[Artigo] (Reeditado) Stephen A. Merglin What Do Bosses Do; The Prigins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production

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Radical 
Interpretations 
of
Economic History
 
 
 The Review of 
 Radical 
 Political Economics
 
 Vol. 6 N° 2
 Summer, 1974
Stephen A. Marglin
WHAT DO BOSSES DO?
The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production*
I. Introduction: Does Technology Shape Social and Economic Organization or Does Social and Economic Organization Shape Technology?
Is it possible for work to contribute positively to individual development in a complex industrial society, or is alienating work the price that must be paid for material prosperity? Discussions of the possibilities for meaningful revolution generally come down, sooner or later, to this question. If hierarchical authority is essential to high productivity, then self-expression in work must a best be a luxury reserved for the very few regardless of social and economic organization. And even the satisfactions of society’s elite must be perverted by their dependence, with rare exception, on the denial of self-expression to others. But is work organization determined by technology or by society? Is hierarchical authority really necessary to high levels of production, or is material prosperity compatible with nonhierarchical organization of production?
Defenders of the capitalist faith are quite sure that hierarchy is inescapable. Indeed their ultimate line of defense is that the plurality of capitalist hierarchies is preferable to a single socialist hierarchy. To seal the argument the apologist may call on as unlikely a source of support as Frederich Engels. Perhaps it was a momentary aberrations, but at one point in his career at least Engels, saw authority as technologically rather than socially determined.
If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism, independent of all social organization. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel. ¹ 
Going back to the spinning wheel is obviously absurd, and if the producer must typically take orders, it is difficult to see how work could in the main be anything but alienating.
*The research or which this paper reports is still in progress. It is published in its present form to stimulate discussion and comment. This paper represents my initial and in parts preliminary thinking on this subject and no attempt has been made to reflect the many helpful criticisms and suggestions I have received. Copyright by Stephen Merglin, 1974. 
¹F. Engels, “On Authority,” first published in Almenacco Republicano, 1894; English translation in Marx and Engels, Basic Writings in Politics and Philosophy, L. Feuer (Ed.), Doubleday and Co., Garden City, New York, 1959, p.483. Emphasis added.