Brave New World and the Rationalization of Industry

Abstract

B R A V E N E W W O R L D A N D T H E R A T I O N A L I Z A T I O N O F I N D U S T R Y JA M E S SEXTO N Camosun College Rationalization: “ the methods of technique and of organisation designed to secure the minimum waste of either effort or material. They include the scientific organisation of labour, standardisation of both materials and products, simplification of processes, and improvements in the system of transport and marketing. . . . [T]he judicious and constant application of . . . rationalisation is calculated to secure . . . to the community greater stability and a higher standard of life.” World Economic Conference, Geneva, sponsored by the League of Nations, 1927, defined in L. Urwick, The Meaning of Rationalisation, 1929. l^ iear the passage which Huxley took as an epigraph to Brave New World, Nicolas Berdyaev speaks of socialist Russia as a satanocracy where the indi­ vidual is subordinated to the collectivity. He asserts that human and spiritual values are being sacrificed to the false god of materialism, that life’s centre of gravity has shifted to economics, and that man has been converted to a mere economic category.1 Much of Berdyaev’s thought is a footnote to the Grand Inquisitor chapter of Dostoevski’s Brothers Karamazov, which sets in opposition two views of human nature: wholly materialistic man (homo oeconomicus) versus “ soulencumbered ” man. But interestingly the Grand Inquisitor’s materialist vision of man is congruent with that of Henry Ford, whose My Life and Work is the bible of Brave New World. There Ford states, “The average worker . . . wants a job in which he does not have to put forth much physi­ cal exertion — above all, he wants a job in which he does not have to think.” 2 He then goes on to say that the minority of creative thinkers, those few who would be appalled by repetitive, routine work, should look for a more vital pastime than mere music or painting: [Hjigher laws than those of sound, or line, or colour; [apply in the field] of industrial relationship. We want masters in industrial method — both from the standpoint of the producer and the product. We want those who can mould the E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , x ii, 4, December 1986 political, social, industrial, and moral mass into a sound and shapely whole. We have limited the creative faculty . . . for too trivial ends. We want men who can create the working design for all that is right and good and desirable in our life. . . . It is possible to increase the well-being of the workingman . . . by aiding him to do more. . . . If he is the happier for using a machine to less than its capacity, is he happier for producing less than he might and consequently getting less than his share of the world’s goods in exchange?3 Huxley saw that the common denominator between Fordism and social­ ism was uncritical veneration of rationalization. Mark Rampion in Point Counter Point (1928) points to the sameness of Bolshevik and Capitalist goals, and incidentally, he uses the same infernal imagery as does Berdyaev. The squabbling between Bolshevists and Fascists, Radicals and Conserva­ tives was really a fight to decide whether we shall go to hell by communist express train or capitalist racing motor car, by individualist ’bus or collectivist tram running on the rails of state control. The destination’s the same in every case. . . . They all believe in industrialism in one form or another, they all believe in Americanization. Think of the Bolshevist ideal. America but much more so. America with government departments taking the place of trusts and state officials instead of rich men. And then the ideal of the rest of Europe. The same thing, only with the rich men preserved. Machinery and government officials there. Machinery and Alfred Mond or Henry Ford here. . . . They’re all equally in a hurry. In the name of science, progress and human happiness!4 In the years 1928 and 1929 Huxley reveals the probable...