s05a - labour and monopoly capital

Labor and Monopoly Labor and Monopoly capitalcapital

By: Harry BravemanBy: Harry Braveman

Presented By : Brendon Chen Daniel Koo

IntroductionIntroduction

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.


2. 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.

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.


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


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


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.


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.


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


8. 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


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


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.


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



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”



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.


• 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.


• 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 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?


• 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.


• 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.


• 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 DissatisfactionLabor 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


• 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.


• 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


• 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 PowerLabor 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 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.


• 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.


• 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.


• 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.


• 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.


• 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 DeskillingLabor 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).


• 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


• 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.

s05a - labour and monopoly capital

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