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Preface
Work under monopoly capitalism has experienced significant transformation that has concentrated greater control at the top of the corporate ladder, not for efficiency’s sake or the public good, but to guarantee greater capital for the bourgeois class. Hence work is organized in a way that negatively impacts workers and ultimately worker productivity. Harry Braverman and Richard Edwards delve into these matters from a radical perspective that challenges the traditional view. This article comparatively analyzes their theory and provides my personal reflection and work experience on the matter
Introduction
Humanity cannot exist without wealth and wealth is created through work. Work necessitates life and life precipitates work. Actually, it is said that life is about unraveling this dialectic as to whether we live to work or work to live. But increasing consumption has supplanted this dialectic of work and life with the dialectic of whether we consume to live or live to consume. Nevertheless, this greedy consumer society has generated burgeoning demand for more goods and services at a cheaper price. Hence this has catalyzed a capitalist strategy for maximizing profit by cutting costs, particularly labor costs. Subsequently, these dynamics have given rise to the changing nature of work especially for the working class whose labor has been cheapened and degraded due to the application of scientific-management and technology to production. The two books we are comparing here argue this case, as they trace and explore the transformation and degradation of work and the effects of this change on the labor force.
In fact, as I prepared to write this paper on the evolution of work and its effects on the workers, I picked up the March 2011 issue of “wired”
magazine and the front cover provided a vivid view of work-life today. The front-cover in black, white and yellow bold-caption, with an assembly-line comprised of Chinese workers wearing white overcoats and net headgears in the backdrop, reads: “1 MILLION WORKERS. 90 MILLION iPhone. 17 SUICIDES.” (March 2011, front-cover). According to the magazine article, there have been a number of reported cases of suicide by Chinese workers who reportedly jump off the building of their work-sites. “Sweat-shop” conditions and forced overtime were two of the reasons cited for the suicides. In effect, “the products we buy… come to us at the expense of underpaid and oppressed laborers” (Joel Johnson March 2011, p. 200). This article captures the decadence of what life has become for many workers, although from a global-South’s perspective. The nature of American Work has been transported to the global south so as to take advantage of cheap labor so that the capitalists can accumulate more wealth.
Braverman and Edwards both agree that the working class has undergone tremendous and revolutionary change in the way their work is organized, as a result of the large-scale corporation which utilizes innovative management science approaches and technology to de-skill and therefore disempower the working class from their work so that they (the capitalists) can amass more wealth. The authors counter the traditional orthodox view, which theorizes that the transformation in work-relations are historically based on the need to improve efficiency and productivity for the greater good, utilizing practical examples that debunk the efficiency argument and pointing to profit through control as the singular reason. They have provided an analysis from the 1970’s, which is still relevant today, to help us examine the structure of work, how it has evolved or devolved in America and its effects on the working class. But how extensive and typical are Braverman’s and Edwards’ analyses under monopoly capitalism? What are the similarities and differences? What are the respective strengths and weaknesses? And do any of their descriptions represent my career experiences so far? We will delve into these issues as we study the evolution and changing nature of work in the twenty-first century.
Analysis of Braverman and Edward
Harry Braverman and Richard Edwards are pioneers in the field of work-relations and organizational labor. They have provided an in-depth analysis of the structure of the working class and the manner in which it has changed. Writing from a “Marxist-socialist” perspective, they view the evolution and transformation of the organization of the work-force as a struggle for control between capitalists and workers, and that this control persists because it guarantees greater profit for the capitalists and does not necessarily improves efficiency and productivity. In making this point, they eschew the orthodox argument that the demand for greater efficiency requires more modern and degraded ways of organizing work (as advanced by Taylorism). In fact, this orthodox view contradicted reality, and it was this that influenced Braverman’s work in particular. However, Edwards and Braverman’s investigation into these concepts differ in terms of the scale and scope of their analysis or the weight they ascribe to certain concepts. Braverman is primarily interested in the degradation of work as it affects the working class in industries while Edwards is investigating how the organization of work has shaped the working class in society as a whole. They both take similar approaches unlike other social scientists that have looked at class consciousness and the relations of class to work based on pre-determined scientific questionnaires that test affect and are irrelevant to the poor working conditions and organizations of work.
The pre-dominant issue at the time, when Braverman wrote Monopoly Capital, suggests on one hand that work was less alienating, and on the other the Secretary of Health found that significant numbers of workers were dissatisfied with the quality of their work lives which resulted in low-worker productivity. Braverman notes that the industrial working class had been shrinking for sometime. He experienced this personally with the decline in his trade as a craftsman due to new materials and technology. His interest in the subject matter emanated from an observed contradiction :
“on the one hand, it is emphasized that modern work, as a result of the scientific-technical revolution and automation requires ever higher levels of education, training, the greater exercise of intelligence and mental effort…. At the same time, a mounting dissatisfaction with the conditions of industrial and office labor appears to contradict this view. For it is also said… that work has become increasingly subdivided into petty operations that fail to sustain the interest or engage the capacities of humans with current levels of education; that these petty operations demand ever less skill and training; and that the modern trend of work by its mindlessness and bureaucratization is alienating ever lager sections of the working population Harry” Braverman 1974, 6).
In investigating this contradiction, Braverman presented his argument via a historical method that traces the rise and dominance of the corporation over the work-force and the subsequent demise of occupational skill and worker-control over their craft which resulted from, two strategies, the scientific-management and technological Revolutions. These Revolutionary strategies according to Braverman secured greater control for capitalists that allowed them to divide the work tasks into petty operations, which were improved, implemented and managed by new scientific processes and principles that polarized and alienated the workforce (thereby separating conceptualization from execution of work) and increasing automation that requires fewer and cheaper laborers who are pretty much dumb. Hence, the efficiency argument for Braverman is an obfuscation of an ulterior motive to down-graded labor in so as to accumulate greater capital and wealth for the capitalists. Thus, the major revolutions that catalyzed these changes in the work-force were strategies used for the benefit of the capitalist to control that was clouded in the efficiency argument. Of course this sounds like a conspiracy argument, but where is the conspiracy here, on which side?
The fact is, however, his argument is buttressed by studies by the department of Government – namely the Secretary of Health – and social scientists show that the present organization of work in the US creates worker dissatisfaction.
Similarly, Braverman finds support from Edwards, his contemporary who wrote an almost identical piece five years later concerning the transformation of work. Edward’s work, like that of Braverman’s, was aimed at demystifying this childish myth that celebrated work under monopoly capitalism. However, unlike Braverman, Edwards investigates how the organization of work has shaped the working class in society as a whole. He agrees with Braverman, though, that the working environs have changed so that workers no longer have much control, rights or protection for their jobs given the rise of the giant corporation. But for Edwards, the result of this comes not from a homogeneous inert work-force, but is a result of a fractious working class in society. He believes that the working class has been transformed from class conscious issues that involve struggles between bosses and workers to one that is fractious or group-oriented. Therefore unions represent special groups and interests that bargain for rights to grievance appeals and better pay. This fractious working class, he argues, has helped to consolidate capitalist hegemony and countervailed any challenge to their rule.
Nevertheless, Edwards goes on to argue that this fractious working class serves as a deterrent to capitalist control that tends to be more uncertain because working class fractions may create friction which significantly impact the formulation of governmental and state policies.
Consequently, Edwards unlike Braverman, illustrates how workers create agency for themselves that has constantly militated against capitalist control, through bargaining rights, protestations and walk-outs. This constant and sporadic worker pressure from below has led to the formulation of varying degrees of control, coordination and tension in the workplace among and between occupational groups and workers and management. Edwards illuminate the idea that the use of scientific-management has created rules, regulations and agreements between interests groups and working factions in the organization which has nullified the intensity of the unions, thereby obscuring and diminishing workers-bargaining rights and organizing workers against themselves. Thus Edwards seem to imply a bottom-up evolutionary change that favors a top-down work place system.
Indeed, Braverman and Edwards seem to possess very little theoretical differences. If and where they differ would be in the amount of discussion they give to some subject matters in their analysis of issues such as the role of unions, historical precision and treatment of working class in industries and as a whole. Braverman and Edwards argue that unions have changed their role. But Edwards deal more fully with unions in examining work struggle and assert that they have become weak given the fractious working class. Braverman, on the other hand, devoted one sentence concerning unions which seem to beautifully encapsulate his position and appears to be a concise evaluation of Edward’s analysis. Braverman seem to imply that unions are experiencing the “iron law of oligarchy” in that they have changed their original impetus. Further, Unlike Edwards, Braverman does not seem to infer any heterogeneous working class except when he argued that management and technology has polarized work-force so that a distinction is created at the work place between conceptualization and Execution of work. Essentially, for Braverman, shop floor workers operate outside and apart from administration so that the function of planning is separated from the function of execution.
Hence, workers become machines, broken down into interchangeable parts, replaceable, and this cheapens labor and augment consolidate control at the top. Braverman and Edwards agree seem to agree here that management uses elaborate work rules and credentialism to divide the workers and thereby centralize control. Where Edwards illustrate an active union struggling for control, Braverman argues that the working class suffers from inertia and allows “symbolic violence” to be done against them because they operate within a habitus or a class consciousness that accepts such violence and passivity. In fact he declares that the unionized working class is intimidated by “the scale and complexity of capitalist production, and weakened in its original impetus by the gains afforded by the rapid increase in productivity” (Braverman 1998, 8). For Braverman, unions are no longer interested in socialist revolution to force control away from capitalist, but to bargain over labor’s share in the product. He doesn’t offer anything else on the issue of unions.
What make their works compelling are the historical and illustrative evidences that they have presented to highlight an inconspicuous and hidden reality of work under monopoly capitalism. This represents their greatest strengths. They have penetrated the world of work under capitalism and challenged it’s taken-for-granted assumption that doesn’t serve the public good. In presenting case studies and anthropological evidence and economic reasoning that appropriates and reconcile contradiction between productivity and profitability, efficiency and the degradation of work with the analogous reality of worker dissatisfaction and inefficiency, they have logically concluded that the result of the Wealth of Nation is the degradation of work and not the enhancement of work.
However, these writers suffer from a very biased opinion as they are writing out of an ethic-political position of Marxism and oppression. But that is hardly a strong criticism as it has long been established that there is no such thing as objectivity devoid of a “perspective of seeing” and a “perspective of knowing” (F. Nietzsche 1969, 119). Moreover, oppression and exploitation manifest itself in inefficiency and suicide and high worker turn-over rates with fresh examples showing up in China and other parts of the world as countries in the global south are implanted with neo-liberalism through structural adjustment. And Braverman shows this adoption of capitalist work structure in socialist as well as capitalist countries. Therefore, it is difficult to argue that these authors are biased given the numerous illustrations they provide that highlights the degradation of work. Notwithstanding this, Braverman and Edwards failed to explore how globalization and deindustrialization have affected the structure and nature of the working class and the manner in which they are affected. Moreover, this degradation and oppression of work and workers that Braverman and Edwards speak of is not new to much of the world’s ‘exotic others’. Probably the so-called middleclass in the global north are now being reduced to the position of the post-colonial subject and ethnic people’s plight of the world. From serfdom to wage-dependent labor, the world’s history is one that deprives certain workers and classes. Certainly, scientific-management and technology have added sophistication to this deprivation and degradation of work. Interestingly enough, globalization and economic decline in the US have increased unemployment, displaced more workers and shrink the middle and working class so that unemployment stands at 9.5%.
Certainly. In the United States today, more people are poor, and more desperate persons are created so that employment increasingly becomes more capricious thereby creating an opportunity for the capitalists to further degrade work and cheapen labor. This provides another strategy for the capitalists to gain more control over state policy and governance, because government is usually scapegoated for failures which lend weight to their call to cut government interference into the market. Hence federal and state control are weakened; as its power is reduced and supplanted by private control, a logic that some view as characteristic of American modus operandi. Hence, Braverman’s and Edward’s interests are commendable but fail to ponder these other evolutionary processes that affect work. (Braverman investigated particularly working manufacturing/industrial class which narrows his study to aspect of the workforce.)
Another criticism and possible weakness leveled against Braverman and Edwards rests with their backward and time-bound veil which restrict and narrow their vision of the possibilities of the future and how the future corrects itself. Braverman, especially, cites de-skilling of the worker as an effect of scientific-management and technology on the working class. However, according to orthodox theorists, this critique by Braverman and Edwards does not consider the fact that Taylorism and de-skilling was one stage in the evolution of work. Today’s American business promote re-skilling and re-tooling coupled with humanistic management approaches and better organizational and social dynamics that empower workers and harmonize working relationships between subordinates and bosses. Even so, this criticism doesn’t repudiate the fact that Edward’s and Braverman’s descriptions were right in the 1970s and might still be relevant today given mounting dissatisfaction among staff and the rise of humanistic management that has replaced the morality of hard-work and success with management-bureaucracy that is based on nepotism and induces “patron patriotism” which guarantees success. Operational control becomes decentralized but controlling power becomes more concentrated at the top as details flow down the pyramidal organizational line and credit flows upwards which seem to give greater control to workers (see Robert Jackall 2010, Chapter 2).
But this strategy is another step in consolidating power at the top as workers jostle to compete for their boss’s credit so as to appear loyal for promotional consideration. The failures of the organization are also passed off to those at the bottom of the organizational structure. However, Braverman failed to analyze bureaucratic rules in organization as it affects workers. But Edwards on the other delve into this indispensable dynamic that shape organizational work and worker-relations. It is this bureaucracy, implied by Edwards, that creates fractions in the workforce which Braverman’s work lack.
Personal Work Experience
Another criticism is that Braverman’s and Edwards’ analyses are so limited to one aspect of the labor-force in that they fail to consider other workers in other organizations (and epochs because they’re psychics) such as Governmental and Quasi-Governmental organizations, religious institutions such as churches and mosques, and philanthropic and not-for-profit organizations. I for example cannot identify with any industrial or manufacturing firm. I have always worked in the service sector, particularly the church, quasi-government behavioral management agency and a benevolent society. I was trained and worked in the humanities, a particular side of work that looks for ways to improve life for all persons. But you may say that all firms aim to do that. However, I first worked as an ordained minister in the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. I served first as a youth minister for a district and then as Pastor for two major Presbyterian churches. We had a small staff who worked in a harmonious and cordial atmosphere. Of course, we expect the church office to mirror Christlikeness and work is mostly that, kindness, gentleness, but lots of sacrifice, compromise and fealty to the church hierarchy which determines promotions and strategic positions. The Pastor however experience job dissatisfaction and burn-out because he has much to do with a small staff and has to constantly adjust the books and make “gut decisions”. As a pastor, I observed the secular bureaucratization that governed my craft. Far from a protestant ethic of hard-work and frugality, pastors who are administrators in their own right, work hard enough and harder to appear promotional which is determined by spirituality and the political networks forged. I was inundated with the bureaucracy that was contained in the hierarchy of the church which was controlling and daunting. For Edwards, hierarchy exists in business as an instrument to exert control for the basis of profit. But for the church, I soon realized that hierarchy exists to maintain the church’s traditions and protect its reputation.
The church does not exist for profit and, therefore, my work as a pastor was not organized around the accumulation of wealth but the accumulation of “souls” which ensures greater church power in society. The more following a church has in society means that they control a greater portion of the electorate and this therefore results in greater political influence. Moreover, a church may also control capitalists if most of the elites and business class worships at that church. But, much of church-work is done by church folk who volunteer their time. It was my work as a pastor for my local parish to organize the work with elected elders to manage the church’s affairs. As a pastor, I was well-paid because I served in an aristocratic parish of wealthy capitalists and famous politicians. This provided greater fame, societal influence and opportunities for me as a pastor who at the time defended capitalism and company bureaucracy. So I was never dissatisfied, because I was serving God, working hard and being faithful to the parish and the church hierarchy which ultimately pleases God and this ensures eternal blessings on such display of faith. The church is very hierarchical and controlling but this control is acceptable and appreciated because of the social habitus and milieu that organized church power from top-down. Church-work is informed by a Romanized model that preserves the status quo. But in the reform tradition, which I served, there was a slight balance of hierarchical power with congregational power as the church combined “Presbyterian” with “Congregational” forms of church governance so that I owed allegiance to the laity as well as to the synod (denomination membership administered by central government). I found this to be schizophrenic at times as I was caught in the middle of church conflicts, tensions and battles. Certainly, my work as a pastor was a little less than creative as the church hierarchy constantly interfered in worship styles and management methods, and even sermons and public statements that opposed the status quo.
Moreover, within the church there were factions that disagreed with liturgies and church practice, and this created much tension and further intervention from the hierarchy. This demonstrate that the church worker is accountable to God, laity and its various factions and the church hierarchy. In many cases, desires clash and I was caught in the middle of navigating and negotiating through this complex maze. As a pastor, my job was very fragile and complex, but meeting all needs except mine was a difficult but exciting task. Moreover, I was a young newly ordained minister, who had just graduated from seminary having studied Theology and Psychology. I applied Scientific-management and technology to my job as a pastor to manage my work and time so that I could be efficient and fair in meeting the needs of all members in both parishes. I believed the church provides a unique way in which work is and can be organized irrespective of the hierarchy which imposed itself on the local church life.
However, this helps to maintain the church’s institutional logic and ethos which is shared by the laity of all times in all places. What is as unique and exceptional to my experience as a church clergy man or worker, per-se, is how homogeneous the church was. Every worker knew his place and it was something that they agreed on whether overtly or covertly. In most cases the church workers came from inside and had assisted in creating the post he/she occupied. In fact my work as a pastor hasn’t changed since there was ever a pastor. The church is an historical and traditional institution that has managed to maintain of all things the nature and structure of church work. What has changed is the use of technology to increase the church’s reach, message and effectiveness in organizing itself.
As a former Pastor for Andrew’s United Church in Mandeville Jamaica I had used information-technology to diversify and intensify the church’s image as this church was dying. This proved very successful as the church grew more than we had hoped. Indeed, management techniques were accessed at my own discretion to get the most out of myself and my church. This is what separates my work from what Edwards and Braverman described in their analysis. I felt as though I was in control of my work; as I set my own targets in relation to my colleagues and fellow churchmen goals and expectations. The work was not individualized but represented an interdependent spoke in a wheel. However, my radicalism and liberal views became antithetical to the church and subsequently I was forced to resign as pastor.
I then worked in a government agency, which was an executive agency of government given the powers to form its own board outside of government with representatives of government on the board. While this sounds ambivalent and confusing, which it was and still is, it operated as a statutory body that carried out the government’s mandate to develop and manage the National Youth Service. Our aim as a quasi-government professional institution was to develop and direct a program that helps to develop pro-social behaviors in at-risk youngsters, train and prepare 17-23 year-olds for the world work and for college, develop a national youth service and implement a national values and attitude model for tertiary students. The National Youth Service (NYS) employed consultants and professionals with a very small staff of interns, trainees and janitors. Like Edwards’ concept of coordination and control, work at the NYS was organized or coordinated in teams and in terms of and to meet the state’s goals. I was the facilitator for the Career and Counseling Services team, which represented a less bureaucratic way of designating managerial title/work. The NYS was headed by a Pastor as well who was given the power by the state to organize a work model with his team. Hence work was very participatory and required everyone to be involved in planning, but very little execution. The fact is our agency was responsible for the conceptualization of policies, programs and work. We also created and monitored the agencies that executed the directives and programs. But agencies and their staff were only monitored to ensure that they stay within budget and program, and operated according to policy. Further, since we were involved in behavioral and psychological practice, monitoring and supervision (not control) was needed to ensure compliance with professionalism and psychological best practice and policies.
Hence, I cannot associate or identify fully with Edwards’ or Braverman’s description of work, because their analysis was limited to a particular kind of work. I work in a human industry that continues to value the linkages between the craftsman and his craft, the helping professional and his helping which require much thinking and a trained professional eye. This represents Braverman’s and Edwards’s greatest weaknesses as they seem to generalize that de-skilling and the degradation of work are occurring everywhere. But one could argue that psychological and behavioral industries are relatively new and may be irreplaceable by machines, but for now, until someone figures out a way to cheapen the labor. Further, it could be argued, that such professions are only necessary because of the degradation of work and job dissatisfaction that created the need for behavioral sciences to bend or heal the worker so that he can continue to survive under an exploitative capitalist regime that pays a pittance for their work. In fact, the growth in the demand for behavioral and psychological professionals seems to be compatible with greater job-dissatisfaction and worker demoralization under monopoly capitalism. It would seem, then, that Braverman may not need to explore church, philanthropic and behavioral organizations because work in these organizations is peripheral and trivial to mainstream work. It is mainstream work that needs to be “fixed” and not the establishment of these churches, charities and mental institutions that provide patched-up work that perpetuate the degrading of work and wage-dependent labor. Life is hard, because work is hard under monopoly capitalism. Hence one could argue that my experiences as a satisfied and valued professional who has control over my profession, assumes little resemblance to Braverman’s description because I work in a nascent industry not yet degraded but utilized by capitalists nonetheless to cover its reckless destruction of the working class, appease their guilt and revitalize a wounded workforce to prop up bourgeois wealth. Indeed, my job at the NYS perpetuated monopoly capitalism. It ensured that youngsters became worthy employers whose labor can be exploited. We harnessed obedience, work-attitude and loyalty even under duress and harsh conditions.
Finally, we are left with the task of pondering or imagining a better future. Richard Edward provides an alternative view, a solution to democracy and enhancement of work. According to Edwards, the future of democracy lies with the working class and socialism (Edwards 1979, 202). This is consistent with Braverman’s Marxist implications when he said unions have left their first loved of pressing for control of their work. But it is Edwards that explicitly offer a radical leftist solution. He concludes that “democratic socialism cannot be realized unless progressive forces everywhere struggle for both democracy and socialism. To do less shortchanges our future” (Richard Edwards 1979, 216). I concur, but must question whether this struggle is ultimately an effort of futility. How long must we struggle? But as long as those who experience oppression and violence in their life and work remain complicit and inert, accepting the violence, then the end will never come. However, each day people, more and more are being introduced to the truth which will awake the masses and provoke them to action. Braverman and Edwards are two provocateurs of change who have unveiled the destruction of work under monopoly capitalism that demands an active socialist response.
Bibliography
Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998)
Edwards, Richard. Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the TwentiethCentury. (USA: Basic Books,1979)
Nietzche, Frederick. On the Geneology of Morals. Trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J.Hollangdale. (New York: vintage Books, 1969).
This article was written by Rev. Renaldo McKenzie. Renaldo is a graduate at University of Pennsylvania and is pursuing Doctoral Studies at Georgetown this semester. He is presently working on two books: 1. Caribbean Thought…; and 2. Secrets to Unlocking Divine Intervention. Renaldo is also a Visiting Lecturer as he teaches at the Jamaica Theological Seminary and is the President and Partner of McKenzie & McKenzie Company a Consulting HR staffing and financial family private business. Renaldo can be reached at [email protected].
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