Before our class last Thursday, I had never heard of Taylorism as a distinct theory, rather I thought that the utilitarian application of human labor was just something that developed naturally out of the industrial revolution. It may be that this is partly to what Frederick Winslow Taylor was reacting, but it is also possible that manufacturing at that time was adapting to the ideas that Taylor devised. Perhaps it is a chicken/egg scenario, but perhaps I am also thinking about it too much.

Even in just reading the Wikipedia article on this (which is in fact titled Scientific Management, Taylorism is the subtitle), I am struck by how this seems like a philosophical or political ideology, even without knowing how it is used that way in We. Ideology is normally used in the context of political beliefs, but in a totalitarian society where political beliefs are not really relevant it makes sense that ideologies are applied to other parts of life.  

I only have a brief understanding (or possibly completely false, depending on how much faith I put in Wikipedia) of the details of Taylorism, but I think that it is interesting that this idea became popular at the same time in both the newly formed Soviet Union, and perhaps the most blatantly capitalist industry – cars. Both Lenin and Henry Ford adopted this scientific management style, or followed this Taylorist ideology which at its center emphasizes the division of labor. Ford’s goal was the achieve this at it’s most extreme, which makes sense for capitalism, but for Lenin I don’t see why it was so appealing, as it seems to lead directly to alienation of the worker that Marx thought Communism would transcend. I am not really sure how Taylorism is at all conducive to Marxist Communism, so it is really interesting that a Marxist would even try.