Thanks, Jim, for the summary of the Monthly Review issue about Braverman's book. One small point, the author of the third article is Joan Greenbaum.
michael yates
James Farmelant wrote:
>
> The January issue of Monthly Review is devoted to commemorating
> the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Harry Braverman's
> _Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the
> Twentieth Century_ (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1974) which remains
> a classic Marxist study of the evolution and the meaning of work in
> twentieth century capitalist society. Michael Yates (not unfamiliar
> to people on these lists) writes on "Braverman and the Class
> Struggle." He notes that Braverman's book has been criticized for
> allegedly ignoring the class struggle. Yates disagrees with that
> criticism and he argues that the book was a valuable contribution
> to the class struggle because it focuses on the need to wage the
> struggle against capital within the workplace and not just within the
> labor market.
>
> 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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