John Bellamy Foster in his "A Classic of Our Time" writes of Braverman's book as as a sociological treatise. He attempts to answer the criticisms that Michael Buroway has made of it in "A Classic of Its Time." Whereas Buroway views the book as advancing the 'deskilling hypothesis' and as being representative of the industrial sociology of the 1970s, Foster challenges this reading of the book, arguing that the 'degradation of work' involves much more than just deskilling - a term which hever used. Foster reads Braverman as detailing the proletarianization of the working class resulting in an intensifying class polarization. Foster also reads the book as offering a comprehensive critique of technological determinism which he points out is much more characteristic of bourgeois sociology (via Weber) than of classic Marxism.
Joan Greenback in "On Twenty-Five Years with Braverman's _Labor and Monopoly Capital_ (or, How Did Control and Coordination of Labor Get into the Software So Quickly?)" points out the relevance of Braverman's analysis of work under capitalism for understanding the impact of the use of computer technology, the development of complex information systems for coordinating work processes today. She details the failure of the attempts automate offices during the '70s and '80s. This led managers to concern themselves with work organization with the aim of coordinating and controlling work processes through technical specification. Greenbaum finds Braverman's book especially relevant for analyzing what is going on here.
Finally Bryan Palmer in his "Before Braverman: Harry Frankel and the American Workers' Movement" provides us with a political biography of Braverman, tracing the beginning of his political life with the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) back in the 1930s which was fervently anti-Stalinist. This led to his involvement in Trotskyist politics, which meant his joining the SWP. After WW II, Braverman became closely associated with Bert Cochran and Jules Geller. While in the SWP he adopted the party name, Harry Frankel. Frankel was a long time supporter of SWP founder, James Cannon. Frankel remained in the SWP until his expulsion along with Bert Cochran for opposing Cannon over a number of issues including the party's stalinophobia and bureaucratized cliquism. Following his expulsion, Frankel founded the Socialist Union of America which published "The Educator." After about a year he resumed using his given name, Harry Braverman, and he became co-editor with Cochran of the "American Socialist." He began to undertake a critique of Trotskyism which he concluded had died in the 1940s. After several years Cochran and Braverman began drifting apart. They worked together in a Monthly Review publication, _American Labor in Mid-Passage_ (1959). This brought Braverman closer to Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman of Monthly Review and it was Monthly Review Press that would later publish his _Labor and Monopoly Capital_.
Jim Farmelant
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