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Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century
This widely acclaimed book, first published in 1974, was a classic from its first day in print. Written in a direct, inviting way by Harry Braverman, whose years as an industrial worker gave him rich personal insight into work, Labor and Monopoly Capital overturned the reigning ideologies of academic sociology.This new edition features an introduction by John Bellamy Foster that sets the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two rare articles by Braverman, "The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century" (1975) and "Two Comments" (1976), that add much to our understanding of the book.
338 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
83 people are currently reading
5153 people want to read
About the author
Harry Braverman
12 books25 followersHarry Braverman was an American Socialist, economist and political writer. He sometimes used the pseudonym Harry Frankel.
He became active in the American Trotskyist movement in 1937 and soon joined the newly founded Socialist Workers Party.
In the 1950s, Harry Braverman was one of the leaders of the so-called Cochranite tendency, a current led by Bert Cochran within the broader Socialist Workers Party. The Cochranites rejected revolutionary agitation under the dual pressures of relative post-World War II capitalist prosperity and the accompanying McCarthy-era anti-communist witch-hunt. They argued that the current capitalist expansion would last for an extended period, which precluded renewed revolutionary struggles by working people. Eventually the Cochranites, including Braverman, were expelled from the SWP. They formed the American Socialist Union, to whose journal Braverman was a regular contributor.
During the early 1960s, Harry Braverman worked as an editor for Grove Press, where he was instrumental in publishing The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Braverman's most important book was Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, which examines the degrading effect of capitalism on work in America. The book was published in 1974. He died from cancer in Honesdale, Pennsylvania on 2 August 1976.
He became active in the American Trotskyist movement in 1937 and soon joined the newly founded Socialist Workers Party.
In the 1950s, Harry Braverman was one of the leaders of the so-called Cochranite tendency, a current led by Bert Cochran within the broader Socialist Workers Party. The Cochranites rejected revolutionary agitation under the dual pressures of relative post-World War II capitalist prosperity and the accompanying McCarthy-era anti-communist witch-hunt. They argued that the current capitalist expansion would last for an extended period, which precluded renewed revolutionary struggles by working people. Eventually the Cochranites, including Braverman, were expelled from the SWP. They formed the American Socialist Union, to whose journal Braverman was a regular contributor.
During the early 1960s, Harry Braverman worked as an editor for Grove Press, where he was instrumental in publishing The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Braverman's most important book was Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, which examines the degrading effect of capitalism on work in America. The book was published in 1974. He died from cancer in Honesdale, Pennsylvania on 2 August 1976.
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November 17, 2017
One of the things I’ve been thinking about Marx lately that hadn’t really occurred to me previously was how much he disliked the division of labour. You have to be careful when you say things like that, obviously. One of the things Marx says about Capitalism somewhere is that to really understand it you need to think of it as simultaneously the best and worst things that have ever happened to the world. I suspect we need to think of the division of labour in much the same way.
This is a seriously interesting book and one that since I’ve read it I’ve been noticing in lots of other books I’ve enjoyed – like The Global Auction, a book I constantly tell people to read. But I want to play with the ideas contained here about the division of labour and what that might mean if you were to hope for a utopian future of some kind.
Marx makes it very clear that labour is what made us what we are – not just in the sense that building cities or houses or farms are good things to have about you if you want to be properly human, but more that human labour has changed us as beings much more fundamentally still. It has changed our hands so we can grasp, it has structured out brains to be plastic so we can learn, it has helped us to create environments that have both changed the world and changed us to fit that world and could be argued to have changed our vocal pathways so we can communicate – that most human of abilities – that enables labour to be something we learn from.
At one point in Capital Marx says that the difference between the worst architect and the best bee is that a bee works purely from instinct, while an architect has already built their building in their head before they even start to build it in the world. This unity of mental and physical labour is a large part of what Marx means when he says that it is labour that makes us human.
And this is a large part of his distaste for the division of labour. Particularly under capitalism, the division of labour has become a kind of hyper-reality. There has always been some form of division of labour in society – probably beginning with a division based on sexual roles (although, some things I’ve been reading lately imply this might be overstated) – still, these divisions even between trades’ people and journeymen and apprentices generally left meaningful tasks for everyone employed. It is capitalism – and the extremes of ‘scientific management’ discussed at length in this book - where the separations of mental work and physical work is made most apparent.
In Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital – a book that this book borrows its title from – Marx discusses the torments of the division of labour as the alienation of labour. This book takes this idea and runs with it. Essentially, in the capitalist division of labour, work is designed to reduce all tasks to the lowest possible skill level – in fact, ultimately to have all tasks done by a machine that replaces human labour altogether if possible. This is done for a number of reasons, but the main refers back to Marx’s theory of value – that is, the real cost of any item is directly related to the labour contained within it and so if you want to reduce the cost of what you produce you have to reduce the quantity or the quality of the labour that is embodied in that product.
Now, crafts people are expensive – their labour is expensive – so, one of the things capitalism does is to reduce the complexity of the series of tasks needed to produce something down to a series of simple and highly repeatable ones. Then it allocates those tasks to various people according to the skill level of those tasks and therefore the amount of skill those people will have and that they will be paid. If doing one part of the overall production cycle involves lots of skill, then you will organise the process to ensure that the high value labour needed for that part of the job will only be employed doing that part of the job - and none of the other less skilled parts of the job. The other less skilled parts will be then done by less skilled people who will be paid accordingly. With the Ford motor company, all this was then attached to a conveyor belt and then the company had control over the process and who did what in that process; and also over the speed with which the process occurred.
But notice also that even the most skilled people end up doing only a small part of the overall work – and they do this over and over again. This means they too becoming increasingly de-skilled and are likely to also be bored out of their minds doing it. They also have been reduced to less than bees – because at least a bee builds a hive according to its natural inclinations – a worker is so alienated from their labour that they can have no interest in what they do at all, other than that it puts food on the table. If labour is what makes us human, the capitalist division of labour degrades us to the point where we stop being human, but become rather cogs in a machine.
Okay, but haven't things changed? Are we now living in a world where these early horrors of capitalism have been replaced and now, rather than jobs being reduced to the lowest possible skill level, we are seeing broad-banding, multi-skilled jobs and total quality management?
Well, yes and no. One of the things documented here is the steady decline in skill level needed for virtually all work in capitalist economies. In fact, he also documents how office work has increasingly come under the sway of ‘scientific management’ where thinking is increasingly not a required characteristic of the employment situation. The increasing use of computers in office work has only accelerated this process – as the Global Auction makes clear. That some jobs require increased skill says nothing for the average job. Braverman even points out that in some cases employers made it clear that too much education actually undermined a worker's ability to do certain jobs - as they simply got too bored. A recent 'secret' in post-secret summed this up by saying that nothing in their current job was in any way as intellectually challenging as the course they needed to do to get the job in the first place.
The author’s point – and it is interesting to note this was written well before the fall of the Soviet Union – is that Marx would not have been happy with ‘socialism’ as it existed at the time. That is, socialism at the time retained all aspects of the capitalist division of labour – he even quotes Lenin as saying it was urgent to apply Taylor’s scientific management principles to Soviet factories. Marx, the author feels, wouldn’t have been happy with this at all, as the point of the revolution ought to have been not just replace the capitalist class with a managerial class designed to retain the same division of labour – but to do away with this harmful side of the division of labour altogether.
And that is the bit I’m not sure how it could possibly work – which might be why it was never attempted. The thing about factories designed according to scientific management principles is that they are insanely efficient. They produce lots of stuff and do so increasingly effectively in ways that increase the overall standard of living of people. So much so that today the 1% can possess half of the wealth of the world and everyone else can still experience improving living standards.
That said, while we are producing endless stuff and having all parts of our work increasingly deskilled, it isn’t at all clear that the world capitalism creates is sustainable in any sense – either environmentally, or psychologically. As is repeatedly pointed out in this book, the alienation of labour makes us all less than fully human. The moral issue here is that the increasingly moronic forms of work we are forced to do ends up making us increasingly morons – and by that I mean something other than truly human.
This is a seriously interesting book and one that since I’ve read it I’ve been noticing in lots of other books I’ve enjoyed – like The Global Auction, a book I constantly tell people to read. But I want to play with the ideas contained here about the division of labour and what that might mean if you were to hope for a utopian future of some kind.
Marx makes it very clear that labour is what made us what we are – not just in the sense that building cities or houses or farms are good things to have about you if you want to be properly human, but more that human labour has changed us as beings much more fundamentally still. It has changed our hands so we can grasp, it has structured out brains to be plastic so we can learn, it has helped us to create environments that have both changed the world and changed us to fit that world and could be argued to have changed our vocal pathways so we can communicate – that most human of abilities – that enables labour to be something we learn from.
At one point in Capital Marx says that the difference between the worst architect and the best bee is that a bee works purely from instinct, while an architect has already built their building in their head before they even start to build it in the world. This unity of mental and physical labour is a large part of what Marx means when he says that it is labour that makes us human.
And this is a large part of his distaste for the division of labour. Particularly under capitalism, the division of labour has become a kind of hyper-reality. There has always been some form of division of labour in society – probably beginning with a division based on sexual roles (although, some things I’ve been reading lately imply this might be overstated) – still, these divisions even between trades’ people and journeymen and apprentices generally left meaningful tasks for everyone employed. It is capitalism – and the extremes of ‘scientific management’ discussed at length in this book - where the separations of mental work and physical work is made most apparent.
In Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital – a book that this book borrows its title from – Marx discusses the torments of the division of labour as the alienation of labour. This book takes this idea and runs with it. Essentially, in the capitalist division of labour, work is designed to reduce all tasks to the lowest possible skill level – in fact, ultimately to have all tasks done by a machine that replaces human labour altogether if possible. This is done for a number of reasons, but the main refers back to Marx’s theory of value – that is, the real cost of any item is directly related to the labour contained within it and so if you want to reduce the cost of what you produce you have to reduce the quantity or the quality of the labour that is embodied in that product.
Now, crafts people are expensive – their labour is expensive – so, one of the things capitalism does is to reduce the complexity of the series of tasks needed to produce something down to a series of simple and highly repeatable ones. Then it allocates those tasks to various people according to the skill level of those tasks and therefore the amount of skill those people will have and that they will be paid. If doing one part of the overall production cycle involves lots of skill, then you will organise the process to ensure that the high value labour needed for that part of the job will only be employed doing that part of the job - and none of the other less skilled parts of the job. The other less skilled parts will be then done by less skilled people who will be paid accordingly. With the Ford motor company, all this was then attached to a conveyor belt and then the company had control over the process and who did what in that process; and also over the speed with which the process occurred.
But notice also that even the most skilled people end up doing only a small part of the overall work – and they do this over and over again. This means they too becoming increasingly de-skilled and are likely to also be bored out of their minds doing it. They also have been reduced to less than bees – because at least a bee builds a hive according to its natural inclinations – a worker is so alienated from their labour that they can have no interest in what they do at all, other than that it puts food on the table. If labour is what makes us human, the capitalist division of labour degrades us to the point where we stop being human, but become rather cogs in a machine.
Okay, but haven't things changed? Are we now living in a world where these early horrors of capitalism have been replaced and now, rather than jobs being reduced to the lowest possible skill level, we are seeing broad-banding, multi-skilled jobs and total quality management?
Well, yes and no. One of the things documented here is the steady decline in skill level needed for virtually all work in capitalist economies. In fact, he also documents how office work has increasingly come under the sway of ‘scientific management’ where thinking is increasingly not a required characteristic of the employment situation. The increasing use of computers in office work has only accelerated this process – as the Global Auction makes clear. That some jobs require increased skill says nothing for the average job. Braverman even points out that in some cases employers made it clear that too much education actually undermined a worker's ability to do certain jobs - as they simply got too bored. A recent 'secret' in post-secret summed this up by saying that nothing in their current job was in any way as intellectually challenging as the course they needed to do to get the job in the first place.
The author’s point – and it is interesting to note this was written well before the fall of the Soviet Union – is that Marx would not have been happy with ‘socialism’ as it existed at the time. That is, socialism at the time retained all aspects of the capitalist division of labour – he even quotes Lenin as saying it was urgent to apply Taylor’s scientific management principles to Soviet factories. Marx, the author feels, wouldn’t have been happy with this at all, as the point of the revolution ought to have been not just replace the capitalist class with a managerial class designed to retain the same division of labour – but to do away with this harmful side of the division of labour altogether.
And that is the bit I’m not sure how it could possibly work – which might be why it was never attempted. The thing about factories designed according to scientific management principles is that they are insanely efficient. They produce lots of stuff and do so increasingly effectively in ways that increase the overall standard of living of people. So much so that today the 1% can possess half of the wealth of the world and everyone else can still experience improving living standards.
That said, while we are producing endless stuff and having all parts of our work increasingly deskilled, it isn’t at all clear that the world capitalism creates is sustainable in any sense – either environmentally, or psychologically. As is repeatedly pointed out in this book, the alienation of labour makes us all less than fully human. The moral issue here is that the increasingly moronic forms of work we are forced to do ends up making us increasingly morons – and by that I mean something other than truly human.
January 7, 2017
Braverman is what you should read if you want the background of the continual "deskilling" movement where capitalists invest in strategies that undermine, mechanizes, and cheapens (literally and figuratively, the latter in terms of materials) the craftsperson's trade and skill, thereby keeping the cost of labor and product down. It helps explain the collapse of the "living wage" job in the U.S. for many that are largely replaced by the "McJobs" that economist Bluestone and Harrison discuss, characterized by low-pay, no/few benefits, and generally in the service economy. It's why in the late 70s a single step up into management from the shop floor laborers brought in $25/hour in Lewiston, Maine (where I teach) and now those mill jobs are long gone, with no promise of replacements that can support a family.
De-skilling has hit the university, too, and it's why your kiddies have adjunct instructors instead of full-time, tenured professors teaching at your local public universities. A recent Atlantic article described the radical change to public higher education as the market finally caught up with it: "Nowhere has the up-classing of contingency work gone farther, ironically, than in one of the most educated and (back in the day) secure sectors of the workforce: college teachers. In 1969, almost 80 percent of college faculty members were tenure or tenure track. Today, the numbers have essentially flipped, with two-thirds of faculty now non-tenure and half of those working only part-time, often with several different teaching jobs."
Marx said everything eventually would turn into a commodity under capitalism, and surely the public good of education in the US is undergoing rapid privatization that includes this process of de-skilling.
De-skilling has hit the university, too, and it's why your kiddies have adjunct instructors instead of full-time, tenured professors teaching at your local public universities. A recent Atlantic article described the radical change to public higher education as the market finally caught up with it: "Nowhere has the up-classing of contingency work gone farther, ironically, than in one of the most educated and (back in the day) secure sectors of the workforce: college teachers. In 1969, almost 80 percent of college faculty members were tenure or tenure track. Today, the numbers have essentially flipped, with two-thirds of faculty now non-tenure and half of those working only part-time, often with several different teaching jobs."
Marx said everything eventually would turn into a commodity under capitalism, and surely the public good of education in the US is undergoing rapid privatization that includes this process of de-skilling.
July 25, 2011
Does your job suck? I bet you said yes. Are you proud of what you do for a living? "No," right? Chances are good that whoever you are (which is probably just you, Maya, I know), your job requires you to be either chained to a desk or behind a counter or to sell something (and by "sell" I mean throw your scruples into the gutter each morning before you're off to engage in the act of convincing insecure people to spend their money on things they don't need or want, nor had they ever heard of before your smiley f&%@ing mug showed up to harass them). Maybe you don't have a job like any of these. Maybe you like your job and are proud of it. Maybe your job is to make sure that the people who have jobs like those just described don't get out of line, but probably not because such jobs constitute the vast majority of all jobs under our currently world-dominant capitalist system. This fact is no accident.
People saw that unskilled, mindless, low-paying (and degrading) jobs would all but consume the workforce, e.g. Marx and, yes, Smith, back at the beginning of the industrial revolution. This book shows how the near-religious devotion to "efficiency" and "scientific" management principles by managers and capitalists in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drove the systematic transformation of labor power into a commodity. Labor is now a sort of fuel which powers the technologies that have taken over the jobs people had done for centuries. Of course the technology creates jobs, but very few require real skill or intellectual exertion while most are even less skilled than the previous technologies required, and always the total number of jobs steadily decreases. Are the managers and capitalists to blame? The scientists and engineers who push the technology forward? Labor? Yes, yes, and yes. Modern Capitalism raises some of us to the level of demigods, keeps some of us right where we want to be, and lowers most of us to the level of "wage slaves", or absolute non-participants in the modern world. Certainly some are more responsible for this situation than others, but almost all of us (be it through action or inaction) are responsible to some degree; and if a leash can be put on this monster we call Capitalism, it will certainly take all of us to hold it.
This book pumped me up with serious but impassioned history and arguments about (as the subtitle explicitly indicates) something right at the top of my list of important things...not just abstractly or theoretically important, but also relevant in the sad little drama that is my daily, weekly, annual life; because I (and I think most people who know me even a little) consider myself a very capable, intelligent, and creative person, and yet I have never had a job which challenged me to nearly the full extent of my ability, intelligence, and creativity. Of course I am not the only one, and whether we are all aware of it or not, this situation is deeply depressing. (Sadly, I think many people would say it's just whining to even point this out or question it. "That's life," or "Suck it up buttercup," or "Welcome to the cruel world," they say, as if God or Nature has dictated that our lives and world should be this way.) Feeling challenged, needed, and important is what gives us long-term happiness - not love, faith, or beauty (as the Hallmark and Disney Corp.'s would have us believe), which are all fine and good short-term opiates.
Most of the very good works of modern fiction that I can think of have a foreground of (let's say 90%) personal story set against a background of (10%) factual "arguments" that wake us up to some part of this situation we are all in. This book has an inverse ratio, and given that of late the very personal and fictional have not interested me very much this was quite satisfying.
Despite the tone of the main title, this book is not very technical. It has some charts, and a lot of references to very dry, technical reading, but does not claim to contain any original research or theory. It is, in my opinion, lucidly written and carefully constructed. Although probably a bit longer than necessary, part of it's appeal, for me, was that the author, writing in the early seventies (before strict brevity became the golden rule of popular nonfiction, and insanely jargon-laden abstruse writing became the fashion of academic papers) was not afraid to take his time in lengthy paragraphs and chapters brimming with interesting and compelling examples and quotes. Unlike many contemporary nonfiction books, he clearly took his subject seriously and was not just a polemic blowing smoke into some ridiculous political cat-fight. In other words, though not original, Braverman put together a book that is (almost 35 years later) not only readable but relevant, and substantial enough that after reading it one could avoid most of the much less readable work which he draws upon and still have a pretty solid understanding of the issues.
People saw that unskilled, mindless, low-paying (and degrading) jobs would all but consume the workforce, e.g. Marx and, yes, Smith, back at the beginning of the industrial revolution. This book shows how the near-religious devotion to "efficiency" and "scientific" management principles by managers and capitalists in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drove the systematic transformation of labor power into a commodity. Labor is now a sort of fuel which powers the technologies that have taken over the jobs people had done for centuries. Of course the technology creates jobs, but very few require real skill or intellectual exertion while most are even less skilled than the previous technologies required, and always the total number of jobs steadily decreases. Are the managers and capitalists to blame? The scientists and engineers who push the technology forward? Labor? Yes, yes, and yes. Modern Capitalism raises some of us to the level of demigods, keeps some of us right where we want to be, and lowers most of us to the level of "wage slaves", or absolute non-participants in the modern world. Certainly some are more responsible for this situation than others, but almost all of us (be it through action or inaction) are responsible to some degree; and if a leash can be put on this monster we call Capitalism, it will certainly take all of us to hold it.
This book pumped me up with serious but impassioned history and arguments about (as the subtitle explicitly indicates) something right at the top of my list of important things...not just abstractly or theoretically important, but also relevant in the sad little drama that is my daily, weekly, annual life; because I (and I think most people who know me even a little) consider myself a very capable, intelligent, and creative person, and yet I have never had a job which challenged me to nearly the full extent of my ability, intelligence, and creativity. Of course I am not the only one, and whether we are all aware of it or not, this situation is deeply depressing. (Sadly, I think many people would say it's just whining to even point this out or question it. "That's life," or "Suck it up buttercup," or "Welcome to the cruel world," they say, as if God or Nature has dictated that our lives and world should be this way.) Feeling challenged, needed, and important is what gives us long-term happiness - not love, faith, or beauty (as the Hallmark and Disney Corp.'s would have us believe), which are all fine and good short-term opiates.
Most of the very good works of modern fiction that I can think of have a foreground of (let's say 90%) personal story set against a background of (10%) factual "arguments" that wake us up to some part of this situation we are all in. This book has an inverse ratio, and given that of late the very personal and fictional have not interested me very much this was quite satisfying.
Despite the tone of the main title, this book is not very technical. It has some charts, and a lot of references to very dry, technical reading, but does not claim to contain any original research or theory. It is, in my opinion, lucidly written and carefully constructed. Although probably a bit longer than necessary, part of it's appeal, for me, was that the author, writing in the early seventies (before strict brevity became the golden rule of popular nonfiction, and insanely jargon-laden abstruse writing became the fashion of academic papers) was not afraid to take his time in lengthy paragraphs and chapters brimming with interesting and compelling examples and quotes. Unlike many contemporary nonfiction books, he clearly took his subject seriously and was not just a polemic blowing smoke into some ridiculous political cat-fight. In other words, though not original, Braverman put together a book that is (almost 35 years later) not only readable but relevant, and substantial enough that after reading it one could avoid most of the much less readable work which he draws upon and still have a pretty solid understanding of the issues.
Read
April 6, 2020This is necessary reading. Necessary. Fucking. Reading.
Simone de Beauvoir, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Jane Jacobs, and David Harvey all provided their own devastating analyses of the ways in which the Big Lies of modern society are perpetuated. While regrettably little-read, Harry Braverman did the same thing with one of the most pertinent points of late-capitalist society: why you hate your job, and why your job hates you.
You work hard, or at least you tell yourself you do, even if all of that talk about “building character” seems so damn false when you realize how much of your time you dedicate to making yourself seem marginally better than your co-workers, foisting off responsibility, watching the few things you take pride in swept away. You watch as you lose touch with those real skills and passions that originally drew you to your career. And when you find, 20 years down, that you've been streamlined out, what are you gonna do?
Now someone update this for the gig economy. We need it.
Simone de Beauvoir, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Jane Jacobs, and David Harvey all provided their own devastating analyses of the ways in which the Big Lies of modern society are perpetuated. While regrettably little-read, Harry Braverman did the same thing with one of the most pertinent points of late-capitalist society: why you hate your job, and why your job hates you.
You work hard, or at least you tell yourself you do, even if all of that talk about “building character” seems so damn false when you realize how much of your time you dedicate to making yourself seem marginally better than your co-workers, foisting off responsibility, watching the few things you take pride in swept away. You watch as you lose touch with those real skills and passions that originally drew you to your career. And when you find, 20 years down, that you've been streamlined out, what are you gonna do?
Now someone update this for the gig economy. We need it.
May 26, 2017
It's
SCATHING!
This guy demolishes plutocracy, exploitation, and capitalism. Dirty little management tricks and secrets exposed on every page. In all it's gruesome, ugly, glory.
Put down your mind-erasing smartphones and turn off your stupefying 'smart tv' and drop the Youtube vids and get off the retarded social-media treadmill. Raise yourself out of the fog of all these billionaire bad-boy vampire fantasies. Read more books like this.
Let's think more about the world we live in. Let's not just gaze around at it, inert and motionless, like department-store mannequins. No, not the newsmedia, either. That's not the way. Escape all that mental programming.
No one ever asks: Why are people so miserable in their jobs? Why are our workplaces so soulless? Why is everything so out-of-balance? How did we get so effed up? Why is the world the way it is? Can we ever change anything without understanding it first?
Books like this. Books like this.
Put down your mind-erasing smartphones and turn off your stupefying 'smart tv' and drop the Youtube vids and get off the retarded social-media treadmill. Raise yourself out of the fog of all these billionaire bad-boy vampire fantasies. Read more books like this.
Let's think more about the world we live in. Let's not just gaze around at it, inert and motionless, like department-store mannequins. No, not the newsmedia, either. That's not the way. Escape all that mental programming.
No one ever asks: Why are people so miserable in their jobs? Why are our workplaces so soulless? Why is everything so out-of-balance? How did we get so effed up? Why is the world the way it is? Can we ever change anything without understanding it first?
Books like this. Books like this.
Want to read
November 21, 2013Amazon=Goodreads=Bezos recommends that I read this. Amazon. Bezos. Wants me to read this.
November 7, 2022
A truly outstanding work of political economy. Building directly from Marx, Braverman examines, in relatively simple language, the detailed process via which capitalism has transformed the labor process over the last 150 years. Examining the way that capital formalizes a general process for breaking down, devaluing, and finally automating the labor process first in agriculture, then the factory floor, then the office, Braverman paints a picture of how capital invades every square inch and spare moment in pursuit of profit. The effects on the working class, the immiseration of work as skill is broken down to make labor cheaper and all independence and freedom of thought taken from the individual worker and centralized in management in order to maximize control, leaves us with the vast majority of jobs we see today which operate at a backbreaking pace and ever worsening monotony. Braverman also looks at the question of the "new middle class" or "new petit bourgeoisie" in a much more direct and well thought out fashion than many of his contemporaries. Specifically his look at clerical workers, service workers, and the way the distinction between "productive" and "unproductive" labor has changed as capital changes the labor process and subsumes everything under it, is far better developed than Poulantzas' in Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (though I do like and recommend that book). There's a couple minor annoyances where Braverman falls prey to the common utopian critiques of the Soviet Union that one expects from a Trotskyist, where a new nation born from war and invasion is expected to operate on a blank slate, ignoring the historical and material conditions of its birth and continued existence, but these are incidental to the text and do not detract from it's substance.
An absolutely vital work on how capital has changed labor for the worse. Extremely clarifying on a lot of thorny issues. Highly recommended.
An absolutely vital work on how capital has changed labor for the worse. Extremely clarifying on a lot of thorny issues. Highly recommended.
November 6, 2024
damn this is good. wish he were around today
January 21, 2025
underrated der gee
January 23, 2026
I had my doubts that this would be interesting, but in fact it is an easy, and excellent read, not at all the dull one you might expect by the title. A well-deserved leftist classic. The alienation of labor clearly has not ended with technological advance and Braverman argues (to me quite successfully) that is has actually gotten worse.
This 1974 work started "the labor process debate" (finding that there was a decline in the use of skilled labor as a result of managers strategy for control). It critiques scientific management as authored by Frederick W Taylor in the early 1900s.
But why does Braverman focus on an idea so old? It has of course been claimed that other thinkers have since offered better ideas on the roles that humans would play in mature industrial systems. Most importantly perhaps: The human relations school of management in the 1930s. And there is some truth to that, since capitalism is certainly a lot more dynamic than simple scientific management now.
However Harry Braverman insisted here that human relations did not replace Taylorism but rather that both approaches were complementary —Taylorism determining the actual organisation of the work process, and human relations helping to adapt the workers to the new procedures.
Human Relationists would say that today's efficiency-seeking methods clearly include respect for workers and fulfillment of their needs as inherent parts of the theory. So hasn't a syncretism occurred since Taylor's day? The truth of the matter is that the changes are superficial, and they actually consist of a 'pretense of worker participation through gracias liberalities, fractional job movements, illusory decision making among fixed and limited alternatives chosen by management, and ultimately insignificant choices.' The structure remains the same.
Braverman argues: scientific management was merely the first iteration of a long-developing way of thinking, and many iterations have come since. And it is quite obvious that common elements unite them. Here is the long list of its legacy:
1920s and 1930s: through development of statistics came quality assurance and quality control.
1940s and 1950s: operations management, operations research, and management cybernetics.
1980s: total quality management
1990s: "re-engineering" mystique.
Other developments that use scientific management principles:
-knowledge management
-the Toyota Production System and Japanese management culture in general
-universities and government
-modern military organizations use all the principles (except wage incentives for increased output, these do however appear in the form of skill bonuses for enlistments)
-sports: stop watches and motion studies
This 1974 work started "the labor process debate" (finding that there was a decline in the use of skilled labor as a result of managers strategy for control). It critiques scientific management as authored by Frederick W Taylor in the early 1900s.
But why does Braverman focus on an idea so old? It has of course been claimed that other thinkers have since offered better ideas on the roles that humans would play in mature industrial systems. Most importantly perhaps: The human relations school of management in the 1930s. And there is some truth to that, since capitalism is certainly a lot more dynamic than simple scientific management now.
However Harry Braverman insisted here that human relations did not replace Taylorism but rather that both approaches were complementary —Taylorism determining the actual organisation of the work process, and human relations helping to adapt the workers to the new procedures.
Human Relationists would say that today's efficiency-seeking methods clearly include respect for workers and fulfillment of their needs as inherent parts of the theory. So hasn't a syncretism occurred since Taylor's day? The truth of the matter is that the changes are superficial, and they actually consist of a 'pretense of worker participation through gracias liberalities, fractional job movements, illusory decision making among fixed and limited alternatives chosen by management, and ultimately insignificant choices.' The structure remains the same.
Braverman argues: scientific management was merely the first iteration of a long-developing way of thinking, and many iterations have come since. And it is quite obvious that common elements unite them. Here is the long list of its legacy:
1920s and 1930s: through development of statistics came quality assurance and quality control.
1940s and 1950s: operations management, operations research, and management cybernetics.
1980s: total quality management
1990s: "re-engineering" mystique.
Other developments that use scientific management principles:
-knowledge management
-the Toyota Production System and Japanese management culture in general
-universities and government
-modern military organizations use all the principles (except wage incentives for increased output, these do however appear in the form of skill bonuses for enlistments)
-sports: stop watches and motion studies
Read
October 28, 2025the longer it stews, the stronger it gets!
January 27, 2026
Finally finished off the last two chapters or so of this book after starting it early last year. An enlightening read all the way through, clear, concise, and with many conclusions that can be easily applied and extended into the twenty-first century. It's hard to find many faults in this book, other than those that come with any text published 50 years ago. The text could certainly do with supplementary reading such as Imperialism in the 21st century by John Smith and Unequal Exchange, if one wants a full picture of how labour relations and processes have developed globally.
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June 11, 2025Felt like staring into the sun. Unfortunately required reading for this moment :/
March 16, 2020
A very readable book. Harry is the poster boy that explains how social polities, social thinking and the fair distribution of economic resources works, smart man who rises from uneducated, blue collar worker to academic.
I still think that the idea that capital always moves towards monopolistic practice and rent seeking is like poetry when I think about it. Today more relevant than in the author's day.
Braverman writes well, in clear concise prose. Pity the markets seem to have won the battle over the control of resources, once again for the benefit of the few.
I read this at university back in around 1986. It still rings delightfully in my ears.
If you can't read Karl in the original, this may be what you need.
I still think that the idea that capital always moves towards monopolistic practice and rent seeking is like poetry when I think about it. Today more relevant than in the author's day.
Braverman writes well, in clear concise prose. Pity the markets seem to have won the battle over the control of resources, once again for the benefit of the few.
I read this at university back in around 1986. It still rings delightfully in my ears.
If you can't read Karl in the original, this may be what you need.
February 4, 2015
I work with healthcare workers. The same process Braverman described 40 years ago is happening now in our hospitals. Executives are working to seize total control of the work process from healthcare workers, take decision-making away from caregivers, divide up the work into predefined tasks, and eliminate skill -- all in order to maximize profits. Braverman wouldn't be surprised -- he argues convincingly that the need to accumulate capital compels management to constantly reorganize and degrade work. This book is essential for understanding the changes in work and occupational shifts in the working class -- and it's also a powerful call for workers to resist.
July 18, 2007
Ignore the awful title-- this book is the clearest explanation of work under capitalism and what's wrong with it that you'll ever read. The writing is clear and good-humored, the depth of analysis is astounding.
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April 25, 2023I finally understand Taylorism.
I was surprised by how brilliant and engaging this book was. To do what it does, which is to use Marx's method as outlined in Capital to chart the development of the conditions of work in society, requires such an intricate understanding of the concepts and trends involved that it sometimes appears as an impossible task, but Braverman seems to do it effortlessly in clean, engaging prose. I was often blown away by just how precise and fruitful his observations are, even now 50 years after the book's publication. The level of prophecy on display here for events that were just beginning to occur in Braverman's era parallels that of Marx, a few sections are so essential to how work is organized today that it really feels like a must-read, and he never ever strays away from the abstract principles of Marxian economic analysis. That said, as I was reading it, I thought about how awesome it would be to read a similarly structured book equally dedicated to applying the Marxist method to the changes in capitalism that have developed since the 70's, like an even larger emphasis on finance capital, the development of the post-managerial class, etc.
I think this would be an amazing read for anyone still a little too intimidated to jump into Capital but wanting a sense of Marx's economic theory. There are enough real-life examples to make it readable while also being very theoretically rigorous. And then you should read Capital.
I was surprised by how brilliant and engaging this book was. To do what it does, which is to use Marx's method as outlined in Capital to chart the development of the conditions of work in society, requires such an intricate understanding of the concepts and trends involved that it sometimes appears as an impossible task, but Braverman seems to do it effortlessly in clean, engaging prose. I was often blown away by just how precise and fruitful his observations are, even now 50 years after the book's publication. The level of prophecy on display here for events that were just beginning to occur in Braverman's era parallels that of Marx, a few sections are so essential to how work is organized today that it really feels like a must-read, and he never ever strays away from the abstract principles of Marxian economic analysis. That said, as I was reading it, I thought about how awesome it would be to read a similarly structured book equally dedicated to applying the Marxist method to the changes in capitalism that have developed since the 70's, like an even larger emphasis on finance capital, the development of the post-managerial class, etc.
I think this would be an amazing read for anyone still a little too intimidated to jump into Capital but wanting a sense of Marx's economic theory. There are enough real-life examples to make it readable while also being very theoretically rigorous. And then you should read Capital.
January 22, 2016
Though Braverman covers a lot of ground in this book, the heart of it is an argument as to why the job market tends to bifurcate, with jobs growing rapidly in unskilled and low-paying sectors as well as (at least nominally) highly skilled and highly paid sectors (though of course there aren’t nearly as many of the latter as the former), but not growing or even shrinking in middle-wage skilled occupations. (The fact that this is still a hot-button concern today is another strong piece of evidence in favor of his thesis.) Basically it comes down to a point which is obvious when you think about it: unskilled workers are cheaper to hire than skilled ones. (He calls this the Babbage principle, after Charles Babbage, better known as the man who invented the idea of the first computer, if not, unfortunately, the thing itself.) The fundamental point has to do with the actual function, in a capitalist economy, of the division of labor. The counter-argument to Adam Smith’s famous example of the manufacture of pins is that all the small tasks that Smith breaks the making of a single pin into could be mastered by one person: none of them are all that complex, after all. To do each task in turn for just one pin would of course be quite inefficient, but a single craftsman (or a few working together) could easily mimic a factory division of labor (in this case, at least) by moving a large batch of pins through each step in turn. Instead, the argument goes, the real reason for dividing the labor as Smith describes is to force all the workers to congregate in one central place where the employer can control their work. This is certainly true, but it’s far from all. In 1832 Babbage pointed out another obvious benefit (to management): a craftsman capable of performing all the necessary operations to make a pin is an expensive person to employ, while unskilled laborers that can be quickly trained to perform just one of the basic operations can be obtained cheaply. The result is that the pin manufacturer, by breaking down the process, can obtain as many pins as before (though possibly not at the same quality level as before) without having to pay nearly as much in salary. Hence the constant trend in capitalism to de-skill the work force by breaking down jobs into a series of repetitive, easily-learned tasks for which the cheapest possible labor can be hired. To back up this argument, Braverman quotes extensively from the pioneers of breaking down jobs into a series of repetitive, easily-learned tasks, Frederick Taylor and his fellow inventors of scientific management (and thus the intellectual forefathers of today's MBA programs). The likes of Taylor and the Gilbreths were quite open about the benefits to management, in terms of cheaper, better-controlled workers, that would result from their systems, practically making Braverman's argument for him.
Having established his basic terms, Braverman than traces the evolution of work up to his present: the accelerating effects of the scientific revolution on the de-skilling of jobs, the extension of this process from the factory to the office, and then its further extension into the lower realms of management and design as the remorseless logic of the process leads towards the dumbing down via mechanization of every possible job. He even manages a moderately accurate prediction of the effect of computers on the work force, given when he was writing. And he constantly reminds the reader that none of what he discusses is necessary or determined by levels of technology. If machines are deployed to the detriment of workers, this is not because there’s no other way they could be used, but simply because they are not owned by workers but by their employers. Perhaps the greatest sign of the book’s success is that it makes you want to extend its arguments to areas that it neglects. For instance, in a couple of places Braverman nods towards the idea, familiar from James Scott’s “Seeing Like a State”, that the massive centralization of knowledge and skill he describes is likely to have a detrimental effect on quality: it would have been interesting to see this explored in more detail. Sadly, Braverman died (at 55) two years after completing this book, so any such further efforts would have to be carried out be someone else.
Having established his basic terms, Braverman than traces the evolution of work up to his present: the accelerating effects of the scientific revolution on the de-skilling of jobs, the extension of this process from the factory to the office, and then its further extension into the lower realms of management and design as the remorseless logic of the process leads towards the dumbing down via mechanization of every possible job. He even manages a moderately accurate prediction of the effect of computers on the work force, given when he was writing. And he constantly reminds the reader that none of what he discusses is necessary or determined by levels of technology. If machines are deployed to the detriment of workers, this is not because there’s no other way they could be used, but simply because they are not owned by workers but by their employers. Perhaps the greatest sign of the book’s success is that it makes you want to extend its arguments to areas that it neglects. For instance, in a couple of places Braverman nods towards the idea, familiar from James Scott’s “Seeing Like a State”, that the massive centralization of knowledge and skill he describes is likely to have a detrimental effect on quality: it would have been interesting to see this explored in more detail. Sadly, Braverman died (at 55) two years after completing this book, so any such further efforts would have to be carried out be someone else.
May 28, 2019
Essentially a combination of Marx's Capital and Fredrick Taylor's Scientific Management framed in the concept of monopoly capital. Although published in 1974 one can see the inevitable progression of the capitalist system that delivers us to where we are today. Now try to imagine where we're going with the pending explosion of robotics, smart technology and genetic manipulation. Indeed a brave new world.
October 14, 2022
Key points:
Capital accumulation does not just amass wealth in the form of abstract labour, but also drives the concrete labour process to be reduced to a mass of more or less undifferentiated labour power. This allows labour to be thrown in and out of the production process dynamically with the needs of capital accumulation across branches of industry
Along with this reduction of workers to a mass of labour power comes an increasing split between the technical management/control of the labour process and its operation. This is the process of deskilling that takes place across both service and manufacturing branches of industry as they are increasingly integrated into the accumulation process, and therefore subject to mechanisation and rationalisation. Competition amongst competing capitals introduces pressure to increase productivity (i.e. grow or die).
As productivity in manufacturing increases, workers are thrown into unemployment or the increasingly prominent service sector. Stagnation occurs as services are resistant to mechanisation, driving financialisation as capital searches for returns etc etc
Braverman critiques ideas of “industrial democracy” as essentially parliamentarism in the workplace. If workers do not rediscover the technical knowledge of the labour process they are still reliant on the split in technical expertise and operation.
This is one aspect of the soviet unions failure, as it changed property relations without altering the structure of the production process. While workplace democracy is a given, reclaiming mastery of the production process is the key element in a break with the organisation of the social division of labour by capital.
Capital accumulation does not just amass wealth in the form of abstract labour, but also drives the concrete labour process to be reduced to a mass of more or less undifferentiated labour power. This allows labour to be thrown in and out of the production process dynamically with the needs of capital accumulation across branches of industry
Along with this reduction of workers to a mass of labour power comes an increasing split between the technical management/control of the labour process and its operation. This is the process of deskilling that takes place across both service and manufacturing branches of industry as they are increasingly integrated into the accumulation process, and therefore subject to mechanisation and rationalisation. Competition amongst competing capitals introduces pressure to increase productivity (i.e. grow or die).
As productivity in manufacturing increases, workers are thrown into unemployment or the increasingly prominent service sector. Stagnation occurs as services are resistant to mechanisation, driving financialisation as capital searches for returns etc etc
Braverman critiques ideas of “industrial democracy” as essentially parliamentarism in the workplace. If workers do not rediscover the technical knowledge of the labour process they are still reliant on the split in technical expertise and operation.
This is one aspect of the soviet unions failure, as it changed property relations without altering the structure of the production process. While workplace democracy is a given, reclaiming mastery of the production process is the key element in a break with the organisation of the social division of labour by capital.
June 17, 2022
Even though this was written in the 1970's, it's still painfully accurate. Braverman goes through the journey of capital appropriating not only the means of production, but also the know-how that used to be on the hands of craftsmen, by dividing it into such tiny tasks that any (=cheaper) worker can both learn their task much faster and have no possible knowledge of the entire chain of production, having to abide to the manager's instructions so as to be as productive as possible and not innovate in any aspect.
Braverman also analyzes how this phenomenon has spread from industrial labor to clerk, so-called 'managerial' and sales labor, making sure office work is also multiplied into a bunch of tiny tasks, essentially turning white-collar workers into just another part of the proletariat. All prestige those positions used to hold are lost, the extra (cheap, as usual) workforce coming from women joining the market, men being displaced by technology from traditional industries, farms becoming increasingly monopolized and forcing the move from the country to cities, and immigrants desperate for work.
There's a whole lot of ideas in there that I wouldn't be able to summarize here, but if you're interested in the subject at all, this is very much worth the read. A recent best-seller is out there talking about so-called 'bullshit jobs' and yet Braverman's book about job atomization has been here all along.
Braverman also analyzes how this phenomenon has spread from industrial labor to clerk, so-called 'managerial' and sales labor, making sure office work is also multiplied into a bunch of tiny tasks, essentially turning white-collar workers into just another part of the proletariat. All prestige those positions used to hold are lost, the extra (cheap, as usual) workforce coming from women joining the market, men being displaced by technology from traditional industries, farms becoming increasingly monopolized and forcing the move from the country to cities, and immigrants desperate for work.
There's a whole lot of ideas in there that I wouldn't be able to summarize here, but if you're interested in the subject at all, this is very much worth the read. A recent best-seller is out there talking about so-called 'bullshit jobs' and yet Braverman's book about job atomization has been here all along.
December 6, 2007
This is the kind of book (like Jane Jacob's Death and Life of Great American Cities) that I think every human being in the world ought to know on a basic level, although very few people will want to read it cover-to-cover. The main idea is pretty simple: Employers do absolutely anything they can to apply technology and constantly break jobs down into simpler and simpler tasks. Despite the hype about technology making work easier, it means that over time, there is a constantly growing majority of people whose jobs are constantly getting more and more mind-numbingly boring, and lower paying. The whole book is just theoretically analyzing the different aspects of this deskilling process, showing that it applies in every imaginable industry without exception...
The previous reviewer has a point... Its one of those rare books that is both groundbreaking in its importance and actually rather readable. But I think you can get the point rather quickly, and then it all seems kind of repetitive if you're not reading it for academic/professional reasons.
The previous reviewer has a point... Its one of those rare books that is both groundbreaking in its importance and actually rather readable. But I think you can get the point rather quickly, and then it all seems kind of repetitive if you're not reading it for academic/professional reasons.
January 4, 2008
Brilliant critical analysis of the conditions of modern labor; Braverman takes a critical look at Taylorism and the effects of what is called "scientific management." Want to know why your job sucks? Feeling a bit alienated? Don't know how things got to where they are but are fed up with it? Well, this book won't give you all the answers, but it will set you on the right path. This was excellent!
September 20, 2018
One of the best books I've ever read, written in an entertaining and easy-to-read style, covering a wide range of topics from the history and implications of scientific management, the increasing alienation of workers from their labour, mechanisation in both factories and offices, and far more. Braverman's book is a treasure trove of knowledge on the work process under capitalism. An absolute must-read for anyone who wants to understand and change the world.
June 8, 2012
An excellent defense of Marxism and a reappropriaton of Marx's economic theories in an era of changing relations in advanced capitalism. One of the most important things discussed in this work is the fluidity of social class, which Braverman believes will ultimately lead to placement in either the proletariat or the bourgeois camp.
April 29, 2009
An interesting look at how labor has been changed by technology. A big emphasis is made against Taylorism and Scientific Management (controlling meticulously the decions/process/results) which he argues degrades humanity and their need to imagine/condeptualize/communicate.
January 13, 2015
I was assigned to read this book for a class in Marxism. I expected it to be as dry as toast but was pleasantly surprised to find the book not just readable but riveting.
February 9, 2026
I've had this book on my office bookshelf for probably 15 years and I think it's probably best that I read it when I did (understanding a bit more Marxist theory now)
This is a masterpiece, interpreting and extending Marxist theory to a workplace filled with more automation, more service work, and more clerical tasks.
The main thesis is that our workforce has been designed, losing essential craft knowledge. Braverman had a brilliant, cutting mind and this book covers a lot of topics even while keeping with his main thesis. My favorite part was an extended chapter on clerical work and its transformation in the 20th Century.
It was sad that Braverman died young and this was his only book.
This is a masterpiece, interpreting and extending Marxist theory to a workplace filled with more automation, more service work, and more clerical tasks.
The main thesis is that our workforce has been designed, losing essential craft knowledge. Braverman had a brilliant, cutting mind and this book covers a lot of topics even while keeping with his main thesis. My favorite part was an extended chapter on clerical work and its transformation in the 20th Century.
It was sad that Braverman died young and this was his only book.
October 14, 2022
I read this due to its importance in the history of ideas. I am far from being a Marxist, I come from a former communist country so I know for sure centralised economy is not the way. But it strikes a note if you read it today. We are living during a moral crisis of capitalist economy. We have comercialised every aspect of public and personal life, most people are working in meaningless jobs, repetitive acts and in an artifical medium, fully controlled by need..to pay your bills. A history of capitalism might help reveal some of the drastic changes it has created in society and how we might gain back some values long lost
February 7, 2026
A re-read, part of some research for an article that started as a reflection on automation, work fragmentation and human displacement, and then turned into a reflection on smart working. I guess it's one of those weekends.
The book is a capital work, a must-read to understand some of the changes we're undergoing, and not just when it comes to manual labor: the separation of conception from execution, the fragmentation of work, is something that we need to understand if we want to truly grasp the actual threat posed by Generative Artificial Intelligence for creative professions, particularly in the gaming and the movie industries.
The book is a capital work, a must-read to understand some of the changes we're undergoing, and not just when it comes to manual labor: the separation of conception from execution, the fragmentation of work, is something that we need to understand if we want to truly grasp the actual threat posed by Generative Artificial Intelligence for creative professions, particularly in the gaming and the movie industries.
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