I subscribe to a few leftist magazines. One of them – Catalyst – has published a few contributions to a debate over the status of Lean production. Not long ago, I read the most recent article in that debate: one by the title ‘The Politics of Lean Production‘ by Matt Vidal.
The debate itself concerns both the theory and economics of Lean. Is Lean a bad thing by its very nature? Or, on the other hand, do we have ways we can redirect it for the benefit of the left? Vidal reads his opponents as arguing for the former, while he argues for the latter. And while Vidal doesn’t really want to go there, no less than Lenin himself once tried to re-capture something a bit like Lean.
Let’s take a look at this debate.
Vidal on Lean Production
In the US, Lean took off in a specific time and manner. Companies turned to it during the early parts of the neoliberal era as a response to declining profits. Vidal takes the basic fact and derives from it the claim that a certain phase of capitalist development led to Lean. Fierce global competition forced managers to take special measures to stay profitable. And so, Lean became a big part of these ‘special measures.’
Two Routes for Lean
For Vidal, companies can implement Lean in two basic ways. First, they can maximize how much (capacity utilization) and how hard (work intensification) workers work. In other words, they can use Lean to micromanage people’s time so that they’re always working and always working as hard as possible. Alternatively, second, companies can improve work processes, thereby using workers’ time more effectively. In other words, they can eliminate wasteful or redundant parts of the job in order to allow workers more time to do more interesting work, make more decisions on the job, and do a wider range of more interesting kinds of work.
While either of these options might go wrong for us, most workers would strongly prefer option two over option one. Vidal claims that Lean itself – as a system and a set of tools – is neutral between these two options. Companies can do in either direction (or, I suppose, both directions).
Historically, companies took Lean toward option one. But there’s nothing – according to Vidal – that says they must do that. Vidal thinks most companies took the first option because Lean appeared in industries with narrow profit margins and strong economic incentives to intensify work (e.g., the auto industry). Perhaps it would work differently in other industries.
Regardless, Vidal thinks unions should come together, embrace Lean in selective cases, and fight for the second route and against the first one.
Lean as the Enemy of the Left?
Vidal reads his opponents as arguing that Lean inherently takes the first route. In other words, they think Lean – by its very nature – deals in issues of worker capacity and the intensification of work. They think this because, ultimately, Lean is about maintaining managerial control over the company. As Lean operates, companies must use it to force workers to work longer and harder to keep the managers in charge and give them a function. In support of this interpretation, Vidal cites several articles in Catalyst that criticize Lean.
Readers can find those articles here, here, and here.
For my part, I think Vidal’s view hits closer to the truth than all that. But it’s less clear to me whether Vidal accurately captures what his opponents argue.
Why? It’s a real stretch to say that Lean must be done that way. Like a great deal of business theory, there’s a lot of grand talk in Lean but a lot less in terms of how to implement it. I suspect Vidal’s opponents merely point out that – as capitalism actually unfolded in the US – companies using Lean were drawn to work intensification.
They probably don’t need to go beyond that and argue for a stronger thesis about the logical structure of Lean.
A Dangerously Neutral Tool
What should we make of all this? In short, Vidal gets it right when he argues that a neoliberal era featuring fierce competition pushed companies to use Lean. And concerns over profitability drove that shift. From this, we can conclude that profit and competition – rather than managerial control, as such – drove Lean.
That said, having unions push for a better version of Lean is much easier said than done. Whether or not managerial control is the fundamental force driving companies, the fact of the matter is that managers do remain in control. And they’re quite skilled at putting in place systems that maintain that control. Even when those systems appear to advocate for worker autonomy or democracy.
And so, managers won’t just give up their control. Nor will executives simply brush aside managers if workers make a good argument for the benefits of worker control. To advance their vision, unions would need to get much stronger. It’s not enough to simply put a union in place or start the collective bargaining process. The union would need to spend years organizing, growing, and flexing its muscles.
In the long term, though, it’s very promising. It could form part of the basis of a system of worker collective governance of the workplace. That makes it compelling enough to be worth exploring.
