ABSTRACT
A systematic economic theory of wage forms, which was essentially based upon the differentiation between time rates and piece rates,1 developed during the years from 1895 to 1914 in the context of Frederick Taylor’s concepts of ‘scientific management’.2 Reflections on the history of wage forms, particularly in the Historical School of German Economics, began at the same time. Both economic theory and historiography painted a dichotomous picture of the historical development of wage forms, and this had a strong impact on research throughout the twentieth century. For modern economies, efficiency, and especially an efficiency wage (Leistungslohn), were regarded as a suitable and usual principle of distribution, particularly by those authors who characterized modern societies as ‘achieving societies’.3 On the other hand, efficiency wages were purported to have been totally absent in pre-modern economies. This dichotomous picture of the history of wage forms was closely connected to certain assumptions about the development of attitudes towards labour. At the turn of the century, most economic historians agreed on the ‘natural laziness’ of pre-modern labourers. Therefore, efficiency wages could not have had a historical dimension, since workers could not be motivated by efficiency incentives until the time of mature capitalism. This chapter shows, first, how deeply rooted these dichotomous pictures of the history of wage forms and corresponding attitudes toward labour in economics and historiography have been. Critically confronting these traditional images,
1 See Rudi Schmiede and Edwin Schudlich, Die Entwicklung der Leistungsentlohnung in Deutschland. Eine historisch-theoretische Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Lohn und Leistung unter kapitalistischen Produktionsbedingungen, 3rd edn (Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus, 1978).
