Art is a branch of Mathematics: Zamyatin and Soviet Socio-Fantasy - owen hatherley

In 1914 the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party wrote an article in the party paper Pravda on a recent capitalist innovation- the time and motion studies of Frederick Taylor, an American cybernetician. These studies rationalised manual work to a series of repetitive and strictly measured exertions, a set of robotic constrictions. This scientific management would eliminate human inefficency in favour of the mathematical predictability of the mechanical. Lenin’s article, titled ‘The Taylor System: Man’s Enslavement by the Machine’ was on one level a simple critique of this mechanisation of man for profit. But within it is a more radical suggestion. Lenin claims that the scientific nature of this system was actually, in its rational use of labour time and resources, preparing the grounds for a system that will supersede capitalism. He writes: ‘the Taylor system- without its inititators knowing or wishing it- is preparing the time when the proletariat will take over all social production and appoint its own workers’ committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalising all social labour.’ Hence it’s no surprise that in 1918, a year after seizing state power, Lenin gave a speech that asserted- ‘we must introduce into Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system and its systematic trial and adoption. more....