Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century

Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century is a book by Harry Braverman on the economics and sociology of work under capitalism. It was first published in 1974 by Monthly Review Press.^[1]

According to one source, the book sold 120,000 copies between 1974 and its 1999 reissue.^[2]

Key analyses

Key thinkers examined in Labor and Monopoly Capital were Karl Marx, Charles Babbage, Vladimir Lenin, F.W. Taylor, Frank Gilbreth, William Leffingwell, Elton Mayo, and Lyndall Urwick.

Braverman subjected Taylor to intense critique, describing Taylor's strident pronouncements on management's attitudes to workers as the 'explicit verbalization of the capitalist mode of production'. He argued that, in the present day, the 'successors to Taylor are to be found in engineering and work design, and in top management'.^[1]

Additionally, according to Braverman, Taylorism had not been superseded by more humanistic management methods, such as those of Hugo Münsterberg or Elton Mayo. Braverman instead argued that these 'practitioners of "human relations" and "industrial psychology"' have supplemented Taylor's influence by forming 'the maintenance crew for the human machinery'.^[1]

Influence on sociology

Despite being overtly hostile to academic sociology,^[3] Labor and Monopoly Capital became one of the most important sociological books of its era. It revived academic interest in both the history and the sociology of workplaces setting the agenda for many subsequent historians and sociologists of the workplace.

Sociological analysis was provided by such authors as Paul Sweezy, Paul A. Baran, Georges Friedmann, William Foote Whyte, and Daniel Bell.

The work started what came to be called, using Braverman's phraseology, "the labor process debate".^[4] This had as its focus a close examination the nature of "skill" and the finding that there was a decline in the use of skilled labor as a result of managerial strategies of workplace control. It also documented the workers resistance to such managerial strategies.^[5]

Influence on historical research

Labor and Monopoly Capital built on influential historians such as E.P. Thompson, Alfred Chandler, J.D. Bernal, David Landes, Lyndall Urwick, and E.F.L. Brech. In particular, Urwick was attacked as the 'rhapsodic historian of the scientific management movement'.^[1]

Historical studies influenced by Labor and Monopoly Capital include research into deskilling, bureaucracy, Marxist historiography, business history, historical sociology, the Bedaux System, Bedaux Unit, and the Taylor Society.

Summary

Part Ι: Labor and Management

Labor and Labor Power

In this chapter, Braverman discusses labor, labor power, and work. Human work is very different from the work of an animal such as a bee or a beaver in that humans are capable of conceptualizing the labor process whereas animals are not. “Thus work as purposive action, guided by the intelligence, is the special product of humankind.” He asserts that labor is a natural human function that cannot be bought or sold. “Labor, like all life processes and bodily functions, is an inalienable property of the human individual.” What may be perceived as the buying and selling of labor is in reality the buying and selling of labor power. Braverman proposes labor is very different from labor power in that labor has near infinite possibilities; whereas labor power is finite. It is the power of labor that is bought or sold for an agreed upon time or task. “Thus, in the exchange, the worker does not surrender to the capitalist his or her capacity for work. The worker retains it, and the capitalist can take advantage of the bargain only by setting the worker to work.”

The Origins of Management

In this chapter, Braverman discusses the origins of management. He talks some of the organization labor has taken in the past. He alludes to the fact that laborers were not always managed in the manner they are today, and that under Early Industrial Capitalism the production process was carried on just as it had been before this period, as the laborer saw fit. However, he mentions that this is only for a short time, before we see the capitalist strive for greater control of the production process. The driving force behind the development of management in Industrial Capitalism was the need for greater control over the production process by the capitalist. Braverman asserts that the management that we see at the time of publication is not the first instance where large groups of laborers found themselves under the management of a select few. “The control of large bodies of workers long antedates the bourgeois epoch. The Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, extensive networks of roads, aqueducts, and irrigation canals, the large buildings, arenas, monuments, cathedrals, etc., dating from antiquity and medieval times all testify to this.” However, he mentions that all of the projects were undertaken with slave or other unfree forms of labor. He mentions how the need for control of the labor process grew greater as Industrial Capitalism took hold. “As capitalism creates a society in which no one is presumed to consult anything but self-interest, and as the employment contract between parties sharing nothing but the inability to avoid each other becomes prevalent, management becomes a more perfected and subtle instrument.”

The Division of Labor

In this chapter Braverman addresses the division of labor and compares the social division of labor with the form the division of labor has taken under capitalism. Braverman points out that the division of labor in capitalist industry is not the same as the division of labor that arises in society naturally, which is known as the social division of labor. He asserts the latter is the division of work into productive specialties, while the former is merely the systematic subdivision of work into limited operations. He asserts that the social division of labor is far more common throughout human history than the capitalist division of labor. “The division of labor in society is characteristic of all known societies; the division of labor in the workshop is the special product of capitalist society.” Braverman also points out the negative aspects of the capitalist division of labor: “While the social division of labor subdivides society, the detailed division of labor subdivides humans, and while the subdivision of society may enhance the individual and the species, the subdivision of the individual, when carried on without regard to human capabilities and needs, is a crime against the person and against humanity.” Braverman acknowledges something known as the Babbage Principle, and the role it has played in the capitalist division of labor. The capitalist division of labor is driven in large part by the Babbage principle. According to Charles Babbage, “The greatest saving is embodied in the analysis of the process, and a further saving, the extent varying with the nature of the process, is to be found in the separation of operations among different workers.” Braverman quotes Babbage again by writing: “… [T]he master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process; whereas, if the whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious, of the operations into which the art is divided.” In other words, by dividing the production process into multiple different tasks, the capitalist pays for exactly the amount of skill he or she needs.

Scientific Management

In this chapter Braverman discusses scientific management, or Taylorism, and how it came into being. Braverman claims that “enormous growth in the size of enterprises, the beginnings of the monopolistic organization of industry, and the purposive and systematic application of science to production” were the forces that brought scientific management into being. He defines scientific management as, “an attempt to apply the methods of science to the increasingly complex problems of the control of labor in rapidly growing capitalist enterprises.” He goes on to say that, “[i]t lacks the characteristics of a true science because its assumptions reflect nothing more than the outlook of the capitalist with regard to the conditions of production.” Braverman further distinguishes between scientific management and other sciences by pointing out that it is not a “science of work” but rather a “science of the management of others’ work under capitalist conditions”. He examines Taylor’s 3 Principles. The first principle is “The managers assume. . . the burden of gathering together all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen and then of classifying, tabulating, and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae. . .” Braverman calls this first principle “the dissociation of the labor process from the skills of the workers.” The second principle is “All possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centered in the planning or laying-out department . . .” Braverman calls this principle “the separation of conception from execution . . .” The third principle is “The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management . . .” Braverman calls this “the use of this monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labor process and its mode of execution.”

The Primary Effects of Scientific Management

Braverman uses this chapter to address the major effects of scientific management. One effect he mentions is the separation of conception and action. He mentions how the process, by being completely planned out by management, is now a process that takes place on paper, as well as in person. Braverman points out that, “Inasmuch as the mode of production has been driven by capitalism to this divided condition, it has separated the two aspects of labor; but both remain necessary to production, and in this the labor process retains its unity”. Braverman goes on to say that management’s monopoly on science(which here means technical knowledge) destroys craftsmanship by robbing it of the knowledge required to make it effective.

The Habituation of the Worker to the Capitalist Mode of Production

Braverman uses this chapter to discuss how workers are being made to fit into the capitalist mode of production and how humans are actually a threat to capital. Braverman says, “The condition is repugnant of the victims, whether their pay is high or low, because it violates human conditions of work; and since the workers are not destroyed as human beings but are simply utilized in inhuman ways, their critical, intelligent, conceptual faculties, no matter how deadened or diminished, always remain in some degree a threat to capital.” Braverman claims that this habituation is only increasing. The study of workers, according to Braverman, comes out of this increasing habituation. Braverman writes of the attempts of industrial psychology and to make the laborer a more productive worker. However, this was found to not produce enough valid insight into creating a more productive worker, and as Braverman writes “The chief conclusion of the Mayo school was that the workers’ motivations could not be understood on a purely individual basis, and that the key to their behavior lay in the social groups of the factory. With this, the study of the habituations of workers to their work moved from the plane of psychology to that of sociology.” However, this sociology approach was of little use to management and was shortly dismissed. He concludes by saying that it is not manipulation that ultimately spurs the worker into production, rather it is socioeconomic forces and conditions.

Part III: Monopoly Capital

Chapter 11: Surplus Value and Surplus Labor

Braverman sets up the relationship between surplus value and surplus labor by analyzing how capitalists use and distribute the surplus derived from labor.

He differentiates between monopoly capitalism and finance capitalism in the way they organize surplus. With monopoly capitalism concentrating surplus in a few hands and the labor being focused on manufacturing and producing capital.

He notes the transition then to finance capitalism, which “frees” worker from manufacturing and agricultural work and instead labor power is used to distribute and manage the surplus gained from the remaining manufacturing sector of the economy.^[1]

Chapter 12: The Modern Corporation

He beings by citing the tendency of capital to accumulate. He then goes on to define the corporation as a form of monopolistic capitalism that servers the direct link between capital and its individual owner.^[1] This he argues transcends capital from its personal form to a more Institutional form. He lays out three important aspects of the occuaptional structures of the modern corporation; marketing, the structure of management, amd the function of social coordination. In marketing, their role is to produce new customers while fostering the upkeep of existing customers. In the structure of management, he details the change from simple line organization to the complex staff structures of modern corporations. And in the function of social coordination, he notes that capitalist socieities have no way of developing in a coordinated fashion, so this becomes the role of internal corporate administration.

Chapter 13: The Universal Market

Braverman helped bridged the gap between sociology and economics by analyzing how the structure of capitalism has shaped and changed the structure of society. He begins with the deconstruction of the family unit and the decrease in agricultural workers in the 19th century.

He then continues with the institutionalization of social services and the rise of the service sector of the economy which replaces it.

Chapter 14: The Role of the State

He then briefly describes the role of the state in supporting and maintaining capitalism as “an ensemble of structures to promote capital”.

He explains this role with 4 key points:

1) the tendency of capital to produce more surplus it can absorb, in which government spending takes place to channel the surplus produced.

2) The capitalist need for a guarantee of effective demand,^[1] in the form of military spending

3) The government’s role in sedating and pacifying the working class

4) The government’s role in providing social services (namely education)

Chapter 15: Clerical Workers

Clerical work stands fairly middle of the road to manufacturing and administration regular working class occupations. The PC has made it generally modest to "computerize" writing and documenting administrations even in little workplaces. The utilization of such innovation significantly enhances the profitability of the specialists who remain. While some of clerical work can again be sent abroad to lower wage markets, especially with the world-wide surplus of broadband and satellite access, numerous remote work advertisers still don't have the English abilities, or the wage differentials, to balance the bother of offshoring such occupations.

Braverman estimates that by 1970, exactly 20 percent of the workforce was occupied with lower levels of administration and expert claims to fame. By 1983, the "Managerial and professional specialty" occupations represented somewhere in the range of 23,592 million of the employed, or 23 percent of the utilized populace. By 2001 these occupations had swelled to 31 percent of the utilized population. Add to this the Technical and Sales Occupations and the figures go to 31 percent of all work for 1983 and 39 percent for 2001. Clearly this center level of business has developed drastically since Braverman's opportunity.

Part V: The Working Class

Chapter 17: The Structure of the Working Class and its Reserve Armies

Braverman starts with noting that labor and capital are the opposite poles of capitalism, but at the same time, capital is labor and labor is capital. Capital is labor in the sense that it is the product of past labor that only becomes capital through control of the capitalist to accumulate more capital. Labor is capital because the capitalist buys it to move along his production processes.

He refers to the working class as the resource for capital to pull from to increase its surplus value, and also as the resource for exploitation of workers. The working class sells its power/ability to labor (its labor power) to the capitalist class in return for the working class’s subsistence.

At the time of this book, the U.S. bureaus of the census and labor statistics listed the occupational categories of the working class as craftsmen, clerical workers, operatives, sales workers, service workers, and nonfarm laborers. Braverman is careful to address the argument that some of the occupations among these categories may very well be jobs whose pay and descriptions don’t fit well with those of most working class occupations. Many service workers hold managerial positions like chefs, and likewise many clerical workers hold managerial-type positions like bookkeeper and secretary; police officers may even be counted as service workers. Classifications as such may misconstrue occupational statistics to seem as though the working class receives better pay. Braverman also says that many occupations classified as managers, officials, proprietors, as professional or technical, and the like may include more working class type jobs like railroad conductors, small-scale managers, and union officials.

Braverman uses the idea that occupational data taken from persons with jobs not included in any of the previously listed categories are not reported, the idea that many persons no longer actively looking for employment should perhaps still be included in the labor force, and his idea of the undercounting of working-class portions of cities by census officials, along with the classification of more working class-type workers as managers, officials, etc., all as evidence for an underestimate of the size of the working class population.

He says that this increase in the size of the working class has resulted in a loss of agricultural jobs and a corresponding increase in operatives, clerical workers, and service/retail-sales sectors. He is quick to say however that the scientific-technical revolution led to a deceleration of the increase in operative jobs. As this revolution spread, the biggest job growths were seen in the sectors not technologically advanced, but labor-intensive and had not been affected so much by the new technology. This led to the further growth of jobs in the clerical, service, and sales fields. Braverman then uses the chapter “General Law of Capitalist Accumulation” of volume one of Marx’s Capital to explain this effect. Marx talks of “a disposable industrial reserve army,” which is the result of and effectively just a synonym for “a surplus labouring population.” Like earlier in the chapter, when Braverman referred to the working class as a source of exploitation, Marx refers to this reserve army as “a mass of human material always ready for exploitation.” As Braverman expresses later on, an increase in the proletariat (working class) is accompanied by an increase in the surplus labor population. Braverman summarizes Marx’s statements emphasizing that industries subject to mechanization and technological advancements tend to let go of masses of employees that then go to work in industries less affected by new technologies and automation. This surplus population of laborers for these industries helps the industries to keep the wage rates down for employees.

Braverman identifies three forms of the reserve army of labor as such: the floating, the latent, and the stagnant. The floating form consists of workers who move from job to job based on the changing state of technology and the economy, and experience some amount of unemployment between jobs. Braverman mentions here that the system of unemployment insurance that provides a reduced wage for lengths of unemployed time is a reflection of this form of the surplus labor population. The floating worker is essentially both a member of the employed population and the surplus labor population. The latent section contains those workers in agricultural occupations who are released from work due to new agricultural technology, and are compelled to find work outside of agriculture, mainly in cities. Lastly, the stagnant portion of the population is to Marx those who are in poverty. Marx uses this idea to explain his “absolute general law of capital accumulation,” which basically asserts that as capital increases in general, so does the working class, so does the industrial reserve army, and then so does pauperism (poverty).

He identifies a difference in occupations by sex, and he does so considering the labor force participation rate, which is the proportion of a population that is part of the labor market (not to be confused with the unemployment rate). According to the 1972 Manpower Report of the President over the years from 1947 to 1971, the participation rate of the male population dropped from 87 percent to 80 percent while that of the female population rose from 31.8 percent to 43.4 percent. Braverman sees this as a portion of men being moved to the reserve army of labor and a portion of women leaving the reserve army of labor.

Braverman points out a polarization of income between the occupations rapidly increasing in employment, mostly filled by women, and those occupations increasing more slowly in employment, mostly filled by men. He uses the work of Victor R. Fuchs as support. Fuchs divided the economy into an Industry sector and a Service sector. The polarity of income in this distinction corresponds to what Braverman described earlier. Industrial jobs, jobs technologically affected by the scientific-technical revolution, are either stagnating or declining in percentage of national employment, while those not technologically affected in the Service sector are growing in percentage of national employment. Between 1947 and 1965, Fuchs recorded an increase of only 4 million jobs in Industry, but 13 million jobs in Service. The average wages in the Service sector kept falling behind that of Industry, so that by 1959 Industry wages were 17 percent higher. Braverman says the gap continued to widen, but it’s not clear why he didn’t use more current statistics (perhaps statistics from 1965) if that is the case. Fuchs thought that maybe the average wage was lower because the worker composition of the Service sector consisted of workers that generally received less pay anyway (blacks, women, young workers), but Braverman says Fuchs found that the average wage for “all kinds of workers in the service sector, no matter what their age, color, or sex, receive on the average lower rates of pay.” It is not clear whether statistics were found for middle-aged white males as a comparison to other combinations of age, color, or sex.

The wages in these lower wage industries are generally not subsistence wages, and this leads to a large amount of families with working family members making less than subsistence wages. This led to welfare rolls for employed workers and to multiple family members working jobs.

New York Times Magazine published an article about living (subsistence) wages that summarized findings in a 1970 Census Employment Survey. The article reveals a stark difference between the typical recorded unemployment rate and a proposed ‘subemployment index.’ National U.S. unemployment in 1970 amounted to 4.9 percent, but did not take into account workers who are no longer actively seeking employment after repeated attempts, part-time workers who are trying to find full-time jobs, and the worker who is not paid a subsistence wage. According to data interpreted from a 1970 C.E.S. this new national subemployment index amounted to 61.2 percent.

Chapter 18: The “Middle Layers” of Employment

Braverman is careful to name this chapter the “Middle Layers” of employment instead of the Middle Class of employment, because the middle class is not as easily identified after monopoly capitalism as before monopoly capitalism. Whereas before monopoly capitalism, when the middle class was outside the grasp of capital and wasn’t anything like the capitalist or working class, after monopoly capitalism the middle class exists in layers with varying degrees of capitalist and working class qualities. These layers are between the poles of the capitalist class and the working class. The middle ranks of a capitalist corporation can be seen as on a ladder based on their relation both to the power and wealth above them, and to the mass of labor below them that they help to manage. The pay level of such employees, beyond a certain threshold, represents not just a trade in their labor power for money, but as a portion of the surplus gained by the corporation; this is supposed to attach these workers to the success or failure of the corporation. The range of employees in these middle levels include engineering heads that combine into management, along with a hierarchy underneath them that ends in big drafting and design rooms that are often organized in the same way as factory and production lines. The middle employees also include accountants, technicians, draftsmen, nurses, teachers, foremen, the plentiful ranks of supervisors, and petty managers. He says that this “new middle class” accounts for between 15 and 20 percent of employment at the time of his writing; the old middle class now hardly exists because nearly the entire population works to accumulate capital. He also notes that classes are not fixed entities described by mathematical formulas, but are relationships that change over time.

Chapter 19: Productive and Unproductive Labor

The difference between productive and unproductive labor from the standpoint of capitalism explains how capitalist society was created. Labor is only productive in capitalism if it produces capital for the capitalist. In this definition, labor is either productive or unproductive, based only on its social form: whether it realizes a profit for the capitalist or not. Labor may produce a product, but the labor required is unproductive unless that product is a commodity sold on the market to realize a profit for a capitalist. Labor outside of the reach of capitalism is unproductive to the capitalist, but there are also forms of labor within the reach of capitalism that are unproductive.

The capitalist employs those that realize capital and those that appropriate it. Receivables clerks, insurance clerks, and bank clerks are examples of those workers who appropriate surplus rather than realize/produce it. Their labor is unproductive even though they work for the capitalist. This is another example of how capitalism subjugates all forms of work to its own ends because even unproductive labor is now working for capitalism.

As capitalist industry has become more productive, with automation and other outcomes of the scientific-technical revolution, the need for productive laborers has decreased proportionally in comparison with that of unproductive laborers. Marx had said that to be a productive laborer was a misfortune while one was fortunate to be an unproductive worker. But since unproductive labor has now become subject to the same degree of deskilling and alienation as productive labor, Braverman makes the statement that simply “to be a wage-worker is a misfortune,” implying that it is a misfortune to be a productive or unproductive worker. The final conclusion of this chapter is that unproductive capitalist labor grows as a result of the increased productivity of productive labor; and the increased productivity is caused by a decrease in proportion of the amount of productive labor compared to the proportion of unproductive labor.

Chapter 20: A Final Note on Skill

To Braverman, the proponents of capitalist methods of management have gradually realized the necessity to mask the degradation of skill in capitalist modes of production. During the initial implementations of Scientific Management, Taylor and others were more straightforward in their alienation and deskilling of workers, but recently have used more confusing methods to cover these mistreatments. One example is the addition to the already existing list of skill levels “unskilled” and “skilled,” the level “semi-skilled.” The criterion for a job that required a worker to be “semi-skilled” involved such operations as machine tending, machine feeding, machine operating – usually just operations with a connection to machinery. The scientific-technical revolution seemingly brought in an “upgrading” of skills. The 1968-1969 edition of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook described the requirements of a semiskilled worker to include having normal physical characteristics of a person in fair health, being able to learn their duties in as little as a day and as long as a few months, being supervised closely, and repeating the same motions or jobs throughout a day of work. To Braverman this could just as easily been have been a description of the requirements for an “unskilled” job.

Braverman makes comments on a democratic workplace. He says it is not enough to ballot in workplaces on how to complete tasks and how to go about production. In this case, the worker will still rely on experts in the workplace and essentially may only get to vote on propositions made by these more knowledgeable and experienced workers. “The worker can regain mastery over collective and socialized production only by assuming the scientific, design, and operational prerogatives of modern engineering; short of this, there is no mastery over the labor process.”

References