Labor and Monopoly Capital. (Teaching Notes).By Harry Braverman Harry Braverman (1920 – 1976) was an American Communist and political writer. He sometimes used the pseudonym Harry Frankel. Braverman became active in the American Trotskyist movement in 1937 and soon joined the newly founded Socialist Workers Party. . Introduction by John Bellamy Foster John Bellamy Foster is an American journalist, sociologist, essayist and eco-socialist, as well as editor of the Monthly Review, a prominent Marxist magazine. Foster is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene. . New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Monthly Review Press, $19.00 I teach this book (a third of it, actually) in the second semester of a year-long course on the methodologies of Cultural Studies. The class is organized around the concept of "technological efficiency" and since Georgia Tech is an engineering school, most of my students had never thought of efficiency as anything but an unmixed good. But by looking at the early twentieth-century "efficiency craze" and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20 1856 to March 21 1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. A management consultant in his later years, he is sometimes called "The Father of Scientific Management. , the class was able to reperceive their "ordinary" faith in technological progress. We begin by reading selections from Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards and contextualizing this within latenineteenth century labor disputes. Then, after examining Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management, the class spends two weeks on Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order is an essay from 1966 by Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran. It made a major contribution to Marxist theory by shifting attention from the assumption of a competitive economy to monopolistic aspects of giant . Braverman's seminal analysis of the labor process is, one would think, a bit too dense for the average first-year college student. I have found, however, that the book sparked some of the best class discussions and that students actually enjoyed reading it. I think the book works well because Braverman lays all of his assumptions bare. Beginning by distinguishing humans from other animals by our specific capabilities of work (whether this is right or not itself makes an interesting discussion), Braverman introduces Marx's theory of alienation Marx's theory of alienation (Entfremdung in German), as expressed in the writings of young Karl Marx, refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. so slowly that students are almost wholly won over to his argument (much more so than when I teach Marx). Though most of my students will never become radicals, they are able to understand a perspective which argues that the capitalist division of labor is "a crime against the person and against humanity" (51). This perception is central to the class and it provides the foundation for our discussions of Chaplin's Modern Times and Vonnegut's Player Piano player piano, an upright piano incorporating a mechanical system that automatically plays the encoded contents of a paper strip. This strip, perforated with holes whose position and length determine pitch and duration, is drawn over a pneumatic device that shoots . I assign the Introduction, chapters 1-5 and the final chapter of Labor and Monopoly Capital Though some students resist Braverman's conclusions, more I think find his arguments relevant to the world around them. |
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