimate order should be established either by
routinization or objectification. It must be sanctified
in the real order to be a "real" change. The charismatic
element of ideology reinforces an initial structural
change. Events will subsequently no longer happen but
attain meaning in the light of the source that the
charismatic element advocates. This change in normative
orientations relative to the change in other elements of
the process must be reflected in the ideology. The
ideology of social change may not simply be a reiffication
of the old in a reactionary form. The substance of the
ideology, in being a response to the divergence caused by
the economy and polity, must be such as to transcend that
which came before it. This final condition, specifying
the relations between elements necessary for revolutionary
change, may only be derived in a society which is neither
an organic, composite whole nor one of random atomistic
ends. Rather, the society must be one where the normative
orientation for mediating between conditions and means is
one of consensus.
margins and quotas of output. It is the
responsibility of the local manager to meet these
standards and the re