[lbo-talk] shop class as soulcraft

[Chris Maisano]

I read that book a few months back. I think you'll find that the book is pretty strong in its critique (he draws extensively on Marxist theories of alienation and Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital), but when Crawford moves from critique to prescription he runs into a bunch of problems. He thinks that the Jeffersonian ideal of small property holding is an attainable goal for most people (newsflash: it's not), and disdains collective (i.e. political) solutions to the problems that come with work under capitalism. It could have been a much better book than it turned out to be, but it was still a good read. Much better that Alain de Botton's book on work that came out last year (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, if you happen to be interested).