Organization and Management of the Production Process in the Development of Social Productive Forces

Abstract

The scientific-technological revolution transforms not only the immediate process of production but also the methods of organizing and managing the social production process. The historical stages of the development of production organization have so far been studied mainly from a business-management and engineering perspective; a Marxist-grounded historical and systematic analysis of the principal trends has been lacking.
This article aims to outline and analyze the most important historical trends in the organization and management of the production process from the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries to the contemporary scientific-technological revolution.
The study draws on the writings of Marx, Taylor, Fayol, and Gantt, as well as on economic-historical and social-scientific literature, including Bendix on authority and industrial work, Schröer on organization and management, and Nowoshilow on the management of socialist economy. The central theoretical point of departure is Marx's concept of the social combination of the labour process.
The analysis identifies several developmental stages: the centralized single management of the early factory, rooted in individual capital ownership and lagging significantly behind the development of machinery; the Taylor-Fayol system of scientific management, which extended the division of labour to organizational functions but remained confined to the individual enterprise; the mechanical flow production and the combined enterprise as a first step toward the regulation of the total social production process; and finally, automatic data processing, which enables scientific management of the production process at the societal level. The author argues that the overall social organization of production cannot be realized in the quality demanded by the productive forces under conditions of state-monopoly capitalism, since social ownership of the means of production constitutes its objective prerequisite.