Reading and fully understanding is required to answer the 3 questions:
NO OUTSIDE OR SECONDARY SOURCE READING IS ALLOWED, ALL THE ANSWERS AND COMMENTS HAS TO STRICTLY BE BASED ON THE FOLLOWING 2 ASSIGNED READINGS.
IF THE TEACHER HAS A QUESTION OR A CONCERN ABOUT YOUR ANSWER/COMMENT, HE WILL SENT BACK A REPLY AND YOU HAVE TO REPLY BACK TO HIS COMMENT.
13. M June 28 [panel 4] Explaining industrialization III: organization, technology and class conflict
S. Marglin (1974) “What do bosses do?: The origin and function of hierarchy in capitalist production” Review of Radical Political Economics 6: 60
Andreas Malm (2013) “The Origins of Fossil Capital: From Water to Steam in the British Cotton Industry.” Historical Materialism 21(1):15–68. (http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~moyer/GEOS24705/Readings/From_water_to_steam.pdf )
Please answer or have some unformal comments/paragraphs (you can say I understood that.. I think that.. I did not understand this specific thing in the reading etc. ) regarding each of the 3 following questions.
question #1: This is a thread for comments and questions arising from discussion questions 4 and 5 regarding comparisons of Marglin, Malm, Allen, and other authors we have read in the past few weeks.
Your answer #1:
question #2: This is a thread for comments and questions arising from discussion questions 1 and 2 regarding Marglin’s article, and questions and comments specific points in Marglin you found difficult, unclear or confusing.
Your answer #2:
question #3: This is a thread for comments and questions arising from discussion question 3 regarding Malm’s article, and questions and comments specific points in Marglin you found difficult, unclear or confusing.
Your answer #3:
Now each question is asking about providing comments and questions arising from discussion questions. So you have to look for answers in the readings for those 5 discussion questions in order for you to answer the above 3 questions or have comments on each.
Discussion questions 1-5:
1) How does Marglin’s thesis (e.g., as set out in the first paragraph of p.62, and argued throughout) differ from the conventional neoclassical explanation for the adoption of administrative hierarchy and the factory system? How does his theory apply to capitalism? How does it also apply to non-capitalist (e.g. ancient slave, feudal, and state socialist) systems?
2) Compare Marglin’s his explanation of the division of labour with that of Smith (chapter 1) and Marx’s critique of Smith (Marx Ch. 14 sec. 4). Why did early industrialists think that lower wages would be good for both business and workers? Discuss in light of “push” versus “pull” accounts of industrialization and the “industrious revolution” thesis (see the Notes on Growth handout).
3) What, according to Malm, is the conventional (Ricardian /Malthusian) explanation for why British industry turned from water to coal power in the early 1800s? What is Malm’s alternative explanation, and with what evidence does he support it? How does Malm think proponents of those views might respond to his critique, and how does he reply?
4) Compare the logic of Malm’s thesis regarding the initial adoption of fossil fuels with Marglin’s regarding the organization of production. Assuming that the shift to factory production and to fossil fuels eventually generated vast increases in productivity, what do their theses imply about the adoption of productivity enhancing technologies?
5) Compare and contrast Allen’s explanations for key technical innovations in the industrial revolution to those of Marglin and Malm. [Recall that Allen focuses on whether it did or did not pay for business to invest in labour productivity enhancing technology, while (per question 4) Marglin and Malm think that productivity was not the key motivation. Think about how that relates to the different theoretical perspectives of Allen versus Marglin and Malm.]
if you need more words to answer the 3 questions, please let me know.
thank you
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