Braverman and the Contribution of Labour Process Analysis to the Critique of Capitalist Production – Twenty-Five Years On

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Process Analysis ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Labour Process

Braverman and the Contribution of Labour Process Analysis to the Critique of Capitalist Production - Twenty-Five Years on

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Work Relations ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Conceptual Confusion ◽  
Different Levels

This paper seeks to reassess the contributions made by Braverman and subsequent labour process writers to the critique of capitalist production. Braverman's main motivation lay with the subversion of pro-capitalist ideologies. He identified deskilling tendencies with the capitalist imperative of accumulation in order to promote the case for revolutionary change. The labour process debate that Braverman helped to initiate, while successful in broadening understanding of concrete work relations, has difficulties in excavating the necessary interconnections of capitalist alienation and exploitation. In particular, there is a problem in separating out the different levels of analysis that link essence and appearance in the work context. Narrow focus on the labour process creates unnecessary conceptual confusion about the specificity of capitalist production, and also condones an unduly pessimistic political agenda on the prospects for transcending capitalist domination. In eschewing the important interconnections between workplace organisation and capitalist social relations, labour process analysis risks inverting the critical intent of Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital by promoting the continuation of the extant social order.

The Decline of Labour Process Analysis and the Future Sociology of Work

Sociology ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 931-951 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian O'Doherty ◽  
Hugh Willmott
Keyword(s):  
Process Analysis ◽  
Sociology Of Work ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
The Future

Beyond technological determinism: revitalising labour process analyses of technology, capital and labour

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Paul Thompson ◽  
Knut Laaser
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Call Centre ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Work Relations ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Critical Commentary

Technological determinism is a recurrent feature in debates concerning changes in economy and work and has resurfaced sharply in the discourse around the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. While a number of authors have, in recent years, critiqued the trend, this article is distinctive in arguing that foundational labour process analysis provides the most effective source of an alternative understanding of the relations between political economy, science, technology and work relations. The article refines and reframes this analysis, through an engagement with critical commentary and research, developing the idea of a political materialist approach that can reveal the various influences on, sources of contestation and levels of strategic choices that are open to economic actors. A distinction is made between ‘first order’ choices, often about adoption at aggregate level and ‘second order’ choices mainly concerned with complex issues of deployment. This framework is then applied to the analysis of case studies of the call centre labour process and digital labour platform, functioning as illustrative scenarios. It is argued that the nature of techno-economic systems in the ‘digital era’ open up greater opportunities for contestation.

scholarly journals My talent or yours? A labour process analysis of talent management in practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-199
Author(s):  
Chitalu Kabwe ◽  
Smita Tripathi
Keyword(s):  
Management Practices ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Talent Management ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Process Theory ◽  
Managerial Control ◽  
Employment Relationships ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Work Intensification

The article empirically examines the experiences of managers and employees involved in talent management practices. Our empirical aim is to explore the ways in which high-potential employees might also be exposed to a degradation of their employment relationship. We make a theoretical contribution by analysing talent management practices through the conceptual lens of labour process theory. Labour process theory is part of a well-established Marxist approach and we extend this framework to analyse talent management practices in industrial capitalism to offer new insights into how these practices are changing the employment relationships via augmented managerial control and work intensification. Using an employer–employee perspective, we use qualitative data from three multinational companies based in Europe. Our findings indicate the widespread use of ‘softer’ forms of control, alongside work intensification and a general illusion of opportunity and expectations, thus degrading and hollowing out the employment relationship. In effect, talent management practices are increasing workplace pressure through uncompensated talent development activities and are paradoxically debilitating the employment relationships for the ‘talented’ employees.

Piero Sraffa’s physical price system and reproduction without production

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
William Jefferies
Keyword(s):  
Physical Model ◽  
Price System ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Physical Change ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Correct Model ◽  
Human Labour ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Theory Of Value

This article examines the physical price system of Piero Sraffa. Sraffa’s system is presented as a physical model of production, which provides an internally consistent and so logically superior alternative to Marx’s allegedly inconsistent labour theory of value. This article does not contest the internal consistency of Sraffa’s logic but demonstrates that its logic contradicts every actual process of production. Production, defined as the human labour process that transforms one set of physical inputs into a different set of physical outputs, is a process of physical change by definition, which in capitalist production means that outputs are physically incommensurate to, or different from, inputs. This article focuses on several key issues; commensurability, the standard commodity or physical numeraire; the relation between Sraffian and Leontief’s production matrix, including Quesnay’s Tableau Économique; and the production of surplus. It finds that Sraffa’s physical price system is not a model of production at all, it is a mathematically correct model of nothing. It is reproduction without production.

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