Labor and Monopoly

capital
By: Harry Braveman

Presented By : Brendon Chen

Daniel Koo
 Introduction
1. Contradition of Labor Requirement

 Modern world seems require the labor with High levels of

Education, training, the greater exercise of intelligence and mental
effort to suit scientific-technical and “automation”

 Dissatisfaction from industrial and office labor because of Job

Fragmentation, which fail to sustain the interest or engage the
Capacity of Humans with current level of education.
 Introduction
1. Cause Searching and Investigation
 Evolution of labor Process within the occupation
 Shifts of Labor among occupation
The dynamic underlying the incessant transformation of work in the
mordern era

 Evolution of management
 Evolution of Technology
 Evolution of modern Corporation
 Evolution of Changing in Social Life
 Study of Development of the Capitalist mode of Production During
Past Decade.
 Introduction
3. Motivation in writing this book

 Journalism and Social Science are the main area of literature

of presents and interprets technical and management trends

 Many Widely accepted conclusions were base on little Genuine

Information, and represented either simplification or outright
misreading of complex reality
 Introduction
4. Author’s own employment history

 Started from Serving a four year apprenticeship in a copper

Smith’s trade.
 Switching from job to job due to the limited nature of employment,
Substituting by new processes and material for the traditional
modes of copper working
 Goods foundation laid by the first job made him employable in
the same industry
 Introduction
5. Changes in Labor process

 The Transformation of the labor process from tradition to their

basis to science is not only inevitable, but necessary for the
progress the human race.

 Science and Technology are used as a weapon of dominating

in creation, prepetuation, and distance the class of the society

 In pure work point of view, everyone will benefit from it if it

combine human mastery and marvel of science.
 Introduction
6. Marx’s Capital

 Labor process as it takes place under the control of capital

 The accumulation of capital is the driving force of the capitalist
society, and transformed by the process of production

This transformation manifests itself in following,

 Continuous changes in the labor branch of industry
 Redistribution of labor among occupations and industries.
 Introduction
7. Critique on Marx’s study
 During past century, the same dynamic has been far more powerful
than manifestation of it

Marxists have added little to following

 Changes in Productive processes
 Changes in occupational and industrial structure of the working
population
 Introduction
1. Extraordinary development of Scientific Tech

 Unionized working class, intimidated by the scale and complexity

of Capitalist production

 Weakened in its original revolutionary impetus by the gainsafforded

by the rapid increase of productivity

 Increasingly lost the will and ambition to wrest control of

production from capitalist hands

 But turn over to bargain labor’s share in the product

 Introduction
9. Working Philosophy of Marxism

 More focus on the various conjunctual effects and cries between

Capitalist and workers

 Immense productivity of labor process, baffled by its increasing

scientific intricacy,

 Participating in the struggles of workers for imporvements in

wages, hours and conditions
 Introduction
10. Marxism movement to communist

 The soviet union faced catastrophe unless it could develop

Production and replace traditions of Russian Peasantry with
Systematic habits of social labor

 Admiration of Marxism for the scientific technology, production

System, regularized labor processes of developed capitalism

 In Practice, Soviet industrialization imitated the capitalist model,

it finally settle down to an organization of labor differing only in
details from capitalist countries.
 Introduction
11. Technology and Society

 The similarity of soviet and traditional capitalist practice strongly

encourages the conclusion that there is no other way in which
modern industry can be organized

 One of the central traits is the inevitable and eternal separation

of industrial men into managers and the managed.

 Social Relations are closely bound up with productive forces

 Introduction
11. Technology and Society

 There is no simple and unilateral determinism which “cause”

a specific mode of production to issue automatically from
A specific technology

 Social and political revolution provides for the growth and

Revolution of forces of production within the bounds of a
Single social system.

 The relation between technology and society are beyond the reach
of any simpleminded “determinism”
 Introduction
12. Technology and Society

 Social determinacy does not have the fixity of a chemical reaction

But is a historic process
“every society is a moment in the historical process”

 Socialism must be brought into being, on the basis of an

adequate technology, by the conscious and purposive activity
of collective humanity
 Labor and Monopoly Capital
• The capitalist mode of production (i.e. CMP) refers to the
socio-economic base of capitalist society which developed in
Western Europe
• It is characterized by the predominant private ownership of the
means of production, distribution and exchange in a mainly
market economy.
• The owners of capital are the dominant capitalist class
(bourgeoisie). The working class (proletariat) who do not own
capital must live by selling their labor power in exchange for a
wage.
• According to Marx, the combination of forces and relations of
production means that the way people relate to the physical
world and the way people relate to each other socially are
bound up together in specific and necessary ways.
 Labor and Monopoly Capital
• People must consume to survive, but to consume they
must produce, and in producing they necessarily enter
into relations which exist independently of their will.

• He argued that the mode of production substantively

shaped the nature of the mode of distribution, the mode
of circulation and the mode of consumption, all of
which together constitute the economic sphere.

• To understand the way wealth was distributed and

consumed, it was necessary to understand the
conditions under which it was produced.
 Labor and Monopoly Capital
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• One view by Harry Braverman supports the claim that capitalism

has taken away the craftsmanship in the work place through the
consequences of accepting Taylorism, introduced by its originator
Frederick Winslow Taylor.
• Taylor's system can be summarized in three principles.
• One is that traditional knowledge is gathered into the hands of
management. Braverman states this is "the dissociation of the
labor process from the skills of workers".
• Two, conception of task is separated from its execution. This
means that management decides what needs to be done and the
workers follow those instructions of orders.
• Three, management uses its monopoly over knowledge to control
each step of the labor process. No detail, however small, is left to
the individual worker (Braverman).
 Labor and Monopoly Capital
• Taking a look at society and the work force as a capitalistic
system today we can see how society and technology has
been developed through Taylorism ideas.

• For example, I know personally of quite of few companies

and organizations that dictates procedures and rules to their
employees.

• There are jobs where you must arrive at a prescribed time for
allocated amount of hours with an expectation for a measured
quantity of work.

• In sales for large department stores there are quotas

established for merchandise to be sold, at factories have
required amounts to meet for assembly, and social services
have a number of clients and cases to process or attend to.
 Labor and Monopoly Capital
• It's these procedures and standardization that Braverman is
implying has caused the degradation of work in the twentieth
century.

• Taylor has organized and brought what he calls a more

structured way of dealing with the biggest obstacle to obtain
maximum output from a worker through the workers
inclination to purposely adapt a slow pace in the work place.

• This process is called "soldiering" in the jargon of the day.

• This process of becoming more efficient and change to a more

scientific management seem to have become accepted in our
society -but contradicts to the though of reasoning of a
Marxist idealism.
 The “New Working Class”
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• To some writers, the concept of ‘The New Working Class’

embraces, occupations which serve as the repositories for
specialized knowledge in production and administration:
- Engineers
- Technicians
- Scientists
- Lower Managerial Positions

• Therefore it refers to occupations that are new in the sense

of having recently created or enlarged and also in the
sense of presumed advancement or superiority to the old
 The “New Working Class”
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• The new working class is thus ‘educated labor’

better paid, somewhat privileged. Manual labor,
according to this definition is ‘old working class’.

• But Braverman critiques, that for example that

occupations of engineer on the one side and janitor
on the other have followed similar growth curves
and both have developed in response to the forces
of industrial and commercial growth.

• Then why is one to be considered ‘new working

class’ and the other not?
 The “New Working Class”
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Post-Industrial Society:
– Shift from Manufacturing to Services
– Shift from Manual to Non-manual
– Expansion of Education.

• That technical change is eradicating physical / manual

work, particularly in manufacturing industry, and therefore
is causing the disappearance of the working class.

• The idea was that technical change was eliminating much

routine manual work as a result of the need for enhanced
levels of training and specialist expertise. There is a
growing need for a technologically sophisticates
workforce.
 The “New Working Class”
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• These secular trends were seen as eliminating

routine, labouring, manual jobs and generating
more skilled, ‘knowledgeable’ positions within
industry.

• Furthermore, the increasing intensity of capital in

the manufacturing sector also led to increasing
employment in the service sector.

• Here is the image of increasing numbers of

teachers, doctors and related service sector jobs
which also led towards an increasing ‘middle
class’ society.
 The “New Working Class”
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Braverman takes exception to both these views about

the modern working class.

– an increasing proportion of jobs – whether

nominally manual working class or in the service
sector – were becoming more and more akin to
classic proletarian jobs, (i.e. more and more
degraded, subdivided, simplified, routinized,
alienating or straightforwardly boring).

– Proletarian: means working class.

 Job Dissatisfaction
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Significant amount of Amercian workers are dissatisfed with

the quallity of their working lives.

• Their Job dissatisfaction as is the disgruntlement of white collar

workers and the growing discontent among managers.

• Many workers at all occupational levels feel locked in, their

mobility blocked, the opportunity to grow lacking in their jobs,
challenge missing from their tasks, etc

• Absenteeism and the quit rate cited as evidence of a new

worker attitude tend to vary with the availability of jobs and
may have partly reflected the decline in unemployment rates at
the end of the 1960s
 Job Dissatisfaction
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Indication of a new resistance to certain forms of

work, example the automobile plant and especially
their assembly lines

• Many feel that the industry is going to have to do

something to change the boring, repetitive nature of
the assembly line work.

• The Apparent increase in active dissatisfaction has

been attributed to a number of causes, some having to
do with the characteristic of the worker – younger,
more years of schooling, ‘infected’ by the new
generational restlessness.
 Job Dissatisfaction
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Various remedies and reforms have been proposed. Among these are job
enlargement, enrichment or rotation work groups pr teams, consultations
or workers participation, group bonuses and profit sharing.

BUT STILL
• Corporate Managers have neither the hope nor the expectation of altering
this situation by a single stroke.

• Rather they are more concerned to ameliorate it only when it interferes

with the orderly functioning of their plants, office, stores, etc.

• For corporate management, this is a problem in costs and controls, not in

the humanization of work. It compels their attention because it manifests
itself in absentee, turnover and productivity levels
 Job Dissatisfaction
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Therefore Braverman states in his writings

of Peter F Drucker, “it does not follow that
the industrial world should be divided into
two classes of people, a few who decide
what to be done, design the job, set the
pace and orders others about and the many
who do what and as they are being told”
 Labor and Labor Power
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Under capitalism, according to Marx, labor-power becomes

a commodity – it is sold and bought on the market. A
worker tries to sell his or her labor-power to an employer,
in exchange for a wage or salary.

• If successful, this exchange involves submitting to the

authority of the capitalist for a specific period of time.

• During that time, the worker does actual labor, producing

goods and services. The capitalist can then sell these and
realize a profit – what Marx called surplus value.

• Since the wages paid to the workers are lower than the
value of the goods or services they produce for the
capitalist.
 Labor and Labor Power
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Labor power is a peculiar commodity, because it is an attribute

of living persons, who own it themselves. Because they own it,
they cannot permanently sell it to someone else; in that case,
they would be a slave, and a slave does not own himself.
• Labor power can become a marketable object, sold for a
specific period, only if the owners are constituted in law as
legal subjects who are free to sell it, and can enter into labor
contracts.
• Once actualized and consumed through working, the capacity
to work is exhausted, and must be replenished and restored.
• In general, Marx argues that the value of labor power is equal
to its normal or average reproduction cost, i.e. the established
human needs which must be satisfied in order for the worker to
turn up for work each day, fit to work.
 Labor and Labor Power
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• This involves goods and services representing a

quantity of labor equal to necessary labor or the
necessary product.

• Buying labor power usually becomes a

commercially interesting proposition only if it can
yield more value than it costs to buy, i.e. employing
it yields a net positive return on capital invested.

• However, in Marx's theory, the value-creating

function of labor power is not its only function; it
also importantly conserves and transfers capital
value.
 Labor and Labor Power
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Within Braverman’s model Capital needs to dominate the

labor process and weaken the ability of workers to resist.

• Braverman placed considerable emphasis on the role of

Scientific Management (Taylorism) as a quintessential
method of achieving this.

• In particular, Scientific Management involves the

subdivision of tasks and the establishment of new
technologies that are less dependent upon worker’s craft
skills.

• Capitalist production requires exchange relations,

commodities, and money, but its differentia specifica is the
purchase and sale of labor power.
 Labor and Labor Power
Labor and Monopoly Capital
• For this purpose, three basic conditions become generalized
throughout society.

• First, workers are separated from the means with which production is
carried on, and can gain access to them only by selling their labor
power to others

• Second, workers are freed of legal constraints, such as serfdom or

slavery, that prevent them from disposing of the own labor power.

• Third, the purpose of the employment of the worker becomes the

expansion of a unit of capital belonging to the employer, who is thus
functioning as a capitalist.

• The labor process therefore begins with a contract or agreement

governing the conditions of the sale of labor power by the worker and
its purchase by the employer.
 Labor and Labor Power
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• The worker enters into the employment agreement

because social conditions leave him or her no other way
to gain a livelihood.

• The employer, on the other hand, is the possessor of a

unit of capital which is endeavoring to enlarge, and in
order to do so he converts part of it into wages.

• It has become in addition a process of accumulation of

capital. And, moreover, it is the latter aspect which
dominates in the mind and activities of the capitalist,
into whose hands the control over the labor process has
passed.
 Labor and Labor Power
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• The labor process has become the responsibility

of the capitalist. In this setting of antagonistic
relations of production the problem if realizing the
full usefulness of the labor power.

• Thus when the capitalist buys buildings, material,

tools and machinery, he can evaluate with
precision their place in the labor process.

• It thus becomes essential for the capitalist that

control over labor process pass from the hands of
the worker into his own.
 The Theory of Deskilling
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• The Theory of Deskilling

• This theory is aimed directly at human capital theory with its

optimistic view of the effects of technological change upon the
skilling of the workforces of industrial societies

• Braverman suggested that both manual and non-manual work

were being deskilled in his analyses of craft work and clerical
work.

• Consequently for Braverman, advanced capitalism is producing a

proletarianization of the workforces of such societies: this is a
vindication of earlier Marx’s arguments for deskilling and
proletarianization under conditions of competitive capitalism and
for the associated idea that labor increasingly takes on the central
characteristics of ‘pure’ labor (ie it becomes an interchangeable
commodity).
 The Theory of Deskilling
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• Braverman argued strongly that Taylorism/Scientific

Management embodies three fundamental principles of
modern management:

– The labor process must be made completely independent

of the autonomy, creativity and ability of the individual
worker

– There must be a total divorce of mental and manual

labor – “ ‘the separation of conception from execution’.

– Capitalists (management) must assume control over

every step of the labor process
 The Theory of Deskilling
Labor and Monopoly Capital

• For Braverman, modern science and technology

are seen as adjuncts in these processes.

• What are the Manifestations of Deskilling?

– Decline in craftsmen
– Increasing separation of mental and physical
labor
– Decline in levels of training
– Increase in the interchangeability of labor
 Critique
• Does Braverman demonstrate his case?

Not really. It is a “capital logic” or perhaps more precisely a

“labour process logic” approach. Indeed, much of
Braverman’s argument proceeds by conflation – by assuming
what has been shown to be the case in his argument.

Nonetheless, his argument is highly suggestive and led to a

massive renewal of economic sociology and in particular:
– Renewal of Marxist industrial sociology;
– Regeneration of Weberian accounts as a response;
– In a real sense we can see the beginnings of the
emergence of a post-Marxist, post-Weberian economic
sociology.
 Glossary
• Capitalism: System in which trade and industry are controlled by private
owners.

• Socialism: Political and Economic theory that resources, industries and

transport should be owned and managed by the state.

• Imperialism: Policy of having or extending an empire.

• Militarism: Reliance on military attitudes.

• Nationalism: Policy of national independence.

• Fascism: System of extreme right wing dictatorship. Somewhat orthodox.

• Marxism: Socialist theories of Karl Marx.

• Orthodox: Conservative, traditional, conventional.