6 Quotes by Donald Stabile

The smooth coordination of cooperative labor requires managers to “command in the name of capitalists” Here we find a form of wage labor, but of a special kind

We know very well how to operate the machines on which our futures depend yet we rarely know how they operate—our knowledge of the internal workings of the machines is almost mystical.

Yet the machines we encounter remain symbols of a vast human confusion and uneasiness that often skulks through the dim corridors of our thoughts about our life conditions. We know very well how to operate the machines on which our futures depend yet we rarely know how they operate—our knowledge of the internal workings of the machines is almost mystical.

And so experts have been the missing link in our understanding of the special interpenetration of man and machine that has made the American Century, peculiarly American. We all know something about machines, but experts know everything—if not about machines, at least about a particular machine. We are thus weighted down by a heavy reliance of experts, with much of our time spent in search of the right expert in whom to place confidence for the repair of our mechanical problems

Finally, the legitimization of the corporate holding company [1890] established a business structure that lessened the threat of competition by allowing for the elimination of competitors. The merger movement followed and horizontal combinations of productive capability reorganized industry into large blocks of corporate power.

…science knows no boundary for those to whom it will serve.