OPEHATIONAL RESEARCH Al',lD 'mE ]!'ORCES OF PRODUCTION: A MARXIST ANALYSIS OF SC~ENCE AND IDEOLOGY

MICHAEL HALES

Submitted in f ulfillment of the Rec;ulations for the Degree nf Doctor of PhiloDOphy

Ul1iversi ty of Sussex, Septe:nber 1978

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This is to certify that this thesis has not previously been sub~it ted , in whole or in. part , t o the University of Sussex or any other university f or a degree . The thesis is solely the re sult of wor k by the author .

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ABSTRA CT

OPERATIONAL RESEARCH AND Trlli FORCES OF PRODUCTION: A MARXIST ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE AND IDEOLcx;.y

This study in the history and political philosophy of science a t tempts a novel analysis of a practice in management science , operat ional research ( OR), based on a marxis t theory of practice. This analysis draws on a survey of methodological writing , intervi ews with OR practitioners and leading professiona l figures (mostly British), a survey of debates on professional ma t t ers , and the aut hor's own experience as an OR worker. It is an att empt to contribut e to the theory (and thence , prac t i ce) of class struggl e in monopoly capi talism, especially in the SI1ctors of work carried out by the "New Middle Class", and covers not only OR (directly) but also (indirectly) the policy sciences, scientifi c work in general, and workers' counter-science. Directed in part to marxists with a more-than-theoretical interest, this study is al so intended for methodologically inclined OR workers who care about the results of their work.

The thesis embodies a ma terialist analysis of the politics of knowledge production, and shows how the historical specificity of OR (especially in relation to Tayl orism) can be defined. Problems of "praxis", "technical rationality", and the class content of science are dealt with through a theoretical structure which incorporates a non-reductionist concept of the contradictory material articulation of the forces and relations of production. As a whole, the argwnent tries to approach the problem of constituting a revolutionary practice of subjective socialisation of labour, in oppos i tion to capital's revolutionisation of the objective socialisation of labour. The study shows the contradictory nature of "the systems approach", how the insights of this approach (concerning the r elations of theory and pra ctice, "neutrality", and dialogue in t he production of knowledge) are subordinated within an approach based on measurement, and how OR takes the form of a scientistic politics. The r ela tive strengths of this analysis are summ~: ised with respect to Haberma s' theory 0f cognitive interests, Althusser's concepts of theoretical, political and ideological practices, Sohn-Rethel's theory of the division of mental and manual labour in Taylorism, and recent work on the capitalist labour-process. One of the main conclusio~~ '1 is that, to the extent that a concept of the unity of the forceb and relations of production is worked out a t the level of specific scientific practices (as in this s tudy) the content and mutual relations of the r elations of produ ction themselves become problematic; and thus, that theories of class struggle at the level of t he labour-process must move ahead carefully . The study ends with an opt :Lrnistic speculation on the future of operational research as a possi.le mode of revolutionary practice.

MIKE HALES September 1978

CON'l~NTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, etc.

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i

PART 1 'llIE PROBLElrf OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The History of Operational Research 1

The Novelty of OR 5 The History of 'Operational' Research 15

San~ initial theoretical remarks 16 The broad structure of the argument 20 The "insider" story 23 The "new concepts" story 24 The "praxis" story 29 The "politics of technique" story 33 The "class" story 34

CHAPrER 2. Scienoe and Ideology: A Materialiat Theory of Conceptual Practice

The Technical, The Subjective, and The Material A Deconstruction of "Objectivity"

Canpleteness Rigour Validation Implementation Accuracy

Levels of Conceptual Structure in Sciences

PART 2 SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION IN SOCIETY

CRAPI'ER 3. OR Talk: The Profess i onal Ideology of OR

"Science" "Co-operation" "EffiCiency" "Radicalism"

.OOPI'ER 4. OR Work.: The Forces of Scientific Production

The Labour-Process The Forces of Production in OR OR as a Capitalist Practice

38

4D 45 47 48 50 56 57 58

66

69 81 88 97

111

118 127 133

PART 3 OBJECTIVITY AND SUBJECTIVITY IN A SCIENCE OF CAPITALIST MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 5. Subjectivity in Science: The Systems Approach and-Politics 144

Objectivity as Subjectivity Contradictions of "The Whole System" The OR Dilemma

CHAPl'ER 6. The Dominance of Technique: Modelling, Control, and The Limits of Validation

"Subjectivity" in Implementation Objectivity through Measurement Models ~ Practice The Validity of OR Models

PART 4 '.mE PLACE OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

CHAPl'ER 7. Knowledge and Real Subordination: The Relations of Living and Dead Conceptual Labour in OR

The Conditions of Operational Knowledge Techniques, Value, and The Right to Manage Autonomy and Feed-back Control OR and The Capitalist Labour-Proces8

CHAPTER 8. Conclusions: Politics, Science, Ideology

Science P,.,litics Practice

150 158 165

178

183 188 200 206

217

221

225 233 245

254

257 268 278

CHAPTER 9. Postscript: The Future of 'Operational' Research 296 .-

BIBLICGRAHIY

APPENDICES I. Definitions of OR II. "Theoretical" categories in the International

Abstracts in OR classification III. Habennas on "Cognitive Interests" IV. A Brief Account of OR Work in an Industrial OR Group V. List of Interviewees, with Brief Biographical Notes VI. Sohn-Rethel on Scientific Management

GLOSSARY OF THEORETICAL TERMS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS , etc .

A BBREVI AT I ONS

OR operational research, operations research

eM Churchman , Ackoff and Arnoff 1957 ( 53 ) ORQ Operati onal Research Quarterly

PUNCTUATION CONVENTIONS

Single quotes: ter ms with theoretical status within this stu~

eg: 'practice', 'technical', 'subjective' Double quotes: quotations, and non-theoreti cal ~erms

eg: "cognitive interestll, "the whole system"

All italics within quotations are original unless otherwise stated.

SlaShes within quotations indicate inserted matter

eg: "This was necessary in order that he/the OR worker/ could develop an objective model of the situation."

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEHENTS

Dare to struggle, dare to w~n . (Mao Tse Tung.)

My purpose ~n this study is to contribute to the -

theory, and thence to the revolutionary practice, of

class struggle in monopoly capitalism especially in

those sectors of production that are the province of "The

New Middle Class". The study is the direct result of my

own attempts, as an engineering graduate working in -

"responsible" positions in a major international company, to make some moral and intellectual sense of that

exper~ence. In taking this approach to that problem, my , - -

own biographical development parallels that of an

increasing number of scientific and technical workers.

I have to hand, for example, two postgraduate

dissertations by ex-programmers (Cummings 1978 (63);, - , . 1 " Green~aum 1978 (,q )',) " dealing with changes in data processing work and the automation of clerical work, and .

adopting the kind of view that has been put forwar~, with . " -

widespread effect, by Harry Braverman (Braverman 1974 , ,

(!5 )')', My own attack shares the focus on "the 1abour-

1 Wherev e r possible I shall give brief referenc e s in text, to minimise the use of footnotes. Where relevant, I shall give the date of publication after the author ' s name. Works by Marx will have a short title L~E~!~~L

Q!~~i~~~, ~ei~~L_r, et c.) in place of the dat e . The figures in brackets refer to th e composit e bibliography, wher~ full references may be found

.

I

pr ocess " which unite s these and many other r ecent line s of -

theoret ical work by r adica l s and marxis ts. It di tfers ,

however , in concen tra t ing l e ss on historical ana l ys i s of - -

change s in spec if ic l abour-proc e s se s and in the composi tion -

of capital, and mor e on the forms of knowl edge-production - - -

within which labour-process e s in monopoly capitalism a r e

located. It ~s thus less a thesis in marxist economics

than in marxist ph i losphy.

I use this t erm in broadly the sense g~ven to it by - . \ .

Louis Althusser. To quote Norman Ger as' excellent

analysis of Althusser's marx~sm:

for Althuss er, Marxist philosophy is a "theory of the di f fer ential nature of theoretical formations and the ir history , that is, a theory of epis temological history, II or, what comes to the same thing, "the the ory of the history of the production of knowl edge ." It is, in short, "the theory of science and of the history of science." (Geras (66).)

My use of the "labour-process" concept, then, ~s directed towards an analysis of the production of knowl edge in

monopoly capitalism. Being predominantly philosophy, in

this Althusserran sense, the study is also marxist history

~n a corresponding sense: the theoretical analysis of - -prac~ices in their specificity and relation to one-another

in the social formation. The specific practice analysed .. -

is Operational (or Operations) Research, and it ~s the specificity of this self-designa t ed science in its

- - -

relations with managerial and managed practices that I wish

to show clearly.

My approach ~s related to a numb er of important

problematics within marxist and non-marxist theory. It ~s - -

"history and philosophy of science", for example; it is an

approach to "theory and practice", and to "science and ..

\I

ideology"; and it 1S a product of debates over the last ten

years or so on "social r esponsibil ity in sc i ence", "sc ience

and society", and "workers ' sel f-managemen t in science",

It works at a l eve l, however , that is less abstract than

some of the major theoretical positions in thes e areas, -

while at the same time being at a higher level of abstraction -

than most of the debate on, say, "social responsibility", . .

By virtue of both these r e lations, I think that the study - -

makes special contributions, but at the cost of raising some questions in an unfamiliar form and through concepts that

are effectively new ones. I shall say more of this problem

in chapter 1, but since it is constituted partly as the

personal level I want to sketch brief ly how I came to take

this approach to operational research.

Since 1967, when I graduated as a chemical eng1neer, -

I have spent four and a half years employed in the chemical

< industry, five years as a full-time postgraduate student, -

and a year and a half unemployed. It is this last, most ..

recent, period that has seen the production of the present -

study. An inclination towards the theoretical, and an - -

inability (for which I am duly thankful) to internalise the values of money, led to the end of my first spell as an

emploY2e. After two years' worK as a chemical engineer I - -

retreated to academia in a search for my roots, which I -

thought might be found by doing an MSc in the philosophy

of SC1ence. I was wrong, but the place - Sussex University - .

in 1969 - was right. Over five years my intellectual approach changed, as my sense of the political developed.

- -

Having started as a person who thought that with a little -

bit more mathematics (and some systems theory on the side)

the wor ld wou l d be OK, I l eft Sussex in 1974 wi t h a more-or--

l es s complete f irst draf t of a critique of managemen t sC1ence -

as "technical r a tional ity". I had been active i n t he

British Socie ty f or Social Re sp onsib i l ity in Scienc e , and

through this bec ame one of the origina l members of the -

editorial collective of Radi ca l Sc i ence J ourna l. Armed with

this sens e of political identity and an analysis of the place

of science as ideology, I got another job - as an Operational Re s earch analyst.

In and around the obligatory 37~ hours attend.'lllce at

the workplace 2 I was committed to a numb er of othe r things. -

I was active 1n my Branch of the "militant" white-collar

un1on, ASTMS, serving as Health and Safety Officer and editor

of the monthly newsletter. I was also trying to develop

working relationships with others (mostly academics) interested in similar theoretical questions to myself, and

- -

to write a novellistic account of life as a middl e-management

technical specialist. And I was struggling to put the - -

politics of personal relations into practical shape, living -

with a woman, a young child, and a mortgage in a big city -

to which we were foreigners. The contradictions were ve ry -

intense and eventually somethip~ had to go. I resigned my -job. That experience was traumatic, but it haR propelled

- -

IT,y work since then in a very creative and productive way.

On one hand, I have been involved - as an 'operational' . -

research worker, in a sense that I will explain as the study -

proceeds - in a Res earch Co-operative composed of academics

and shop-stewards employed by my ex-employer. On the other, .

I have pulled togethe r my previous draft, my subsequent

2 Appendix lV gives a bri ef p e rson a l a ccount of work

as an OR an a ly st . . IV

I

I

.I

exper~ence ~n OR, and some current idea s in marxist and

socia list thinking, to produce a thesis that is far more -

worthwhile than it could have been if completed in an academic

environment. These two commitments over the past year and a -

hal f have contributed to each other ~n a very dynamic and intense ly satisfying way.

One way of describing this study, then, would be to call

it an effort of what C. Wright Mills called "the sociological -

imagination". The essence of this is to try to connect - - -

"public issues" with "private troubles", and thus to produce

a place for knowledge-proaucing practice in the political life

of modern societies. This study falls somewhere between the

two extremes. While some of its themes are certainly public -

issues of a sort - the problem of science and politics itself, -

for example - the analysis is not, by and large, conducted at -

a State or international level and thus, in today's world, . -

many public issues must escape it. On the other hand, the

theory of the persona! ' (~s a theoretic~l form~lation of . -

"private" troubles) is very underdeveloped in this study -as, indeed, it is generally. Thus the connection in knowledge

-

between the personal and the public is for the most part

"external" both theoretically and practically, to the argument

present:ed in these pages. Nevertheless, I make no excuse for . -

introducing occasional "personal" details into an "academic"

work.

SOURCES AND LIMITATIONS

Given the highly theoretical nature of the present study, -

it seems best to begin by indicating some of the major sources of ideas worked in it. I mention in this section only

- .

published work; personal influences are acknowledged later

For a numb er of years, Raymond Williams ' work on " -

"culture " has been a source of inspiration and insight for me ,

especially Cul ture and Socie ty , The Long Revolution, and Th e

Country and the City . (Wi lliams (\~ , \'\0, \Q3).) Reading the latter book during my (over-extended) lunch hours at work (in alternation with Braverman's book) was one of the things that he lped to keep me marginally sane. In the terms of my

discussion, however, it is ideology rather than theory that

this source has contributed to the pre sent work, especially

the deep sense of commitment, as an intellectual, to a

personal and a class cultural history. The clues which

have helped me turn my interest in "culture" into some kind

of theory have come from elsewhere. Most directly, there -

~s Terry Eagleton's criticism of literary criticism, in -

Criticism and Ideology {Eagleton (1,8).)., Despite - or perhaps because of - its "theoreticist" tendencies, this

-

book gave me the push that was necessary to begin formulating

the notion of conceptual (theoretical and ideological) , production, in a rigorous marxian sense. This concept, plus

the division of scientific ideology into three regions or - -

levels used in this study, show the most direct influence of

Eagleton's approach. Less directly, Lucien Seve's formulation - -

of the problem of a theory of human personality has helped

me make the distinction between "the systems approach" and the -

"measurement" approach in OR. Seve discusses the proulem of

"a science of the singular" in Marxism and the Theory of -

Human Personality (S~ve (166).). Jurgen Habermas' article, "Technology and Science as

- -

'Ideology'" (Habermas (103).) was for a number of years the -

main source of my substantive criticisms of operational

research, and although superseded in this role, the influence

remains in the way that I define th e 'material', as the unity

.

"'.

of technical and subjective structures . As it now s t ands , the theory of ideology in this study owes more to Louis

Althusser, particularly the summary of concepts in the -

Glossary of Reading Capita l (Al thuss er (\~ ).). The article "Contradic tion and Overde t ermination" (AI thusser (14 ).) ,was my first introduction to some of the problems that I have

tried to tackle, at a different l eve l, through the concept

of entrenchment. The nec essity for a clear treatment of

ideology in management science was made app areri t to me by

what I now see as the incompleteness of Alfred Sohn-Re thel's

work in ma terialist epistemology, leading to his assessment 0

Taylor's "scientific management" in articles such as "The -

Dual Economics of Transition" and "Mental and Manual Labour

in Marxism" (Sohn-Rethel (161l, \70 ) .) . This work points to the -

importance of the socialisation of labour as a concept in the -

analysis of the relations of science and capital, and in this

sense it has been formative in the p~oduction of my analysis of operational research. A new and, for me, crucial dimension

was given to this kind of analysis by the Brighton Labour - -

Process Group's discussion of the capitalist labour-process

{Brighton Group {!6 ).)and their work on ITT (Creed) . , These have been the main non-OR sources of the theoretical

object of this st~dy. -The relation between this theoret~cal ..

work and the study's real object, operational research - -practice, was (until I too~,: a job as an OR worke~) mainly

-

mediated through the published OR literature. That is, - .

most of the "data" of this study are t ex tual data, derived -

from standard works on OR, review articles, and the OR journals. This 1S ~ppropri~te to the main level of anlysis in the present study, as a retheorisation of the theory of OR. Even

-

though most of the data appearing in my text are of this kind,

however, the way that they are structured rests on more than

"ii

I . the literatur e . At the outs e t, my r e search focussed on the

growth of OR as a "profession", and as par t of this approach

I carried out unstructured interviews with about thirty

people, both "figure s" and members of industria l OR groups,

over the period .1971-72. They are listed in Appendix V. - -

I sat in on a number of the special cours e s run by the .

Department of OR at Sussex University over the same per iod,

for which I have to thank Professor Rivett, who was -

interested in the idea of a historical study of OR and made

it possible for me to meet many of the people whom I

inter..:riewed,. As a student member of the Operational Research .

Society from 1970-74 I attended occasional meetings of the

Society, and received the internal bulletins which are sent -

to members in addition to the Operational Re search Quarterly. Though these other sources are not cited often in the study,

they constitute a much wider background against which my

comments on the formal texts of OR are set. Since leaving

Sussex University in 1974 I have added to this background - - . (though it was very much "foreground", at the time) ,my

.

direct experience as a OR worker in an industrial OR group. -

A short account of this appears as Appendix TV. -

One obvious limitation that is imposed on this study

by these sources is that it cannot deal with ideology i~ its intersection with the collective biography of OR workers;

this would have demanded a much more extensive soliciting .

of views and collection of statistics. Little can be said,

then, about the class consciousness of OR workers except - -

to the extent that it figures in the literature. Most of -

the limitations of this study have been theoretically imposed

It does not attempt international comparisons, nor does it

attempt to trace the development of OR applications, techniques . .

and organisation, and both of th ese for the same reason: the

viii

ana l ysi s of such phenomena r e qu~res an understanding of -

economi cs (in the f orm of a histor y of monopoly capita l s ~nce the turn of t he century) tha t I do not have . Nor have I

- -

t ri ed to link the ana l ysi s o f OR id eology to an ana l ys is

of dominant s tructures in economic, political, and gene r a l

ideology. This would have been too large a task given the -

current state of cultural theory in Britain.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis has been ~n process for eight years, and ~n

that time I have had a lot of help. All that I can do here

~s to name those people whose contributions have been direct

enough for me to identify them. The person who started me - ..

off on the trail of operational research, as an object of research, was Gary Werskey. He pointed out the connection

-

between the Left scientists' movement of the inter-war years,

in which I had a current interest, and OR, as a practice with

a historical relation to systems theory and cybernetics. Gary's

suggestion was the beginning of a road that turned my

technocratic fascination into socialist critique.

While writing the earliest draft of this thesis I

workeG, over a couple of years, with Jonathan Rosenhead and - -

others on a pamphlet dealing with s e lf-management and job-enrichment. In hindsight I can see that our ideas rn OR

. -

have mutually influenced each other, though at the time it . --

was his friendship that I was aware of and valued. Among

other things, it was Jonathan who asked me if I was really -

serious when I talked about "organisations" as dead labour,

and thus pushed me to make one of the most useful conc epts in -

this critique of OR as ideology. John Mepham's analysis of

Marx's theory of ideology was crucial at a certain stage ,

and if mov1ng away from Brighton lias made it difficult for me -

to have as f rui tful a relationsh ip with him as I would have ..

-

liked (as with some others , no tably Robin Hu rray and the late - .

Sigurd Zienau), ne verthe l es s thanks are du e for he lp and interest.

After mov1ng to Manchester, my theore tical work might

have been totally swamped by my pa id employment if it had not

have been for Ken Green and Rod Coombes. Working with them

over the past two years in the ICI Labour Process Study Group

has been very productive and in var10US ways they have made .

quite direct contribution ~: Ken V1a our joint presentation on chemical process design at the 1977 Communist University of

.

London, which stimulated a lot of my thinking on ideological . .

production, and Rod through discussions on the concept of

forces of production. In recent months Edward Yoxen and Les . .

Levidov have read chapters in draft and made comments which

have led me to revise and improve my analysis of "objectivity". For various reasons, to do with circumstances and personality,

-

I have tended to "write myself into a corner" as my ideas on

OR have suddenly developed over the last couple of years, and - .

discussions with these named people over that period have . .

done something to keep me 1n touch with people who have -

other things on their minds thda theoretical analyses of OR.

The collective of Radical Scienc e Journal was where

much of my early thinking was shaped, and a more dibtant

connection S1nce moving to Manchester has nevertheless

continued to give me solidarity and encouragement. I want - .

particularly to mention Margot Waddell for the sense of

comradely purpose and personal support that I have had from

her since the beginning of RSJ and the preceding self-mangement -

conference. Bob Young, as another long-standing member of the

RSJ collective, has been a friend and comradely critic of my IXa

ideas on Scientific Hanagement and Mangement Scienc e ; he -

r ead and cri t ici sed most o f the penu l t i mate dra ft - and I' ve

done a ll I can, Bob! Brian Easlea has had perhaps the mos t

radica l influenc e of a ll. I t ~vas he who introdu ced the debate

be t ween Kuhn and Popper in t o an otherwi se stultifying

atmosphere of logical pos i tivism in my MS c year and , mo r e to

the point, weaned me f rom my t echnocrati c addiction with his

deeply-f e lt anti-reductionism and desire to see scienc e as a -

means of liberation. Roy McLeod, my superv1sor, has prodded me into

various major and mLnor moclifications of s tyle and organisation, for which I am thankful. All of the

influences on the form and conent of this study in recent

months have not, however, resulted in the clarity and . .

succinctness of exposition that my readers - and my

argument - deserve. This is, of course, my responsibility;

but in weighing this against the cost of yet further

prolongation I am sure that the thesis is better completed

than left in draft. One of the immediate e ffects of this . -

trade-off, however, has been that my typist, Mary Peak,

hasn't found it an easy piece of work. I offer her my

apologies for this, and my thanks for having nevertheless

seen it through at a time whict could not have been less

convenient for her.

Like any PhD thesis, this is a personal stateffitnt -

though perhaps more self-consciously so than most. The only

way to complete these acknowledgements, then, is to say that

having achieved this statement - and having lived off my wife 's -

income for a significant part of the time - I have become a - - .

nLcer person to live with (except as the deadline approached very close)! Pauline and Ben were the reasons why I left my

x

(unl iveable ) ,work at leI, and I hope that th e satisfaction I have from this completed study serves to show my thanks to them

-

for meaning that much to me .

. date to snuggle, dare to gr~n.

xi

PART 1

THE PROBLEM OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

THE HISTORY OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

Scientists and others have made many grand claims concern1ng .

the significance of science in the development of humanity.

The management SC1ences are not among the most modest in

this respec t:

Man do,es not generally work well with his fellow man in relations saturated with authority and . dependence, with control and subordination, even though these have been the predominant human relations in the past. He works much better when he is teamed with his fellow man in coping with an objective, understandable, external environment. That will be more his situation as the new . techniques of decision making come into wide use. (Simon 1960 (t66), 49.) .

In two respects this statement is typical of many that have - .' . .

been made about management science, and Operational Research - . .

1n particular. It treats the predominant "human" relations

of "the past" as problematic, from the point of view of

productive collaboration of "fellow men", and in this it .

aligns itself with a broad trend in liberal ideology. It

also ~')':ojects developing "sciences" of management (and the batteries of techniq~e that they generate) as means of enhanced social control, while implying that these practices

and techniques are themselves neutral - or even

intrinsically antagonistic - with respect to relations of

"authority and dependence, control and subordination".

In this study I 'want to show that such V1ews are mistaken

or, more accurately, ideological. I . shall take Operational

Research as an intellectual and managerial phenomenon and

show how it may be appr oached theore tica lly in such a way -

that two aspects are highlighted and r e lated to each o th er .

On one hand, there are a numb er of significant innovations , 1'" 1 ' 11 1mp 1C1t 1n OR. On the other , OR r ep roduces 1nterna y

the forms of the political status quo. It is not neutral,

in any strong and practically-effective sense. Science -- . .

OR in particular - creates new possibilities in production

and politics, and at the same time is implicated in the

reproduction of historical constraints on "human"

development. In this study 'I shall show OR, a SC1ence, 1S

ideological and how this contradictory unity carr1es a

determinate politics.

The problem of OR, as a specific form of the problem of

science in relation to society, is constituted for this

study in terms such as these:

1

On the one hand, inside the factory, the individual labourer and the individual scientist alike can work only as part of a team. They can no longer do individual jobs in function of individual inclinations, regardless of the activities of other members of the team. Their jobs have become part of a co-operative totality which, potentially, once capitalism has been superc eded by the reign of the associated producers, will open up undreamt of possibilities for the development of individual talents . and capacities tC0, precisely because this tigh level of objective co-operation of . labour . immensely widens the general scope of human endeavour and potential self-development.

On the other hand, between factories, bralches of industry, countries, the more the centralization of capital advances, the more technical and economic integration advances also, creat ing closer and clo'ser bonds of objective co-operation between producers who are still living hundreds if not thousands of miles apart. In this way too,

WOR W is an internationally accepted abbreviation for both Operational Research (the original Briti s h term) and Operations Research (its American v ariant.) I shall use this abbreviat e d form throughout. The term 'operational' research has a distinct connotation, which I shall explain in the text.

2.

ca~italism pre par e s t he ground [or both the real un1ty of the _human race and the r ea l universa lity of the individual, made materia lly possib l e by this obj ective socialisation of l abour. (Mande l 19 76 (100 ), 9L~6 .)

" -

It.is the obj ective socialisation of l abour under capital - .'

that provide s at once a basi s (both a place and a content ) for OR as an innovation and the conditions of its

conservati sm as politics. The fact of the increasing -

socialisation of labour of all kinds, and the fact that

this deve lopmen t of the forces of production is a

contradictory development, produc e s the place for a -scientifi~ practice which attempts to produce a

-

corresponding subj ective socialisation of labour. This 1S -

. the root of OR's radicalism. The fact that this

development in the forces of production is an aspect of -

real subordination - an aspect of the history of classes 1n -

capitalism - produces the contradictions, and thus the . - -

specific form of subjective socialisation that is attempted. This is OR's conservatism.

I do not want to show merely that OR is functional for -

capitalist social development. Indeed, in the past ten

years or so, those who subscribe to the radical tradition -

in OR have expressed an increasing sense of anguish a~ . -

their profession has failed to prove itself functional to

the extent that they had ~xpected of it. I shall try to

show that this phenomenon in OR culture has its roots 1n the - -

contradictory nature of OR, as a structure within the forces

of monopoly capitalist production. In the course of

develqping a t~eoretical problematic adequate to this task -

we shall logically constitute a mode of research -

'operational' research I shall call it, as distinct from

OR - of which OR is a specific historical form. This 3

the ore tical deve lopme nt is part of an a tt empt to identify pos sibilities f or r evolut ionary deve lopment within t he

sphere of 'operat ional ' research. I shall try to show how --

a materialist concept of scientific practice can be us ed -

to cut through some of the contradictory ideological

structures of OR, making a rigorous distinction be tween - -

socia l control - a condition of society, as such - and

class domination, and thus to make clear what OR shows of

the relations of science, ideology and politics in the

history of capitalism.

This introductory chapter is divided into two sections. In -

the first of these I shall look at some ideas that have - .

been put forward concerning the historical novelty, or

non-novelty, or OR. My ~ain purpose in this is to sketch out something of the ideological ambience of OR, its sense

-

of historical stature. As a basis for a theoretically -

ordered history of OR, however, we shall find relatively

little in these ideas. In the second section, therefore,

I shall discuss my response to this problem, the concept of

'operational' research. This is not only a solution to an -

intellectual problem~ posed by the inadequacy of OR's own historians' attempts. It is aLso a solution of a problem

- .

of political practice at the personal level. The

development of 'operational' research has been a r ~ al - , -

historical deve lopment, taking place in my own life as part

of the intersection of a number of broad practices on the

Left over the past ten years or so. In outlining the themes

to be pursued in the course of this study I shall start --

wherever I can from this personal basis; and these themes --

are,therefore, also stories. As stories of real events they

can have no definite end, and the "solution" represented by

4

'operational' research , by the concept of OR that I shall

produce, and by the marxist problematic of 'practice' that

this study constitutes, is thus only an interim solution.

If the development of 'opera tional' r esearch outlined in -

this ch apter ~s so far mainly an abstractly theoretical developmen t, it also has logical - and to some extent

material - connections with real historical projects within -

the class struggle in capitalism.

THE NOVELTY OF OR

A manager, whose part in the rationalisation of British

capital at the State level has been not inconsiderable,

had this to say of the novelty of OR: -

the conception of applying scientific techniques to . management has been _a totally new one. It _is true that management has seen a need for research and development scientists for many years now, and that over the years new techniques such as financial analysis and personnel managment have been absorbed into the overall scheme of things -but the research and development scientist is only marginally concerned with the management process, and the accountant became part of operational _ management just as did the factory or sales manager. The operational research worker is applying scientific discipline to changing the form of management and to

.providing new tools for managers. (Robens 1971 (lS7), viii.)

In this assessment, Lord Robens concurs with many of the -

uefinitions of OR that have been put forward since its

inception in the early months of the Second World W~r.2 OR, in this assessment, is essentially novel. Yet in its

attempt to develop as a profession, OR has frequently - -

referred to precursors going as far back as Ancient Greece.

2 Appendix 1 contains a selection of definitions of OR,

from British and American sources and spanning the period 1947-62.

5

In this s ection I shall argue tha t such vary~ng and -

contradictory reconstructions of OR imply more of a s ense Of historical occas~on than any cl ear concept of historical place.

In the Second World War the role of scientists was extended

beyond the traditional confines of the laboratory. A

number of eminent British men of science, practitioners and -

statemen, had been involved in the inception of radar as a

means of defence against the threat of air attack by the

~ermans. \The nature of their involvrnent was such that, -

when radar was put into the field as an operational weapon,

it seemed natural for scientists to help in the solution of

problems that arose in this context, requiring organisational

as well as technological ch~nges. I do not intend to go into 3 the details of wartime developments. Suffice it to say

-

that by the end of the war this form of practice was

widespread within all arms of the ~orces, in Britain and the USA, and the term operational research' (or operations research) ,was used to designate science extended beyond the context of in~ention to the context of innovation. 4

-

By all accounts the significance of OR, as an innovation

",

3 S~e, for example, Bjacke~~ ,1941 (t,), HMSO 1963 ( ), Wadding~on 1973 (ISO), Crowther and Whiddington 1947 (62 ), Bibliography in McCloskey and Trefethen 1954 (IZ'), Radnor and Mylan 196 8 (149). These sources all refer to the ninternal" developm e nt of OR. Edward Yoxen has pointed out to me ~he importance of loca~ing OR as a phenomenon of ~he general social and economic recomposition of capital tha~ took place in, and was obscured by, the Second World War and the subsequent -recoveryn. This is correct; but I have been unable to cover this aspect in the present study. 4 These terms are used in a special sense; see ~he Glossary.

6

itself, was cons iderabl e . Thus:

The Se cond Wo r hlWar f orms a watershed in the progress and or ganisation of science. Six important deve lopments or devices aros e or gr ew to sta ture becaus e of t he war. They wer e a tomic ene r gy , r adar, tocke t propuLsion, j e t pr opul sion, automa tion and operational research. (Ha r t cup 1 970 (I Oq ), c h . 1.)

At the same time as reflecting a general assessment, this

comment also shows the difficulty that conventional modes

of thinking have in coming to grips with OR. As a form --

of science rather than a content, it stands at a distance

from its companions in this list of honour; not only the

"devices" but also the other "developments" - atoillic power and automation: Definitions of OR have at their core two

-

attributes: its scientific nature, and its severely practical

goal. It ~s the former that marks it off from the other

phenomena ~n Hartcup's list: OR is a practice, a form of

sCLence, not a mere system of hardware nor even a _

"body of knowledge" or technique. But it is the latter

that opens up the gaps in'the theory and ideology of

SCLence that are so apparent in OR, and which this study

aims to map.

"Executives", "managers", "those in control" - here is the

centre of OR. Take this samr~e of definitions, spanning two decades:

5

- -

the scientific study of aspects of a functioning system, having the aim of providing those responsible for execution with a quantitative basis for decisions, (Goldsmith and Innes 1947 (q\ ),15.) . the application of scientific methods, techniques and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the . operations with optimum solutions to the problems. -(Churchman, Ackoff and Arnoff 1957 (&2)~ 8-9.)5

This book is one of the major texts of OR methodology. Throughout this study I shall refer to it by the abbreviation "CAA"

7

. the application o f th methods of SC1ence to comp l ex problems ar ising in the direction and manag ment o f l arge sy stems of men , mach ines , materia ls and money in i ndus try , business , gov rnment and defence . The distinc tive approach is t o deve l op a sc i ent if i c mod e l o f the sys t em , incorporating meas ur emen t s o f chance and ris k , with which to predic t and compare th outc omes of a lte rnat ive deci sions , strategies or con t r ols. Th e pur po se is to he lp management de t ermi ne i ts po licy and act ions scien t i f i ca lly. . 6 (Oper a tiona l Re search Socie ty 1962, ORQ 13 (3), 282~) . - .

The author of this l as t de finit i on, Stafford Beer, brings

the point - and the cha llenge to orthodoxy in scientific

ideology - home quit e bluntly: - .

The OR man is pa id by the management to help it decisions; he i s not paid to write PhD thes es. the management is comp ell ed to make a decision tomorrow, it is incompe t ent in OR to reply that scientific integrity demand s a six-month study. (B e e r 1 9 6 6 (2.5 ), 184 )

make If

its

It is this integration of OR within the relations of - -

management - r e lations of "control and subordination",

to use Simon's ideological phrase 1n a strict sense -

that give OR its special interest to historians, and

its special difficulties 1n finding an adequate theory

and ideology to . support its practice.

Ancestors of the modern OR scientist claimed in the

literature include Archimedes. Leonardo do Vinci, Galileo - . 7

and Sir Isaac Newton. In the USA, Thomas Alva Edison

joins the list. 8 Less distant precursors of OR incl~de a number of examples of scientists' work from ~he ~irst

6 ~Q r efe rs to t h e Q~~!~~~_~~~~~~_Q~~~~EI~L the publicat ion of t h e Opera t ion a l Res ea rch Soci et y. I shall us e th is abbr e vi a tion th r ou ghout. 7 See Wansbrough-Jones 1947 (IBZ), 321, and HMSO 1963 ( lot ), xvi i 8

Trefethen 1954 (/76), 4. Also Whitmore 1953 (/tlT).

World War . 9 But many of the cases cited in the early

post-war debate on OR 1n Britain were taken from civilian -

activities in the State sector. The work of the

co-operative Research Associations seems genera lly to have 10 been regarded as prototype OR. It involved the

development of quantitative models of social systems, and

was commissioned in "the national interest", and in both

thes e respects it ex.emplified many scientists' aspirations.

Such cases would not be held up nowadays. A' special body - .

of technique has developed (initially under the influence of the terldency towards abstract theory shown in the USA) that goes well beyond statistics, so th~t early links between OR and various forms of "field" research are now

-

much less central. But apart from this technical shift,

such examples are too unglamorous to serve nowadays as - --

paradigms of the close science/management relationship .. 4

at "top" levels that OR professionals aspire to.

It is crucial to locate the relationship between OR and - -

Taylorism (Scientific Management) in constructing a history of OR. For all its claims to a tradition of noble

ante~edents, OR is still not the practice that its

9 Gunnery research und e r AV Hill is on e such case: Hill 1960 (112). Another is the work of Lanchester on a ma thema tical theory of C(.JI:'Iba t (Lanchester 1916 (11.5).). It is interesting to note that, outside the military . spher e of OR, the mathematical formalism of Lanchester's work has endeared it to the American rather than the British Profession; the Operations Research Society of America awards an annual prize in Lanchester's honour. 10

Work by Pickard (of the Cotton Industry Research Association) on statistical methods in industry, and by Adams . (of the Road Research Laboratory) on road traffic, typical of references in early editions of the E~.~!.:!.~!!.~!_~~..~~.!!._2~~.!.~.L!LL The ORQ. was the world's first OR journal, founded as the orga;:;-of the Operational Research Club which preceded the OR Society and laid the foundations of professional organisation in Britain.

q

are

practitioners wou ld like it to he , and this has a gr at

dea l to do with the we ll -establi shed place of Taylori sm

as representative of Science in manageri a l practice:

in the main it IORI has been s 10\V' to gain acc el?tanc e and its application has progr essed only tard~ly . In industry . . . approache s of this typ e had fr equently been attempted over the years in different ~uises , by people varying in compe t enc e , and with

~ndifferent r esult s . Moreover , i gnorance as to exactly what was mean t by the old and somewhat misleading term " sc i entific managemen t" had created some deep seated prejudices and suspicions of any function including the work "scientific" in its definition. (Brough 1958 (~8 )~ 131.)

-

Brough's tendency is to :ast the problem as an ideological

one - a case of a "bad press" for science thanks to

mis~nderst~nding on the p~rt of pr e~io~s "scienti"sts" and managers. Certainly there is something in this. But

.

equally, some of OR's contradictions - those, I ' shall . .' ..

argue, that account most fundamentally for OR's "tardy"

progress - arise out of the same conditions that gave a

place and content to Scientific Management. It is at this

level of analysis that the relation between OR and

Taylorism needs to be clearly thought.

. .

Generally we see a vacillation between two positions; .

straightforward accept~nce of the Taylorist inheritance: . .

Althou~h the name is relatively new, research at the operat~onal level is not new, of course. Taylor and his followers, in their time-and-motion Ptudies, have investigated a .small part of the whole :leld; -traffic engineers have been working on another part; systems engineers encroach on it, and so on. Perhaps the most useful s e rvice the new term "operational research" has per f ormed is to emphasise the essential unity of the whol e field. (Morse 1954

part of a wide r management-workers group . Instead, time -and-motion study has too of t en aroused the deepest "Luddite hatr eds " in th e worker. OR works within a diffe r ent co nt ex t. (Goldsmith 1948 ( QO ), 12.)

This rej ection on the par t of OR's early socialis t protagonists involved some contortions when it came to

writing history. JG Crowther , a writer clos e ly associated

with many of the wartime founder of OR, wrote ~n later years . .. - .

Babbage ~erce ived that ca lcula tion could be app1ie~ in an increas ingly comprehensive way to the operat ~on of machinery , and to the whol e industrial and commercial process . In his EconomE of Machinery published in 1828, he showed h ow tle pr~nciples of calculation could be used to discover the most efficient way of carrying out an industri a l ~rocess. Thisjs an example o f what today is call ed operational research. He for esaw the principle s of sC1entific industry of the future. Babbage promises to be to the a~e of automation what Newton was to the age of navigat10n. . . (Crowther 1969 (60), 196.)

-

As Crowther describes it, Babbages' contribution - as .'

abstract mathematical calculation of "the ' most efficient

way" - is more closely akin to Scientific Management than -

to OR. OR was and is more than this. The basis of OR's -

success in the war years was the contribution that it made

to the implementation of improved methods of operation. - .

This grew from the practical involvement of scientific -

workers in design, operating and decision-making practices, . - -

and from the attempt to "model" the interaction of su,--h

contexts. As a member of the Left scientists' movement

of the 30's and 40's, Crowther cer tainly knew of Taylorism

and shared the movement's rejection of its principles and methods, and his scientistic attempt to construct a

, ,

"scientific" history for OR is overde termined by this

ideological set against Tay1orism: Taylorism was unfit to

inherit the mantle of such an eminent scientist as . . -

Babbage. Unwilling to see the common ground that OR shares

with Taylorism in the deve lopment of science under

11

capitalism, Crowther was f ore d to postulate a t enu ous

connec tion between Babbage and OR, unmedi a t ed by Scientific

Managemen t .

American writers have had less difficulty accepting the -

connection between Taylorism and OR. Simon argues:

With

Except in matter of de gree ( f or example operations researchers t end to use rather high-powered mathematics) it is not clear that operations research embodies any philosophy dif fe rent fr om that of scientific management. Charles Babbage and Frederick Taylor will have to be made, r e troact1ve ly, charter members of the operations r esearch societies. (Simon 1960 (166), 14.) \ . . . -a professional axe to grind (a s a behavioural

scientist), Simon attacks "scientific method" as a demarcation criterion:

A more understandable and defensible definition of operations research is a sociological one. Operations research is a movement that, emerging out of the military needs of the Second World War, has brought the decision-making problems _of management within the range of interest _of large numbers of .natural scientists and, particularly, of mathematicians and statisticians. The operations _research scientists soon joined forces with mathematical economists who had. come into the same area - to the mutual benefit of both groups. And by now there has been widespread fraternisation between the exponents of the "new" management science and men _trained in the earlier tradit10ns of 'scientific management and industrial engineering. No meaningful line can be drawn any more to demarcate operat10ns research from scientific management or scientific management from management science. (QE cit, 15.)

I think that Simon goes t~o far. There are de facto ----

lines drawn between OR and industrial engineering/work . .

study, as between OR and many other "professions". These - -

professional boundaries vary from context to context,

organisation to organisation, country to country; and

many of them are not rational. However, it is not my concern in this study to arbitrate in such professional

- .

demarcation disputes, but to show that the difference

between OR and Scientific Management as "sciences" of \2.

capita li s t managemen t can be s pecified , in t erms of ways

in which OR goes beyond Taylorism in its cl as sical forms .

This diffe rence is closely r e lated to the op eration

within OR of what is called "the sys t ems approach", and

it is "systems" thinkers who have come clos est to giving -

a historical characterisation of the relation between

OR and Taylorism. Speaking of "management science",

practically synonymous with "OR", Churchman insists on the

distinction:

Concentration on e{~iciency ~ se may be a very inefficient way to manage a system, from the overall point of view. In other words, the "one best wayii may not be the optimal way for the whole system4 This opposition to "scientific management ll sometimes uses a very similar name, "management science", but the two philsophies are poles apart. (Churchman 1968 (48 ), 18.)

A historical basis of this opposition is spelled out by -

Ackoff, as the theory of the "second industrial revolution": - - -

In the first industrial revolution, the knowledge and understanding of the processes to be mechanised were called industrial engineering. Again, in the second industrial revolution, _which began in the late thirties, scientists and engineers . from a variety of disci~lines rose to the challenge. The interdisciplinary actiVity which resulted came to be known as operational research or OR. As operational research and the new technology developed, additional fields of related study emerged; these included information theory, decision theory, control theory, cybernetics, and general systems theory ..

. -

Thus OR bears the same relation to the second industrial revolution as industrial engineering to the first. (Ackoff 1970 ( e )~ 24)

The first industrial revolution

was made possible by the development of machines that were capable of replacing man and beast as sources of physical work. The development of the relevant technology and its effective use in production processes required knowledge and understanding of the nature of physical work, ie what aspects of it could and could not be efficiently mechanised, and how men and machines could separately and collectively work together. At about the turn of this century, the need for

\3

mechdnization attract ed scientist s and ngineers [rom a vari e ty of di sciplines whose interests covered some aspects of the work process . As a result, work study was initiated . (Op. cit. 1 - 2 ) - -

- -

The second industrial revolution (" still in its infancy") -

was "started by two t echnologica l deve lopments": machine s

that could generate symbols (ie , automati c "measuring" and "obs erving" instruments),. and machine s that could proc ess symbols (computers.)

It will not be possible Ln this study to develop an

adequate theory on the g~ ound marked out by these statement s~1 -

What I shall try to do is to show clearly some differenc es

in form between the practices that Ackoff corre lates with

the two revolutions, but without showing how the places -

for such practices carne to exist. The differences in form

are not obvious: -

the classic efficiency _cult, which Taylorism has come to symbolise, remains the prevailing value of contemporary industry. _The majority _of those pursuing the s econd industrial revolution are as much obsessed wi th it as thos e who pursued the firs t and this includes many . operational research workers who . treat systems in much the same way as most industrial engineers treat jobs. (Trist 1973 (176),. 97.) .

Apologists of The Second Industrial Revolution would say -

that this LS due to the incompleteness of the Revolution; - -

socio-technical theorists would speak of "cultural 1ag'I - .

in the wake of a revolution in the mechanical apr~ratus of -

production. I shall analyse this dominance of t echnical "efficiency" in .OR as a phenomenon of contradiction.

The systems approach does carry some novel insights, but

11 Nevertheless, the direction that such an analysis

would take, as an extension of the pre sent study, is clear enough: it would n eed to be an analysis of forms of control and subordination of -the work process, as they have appear e d in the c ourse of capital accumulation and class struggle.

14

their gener a l s ubo rdin a tion within OR i s an aspect of the

contradicto ry f orm of the forc es of production i n OR ,

de t ermined as such by spec i fic histor ica l re l ations of

production. OR and Tay lo r i sm are re l a t ed because they

ar e both capita l i s t sciences of t he l abour process . They

are different becau se t hey occupy di f f er en t place s i n the - -

structure of capita l, which has its e l f deve loped ove r the . - -

half-century or so separa ting their practical origins.

In relation to OR's own mapp~ng of history, "the problem of

OR" is to make ~>ossible a characterisation of OR's

historical specificity (so grounding a clear sense ~n -

which Archimedes, Newton, et aI, were or were not doing OR) while at the same time not be ing seduced into a technological

-

reduction of history. My answer will be in the form of a

concept of 'practice ' that contains within it two structures.

Firstly, the material. It is within this structure that the - .

distinction between technique and non-technique lies.

And secondly; the historical. As a structure of concepts

of class relations, this both locates OR in relation to

its prehistory ~nd determi~es the un~vailability of . -

technological reductionism - or indeed any other form of -

reduc tionism - as a mode of ~~~p lana tion.

THE HISTORY OF 'OPERATIONAL' RESEARCH - -

'Operational' research, as a speci f ic mode of 'practice', . -

has been produced over a number of years ~n response to a . . .

-

number of theore tical and directly personal challenges -

and events. In the remainder of this chapter I shall be

trying to do two things with r e spect to this, the

conceptual object of this study. Most obviously, I shall be sketching the line s along wh i ch my argument deve lops in

1&

the subs equent pages. But I sh a ll also be trying to g1ve

a sense of the historical conditions in which such an

obj ec t come s to exist,as well as this can be done throu gh individual biography.

- -

After some initial theoretical r emarks on the relation

be tween 'OR' and 'operational' research and OR,I shall -

outline th e broad structure of this study. As for the -

more detail ed structure, I shall dea l with this in the

form of a number of theme s or stories, highlighting aspects

of " the a~~ lysis. In one respec t this study is the work of an "insider", and the insider story comes first. It

is also, clearly, "theoretical": so I shall next deal with -

the way 1.n which "new" and "old" concepts are articulated,

chapter by chapter. The three remaining themes might be

seen as personally appropriated forms of three well - -

established problematics of radical or marxist practice.

The first of these is the "praxis" story. The second is the -

"politics of technique" story. And the third is the "class" - -

story. It 1.S the working of all these together - as -

intellectual themes and ~sbiographic~l stories - that constitutes 'operational' research as a historical object.

SOME INITIAL THEORETICAL REMARKS

'Operational' research is a form of labour-process, of -

practice. It is a form of scientific production, and at -

the same time a form of ideological production. Its

material logic - its form as a system of forces of

production - is not merely conceptual (theoretical or -

ideological) production, but material transformation -the production and reproduction of soci~lly concrete,

-human and inanimate, physical and mental systems. In 16

attempting m.:1r x i st theor y of such an ob j ect we find on l y indirect support to hand. Mar xist literary cri tici sm ,

as theor y of ideologica l produc t i on, has an obj ec t that 1S predominan tly conceptua l. On the othe r hand, t he obj ect of conventiona l marxis t economi c t heory 1S only

secondarily t he produc tion of concepts. In both these

areas of theor y we can f ind many suggestive concepts, - .-

approaches, and even substantive analyses that r e l a t e

more or l e ss directly to the ana lysis of OR, as a f orm of -

'operational' res earch. But the great ma jority of theoretical work on thi c new object r emains to be done. It seems to me to be necessary, a t both a historical and a

personal leve l, to attempt to theoris e practices with a

predominant conceptual asp ect which have neverthel ess a -

real object that is ma terial - or rather, is approached by the practices ~ material. In this OR differs from, say,

" -

physics on one hand (which approaches its real object as if it were technical only) and literary production on the

-

other, which sees its world as that of "imagination".

The difficulty of analysing OR is increased by its own -

relative underdevelopment . As a young practice, it has -

engendered neither a generally current image that can be

take u for granted by theory as a starting point, nor any . .. ..

. extended body of critical literature to which we can r e fer. -

It is such conditions that allow the theorist of J.iterature

or economic production to deal f airly brie fly with matters -

of "showing", and move on to substantive analysis 1n

deve loped theoretical t erms. The absence of such conditions -in the analysis of OR is both cause and result of the real

underdevelopment of the object in relation to its professional and theore tical aspirations. As a consequence,

the pres ent study ha s to se t it se lf the t a rget of break i ng l7

the ground f or a mo~e developed marxist theory of the

intersection of scientific and pol itical pract ice .

Marx de scr ibes the re lation be tween the theory of the

general and the theory of the specific in these terms :

Wh enever ,,,,e speak . . of produc tion, we always have in mind production at a cer t a in sta~e of

. social deve lopment, or production by soc1al individuals . Henc e , it might seem that in . order to speak of production at all , we must either trace the his tor ica l process through its various phases, or dec lare at the outse t that we are dea ling with a certain historical period, as, . for example, with modern capitalist produc tion . .. . . Bu tall stages of produc tion have c ertain landmarks in common, CCllunon purpos e s. "Production in gene ral" is an abstraction, but it is . a rational abstraction, in so far as it

sin~les out and fixe s the common fea tures, thereby sav1ng repetition. Yet these gene ral or common features discove r ed by comparison constitute something very complex , whose constitutive elements have different destinations. Some of these elements belong to all epochs, others . are common to a few. (Marx, Grundrisse (1~'3), 28.)

. .

-It is this kind of relation that exists between 'operational' -

research (a concept of a general mode of scientific producti?n) and 'OR' (a concept of a specific historical form of practice.) A hi~tory of OR can be developed only to the extent that the former concept exists also; this 1S

.. -

where previous attempts at historical evaluations of OR . .

have. fallen down. It is through theorising the "different

destinations" of constitutive elements of 'operational'

research that we may spE~ulate on the possibility of distinct 'operational' sciences that do not share the

-

conservative politics of OR.

Something has to be said at this stage about the level of

abstraction of this analysis. Carchedi (4l) . .

distinguishes be twee n four l evels. Going from high to

low thes e are: the l evel of pure capital, the level of the

\6

I

I

socio-economic system, the l evel o f th e concrete socie ty,

and the conjunctural l eve l. (Q.P.. cit, 16-23) .. 12 Without necessarily endorsing Carchedi's theory of knowledge,

. ..

and without g01ng into i mportant but time-consuming

analysis, I shall make use of this kind of distinction.

In such t e rms , the pres ent study is constituted almost

entirely at the third level, the "concre te society" level.

My concept of 'practice' is specifically a concept of the . -

lower leve ls of analysis; in fact I shall speak of

the leve l of practice . Certainly, there are many things

that cannot be said about OR at this level, and I shall

try to point out these absences as their presence makes

itself felt.

Marx's distinction between the general and the specific .. ..

thus appears in this study as a distinction between orders

of practice, that is as a distinction within the level of

practice. OR is the ,lowest-order practice that we shall

deal with. My illustrations are taken from the practices .. .. ..

called Operational Research and Operations Research, and ..

from the more or less identical practice called Management

Science in the USA. Examples of methodological writing - '. -

are taken from British and American OR, but the examples ..

of 'professional' phenomena are almost entirely British in .. ..

origin. There is a higher order of practice conc~ituted .. ..

by "action" and "policy" sciences in general: science .. ..

policy research, industrial policy research, "action .. .

research", and so on; and also, in general, practices that

attempt to unite theory with practice - intellectuals'

12 Carch e di quotes Marx, writing of subject matter If ide a 11 y ref 1 e c ted a sin ami r r 0 r" ( Car c he d i (4-2). 1 8. )

pol itical 'practice , fo r examp l e . This obj ec t i s nbt explicitly c onstr~cted i n the present study , but many of my theore tical appr oaches to OR are applicabl e .

'Operational' research i s the highest order of pract ice

theor i sed in th i s study. It mi ght be sugges t ed ( the . -

argument goe s beyond the limits of this study) ,that 'operation~l' r e search is the highest order of sc~enc e , as such. Whil e staying clos e to the sp eci f ics of OR,

therefore , the study has wide implications within the

theory of science.

THE BROAD STRUCTURE OF THE ARGU}lliNT -

The analysis is divided into four parts. The two chapters

in this first part are intended to set out the general 4 _ _ _ .

structure (practical as well as a conceptual) ,within which -

the rest of the work proceeds. Chapter 1 emphasises the - -

problem, the way in which OR has become the object of -

such renegade analysis. Chapter 2 places more emphasis on 4 _

the solution; that is, the conceptual means by which the

problem is to be constituted in a workable form.

The second part, "Scientific Production ~n Society", - ,

beglus to develop both the problem and the solution. . .

Chapter 3 presents an analysis of the way ~n which the

'professional' discours e of OR locates OR ~n society,

while chapter 4 responds to this with an att empt to

describe OR in socie ty as a labour process . The fo cus in

chapter 3 is thus on ideology. It deals with four deeply -

entrenched structures of concepts-"science", "co-operation", - ,. . I

"efficiency" and "radicalism" - with the aim of showing two

things. ' First, the implicit politics of OR, as shown - . -

but rar e ly spoken in pro fe ssiona l discours e , and s econd, the 20

--

way ~n which my O~l problematic connect s in a demonstrabl e , i f historically to r tuous, way with some aspec t s of OR's

profes sional practice. Chapter 4 turns fr om th e "public

relations" fo cus to day-to-day practice . It consti tues a

description of OR in society at two l eve ls. Materially,

it sets out a basis for the analysis of society as

intersecting practices; and historica lly, it presents a

concept of the forces of production as determined by ..

specific relations of production. The former give s us

the means for describing the particular domination of

technique that appears in OR, while the latter t :'l '20rises

the place of this particular phenomenon, as a phenomenon

of class struggle in history.

The ma~n title of this study ~s "OR and the Forces of . -

Production", and the grounds for that discussion are laid, . .

obviously, in Part 2. Less obviously, Part 2 also sets the ..

terms for the secondary discussion: "a marxist analysis

of science and ideology". In Part 3 this discussion is

more intensively developed, as the question of "Objectivity and Subjectivity i~ a Science of Capitalist Management".

.. ..

On the basis of chapter 4's articulation of the material ..

form of OR knowledge, Part 3 turns to the analysis of OR .. -

ideology at the 'practical' level. Here, more than at the ..

'professional' level examined in chapter 3, t~e ideological contradictions of OR are present in an acute form ~ The

~ . ... ...

"systems approach" embodies a radical notion of . -

scientific method that places (collective) ,subjectivity . -

at the practical centre of objectivity, but this .. ..

methodologically radical tradition in 'practical' ideology

is overdetermined as political conservatism. Chapter 5 ..

analyse s this contradiction, as it appears in "the OR 2.1

Dilel1IDla ll and its determination t hrough the capi tali s t

hierarchical division of l abour. Although the systems

approach is the locus of the most s er~ous contradictions

of OR's practical ideology, it is not the dominant

ideological structure at this l eve l~ This place belongs to the ideology of measurement, which is dealt with in

-

Chapter 6. As a whole, Part 3 deals with the relations of -

Models and Managers. These two foci of theory and practice

in OR are reified forms of objecti~ity and s~bjectivity. Thus it is in this Part, that the study presents its

most detailed working ot a materialist theory of knowledge .

-

Part 4 draws together the threads of prev~ous chapters -

in discussing liThe Place of 'Operational" Research." -

Chapter 7 competes the work o.f chapters 5 and 6, for fhe . ..

purposes of this study, by analysing the relative

dominance of ("systems" and technique) approaches within . .

OR as a phenomenon of the real subordination of workers - ..

under capital. This analysis is accomplished through the

extension of two marxist conceptual structures - dead/ . .

living labour, and the relations of production - into

the region of conceptual (as distinct from economic) prac~ice. This analysis of the specificty of OR

-

scientific, ideological and political practice - brings

us to the concluding chapter. There I shall sum up the -

advances that have been made, ~n this study, towards a

solution of "the problem of OR". In order to suggest the

kind of conclusions that may be reached, I shall have to

go into greater detail on the themes that are worked. An

outline of these five themes, or stories, constitutes the

remainder of this chapter.

22.

THE " INSIDER" ,STORY

The biographical conditions Ln which this study has been

produced give it a slightly odd quality. The essential

- marxist - constituents of the problemat ic have entered -

my own biographical practice in a way that makes me

irrevoc ably an outsider to OR, in t erms of ideological and

institutional norms. At the same time , my socialisation

into OR and OR-related practice (chemical engineering, systems theory/cybernetics, formalist philosophy of science)

. .

menas that many aspects of "the problem of OR" st~_ ll

figure in it ~ elements of OR ideology. This LS one of the reasons why I would sugge st a status of marxist ideology

for the product of this study; as a whole it is not

theoretically clear-c'ut. Many friends and comrades who . .

have read drafts of these chapters have questioned me about

what were to them obviously pulled punches, The answer is

probably that a lot of these are my insider responses to -

insider problems, only some of which I would regard as

valid if they were clear~y presented.

-Saying this is obviously something of a disclaimer on my

part. But there is a level at which the "insider" fonn of . .

my argument is intended. No reader of this study could propose that it gave credence to the "internal logic of

science"problematic in the history of science, ' But in some -

respects it takes up and works theoretically what it shows,

in the process, to be ideological insights of OR. This is

especially the case with "systems" ideas. This study gLves

~ central place to the contradictions of the "systems approach", 'by which I mean something different to "systems

theory". If chapte r 5 is the locus of the former in this

study~ the' l atte r come s c l os est to making an ap pearan ce

in chap t e r 6~ but General Systems Theory, so called, is , -

not part of the substantive obj ec t of my analysis. The systems approach is not a matter of producing and app ly ing

genera lis ed, fo rma l "models " of systems; it is a general

approach to systems rather than a theory of general systems ..

The dominance of model-b~ilding in OR can, it is true, be -

seen as a form of general systems theory, especially in the

form that Ackoff's theory of measures gives to it. The

(subor-dina te) "sys terns approach", 'on the contrary, -

attempts to theorise the conditions of a science of

(m~n~gerialjsystems, ~nd is thus forced to recognise -however in~dequately - the material and historical form of its object. Many of what are now, in this presentation,

-

marxist concepts began their life 1n my own theoretical

development as ide~s suggested by theorists of the systems - -

approach, Churchman in particular! It w'as Churchman, as

much as, say, Habermas or Marcusewho first introduced the

distinction between telos and means into my analysis of -

OR. As I make clear in Part 4, there are definite limits

(technical and ideological, social and historical) on the progressive tendencies ,in OR. But I have no wish to hide

the fact that this study is aJvanced to at least some

extent as an intervention 1n a debate within OR.

THE "NEW CONCEPTS" STORY

Chapter 2 sets out some concepts - of levels of conceptual

structure in knowledge-producing practice, of a distinction -

between technical and subjective levels of material - . -

entities, and of the constituents of "objectivity" in a materialist theory of knowledge - that are needed in

. 2A

developing a marxist analysis of scientific production. -

These are all concepts th~t h~ve not traditiona lly figur d in marxis t probl emat ics (though the technical/subjective distinction is deri~ed from Habermas' critique of marx ism.) As this study proc eeds I shall try ' to show how these new

concepts take their place in a marxist theoretical --

structure, through the concept of rac tice . As I have said

earlier in this section, this concept exists at a

particular level of abstraction within marxist theory.

Part of the novelty of this analysis lies in the -

articulation, at this level ' of abstraction, of a concept

of the 'material'. The term is central but not clearly

defined ~n marx~sm generally, and in the sense that accrues to ~s as a term at the level of 'practice' it ~s

best reg~rded as one of this study's "ne,,?" concepts. Likewise with "the forces of production": this concept

- -(and 'use-value' upon which it is based) . LS gLven a -

specific content in relation to 'practice'.

Having pointed out these deviations from the theore:tical

norm, it may seem as though I am engaged Ln a wholesale

redefinition - or reV~SLon - of marxism. I do not think

that this is the case. This aspect of this study's

theorectical structure derives from two main conditions. - -

Firstly, marxism is lacking in a developed materialist

theory of knowledge production, and any attempt to move

on this front (as with the work of Habermas or of Alfred - 13 Sohn-Rethel) . will inevitably open up some distance .

13 See Appendix III for some brief quot a tions from

Habermas on "cognitive interests-, ' and Appendix VI for a quotation from Sohn-Rethel on the contradictory pol itics of knowledge implicit in Scientific Manageme nt.

2& - 1

be tween itse lf and received marx~sm. To the ex t en t tha t

the present ana lys is is derived fr om the marxist theory of

the capitalist labou r -process (with its concepts of use -and exchange-value ) ,I wou ld expect that this distance can

"

eventually be shown to lie within marxism. But secondly,

and more important, it is the choice of a level of analysis - -

that produc e s the need for new concepts. The approaches - ,

of Althusser, Habermas and Sohn-Rethel are all pitched, in

the main, at C:archedi 's second level - the level of the

socio-economic system. Working at a lower level of -

abstraction, I have had to form concepts of the practical -

intersection of "science" and "non-science", and of the

meaning of the determination of the forces by the relations - -

of production, that can - I hope - be put into a close

practical relation with real objects. That is, I want . -

the theory of 'operational ' research to be implementable ~n -

scientific and political practice. It is the attempt to -

open up a level of analysis that has not been systematically

explored that makes this study so much a story of new

concepts.

There is, perhaps, a third reason why this study

~s estranged to the ex tent that it LS from current positions , ,

1n marxism and "radical" critiques of sc~ence. It takes a -

personal form. I came to attempt a marxist analysis of .. ..

OR from a working class tradition with hardly any

explicit politics, let alone rigorous political theory, and -

from an intellectual tradition (in engineering of the -

modern "scientific" kind) structured by what, in this analysis, is called scientism. Personally, then, I am

- --

still working my way into an intellectual and political

26

tradition. There is mor e to it than this , however, During

the time when my first "political" approach to OR wa s

taking shape - an appro~ch through th e pr obl emat ic o f "technical rationa lity" - I was still very m~ch engaged

..

1.n a strugg l e to make (theore tical) s ense of my exper1.ence -

as a working scientist; and since l eaving full-time

postgraduate work I have been even more immediately

confronted by this need to bring theory and practice

together , in my work as an OR Analy s t in industry. I can -

hardly claim much success. I left my employment eighteen

months ago; and thus this argument has essentialLy been - .

constructed by a free-lance intellectual,not by an

employed scientist. Personal biography aside, there 1.S a

crucial historical condition here. As it happens, I was

able to pursue at least some of the necessary avenues of

theoretical work while working in OR - but only through .. . .

outs1.de" connections such as the leI Labour-Process

Study Group, whose members were (with the exception of -

myself) employed as academics. This business of the time -

economy and the social 'division of intellectual labour

1.S crucial in determining the limits of Left politics. - .

In its general aspects, the present study constitutes -

an exhibit, a case, of the contradictory union of political

theory and practice on the scientific Left, and may be read . ..

as such. To explain is not to excuse, but explanations -

of this study's peculiar theoretical structure may be -

found in these conditions of historical practice.

To ease the way, g1.ven the problem of new concepts, I have

included a brief Glossary. Here is a short explanation

of what I will be trying to show, in terms of the new

concepts. As a contribution to the politics of knowl edge , 27

I will be trying to theoris e an ideologica l problematic, . .

the problemat ic of "objectivity" as it operates in OR. Chapter 2 initially sets out th e specia l concepts for

this work , and of t hes e the di st=inction be tween l evels

of ideology in scientific prac tice is irrunediate ly set in -

motion in chapter 3, which focusses on the profes sional -

level of ideology and the political-ideological

structure of scientism . Chapter 4 take s up the

distinct ion between the technical and the subj ective. It is here that the "new" concepts (of the 'material') and the "marxist" concepts (forces and r e lations of production) and articulated together in a concept of practice designed

-

, to have special force in relation to conceptual -production. At this stage of the analysis it will ~ be

- '

possible to define OR more specifically, as a system of . -

forces of production. Chapters , 5 and 6 develop the . ,

critique of "objectivity" initiated in chapter 2, analysing the forms of objectivity and subjectivity as

.

, ' they appear in OR, and on this basis chapter 7 can

derive a definition of ' OR that 1S more historically -

specific, and which dialectically generates, therefore,

a definition of 'operational' research. 'Operational'

research is, finally, theorised as ~ system of forces ~ . .... ~

.of production for socialising conceptual. production and

for unifying conceptual and non-conceptual p~actices in the material transformation of the forces of production.

-

As a specific practice within this category, OR . -

accomplishes this general transformation under the

determination of the relations of monopoly capitalist ." ...

production, in particular, the domination of dead over

living conceptual labour. Thus the specific form of

,"objectivity" in OR, and its specific politics, are 2.9

char acterised, and a theore t i ca l bas i s 18 l a id [or pr ac t ices -

of 'operational' r e s earch which embody a reyo l utionary

politics of knowl edge.

THE "PRAXIS" STORY

As one of the buzz-words of Left inte llectuals'

politics in ' the late 60's, "praxis" was one of the

formative concepts of this study. It appeared 1n many

contexts, signifying a number of things. It meant the -

- .

unity of theory and practice, it meant the unitj of life and politics, and through its assertion of

subjectivity against instrumental, uncreative, "mass" behavio~r it came to be contradictorily associated with both sides of the ideology/science dualism. None of these

connections was clear, nor could they have been consistent. -

At one level this study presents a theoretical

reformulation of this conceptual tangle.... OR offers objects - . .

for each of these interests quite explicitly, in its own

ideological terms. OR, as science, opposes ideology

(as Ideologie,2., and as "emotion"); OR aspires to the un10n . -

of life and politics (as rational administration in the interests of "the whole system"); and OR wants to Sp(:

-

the best theoretical insights practically integrated -

with everyday activity. Thus an analysis of OR is bound

to be a contribution of some kind to the "praxis" debate.

The theoretical status of knowledge, in my analysis, 1S

given by the extent to which it is complete, rigorous

and validated: these are the key concepts proposed for the - . .

analysis of "objectivity" in chapter 2. The ideological is,therefore, characteristically incomplete, unrLgorous

and ( tho~gh this i~ far from necessary) .unva lidated. Thus seen, ideology 1S an essential leve l of structure

in all practice, and it follows that practices may exist

that are deter~ined 1n many aspects by ideology whil e nevertheless having aquired the validated description of

"sciences ". Whether such descriptions are misleading , 1n

implying that theoretical knowledge is produced by the

practice , is a matter for specific investigation. It 1S

in the form of such an analysis of OR that I try to

provide an answer to the scienc e /ideology ques tion.

\ Rejecting a radical separation between SC1ence and ideology, this study is in conflict not only with

orthodox positions within the ideology of science f but

also with some positions taken on the Left. In recent

years an increasing number of radical scient1sts have

come to be critical of the "use vs abuse" conception of

the social relations of science, recognising that there

is an internal and necessary politcal and ideological -

structure in knowledges and the practices that produce -

them. Never~heless, some Left critics argue that while - . . .

science is ideological, it shouldn't be; it must be

pu~ified. Against this I would argue that the prob] ~m (whatever the politics of the practice) is to ensure that the place of ideology ill scientific practices, and the

-

political structure of practice, are taken as objects -

of res earch by the science itself. This 1S not a matter -

of "uniting theory with practice", theory 1S united with

practice - whether this r e lation is conceptually .. . -

app