Labor process theory

Labour Process Theory is a late Marxist theory of the organization of work under capitalism. According to Marx Labour process refers to the process whereby labour is materialized or objectified in use values. Labour is here an interaction between the person who works and the natural world such that elements of the latter are consciously altered in a purposive manner. Hence the elements of labour process are; three-fold: first, the work itself, a purposive productive activity; second the object(s) on which that work is performed; and third, the instruments which facilitate the process of work. According to Marx the simple element of the labour process are (1) purposeful activity, that is work itself, (2) the object on which that work is performed, and (3) the instrument of that work. The land (and this, economically speaking includes water) in its original state in which it supplies man with necessaries or means of subsistence ready to hand is available without any effort on his part as the universal material for human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connection with their environment are object of labour spontaneously provided by nature, such as fish caught and separated from their natural element, namely water, timber felled in virgin forests and ores extracted from their veins. If, on the other hand, the object of labour has, so to speak, been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw material. For example, ore already extracted and ready for washing. All raw material is an object of labour, but not every object of labour is raw material; the object of labour counts as raw material only when it has already undergone some alteration by means of labour. The labour process, as we have just presented it in its simple and abstract element, is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use values. The labour process is sometimes loosely termed "work organisation". The starting point for discussion of the labour process is Marx. It is defined by Marx as consisting of three elements: the act of working, a predefined subject being worked upon (a good or service), and the physical instruments by which the first elements creates the second: "In the labour process, therefore, man's activity, with the help of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in the material worked up on". That which is produced can either be useful in supporting human existence and so have a use value or it can be traded and attain an exchange value. The latter value, of course, presupposes the former. As a consequence of humans wanting to improve their material condition, a surplus is generated with in the labour processes, that is an enhancement of the value between inputs and outputs. Labour processes exist in all societies, capitalist or socialist, and it is argued that the organisation and control of a labour process is indicative of the type society within which it exists. It critiques scientific management as authored by Frederick W Taylor in the early 1900s, and uses central concepts developed by Harry Braverman in the 1970s. Recent attempts have been made to use labor process theory to explain workers' bargaining power under contemporary global capitalism. Labor Process Theory has developed into a broader set of interventions and texts linked to critiquing new forms of management strategy of an exploitative nature. In Labour and Monopoly Capital: Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Braverman seeks to retrieve and update Marx's critiques of the capitalist labour process through an attack up on bourgeois accounts of work in industrial society. Although Braverman's primary focus is the degradation of work in the twentieth century, which he associates with the relentless tightening of management control, Labour and Monopoly Capital also contains at least two other rather loosely related elements: an outline of developments in the wider organisation of monopoly capitalist societies and an examination of changes in their occupational and class structures.