The economist John Kenneth Galbraith spent a lifetime in
the study of modern technologies and their management. In The Liberal Hour, and, later, his Magnum
Opus The New Industrial State, professor Galbraith teaches lessons concerning technology and how
it demands changes in one's approach to management.
“The
great entrepreneur must, in fact, be compared in life with the male
Apis mellifera.” he wrote,
explaining that “he accomplishes his act of conception at
the price of h is own extinction.”(1) In
this the fate of the honey bee as well as the entrepreneur joins,
with less certainty, the Praying Mantis.(2) “The older
entrepreneurs combined firms that were not yet technologically
complex. As in the case of steel at the turn of the century when
U.S. Steel was formed, a small corps of managers and supervisors
directed a large and comparatively untrained and homogeneous working
mass. With consolidation came control of markets—the forerunner of
modern planning...
“But
the act of combination added new plants and products and therewith
the need for specialization by function and knowledge. Sooner or
later came more complex tasks of planning and control. Technology,
with its own dynamic, later added its demands for capital and for
specialized talent with need for yet more comprehensive planning.
Thus what the entrepreneur created passed inexorably beyond the scope
of his authority. He could build. And he could exert influence for a
time. But his creation, were it to serve the purposes for which it
was brought into being, required his replacement. What the
entrepreneur created, only a group of men sharing specialized
information could ultimately operate.” (3)
This
leads us directly to professor Galbraith's star witness, Henry Ford
and, by extension, our modern Caesar Disgustus.
“On
a few occasions entrepreneurs dramatized the point by resisting their
loss of authority and thus taking issue with the inevitable. Through
the twenties, thirties and into the forties, Henry Ford, aging and
autocratic, became increasingly resentful of the organization without
which his company could not be run. He reacted by shunning employees
of specialized technical knowledge—for many years college graduates
were not only not sought but not hired at River Rouge. And he
systematically fired all who, by rising in the hierarchy, seemed to
be arrogating responsibility. Many of the most illustrious names in
the automobile industry—Couzens, Wills, Hawkins, Rockelman, Knudsen
(who helped to build General Motors), the Lelands (who founded
Cadillac and Lincoln), Klingensmith and Kanzler—were extruded or
axed. For a long time the executioner was Charles E. Sorenson; then
Ford executed Sorenson. In the early forties, he was left with only
one significant senior executive, Harry Bennett, who, with assorted
pugilists, baccalaureates of the Michigan penal system, an unfrocked
football coach and other colleagues of similar caliber, spent much of
his time insuring that no one threatened the authority that Ford was
determined to monopolize.
“The
result for the company was near disaster. Cars were either obsolete
or technically eccentric. Planning, particularly market control, was
highly exiguous. Ford once prohibited advertising for several years
and, in classic manifestation of his attitude toward modern
merchandising, said that the customer could have any color of car
provided it was black. In the thirties, the company lost money in
large amounts. In the war years, its performance was so deficient
that its seizure by the government was discussed as also the uniquely
insulting proposal that it be managed by the Studebaker Company...On
his death, the technostructure was reconstituted by Ernest Breech.
The company promptly retrieved lost ground.” (4)
Earlier, in his book The Liberal Hour, the
professor, in a chapter entitled “Was Ford a Fraud?”, (5)
Galbraith pointed out that Ford was the product of a pioneer
public relations ploy, forgetting David Crockett's forged reputation
nearly a century before.
“We
have a tendency that is wholly familiar to place our heroes on a
pedestal and accord them what is rightly called worship. And this
hero worship as surely provokes the tendency for others to search for
signs of clay feet, straw in the shirt, or a furtive twitch of the
eye. Like the progressive income tax, these critics exert a leveling
influence without which democracy might not survive...a picture on
the cover of Time Magazine, as any perceptive recipient of the honor
must know, is taken by a large number of people to mean that the
individual is henceforth much more in need of expert criticism than
applause.
“However,
this suspicion of heroic stature is no doubt most useful when
directed at the living. It is also by way of being more fair. I have
been concerned lest attacking the Ford myth I seem to be debunking
for the sake of debunking the reputation of a man now dead. This is
not my intention. In recent times, Ford's former friends and
associates, as well as histories based on the official records, have
provided us with a mass of evidence that is inconsistent with much
(though not all) of the Ford legend. They show Ford's exceptionally
comprehensive shortcomings as an entrepreneur. They show that James
Couzens, Ford's great partner, was more nearly decisive figure in
Ford's early fortunes than was supposed or than Couzens himself
bothered to claim.
“They
show that Ford was the product of a pioneer public relations ploy.
His world-famous industrial philosophy was manufactured precisely as
was the Model T save that with the with the Model T, Ford had rather
more to do with the design and specifications. The producer was
Samuel Crowther. Ford avidly and enthusiastically abetted both this
and other efforts to bemuse the public...” (6)
Ford emerges as a man who, once the company gained
'critical mass', proved unable to delegate authority and, therefore,
unable to grow with his organization.
Professor Galbraith also cites the history of retail
giant Montgomery Ward where Sewell Avery waged a similar struggle,
concluding: “It will be suggested that Henry Ford and Sewell
Avery were men of marked eccentricity in whom the desire for power
increased with age. Accordingly, they were singularly unqualified for
one-man rule of a great corporation. This is true. But men of lesser
eccentricity and greater judgment would not have tried. In most
cases control passes smoothly from the entrepreneur to the
technostructure. The exceptions show only that the transition must
be accomplished.” (7)
In
light of this, let us reconsider our present Caesar Disgustus. It
should be noted that The Trump Organization, such
as it is, is much smaller than that of the Federal government. Yet
even here he has made a pig's breakfast of things including numerous
bankruptcies—including casino's for Christ's sake.
Disgustus
has all the earmarks of Henry Ford and, like Ford, the organization
he now heads will in all likelihood survive; but only because of its
size and institutional memory. One simply cannot impose one's
ignorance on an organization and not inflict damage. This is true of
even small businesses. In my time I've seen many a start-up go under
because the entrepreneur failed to understand the importance of
advertising and media, subjects that they had heretofore no exposure
or knowledge. Failure to listen to and act upon the advise of those
in the industry has caused many a small 'mom and pop' business to
fail. And, let's face it, The Trump Organization
employing as it does only a relatively handful of people is, compared
to multi-national corporations and the federal government, little
more than a medium sized lemonade stand. Still, he'd made a pig's
breakfast of lemonade.
Like
Ford, tRUMP has been raised to heroic status by a mere public
relations ploy, in network television's eternal quest to bemuse the
public and, like Ford, our intrepid Caesar is a fraud, a fraud that
was readily apparent before network television put a copious amount
of lipstick upon the pig.
Given
the weight of evidence emerging in the Russian Scandal
that it is becoming increasingly apparent the only defense Disgustus'
has will be to plead ignorance. That and a constitutional inability
to tell truth. The first in defense of charges of sedition, the
second to defend him against charges of obstructing justice. Both
defenses are legitimate.
They
are legitimate because of his blinding ignorance of any subject.
Biographer David Kay Johnston has long observed the blinding
ignorance of the man, citing case after case where Disgustus dives
into enterprises about which he knows and learns nothing. Political
columnist George W. Will has likewise observed that tRUMP does not
know what it is to know. In lower stations in life, say the village
idiot, this can be and often is amusing. At the pinnacle of power,
it can and is frighteningly dangerous.
This
week the nation witnessed the heads of CIA, FBI, and National
Intelligence—all tRUMP appointees, tell a congressional oversight
committee in public hearing that ISIS is still a threat, that cyber
attacks from Russia, China and others nation states are ongoing and
that little is being done about them. They were presenting summary
testimony about a joint report on the most serious threats facing the
country. At no time was immigration or the need for the wall brought
up.
Disgustus
promptly went to his iPhone and, like the birdbrain he is, launched a
'tweet'-storm of criticism, suggesting that his intelligence and
security chiefs “go back to school”. Later, he emerged before
the cameras claiming that his underlings reported to him that they
had been misquoted, and were the victims of 'fake news', despite the
networks covering the testimony live and replaying their statements
as they were presented. You see, he knows more than the generals,
knows more than the intelligence heads, knows more than anyone. Our
hero cannot do wrong. Just ask him, he'll tell you.
He
also needs to defend his façade against all observable realities. In
tRUMP's world all reality is what he makes it no matter how obvious
it is that it isn't. About this he will sit, like a toad on a log,
and tell the nation with a straight face that his subordinates didn't
say what they demonstrably did; and did say what they clearly didn't.
“Until
recent times,” noted professor
Galbraith, “senior officials of the mature corporation
were inclined to assume the public mantle of the entrepreneur. They
pictured themselves as self-reliant men, individualistic, with a
trace of justifiable arrogance, fiercely competitive and with a
desire to live dangerously. Individualism is the note that 'sounds
through the business creed like the pitch in a Byzantine Choir.'
'They're bred to race. It's the same with people. It's something
that's born into you'. 'Business is tough—it's no kissing game'.
These Characteristics are not readily reconciled with the
requirements of the technostructure. Not indifference but sensitivity
to others, not individualism but accommodation to organization, not
competition but intimate and continuing cooperation are the prime
requirements for group action.” (8) It
is obvious that our Caesar Disgustus possesses none of those
qualities, indeed he appears as an out-sized hero in a pulp novel,
something conjured in the fevered imagination of Ayn Rand or Horatio
Alger; a hopeless artifact of an American past that, in fact, existed
only in imagination.
“Nor
is any reconciliation possible”, warned
Galbraith. “The assertion of the competitive
individualism of the corporate executive, to the extent that it
continues, is ceremonial, traditional and, on occasion, a
manifestation of personal vanity.(9) And
vanity, it is by now painfully obvious, floods the oval office. With
supreme vanity our Caesar Disgustus goes about imposing nothing but
ignorance upon the system. It is an act of vandalism in which the
the survival of the country hangs, like Ford Motor Company,
increasingly in doubt.
In
the meantime, sanctions on Russia have been lifted and next to
nothing is being done to secure our electoral processes, our energy
grid, our transportation systems.
“An
Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach and Imprison.
_____________
- Galbraith, John Kenneth. The New Industrial State. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston Mass. 1967. Pages 88-89
- See previous post: September 30, 2007: I Stink therefore I am, Polythene Ann, False Pearls Before Real Swine
- Op. Cit. Page 89
- Ibid. Pages 90-91.
- Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Liberal Hour. Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston Mass. 1960.141-165, details many of Ford's shortcomings, including his limitations as a mechanic, and his impact upon the company.
- Ibid. Pages 141-142
- Op. Cit. Page 91
- Ibid. Page 92
- Ibid. Page 92
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