Veblen's Theories of 'Latecomer Advantage' and 'the Machine Process': Relevancy for Flexible Production

摘要

In particular reference to the rise of Germany (Veblen [1915] 1939) and Japan (Veblen [1915] 1945), Thorstein Veblen expounded the theory of latecomer advantage and emphasized the special leg-ups a latecomer country may enjoy in catching up in the "Modern Industrial System," a new stage of capitalism revolutionalized by the "machine process" (1904). The machine process leads to a mechanistic/rational division of workmen's jobs into standardized units of operations, a division of labor that facilitates efficiency while necessitating coordinations of the sequential phases of production and inter-unit exchanges. In other words, specialization leads to the requirement of "interstitial coordination" throughout the "concatenation of industries." At the same time, the Modern Industrial System, though "extraordinarily productive," dehumanizes the work process of production and results in "the alienation between the two classes, the workman and their owners" (Veblen [1915] 1939). The purpose of this paper is to point out that the adversary industrial relations (class struggle) Veblen lamented relates to the paradigm of Fordist/Taylorist mass production which replaced that of craft production in the early twentieth century and that the new paradigm of flexible production originating in postwar Japan addresses the issue of job fragmentation, thereby ameliorating the dilemma of assembly-based manufacturing between productive efficiency and worker alienation. The origination of flexible production in postwar Japan demonstrates one notable "institutional" form of latecomer advantage that was created and capitalized on in dealing with both the interstitial coordination mandate and the job fragmentation effect of the Modern Industrial System.