The Human Motor

Disciplines Philosophy Social & Political Philosophy

About the Book

Science once had an unshakable faith in its ability to bring the forces of nature—even human nature—under control. In this wide-ranging book Anson Rabinbach examines how developments in physics, biology, medicine, psychology, politics, and art employed the metaphor of the working body as a human motor.

From nineteenth-century theories of thermodynamics and political economy to the twentieth-century ideals of Taylorism and Fordism, Rabinbach demonstrates how the utopian obsession with energy and fatigue shaped social thought across the ideological spectrum.

About the Author

Anson Rabinbach is Professor in the Department of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University and author of The Crisis of Austrian Socialism (Chicago, 1983).

Reviews

"Masterfully integrating Europe-wide debates in science, philosophy, technology, economics, and social policy, Rabinbach has provided us with a profoundly original understanding of the productivist obsessions from which we are still painfully freeing ourselves. . . . A splendid example of the mutual enrichment of intellectual and social history. It goes well beyond its central concern with the 'science of work' to illuminate everything it discusses, from Marxism to the social uses of photography, from cultural decadence to the impact of the First World War."—Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 From Idleness to Fatigue
The Body Without Fatigue: A Nineteenth-Century Utopia
The Disappearance of Idleness
Aristocratic Idleness
Idleness and Industry
Work and Hygiene
The Discovery of Fatigue
The Poetics of Fatigue
Fatigue and Society

2 Transcendenltal Materialism: The Primacy of
Arbeitskraft (Labor Power)
An Immense Reservoir of Energy
Dematerialized Materialism
From the Human Machine to the Human Motor
Conservation of Energy
A Universe of Arbeitskraft: Helmholtz's Popular Scientific Lectures
The First Bourgeois Philosopher of Labor Power
Animal Machines

3 The Political Economy of Labor Power
The Social Implications of Energy Conservation
The Marriage of Marx and Helmholtz
The Social Physiology of Labor Power
The Emergence of Labor Power in Marx
Hegelian Helmholtzianism: Engels

4 Time and Motion: Etienne-Jules Marey and the
Mechanics of the Body
Marey and Modernism
An Engineer of Life
The Metaphor of the Motor go
Bodies in Motion
The Language of Physiological Time
Motionless Bodies Do Not Exist
Chronophotography: The Microscope of Time
Time and Motion
The Economy of Work

5 The Laws of the Human Motor
Social Helmholtzianism
Muscular Thermodynamics
Elasticity and Efficiency: Auguste Chauveau
Care and Feeding of the Human Motor
The Laws of Fatigue: Angelo Mosso and the Invention of the Ergograph
The Science of Ergography
A Fatigue Vaccine?

6 Mental Fatigue, Neurasthenia, and Civilization
Mental Fatigue
Pathological Fatigue: Neurasthenia
Materialism, the Will, and the Work Ethic
The Law of the Least Effort: Civilization and Fatigue

7 The European Science of Work
Social Energeticism
Fatigue and the European Science of Work
Arbeitswissenschaft: The Science of Work in Germany
The German Sociology of Work
Industrial Psychotechnics

8 The Science of Work and the Social Question
Between Productivism and Reform
Labor Power: Capital of the Nation
The Personal Productivity of the Worker
Industrial Experiments: Hours and Output
Fatigue and Productivity
The Physiological Limit and the Ten-Hour Day
The Deployment of Social Energy: Military Training and Physical Education
Fatigue, Knowledge, and Industrial Accidents
Science Between the Classes

9 The Americanization of Labor Power and the Great War 1913--1919
The Challenge of Taylorism
Taylorism in France 1913-1914
Jean-Marie Lahy: The Science of Work Against the Taylor System
German Taylorism and the Science of Work
Psychotechnics and the Great War
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Labor Physiology at War
Ergonomics at the Front

1O The Science of Work Between the Wars
Productivism Between the Wars
The Rapprochement Between the Science of Work and Taylorism
The Institutionalization of the Science of Work
The Era of Psychotechnics
Industrial Psychology and the Pathology of Work
Social Politics in the Plant and the Romantic Philosophy of Work
The National Socialist Science of Work: DINTA and Beauty of Labor

Conclusion: The End of the Work-centered Society?
The Legacy of the Human Motor
The Obsolescence of the Body

NOTES
INDEX