With special guest Zach Tan from MIT Sloan School of Business
Harry Braverman’s book Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the 20th Century is an important treatise on labor relations and the systematic ways that work is deskilled over time. Braverman identifies the root cause as monopoly capitalism, identified by Baran & Sweezy (1967) as the breakdown of competitive capitalism into conditions whereby ever-larger corporations monopolize economic activity, leading to downward pressures on costs (and therefore wages), mechanization of work, and increased economic surplus. Through hundreds of examples, Braverman shows that this move to monopoly capitalization had been underway in the US for a long time and the book was a clarion call for change.
The book not only takes aim at the economic system, Braverman was highly critical of many of the seminal authors and schools of thought that he felt enabled this shift. As one might expect, his first target was scientific management under Frederic Taylor, which he blamed for starting the move toward deskilling and degrading the human worker. But Braverman was also critical of the Human Relations school, the Hawthorne Studies, and Joan Woodward and other scholars and consultants for pursuing their work solely from the perspective of management and the pursuit of efficiency. From his perspective, their alternates of scientific management failed to account for their own dehumanizing effects and therefore perpetuated the worker’s plight rather than relieved it.
Braverman also presented a multilevel argument that also took the perspective of the idealized “capitalist” whose motivations were to increase the amount of capital and thereby increase the surplus. It would be incorrect to describe this perspective as merely cut costs and increase production, as Braverman showed (with plenty of evidence) that the capitalist also separates labor into two forms – productive and unproductive – which corresponds roughly to labor directly applied to the production of the surplus and all the services and support needed to enable that labor, which included middle management. Thus, the capitalist wishes to minimize the need for bureaucracy which diverts resources and cuts into the surplus and place them on the line.
Braverman wrote the book hoping that managers would come to understand the effects of their decisions on the state of work and the plight of the worker. The 1970s were a period of labor unrest and social upheaval, and Braverman was hoping to bring about needed change, which did not happen. Unfortunately, Braverman’s book does not offer an alternative system, and given globalization and the advent of algorithmic management and other trends, the question of what such an alternative that at a minimum restores competitive capitalism remains.
You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Supplement
Read with us:
Braverman, H. (1998/1974). Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Monthly Review Press.
To know more:
Baran, P. A. & Sweezy, P. M. (1968). Monopoly capital: An essay on the American economic and social order. New York: Monthly Review Press.