Bad bitch

Babbage and Ure center their representations of the factory on representations of machinery; for both, the machine is a means of disciplining labor, and the factory an assemblage of such ma-chines. They respectively advocated the mechanized factory as a site of production because machinery disciplines human labor.Babbage writes: "One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is from the check which it affords against the inatten-tion, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents" (Economy 54). Because machines work regularly and without human vices and weaknesses, humans attached to machines in the labor process will also have to work regularly and without their usual vices and weaknesses. Machinery, for Babbage, is a "check" on humans; it sets limits to the variety of human actions, which Babbage believes disrupt production. For Ure, on the other hand, machines do not merely limit the role of human labor in controlling the production process, but actually reverse the relations of control between worker and the productive apparatus. Instead of skilled workers directing machines and thus controlling the processes of produc-tion, the mechanized factory directs workers. Ure characterizes in-dustrial production as follows: "every process peculiarly nice, and therefore liable to injury from the ignorance and waywardness of workmen, is withdrawn from handicraft control, and placed under the guidance of self-acting machinery" (Philosophy x). In this pas-sage, Ure does not so much imagine labor being displaced by ma-chines as he imagines labor integrated into a mechanized factory and, thus, unable to disrupt factory production. The key terms of this argument are control and guidance. Certainly machines displace the handicraft worker, but this person is then reconstituted as the factory worker, a subject differing from the former primarily in its relation to the control of production, not in the extent of its partici-pation in production. For both Babbage and Ure, the factory limits the autonomy of workers-in Babbage's case as a "check," in Ure's as "guidance." Neither author imagines a factory that runs without labor, but rather one in which human labor is placed under me-chanical control.

Both Babbage and Ure indeed argue that machines control human labor, but they highlight different aspects of this relationship:

• Babbage's View: He emphasizes that machines help enforce discipline among workers. He sees machines as a way to prevent human issues like laziness or dishonesty, ensuring that workers must keep up with the machines. In this sense, machines provide a structure or rule that helps keep human behavior in check.

• Ure's View: While he agrees that machines influence human labor, he focuses more on the shift in power. Ure suggests that, rather than workers controlling machines, it's the machines that control the workers. This means that the way work is structured is dictated by the machines, changing how workers must operate.

In summary, both thinkers recognize that machines exert control over workers, but Babbage sees machines as tools for discipline, while Ure views machines as leading the way and directing human labor.