Michael F. Wagner
Scientific Management, productivism and technocracy
in the U.S.A. around 1900.

During the progressive era the engineer F.W. Taylor came to be the personification of everything good and evil in the 2. industrial revolution. His inventive activities had lead to a wide spectrum of industrial innovations, but to the public at large he was known as the father of Scientific Management. While many of his technical inventions were quickly accepted and implemented in everyday life, scientific management was met with strong public opposition from union leaders and politicians. It is a paradox that Taylor's system of Scientific Management had a marginal influence on labour conditions in modern industry, but got tremendous attention and achieved a symbolic influence as the incarnation of technological progress. The analysis is focused on the political discourse of Taylorism and examines Taylor's biography to find an answer to the paradoxes of his life.