Changes in Organisational Form and Personnel Strategies Mark the Break with the Degradation of Work - Essay Example

Running Head: DEGRADATION OF WORK Recent Changes in Organisational Form and Personnel Strategies Mark the Final Break with the "Degradationof Work" Name of the writer Name of the institution Recent Changes in Organisational Form and Personnel Strategies Mark the Final Break with the "Degradation of Work" Sociologists regularly criticise Marx and Braverman for being functionalist and determinist (for example, Littler and Salaman, 1982). Braverman notes Marx's dialectical analysis of the historical relations between the material forces and social relations of production. He says his aim is "the study of the labor processes of capitalist society, and the specific manner in which these are formed by capitalist property relations" (Braverman, 1974, p. 24). Braverman, however, is not precise about the dynamic force injected by capitalist property relations. He claims that "he Marx gave primacy to the forces of production in the long sweep of history" (Braverman, 1974, 19-20). Braverman's productive force determinism prevents him penetrating the complexities of the capitalist mentality and the critical importance of the valorization process in the control of labour. Braverman's (1974, pp. 24-25) lack of concern with the valorization process is evident when he writes off Marx's definition of the working class as "the static terms of an algebraic equation", signalling the abandonment of any interest in Marx's political economy. For instance, the present treatise on capitalist production does not contain a formal definition of 'capital' . Marx would agree with Braverman that the 'accumulation of capital' - the generation of increasing amounts of surplus - "dominates in the mind of the capitalist, into whose hands the control of the labour process has passed" (Braverman, 1974, p. 53). He would also agree with Braverman's (1974, 53) aim to consider "the manner in which the labor process is dominated and shaped by the accumulation of capital". However, as Braverman fails to grasp Marx's definition of capital, he has little to say about how the accumulation of capital controls labour, and focuses solely on the material process of production. Some participants such as Morgan and Hooper recognise "the lack of an adequate theorisation of 'capital' " as a major "lacunae" in Braverman and the labour process debate. Marx says that machines only dominate labour 'technologically' - they impose technical constraints and demands - not that they control every aspect of work. He says that workers are impotent against capital 'even when labour exists autonomously', that is, without supervision or technical constraint. Marx (1976, 994) made quite clear his view that it was "pre-eminently in this sense - which pertains to the valorization process as the authentic aim of capitalist production - that capital as objectified labour (accumulated labour, pre-existent labour and so forth) may be said to confront living labour (immediate labour, etc.)". The workers find themselves not only confronted by material reality, "the workers find themselves confronted by the functions of the capital that lives in the capitalist" (Marx, 1976, 1054), and therefore by accounting. It follows that in Marx's theory it is not so much in detailed control of the labour process that we see the fully developed subsumption of labour in capitalism, but in fully developed systems of accounting. Braverman, by contrast, sees the detailed control of labour as capitalism's defining problem. This explains his view that "capitalists use the most productive instruments of labor and the greatest intensity of labor, but they are always aimed at realizing from the potential inherent in labor power the greatest useful effect of labour, for it is this that will yield him the capitalist the greatest surplus and thus the greatest profit" (Braverman, 1974, 56). By contrast, in Marx's management accounting, and in reality, the capitalist thinks the other way around. Because capital's overriding aim is the greatest return on capital, it invests in machinery and systems of control to increase the productivity and intensity of labour. It does not do this to get 'the greatest useful effect of labor', the greatest possible use-value from labour, but to increase the rate of surplus value to increase the return on capital employed. It is because Braverman focuses on the technical labour process that he sees management's main task to be 'de-skilling', that is, taking direct control of production. "like a rider who uses reins, bridle, spurs, carrot, whip, and training from birth to impose his will, the capitalist strives, through management to control. And control is the central concept of all management" (Braverman, 1974, 68). Braverman thinks the rider uses direct controls to cause the horse to produce the necessary physical movements (use-values) to execute the exercises of the manege. Central to capitalist management is control, but not simply the direct, external control of workers, but control of the valorization process through accounting that disciplines capital's jockey and its horse. What is more important, management controls workers by separating and appropriating the mental labour of pursuing surplus value, the mental labour of controlling the valorization process. As Braverman conceives the labour process solely as a material process, management itself becomes a de-skilled labour process, only "a task based on certain techniques" (Armstrong, 1989, 320). "In capitalist production the technical labour process is only the means; the end is supplied by the valorization process or the production of surplus value" (Marx, 1976, 1001-1002) Whereas Braverman sees the 'progressive alienation of the process of production from the worker' as the progressive fragmentation of work, Marx sees the direction of capitalist development as the progressive alienation of labour from capital from ever tighter accountability. Braverman and others, of course, acknowledge the existence of the valorization process, but fail to integrate it into a theory of capitalist control (Elger, 1979). Braverman (1974, 53) says that under capitalism, "the labor process, which, while it is in general a process for creating useful values, has now also become specifically a process for the expansion of capital, the creation of a profit". Braverman 'adds' the valorization process by submerging it within the material process. For him, adding the valorization process adds complexity and uncertainty to the material process. Braverman (1974, 57) contrasts the supposedly certain use-values from constant capital with the supposedly uncertain use-values from variable capital, i.e., labour: "when the capitalist buys buildings, materials, tools, machinery, etc., he can evaluate with precision their place in the labor process. Money spent on labour power is 'variable' capital for Marx because the capitalist intends it to come back augmented with surplus value, not because extracting necessary use-values from labour is more uncertain than extracting use-values from constant capital, as Braverman suggests. Braverman confuses the material labour process - the production of use-values - with the valorization process - the realisation of surplus labour that he treats as an additional, complicating factor within the material process of production. For Marx, by contrast, the material and valorization processes are an indissoluble unity. When capital controls the valorization process, it not only holds workers accountable for the socially necessary value of its labour, but also for recovering the value of constant capital whose realisation is just as uncertain as it is for variable capital. Labour process theorists almost invariably follow Braverman's downgrading of the valorization process. In much of this work, "references to 'the capitalist labour process threatens to become nothing other than an intellectually pretentious way of saying 'work" (Nichols, 1999, 115) Littler (1990, 80) marginalises the valorization process when he argues that "control over task performance considering the enterprise as a work organisation is distinct from control over money flows sic considering the enterprise as a capital fund. The latter form of control is outside the labour process as such". Like Braverman, Burawoy (1985, 26) assumes the capitalist's central problem is "the manner in which the capacity to labour is translated into the expenditure of labour", that is, into use-values. He says the material labour process becomes the focus and the valorization process becomes irrelevant because "under capitalism, because of the absence of a separation, either temporal or spatial, between necessary and surplus labour time, the capitalist is never sure whether has indeed recovered a surplus" (Burawoy, 1985, 32)-he means until realisation. Burawoy (1978, 262) is right that Marx insisted upon the "distinction between the production of things, or use-value, and the production of surplus value", but only to insist even more firmly that the capitalist labour process was driven by valorization. Because Burawoy (1985, 32) is also preoccupied with the material labour process, for him the capitalist labour process is a step backwards from feudal control of valorization. The lord does not know whether the work observed will realise surplus value, or how much, as weather, disease, wars, etc., could obliterate or enhance the realised surplus. By contrast, from Marx's perspective, it is through accounting that the capitalist sees and pursues surplus value in production and holds workers accountable for the circuits of capital. Accounts of the total circuit or elements within it confront many workers, particularly managers and supervisors at all levels, and lower level production workers are accountable to their superiors for the socially necessary value of their labour. Workers collectively and individually confront accounts of the circuit of capital when they struggle at the point of production over the exchange value and use-value of labour in the context of the required return on capital. Furthermore, unlike Braverman's technical labour process, there is theoretical space for the subjective consciousness of the worker - informal understandings, customs, traditions ideology, etc. - in explaining conflict and co-operation in the labour process (Edwards, 1986 and Edwards, 1990). If we see the valorization process as the hub of the capitalist system, it is not the case that "Marx's analysis in Capital is misleading, for in abstracting the operation of the mode of production from the larger social system in which it develops, he creates the impression that the modes of appropriating surplus-value in the labour process are sufficient to reproduce the subjection of labour to capital" (Burawoy, 1978, 4). This is only a valid criticism if we assume the labour process is the technical labour process. Critics of Braverman - and, implicitly, of Marx - argue that management does not single-mindedly pursue surplus value through the labour process. As management must concern itself with both the production and the realisation of surplus value, Kelly (1985, 32) argues that "there is no sound reason for privileging any moment in the circuit-i.e., the labour-capital relation within the labour process". This is a justifiable criticism of Braverman's privileging of the material labour process. However, it is not a valid criticism of Marx who, as we have seen, 'privileges' the valorization process, the integration of the production and realisation of surplus value. Littler and Salaman (1982, 257) may be right that in some circumstances, "production management and labour control are of secondary significance", but this is only a valid criticism of Braverman's view that the labour process is the material process. Littler and Salaman make no attempt to integrate the valorization process into their analysis of the labour process. Although Littler and Salaman are critical of Braverman's focus on the material labour process, they appear to believe this is the only possible definition. Their criticism is only that "the subordination of labour, real or otherwise, cannot be understood at the level of the labour process" (Littler and Salaman, 1982, 266). This again presupposes that the 'labour process' is simply the material process of production. If we define the labour process as the valorization process, our canvas includes all those activities by which capital produces and realises surplus value. Labour process theorists evince little understanding of Marx's notion of total social capital and its centrality in controlling the labour process. For example, Edwards rightly says that " 'Capital' is not the sum of individual capitalists but is a social force stemming from the mode of production". Individual companies will certainly perceive many differences between themselves, but if they are elements of social capital they will also perceive a fundamental similarity in their goals. The valorization process has theoretical priority in Marx's theory because it allows us to understand the dialectic of co-operation and conflict at the point of production. Several of Braverman's critics have raised but not resolved this problem (Burrawoy, 1985; Littler, 1990, 64-65). To understand the relationship between co-operation and conflict, we must, as Edwards (1990, p. 138) says, recognise the "difference between what may be called detailed control, or the control of the details of work tasks, and general control, meaning the continued deployment of workers' capacities to produce surplus value". The analytical power provided by seeing accounts as representations of the social relationships of capital - as the central element in the general control of labour - is, first, that it gives us the structural framework that contains struggles over detailed control of the technical labour process. Second, it gives us their root cause in the contradiction within the capitalist labour process. By contrast, for Marx, the contradiction is between the valorization process dedicated to increase the rate of return on capital - the real economic interest of capital - by constantly worsening the economic returns to the collective worker (including its quality of life) - the real economic interest of labour. Although individual workers may give degrees of consent to capitalist aims and they may benefit from co-operation, across all workers the underlying conflict of economic interests both drives and shapes struggles between capital and labour at individual points of production over the extraction of effort. By contrast, echoing Braverman's preoccupation with the material labour process, in Edwards' (1986, 35) view, "it is in the use of labour-power within the production process that conflict is rooted". Edwards therefore defines 'struggle' as conflict about who controls the use-value and the exchange value of labour, about detailed control, not about general control, control of socially necessary value to realise a satisfactory rate of return on capital. In his model, therefore, as in conventional models of management control, profitability acts only as an external constraint on the labour process, and is not the direct source of conflict at the point of production. In his view, "a capitalist is dependent on realizing profits in exchange and has to manage his labour relations accordingly" (Edwards, 1986, 71). By contrast, for Marx profitability is the aim of control and the source of conflict. Certainly, as Edwards (1990, 129) says, in managing labour relations, the capitalist generates conflict and 'struggles' over control of the technical labour process that "create understanding about how work shall be performed". Higher returns on an individual capital either immediately result from, or by way of competition will lead to, pressure on workers somewhere to sustain or increase the rate of surplus value. General accounting control generates struggle at the point of production because management uses it to press workers to sustain and increase the rate of surplus value. Management undertakes competitive and job-destroying investment in fixed capital to increase labour productivity; it increases the intensity of labour; it puts continued downward pressure on wages; it uses competitive sub-contracting, etc. This is the contradiction that Marx says drives the dialectic of the capitalist labour process at the point of production-that it requires the collective worker to submit to capitalist accountability. Capitalism requires not only work, but also that the collective worker works to further its own exploitation and impoverishment. Edwards and other labour process theorists argue that the source of co-operation and conflict at the point of production is workers' experience and interpretation of the material process of production as exploitative. By contrast, Marx argues that the source of co-operation and conflict at the point of production is the worker's experience and interpretation of the valorization process - the experience of capital - as exploitative. References Armstrong P., (1989) Management, labour process and agency, work, Employment Soc 3 (September (1)), pp. 307-322. Braverman H., (1974) Labor and monopoly capital: the degradation of work in the twentieth century, Monthly Review Press, London. Burawoy M., (1978) Toward a Marxist theory of the labour process: Braverman and beyond, Polit Soc 8, pp. 265-312. Burawoy M., (1985) The politics of production, Verso, London. Edwards P.K., (1986) Conflict at work: a materialist analysis of workplace relations, Blackwell, Oxford, Basil. Edwards P.K., (1990) Understanding conflict in the labour process: the logic and autonomy of struggle. In: D. Knights and H. Willmott, Editors, Labour process theory, Macmillan, London. Elger T., (1979) Valorisation and 'deskilling': a critique of Braverman, Capital Class, pp. 58-99. Kelly J., (1985) Management's redesign of work: labour process, labour markets and product markets. In: D. Knights, H.C. Willmott and D. Collinson, Editors, Job redesign, Gower, Aldershot. Littler C. and Salaman G., (1982) Bravermania and beyond: recent theories in the labour process, Sociology 16 (2), pp. 215-269. Littler C., (1990) The labour process debate. In: D. Knights and H. Willmott, Editors, Labour process theory, Macmillan, London. Marx K., (19760 Capital: a critique of political economy vol. 1, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Nichols T., (1999) Industrial sociology and the labour process. In: H. Beynon and P. Glavanis, Editors, Patterns of social inequality: essays for Richard Brown, Longman, London. Read More