Labour Process Theory

Introduction
There are a variety of issues within the labour process debate such as the redesign of jobs, the position of women,
the management of labour and the impact of new technology.

This particular article talks about the theoretical underpinnings of labour process analysis.
It also provides an assessment of its viability, offers a variety of proposals for it's
reconstructions and suggests a number of directions for its further development.

In this introduction, the article provide a broad overview of the history of labour process theory before presenting a
preview of the individual contributions to the volume, namely from Craig Littler, Paul Thompson, Paul Edwards and
Mark Wardell.

Foundation of Labour-Process Analysis

(1) Labour Power and Wage Labour
- Marx presents a radical analysis of the relationship between the creative power of
human labour and the capitalist mode of production. His purpose is to show how
these relations condition the way in which labour power is actually shaped,
organized and controlled to yield humanly valuable outputs.

- As argued by Marx, Capitalism is the subordination of the human capacity to

produce use values to the exploitative demands of the capitalist whose primary
concern is to create products (commodities) which realize in the market an
exchange value greater than the cost of the factors of production (materials, tools,
wages, and so on). Production for profit rather than need is the main purpose of
capitalism.

- In order to maximize profit by capitalist, they exploit the use of labour to mainly
produce commodities and it cause the creativity of human labour to be lost.
(2) Dynamics of Capitalist Development
- Marx argues, requires that surplus is appropriated from labour by paying it less than
the value it adds in the labour process.

- Once labour is at disposal of capital, a variety of strategies may be developed for ensuring that the purchase of labour
power results in the relisation of productive effort, which is essential if the capitalist mode of production is to be
substained. Eg. Capitalist may cut wages or prolong the working hours to maximized profits.

- Alternatively, capitalist may resort to increase productivity by introducing

automation to the production process.
Eg. development of labour-saving machinery and the design of more intensive
methods of working.

- Due to the external pressure (competitions, market demands, etc) capitalist

continue in search of more productive method of working and it alter the pattern of
labour process. Instead of using one’s creativity and skills to produce an complete
 product, now in order to increase productivity, labour process had been forced to
changed to a more specialized, fragmented division of tasks.
Eg. Production line

Labour in the ERA of monopoly capital

Braverman argues that Labor and monopoly capital contains at least two rather lossely
related elements
a) An outline of developments in the wider organization of ‘monopoly capitalist;
societies
b) An examination of changes in their occupational and class structures.

Braverman explores how the application of modern management techniques, in

combination with mechanisation and automation, secure the real subordination of labour
and deskilling of work in the office as well as on the shop floor.

He suggested that the separation of the conception (management) from the execution
(labour) of tasks, including the task of management, provide the driving motive for the
modern organization and control of the labour process.

Critiques of Braveman
We limit the review to criticism directed at four interrelated elements in Braverman’s
arguments :

1) Deskilling
Braveman’s thesis on deskilling is founded upon assumption that the continuing
accumulation of capital depends upon an appropriation of the customs, knowledge and

skills of labour. Eg. Introduction of automation machinery, dynamic change of

organizational structure and classification of working classes to increase the
productivity and in terms increase profits.

The critics argues that through the application of Taylorism, craft work (including the skilled labour of clerks) is
progressively reduced to the status of detailed labour. It is also being criticized for romanticizing craft work and the
position of craft labour in industry.

Braverman has also come under attack for overlooking the extent to which the ‘real’
subordination of labour actually depends upon the retention or creation of skills and
for marginalizing the significance of opportunities for resistance where work is
deskilled.

2) Management Strategy
Here the main thrust of criticism is directed at Braverman’s exclusive identification of
 the principles of Taylorism, involving an extensive separation of conception and
execution, with the strategy for designing work and controlling labour actually
favoured and implemented by management.

Edwards (1979) has argued that management has increasingly favoured ‘bureaucratic’
forms of control in which greater emphasis is placed upon the incorporation of the
workforce, through the provision of ‘enlightened’ personnel policies and semblance of

a career structure, than upon the simple fragmentation and intensification of work
tasks

Taylorian scientific management is not the only strategy available for exercising managerial authority, and given the
reality of worker resistance, often it is not the most appropriate.

3) Full Circuit of Capital

This criticism attacks what it regards as the parochialism of labour process analysis.
In the era of monopoly capitalism, it is argued, there are cheaper and more effective
ways of ensuring a satisfactory yield on capital employed than by directly
intensifying the productivity of labour. These include monopoly pricing, sales and
marketing efforts, currency speculation, asset stripping, relocation of production to
cheap labour markets, credits manipulation and so on.

4) The Ontology of Class Relations

Braverman’s study is confined within an objectivist framework in which the
‘subjective dimension’of class is simply bracketed out of the analysis. Braverman
omits consideration of the presence of subjectivity in the unfolding of ‘the scientific-
technical revolution’.

Burawoy develops an approach in which any work context is understood to involve

three ‘inseparable’ dimensions: ‘an economic dimention (production of things), a
political dimension (production of an social relations), and an ideological dimension
(production of an experience of those relations).