January issue of Montly Review - Harry Braverman

Michael Yates mikey+ at pitt.edu
Sat Jan 16 19:17:08 PST 1999


Friends,

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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