Harry Braverman | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 9, 1920 |
| Died | August 2, 1976(1976-08-02) (aged 55) |
| Known for | Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century |
Harry Braverman (December 9, 1920 – August 2, 1976)[1] was an AmericanMarxist, worker,political economist andrevolutionary. Born inNew York City to a working-class family, Braverman worked in a variety of metal smithing industries before becoming an editor at Grove Press, and laterMonthly Review Press, where he worked until his death at the age of 55 inHonesdale, Pennsylvania.[2] Braverman is most widely known for his 1974 bookLabor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century,[3] "a text that literally christened the emerging field of labor process studies" and which in turn "reinvigorated intellectual sensibilities and revived the study of the work process in fields such as history, sociology, economics, political science, and human geography."[4]: 33
Braverman was one of the many thousands of industrial workers who became radicalized by the events of theGreat Depression. He first became politically active in theYoung People's Socialist League (YPSL), whose members were known as "Yipsels." Despite being largely composed of students and young radicals, the Yipsels openly dissented from the positions of the established communist groups, taking a firm stance on the need for socialist internationalism (in connection with theSpanish Civil War), providing enthusiastic support for worker uprisings and the formation of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), and roundly rejectingStalinist politics and distortions.[4]: 35–36 Braverman was not afraid of unpopular positions. He sought repeatedly to deepen socialist politics by dispensing with simplistic formulations of Marxian theory. "Marxism," Braverman cautioned, "is not a ready-made slot-machine dogma, but a broad theory of social development which requires application and re-interpretation in every period."[5]
After serving in the shipbuilding industry duringWorld War II, Braverman began to deepen his commitment to revolutionary struggle, joining the firstTrotskyist party in the United States: theSocialist Workers Party (SWP). His political engagement coincided the wave of political repression against socialists and communists known as theRed Scare. Even before the end ofWorld War II, 18 SWP leaders were imprisoned, becoming "the first victims of the notorious Smith Act, which made it a crime of treason to publish and proclaim the ideas ofMarx,Engels,Lenin, andTrotsky." Braverman himself was fired from his job at Republic Steel as a result of red-baiting tactics used by theFBI. Undeterred by the witch-hunts, Braverman continued his political work but disguised his activities by writing under the pseudonym "Harry Frankel".[4]: 36–37
In the 1950s, Braverman was one of the leaders of the so-called "Cochranite tendency", a current led byBert Cochran (who used the pseudonym "E. R. Frank") within the broaderSWP. Braverman participated to some extent in thesectarian politics prevalent among the various Trotskyist tendencies. However, after being expelled from the SWP in 1953, Braverman helped to foundThe Socialist Union—an explicit attempt to transcendsectarian politics and develop a broad left program focused on the U.S. Braverman became editor ofThe American Socialist (previouslyThe Educator), the publication ofThe Socialist Union.[6] It was in these pages that Braverman first began to think more concretely about labor, the labor process, machinery and class consciousness—what would become the key themes ofLabor and Monopoly Capital just over a decade later.
During the early 1960s, Harry Braverman worked as an editor forGrove Press, where he was instrumental in publishingThe Autobiography of Malcolm X. In 1967 Braverman became managing director of Monthly Review Press, a position which he continued for the rest of his life. The editors ofMonthly Review,Paul Baran andPaul Sweezy, and particularly their bookMonopoly Capital, had a significant influence on Braverman as he was developing his analysis of the labor process of twentieth-century capitalism.
Braverman's criticism of the labor process ofmonopoly capitalism has had a lasting impact on the sociology of work and labor relations. In his bookLabour and Monopoly Capital,[3] Braverman extended Marx's writings on the impact of capitalist industrial growth on the labor process, paying specific attention to the growth of giant corporations and oligopolistic industries.[7] Marx saw that the emergence of machinery and the increasing workers' control over the labor process since workers' skills shifted into tending the machines. This was seen as strengthening the owners of capital since they controlled the knowledge and skills needed to operate the factory, run the machines, and employ the workforce. This argument was furthered by Braverman who contended that such a labor force was defined by a weakened position relative to capital. Work became transformed from being a utilization of skills and experience into a mindless, machine-based, and powerless activity. He summarized the tenets ofscientific management developed byFrederick Taylor as 1. disassociation of the labor process from the skills of workers, 2. separation of conception from execution, 3. use of monopoly power over knowledge to control each step of the labor process and its mode of execution.[2] Braverman argued that Taylor's prescriptions for the workplace were "nothing less than the explicit verbalization of the capitalist mode of production".[3]: 86
