Summary (from the book):
To what extent, and in what way, should Capital, as buyer, take care of those who sell labour power on the labour market? This study deals with social reformers in the beginning of the twentieth century and the possibilities and problems of encouraging modern employers to show social responsibility. Confronted with the general metamorphosis of society caused by the triumphs of industrial capitalism and with the conflicts over wages, living conditions and power in the sphere of private firms - “the social war” of the time - many middle class reformers looked for ways to create a good capitalism (instead of overturning the order of society into socialism). They searched for a capitalism which was no less efficient, but gained efficiency by eliminating the roots of the “social war” - by solving the nexus of problems identified as the “social question”, the centre of which was usually supposed to be the “labour question”. Given that modern employers had great resources, had daily contact with the working class, and did already decide a great deal of the living conditions of the workers and their families, it could seem natural to turn to them, and to try incite and guide them to show good will in an appropriate way. This was however a problematic strategy, chiefly due to the fact that the social peace-makers turned to one part in the social war, with a request to take responsibility for the opposite part. Could it be possible to overcome distrust on the part of the workers, to free modern employers’ sense of responsibility from patterns of paternalism and charity, which deprived the workers of their autonomy - that transformed sellers of labour into juvenile receivers of fatherly gifts, putting them in a state of dependency and gratitude? This problem had to be confronted in view of the fact that many modern companies were already experimenting with transforming older forms of paternal responsibility into a (more or less essential) element in a new kind of business strategy. This strategy relied on the possibilities to gain control over vital business conditions - among them the supply of such labour power (loyal and intensive) that served the struggle to turn bold investments in fixed costs into competitive advantage. A significant and delicate aspect of this private Sozialpolitik was that it usually had as a central aim to forestall the mobilisation of autonomous power on the part of the workers: i. e. trade unionism.
These problems are discussed primarily through an American and a Swedish example. During the years around 1900 William H. Tolman in New York established his platform of action (The League for Social Service / The Institute of Social Service) as the national centre for what he preferred to call “industrial betterment”. He had a Ph D in the history of education and had begun his career in philanthropy and the early “progressive” movement for city reform. His ambition seems to have been to bring the new sense of social responsibility among employers into contact with the more or less radical forces of social reform. With an emphasis on the unsentimental and businesslike nature of the modern employer’s benevolence - its character of enlightened egoism on the part on “the great captains of industry” - he promoted a wide range of tasks for company managements. Assisted by “professional” advise and elaborate exchange of ideas and experiences their crass rationality was supposed to further social adjustment and to “allay the antagonism between master and men”. In this context he in 1899 introduced a couple of key words into modern political language: the terminology of “social engineering” and the “social engineer”.
When Tolman a decade later published a volume with the former expression as its title - and the latter one as his own professional title - he confronted a new situation: the problems of enrolling modern employers as his engines of reform had implicitly come into focus in his thought. His former platform (AISS) had become marginalised in the field of employer benevolence by competitors who preferred to talk about “welfare work” - a terminology which Tolman repudiated for its tinge of paternalism and charity. Besides emphasizing the businesslike interest in efficiency as the legitimate motive of benevolence, and besides talking about “industrial betterment” or preferably “mutuality” instead of “welfare”, his strategy to avoid distrust on the part of the workers - and to lessen the risk of provoking them rather than to further social peace - was to apply an order of priorities among the many possible “features of betterment” exposed in his book. His first priority was given to the restrictive tasks of creating a safe and in a wider sense healthy environment at the workplace. This was also the task to which Tolman had restricted his work in 1907-09, when he left his earlier co-operation with partly radical proponents of the Social Gospel movement in order to create the American Museum of Safety and Sanitation. He did so in co-operation with an elite of technical engineers and with primary support from the steel companies - the industrial branch whose former front figure, Andrew Carnegie, also wrote an introduction to his book. More problematic was “features of betterment” which expanded the influence of the employer into the private sphere of the employees and their families. Such an expansion could be found relatively natural in the immediate context of payment, in the shape of programs for social insurance, profit sharing and savings, but it could also be relatively controversial as this touched the main issue in the conflicts of interest between capital and labour. Compared to this, expansive features could seem rather harmless with regard to workers’ autonomy when they aimed to shape the local environment around the workplace - e. g. housing and leisure-time arrangements. But in such cases they were also a relatively far-fetched concerns of the employers, and pretty hard to motivate in terms of the pure business interests of the buyer-part on the labour market (given that the efforts were not to be seen as expressions of a naked will to power).
In this way Tolman’s attitudes were interestingly ambivalent and ambiguous. Obviously his own interest in the whole matter was rooted in his hope that modern employers could establish themselves as a prime force in accomplishing adjustment in a society which - due to their own activities - had been overturned and irreversibly changed. Capital could adjust the living conditions of the working class to their needs as human beings, but could also adjust their behaviour and ways of life to the needs of modern industrial capitalism and to the interests of a worried middle class - thus creating the new forms of social control which was a major theme in the American social theory of the time. From this point of view Tolman could hardly eliminate the “expansive” traits in his program - especially not “education” in its many forms (for instance in his hygenistic program for the workplace) - even though he had found that employers ought to start with and focus on the ostensibly “restrictive” tasks, and to look at them in relatively narrow terms of “efficiency promotion” in order to gain confidence from the opposite part. Tolman explicitly dissociated himself from “welfare work”, but there was in practice no clear borderline between this policy and his own program for “industrial betterment” - and his vague talk of “mutuality” (as the most appropriate name for the whole effort) seems to have been his way of handling this ambiguity.
In dealing with the intricacies of the task the companies needed expert advise. As they employed the insights of technical engineers to perfect the workings of dead matter - materials and equipment - they likewise, according to Tolman, needed the experience and judgement of the consulting “social engineer”, applied knowledge which differed in kind from technical expertise, to deal with the human beings at their service, and with the workplace as their “industrial home”. In order to be efficiently made use of as means of production, people had to be treated as ends in themselves. This was the key to harmony of interests under modern industrial capitalism. In this way a message, earlier articulated in moral terms by Social Gospel ministers among others, was launched in terms of businesslike professionalism. At the corporate level, inside the managerial hierarchy, social engineering in this sense should be applied professionally by the “social secretary”, a role which Tolman interpreted in terms of a need to establish a new “point of contact” and a “personal touch” in the relations between employer and employees in the big modern enterprise. At the same time as the mission of this calling included some of the most expansive traits in his vision - especially in the context of adjusting industrial conditions to female workers and of adjusting the way of life of working class women to middle class norms - Tolman also sketched the task that some years later (during World War I) would become the commitment of a movement for a more consistently restrictive and professional movement of “social engineering” (in the original sense of the word): personnel management.
The other main example in this study is the Swedish counterpart to the American Institute of Social Service, Centralförbundet för socialt arbete (CSA), which was founded in 1903 as a centre of co-operation between associations with a “social” profile in different senses of that word. In sharp contrast to its sister institution in New York the CSA came to play a major role in the history of its country during the first decade of its existence. From my point of view - Swedish social reformers' commitments to similar tasks as the ones which was of the main interest to Tolman - it has been essential to revise the received view in the literature of the early CSA: it was not a lobby organisation for a “social liberal” agenda in the social policy of the state. Although the core of its activists - the “hosts” in this arena - was made up by more or less radical liberals, the organisation was originally a product of “the culture of co-operation of the left” in Sweden during the decades before the final democratic breakthrough in 1918-21; the fact that two articulated socialist workers were among its founders is only one indication among others of its quite firm footing in the workers’ movement already from start. In spite of this the CSA was also able to integrate moderate conservatives and representatives from Capital’s side in the “social war” during the years when the structure of the Swedish labour market took on its characteristic shape (with big organisations on both sides, ready to bargain on a national level, but also to wage conflicts on the same level). Minimum ideological requirements on the right wing of CSA seem to have been (in principle) positive attitudes to political democracy and to the existing trade union movement (in spite of its intimate relations to the Social Democratic party). The intellectual milieu around the CSA was generally characterised by a kind of “social-therapeutic pluralism”. In accordance to this the many aspects of “the social question” and “the labour question” should be dealt with at different fronts with different means simultaneously. This included legislation, regulation and other forms of state intervention, but also private and voluntary initiatives, not only by “organised” philantropy (the Stockholm Charity Organization Society was one of the main organisations behind the CSA), but also by workers’ autonomous economic struggle through trade unions and consumer co-operatives (the socialist-dominated national co-operatives’ association was another pillar of the CSA), and to some extent through the voluntary assumption of social responsibility on the part of modern employers. This last point was obviously of some importance to liberals who had friendly relations with the labour movement: if the socialist arguments for changing the order of society (in a near or far future) should be made to loose their power, modern capitalism had to gain legitimacy by solving the human problems which had followed its triumphs (in terms of productivity). How to create a vigorous capitalism with a human face?
When the CSA started, its three main exemplary models abroad were the AISS, this institution’s Parisian model - the Musée Social - and and the American Institute’s newly founded daughter organisation in Britain. One of the main objectives of the CSA was to create a “social museum” - an exhibition concerning social problems and social movements - in Stockholm as well. This was realised in 1906. In preparing for this the CSA started where Tolman had ended, in the relatively restrictive, workplace-oriented side of the spectrum of voluntary responsibility on the part of employers. To be responsible for “The social exhibition’s” section on industrial safety the CSA created the first of its many daughter organisations in different specialised fields (e. g. for poor relief, municipal reform and the education of professional social workers), the Association for Labour Protection (FFA). This organisation had many objectives: to be a forum for co-operation between the state authorities which worked in the field (the factory inspectors and the public bureau of insurance), to lobby for more powerful state intervention, and to promote safety and sanity in a more efficient way than legislation could do by inciting and guiding companies to take voluntary action, both in the interest of business and the interest of the workers. Even after the coming into being of the FFA, more complex questions regarding labor protection - especially concerning female workers - were treated by the mother organisation. Some of these were highly controversial in Sweden. The women’s rights movement, the leadership of which was prominently represented among the circle of “hosts” in the CSA, took a stand against attempts to restrict women’s access to the labour market under the banner of “protection of women ” (prohibition of night work). The main actors in the CSA probably felt an ambivalence about these questions, which perhaps strengthened their interest in the task which was also William Tolman’s chief concern, i. e. to incite the employers to make the conditions of wage labour more suitable for human beings in general, and especially more appropriate for female workers. After an inquiry among Swedish employers a substantial part of CSA’s own section of “The social exhibition” - which at the start was superintended by the person who would some years later become the first female factory inspector in Sweden (Kerstin Hesselgren) - came to expose “features of industrial betterment” in the sense of Tolman. Partly overlapping the treatment of hygiene in FFA’s section the CSA showed to the exhibition’s many-headed audience different things employers did for their employees - including the highly expansive and obviously paternal benevolence of some more or less modern companies. But this was done in a context which differed from Tolman’s efforts, which, at least in 1909, were characterised by his silence concerning the existence of an autonomous labour movement. In this sense Tolman obviously took the part of the employers in the social war of the time, despite his claim to professional neutrality. The CSA’s examples of employers’ social responsibility were displayed along with generous presentations of the Swedish trade union movement and the co-operative movement. At the time of the inauguration of the exhibition in 1906 the press organ of CSA, Social Tidskrift, discussed the need to liberate the good core of the traditional benevolence on the part of employers from its old framework of paternalism. This was to be done by a strictly businesslike attitude to the task and with respect for the autonomy of the workers - especially their right to organise in unions and to bargain collectively. CSA’s way to promote “industrial betterment” in a wider sense did also contrast with Tolman’s efforts in the way that its ideal picture of a good capitalism - an efficient and socially responsible one - was combined with a struggle against bad (inefficient and irresponsible) capitalism: industrial work in sweat shops and in the homes of the (in this case mostly female) workers. In this effort, manifested at a separate exhibition, the CSA worked together with the trade union movement - which in 1906 also supported the CSA financially - and with the state authority for labour statistics. (The last-mentioned institution developed very close ties to the CSA during the years before it was merged with the factory inspection to form the Social Policy Board in 1912-13, and did also play an essential role at The social exhibition.)
In 1909 the antagonism between Capital and Labour was manifested in an extraordinarily extensive conflict between the unions and the employers’ organisations in Sweden. In the same year Tolman’s Social Engineering gave the CSA the impulse to undertake a new inquiry concerning the extent to which Swedish companies invested in arrangements for the welfare of their workers - primarily of the expansive kind, i. e. the ones that reached into the private life of the workers and their families. This was made by CSA’s bureau manager Emilia Broomé, who also had been chiefly responsible for the collection of material to the social exhibition some years earlier. When she presented the rather meager results in a series of articles in Social Tidskrift she underlined the main points in Tolman’s message. In order to avoid paternalism and charity the benevolence of employers should be applied with a firm basis in apparent business interests, as a kind of efficiency promotion, and preferably executed in a professional way by a social-hygienic expert - the social secretary in Tolman’s sense. Although she found Tolman’s terminology difficult to use in Swedish (she obviously overestimated his influence on thinking and use of language in this area in the USA), she also found the expression “välfärdsanordningar” highly problematic, and she underlined that a sense of common interest between autonomous parties - “mutuality” - had to be the basis of it all. This obviously had a different meaning to her than to Tolman, because the autonomous action of the workers was implicitly identified with the unions. In sharp contrast to the material in the book Social Engineering her inquiry was based on an enquête directed both to the unions and to the employers’ organisations, although the unions seem to have been reluctant to answer, thus showing their distrust concerning the employers’ role in solving the social question of the time. Broomé also underlined that the result of any feature of social benevolence - beneficent or harmful - was dependent on the “spirit” in which it was carried out. She illustrated this by putting forward two examples of model communities built around companies which showed fairly expansive responsibility for the well being of their workers. One was Sandviken Steelworks, which had started to establish the friendly relations with the unions which in the 1920s would give the leading family a role at the head of the opposition in the employers’ organisation. The other example was Åtvidabergs Industrier, the leader of which was not only a prominent liberal politician - soon after Broomé’s article Theodor Adelswärd became minister of finances in a left-government - but also the presumably most articulated dove in the camp of the employers during the years surrounding the big conflict of 1909. At the peak of that crisis Adelswärd had been allowed to publish a pamphlet as a special edition of Social Tidskrift (at that time the official organ of the CSA) in which he distanced himself from the intentions of the leadership of the employers’ organisations and sketched out a model for eternal peace in labour relations on the basis of dialogue and co-operation between strong and united organisations on both sides - a concept with striking similarities to the order which three decades later became “the Swedish model” in the labour market.
The major part of this study (chapter 2-7) is presented in a framework which relates it to a larger research project called “Business economy and the mental revolution”, wherein I aim to analyse different aspects of the “capitalistic” intellectual history of the era in Swedish history between the 1930s and the 1970s, to which labels like “the Swedish model” and “the People’s Home” have been applied, and which in a lot of historiography has been seen as the product of the intentions and the long possession of governmental power of the social democratic party. In my opinion the character of the developments among private companies was also a major factor in shaping the society of that era in Sweden. In the introductory chapter I sketch out the characteristics of the business strategy of “managerial capitalism” (kontrollkapitalism) in Alfred D. Chandler’s sense, which in my opinion came to play an important role in Sweden after the time period of this study - although with different results than in the USA, where it had been dominating since the 1880s. Here I relate it to a discussion of the relation between buyers and sellers of labour power on the labour market, and to a discussion of the possibility to talk about modern society in terms of the relations between three spheres: the sphere of private firms, the political-public sphere and the sphere of home and intimacy. In chapter 2 I initiate a discussion of the problem of “welfare capitalism” in the USA during the Progressive Era by introducing two points of reference - for this book as well as for its sequel (which will deal with personnel management, scientific management and the Swedish model on the labour market). F. W. Taylor represents the efficiency-oriented industrial reformism of the time, and his vision of putting an end to the social war by realising a supposed harmony of interest between Capital and Labour - the common interest in producing more wealth, a bigger cake to share - illustrates the connection between the larger “social question” and the “labour problem” in the more narrow sense of the companies’ problems of getting the full value for their labour costs. Jane Addams represents the social radicalism which I (often in contrast to the “reform philantropism” of the charity organisation movement) call the “idealism of mutuality”. From her analysis of the Pullman conflict of 1894, in which she defended the labour movement and attacked the head of the Pullman Company, I derive a central concept in this book, “the Lear complex”. It refers to the intricate problems of power and autonomy which became vital when modern companies started to transform old time paternalism into a tool of a modern business strategy. This usually aimed at forestalling unionism and sometimes tended to “integrate backwards” into the line of deliverers of work power. (According to Addams the Pullman Company attempted to “socialize the whole life form” of the workers.) I also discuss the possibility of dealing with the Lear complex by pointing to the crass business interest behind employer benevolence, and with the help of Social Tidskrift I introduce this theme through a glance at the flagship of American welfare capitalism, the National Cash Register Company (the slogan of which, “it pays”, may have been an advertising version of Tolman’s chief message). The case of NCR leads back to Taylor, his critique of the “semi-philantropic” welfare work in his main book Shop Management, and the question whether wealth or welfare was to be seen as the main road to social peace. In connection with this I also discuss the heritage of paternalism in Swedish industry, and the possibility that this came to be replaced by some kind of “welfareism” in the American style.
The epilogue (chapter 8) starts out from the identification of how Tolman’s terminology of “social engineering” and “the social engineer” in 1911 came to change its meaning and to migrate to a political language with few direct connections to its origin in the sphere of private firms. I discuss the observations of some historians concerning an American intellectual tradition during the decades from the Progressive Era to the New Deal which tended to look at society as a machinery and at middle class social experts as its “engineers” - who on the basis of scientific knowledge of the relevant “social forces” could give professional and value-free advice on how to solve social problems. I underline the importance of the themes of “cultural lag” (long before the term was coined) and “adjustment” or “social control” in this context, whereby the influence of F. W. Taylor and his disciples once more comes into focus, along with activists in the social settlement movement (people like Jane Addams), social surveyors, the new philanthropic research institutions (carrying names like Rockefeller and Carnegie), and academic researchers who looked for a role to play in public life without losing the prestige of distanced and value-free research. After pointing out some of the strong links between this tradition and Gunnar and Alva Myrdal - the main proponents of what has been called “social engineering” in Swedish historiography - and a general discussion of views of Swedish society during the People’s Home Era, I close the book with a critique of a thesis put forward by the historian Yvonne Hirdman. She claims that ideas of “social engineering” from Plato and the utopian socialists popped up in Sweden in the 1930s, creating a “revolution” in the home-sphere of the Swedish people, especially making the everyday-life of Swedish women the object of expert-penetration through the state. I recognise the value of Hirdman’s observation that the social policy discussion in the 1930s centered around a “re-negotiation of the gender contract”, but suggest that the “social engineering” of intellectuals like the Myrdals should be seen in the light of the traditions of adjustment and social control rather than in a supposed revolutionary heritage of utopian socialism. They urged people to “accept the given reality” and their aim was to amend this given reality – to create a vigorous capitalism with a human face.
Institutionen för litteraturvetenskap och idéhistoria, Stockholm 2003
Stockholms universitet, S-106 91 Stockholm
ISBN 91-7265-597-6