Labor process theory

Labour Process Theory is a late Marxist theory of the organization of work under capitalism. According to Marx Labour process refers to the process whereby labour is materialized or objectified in use values. Labour is here an interaction between the person who works and the natural world such that elements of the latter are consciously altered in a purposive manner. Hence the elements of labour process are; three-fold: first, the work itself, a purposive productive activity; second the object(s) on which that work is performed; and third, the instruments which facilitate the process of work.^[1] According to Marx the simple element of the labour process are (1) purposeful activity, that is work itself, (2) the object on which that work is performed, and (3) the instrument of that work. The land (and this, economically speaking includes water) in its original state in which it supplies man with necessaries or means of subsistence ready to hand is available without any effort on his part as the universal material for human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connection with their environment are object of labour spontaneously provided by nature, such as fish caught and separated from their natural element, namely water, timber felled in virgin forests and ores extracted from their veins. If, on the other hand, the object of labour has, so to speak, been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw material. For example, ore already extracted and ready for washing. All raw material is an object of labour, but not every object of labour is raw material; the object of labour counts as raw material only when it has already undergone some alteration by means of labour.^[2] The labour process, as we have just presented it in its simple and abstract element, is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use values.^[3] The labour process is sometimes loosely termed "work organisation". The starting point for discussion of the labour process is Marx. It is defined by Marx as consisting of three elements: the act of working, a predefined subject being worked upon (a good or service), and the physical instruments by which the first elements creates the second: "In the labour process, therefore, man's activity, with the help of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in the material worked up on". That which is produced can either be useful in supporting human existence and so have a use value or it can be traded and attain an exchange value. The latter value, of course, presupposes the former. As a consequence of humans wanting to improve their material condition, a surplus is generated with in the labour processes, that is an enhancement of the value between inputs and outputs. Labour processes exist in all societies, capitalist or socialist, and it is argued that the organisation and control of a labour process is indicative of the type society within which it exists.^[4] It critiques scientific management as authored by Frederick W Taylor in the early 1900s, and uses central concepts developed by Harry Braverman in the 1970s. Recent attempts have been made to use labor process theory to explain workers' bargaining power under contemporary global capitalism. Labor Process Theory has developed into a broader set of interventions and texts linked to critiquing new forms of management strategy of an exploitative nature.^[5] In Labour and Monopoly Capital: Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Braverman seeks to retrieve and update Marx's critiques of the capitalist labour process through an attack up on bourgeois accounts of work in industrial society. Although Braverman's primary focus is the degradation of work in the twentieth century, which he associates with the relentless tightening of management control, Labour and Monopoly Capital also contains at least two other rather loosely related elements: an outline of developments in the wider organisation of monopoly capitalist societies and an examination of changes in their occupational and class structures.^[6]

Harry Braverman was an industrial worker for most of his life in the United States during the height of Fordist labour management and production techniques in manufacturing. In Labour and Monopoly Capital he examines his own experiences through a Marxist perspective, drawing attention to the very small processes of work that were ignored by Marxists for much of the Twentieth century. His studies coincided with the Autonomist Marxist theory in Italy which paid similar attention to the factory floor.

Labour Process Theory looks at how people work, who controls their work, what "skills" they use in work, and how they are paid for work. Braverman posits a very broad thesis: that under capitalism, management steals workers skills, reduces the pleasurable nature of work and the power workers have through controlling skill, while cutting their wages by reducing their wages to those of unskilled workers and increasing the amount of exertion required from workers. Braverman primarily pays attention to the class-in-itself or the working class as the subject of management and capitalist brutality, acknowledging his inability to attend to working class self-emancipation in this context. Others, following in Braverman's footsteps have criticised his "deskilling" thesis as not universal; and, have attended to working class resistance to the imposition of Fordism.

A key element of labour process theory is an analysis of the local systems of management and control, and an examination of how these are used to reduce the power of sections of the working class who hold work skills that aren't reproducible by unskilled labour or machine power.

References

1. Bottomore, Tom. (1991) A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishers
2. Marx, Karl. (1976) Capital A Critique of Political Economy volume one. Penguin Books. London.
3. Marx, Karl. (1976) Capital A Critique of Political Economy volume one. Penguin Books. London.
4. Michie, Jonathan. (2001) Encyclopedia of Social Sciences Volume II. London, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers
5. Braverman, Harry. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York, Free Press
6. Knights, David. and Willmott, Hugh. (1990) Labour Process Theory. London, Macmillan press limited