In this book it is argued that the commodification of labor in a modern economy relies on complex technical procedures and an extensive institutional infrastructure that precede, and may in fact replace, the role of market forces. The history of evaluating labor in capitalist work science and socialist wage policy in Hungary between 1920 and 1956 illustrates the means by which labor is transformed from a generic activity to discrete units of value accrued over time in a hierarchically structured workplace. This account situates the analysis in the broader context of rationalizing work and busi ... More

In this book it is argued that the commodification of labor in a modern economy relies on complex technical procedures and an extensive institutional infrastructure that precede, and may in fact replace, the role of market forces. The history of evaluating labor in capitalist work science and socialist wage policy in Hungary between 1920 and 1956 illustrates the means by which labor is transformed from a generic activity to discrete units of value accrued over time in a hierarchically structured workplace. This account situates the analysis in the broader context of rationalizing work and business in the mid-20th c. By adopting an alternative periodization to analyzing the scientific transformation of wages across two economic regimes it is possible to challenge several longstanding assumptions in the historiography on the transition to socialism in Hungary: the degree to which the new Marxist-Leninist party/state altered the ways state planning was conducted; how the Soviet Union did, and did not, influence collectivization; who actually crafted new socialist policies; and what class warfare looked like in the countryside. Theoretical debates in Science Studies over the performativity of economics, technology and infrastructure, and the pragmatics of quantification are at the heart of the analysis.