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* 自動機械体系によって条件が十分に熟している場合には、「生産過程は、労働が労働過程を支配する統一
としてこの過程を包摂するという意味での労働過程ではなくなっている」、とマルクスは『経済学批判要
綱』のなかで書いている。 『要綱』は、マルクスが自己了解のために書いたモノグラフから成っており、『資
本論』の準備草稿としての役目を果たすものであった。ここではマルクスは、公刊を目的に準備した著作
の場合よりも、よりいっそうの推論をなし、彼が問題としている主題についてよりいっそう自由に思いを
めぐらすことができた。それゆえ、労働と生産にかんする節は、とびぬけて興味深いとはいえ、実質
的にはその要点はすべて、よりいっそう十分に推敲を重ねた最後的なかたちで『資本論』のなかに含ま
ている。右に引用した大胆な定式は、私の知るかぎり、公刊された彼の著作のなかにはみあたらない非常
に示唆にとむ所説の一つである。
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=経済学批判要綱+生産過程は+労働過程ではなくなっている
思想 - 第 601～606 号 - 1122 ページ
クリティーク - 第 1～5 巻 - 39 ページ
經濟學雜誌 - 第 79～80 巻 - 61 ページ
経済学と歴史変革: 労働指揮権としての資本・生活意識・土地所有
鉄鋼業の「合理化」と企業內教育: M 製鉄所および構內社外企業の企業內教育展開過程についての実証的研究
社会主義 - 第 333～339 号 - 127 ページ
現代社会学の理論と方法: - 47 ページ
Gendai fujin mondai kōza - 第 5 巻 - 37 ページ
1978/1/3 -ハリー. ブレーヴァマン. 『労働と独占資本』. 書. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth ...
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「労働と独占資本」が書かれたのは70年代。当時、アメリカは労働者の職務不安やストライキ、そしてサボタージュが頻発。大きな社会問題となる。ブレイヴァマンはアメリカにおける労働者の「労働の疎外」現象の本質的原因をフレデリック・テイラーの『科学的管理法』に求めます。
『科学的管理法』の本質は仕事の遂行中における「構想」機能を経営者側が掌握し、「実行」機能を労働者に遂行させることにあり、これによって、いわゆるクラフトマンのような熟練労働者の抵抗力を解体させた点にあると主張します。これがいわゆる『構想と実行の分離』とよばれるブレイヴァマンテーゼです。
以後の研究は『構想と実行の分離』を軸に進められてきたといっても過言ではありません。例えばフランスのレギュラシオン学派は８０年代に日本企業に『構想と実行の再結合』が生じているといって賞賛しました。
日本企業の労使関係に関心のある方は避けて通ることのできないブレイヴァマンテーゼ。あなたはどう読み解く？
ちなみに、伊原亮司『トヨタの労働現場』と合わせて読むと効果的。
Harry Braverman
Harry Braverman | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 9, 1920 |
| Died | August 2, 1976 Honesdale, Pennsylvania |
Harry Braverman (1920 – 1976)[1] was an American Marxist, worker, political economist and revolutionary. Born in New York City to a working-class family, Braverman worked in a variety of metal smithing industries before becoming an editor at Grove Press, and later Monthly Review Press, where he worked until his death at the age of 55 in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.[2] Braverman is most widely known for his 1974 book Labor 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
Political struggle and development
Braverman was one of the many thousands of industrial workers who became radicalized by the events of the Great Depression. He first became politically active in the Young 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 the Spanish Civil War), providing enthusiastic support for worker uprisings and the formation of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), and roundly rejecting Stalinist 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]
Agitating during the Red Scare
After serving in the shipbuilding industry during World War II, Braverman began to deepen his commitment to revolutionary struggle, joining the first Trotskyist party in the United States: the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). His political engagement coincided the wave of political repression against socialists and communists known as the Red Scare. Even before the end of World 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 of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky." Braverman himself was fired from his job at Republic Steel as a result of red-baiting tactics used by the FBI. Undeterred by the witch-hunts, Braverman continued his political work but disguised his activities by writing under the pseudonym "Harry Frankel".[4]: 36–37
Socialist Unity
In the 1950s, Braverman was one of the leaders of the so-called "Cochranite tendency", a current led by Bert Cochran (who used the pseudonym "E. R. Frank") within the broader SWP. Braverman participated to some extent in the sectarian politics prevalent among the various Trotskyist tendencies. However, after being expelled from the SWP in 1953, Braverman helped to found The Socialist Union—an explicit attempt to transcend sectarian politics and develop a broad left program focused on the U.S. Braverman became editor of The American Socialist(previously The Educator), the publication of The 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 of Labor and Monopoly Capital just over a decade later.
From metal worker to editor
During the early 1960s, Harry Braverman worked as an editor for Grove Press, where he was instrumental in publishing The 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 of Monthly Review, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, and particularly their book Monopoly Capital, had a significant influence on Braverman as he was developing his analysis of the labor process of twentieth-century capitalism.
Revolutionary theory as a "tool for combat"
Labor and Monopoly Capital
Braverman's criticism of the labor process of monopoly capitalism has had a lasting impact on the sociology of work and labor relations. In his book Labor 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 of scientific management developed by Frederick 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
References
- Frank W. Elwell, "Harry Braverman and the Working Class".
- ^ a b Pagano, Uno (2000). "Harry Braverman". In Philip Arestis and Malcolm C. Sawyer (ed.). A Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists. New York: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 79–87. ISBN 9781843761396.
- ^ a b c Braverman, Harry (1998) [1974]. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. ISBN 0853459401.
- ^ a b c Palmer, Bryan D. (1999). "Before Braverman: Harry Frankel and the American workers' movement". Monthly Review. 50 (8): 33–46. doi:10.14452/MR-050-08-1999-01_5.
- Braverman, Harry. 1956. "Which Way to a New American Radicalism?" The American Socialist (April). Available at the Marxist Internet Archive.
- Renton, Dave (2004). Dissident Marxism: Past voices for present times. New York: Zed Books. ISBN 1842772937.
- Foster, John Bellamy. "New Introduction." Braverman, Harry (1998) [1974]. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. ISBN 0853459401.
External links
- Harry Braverman’s Writings on Marxists Internet Archive.
- Articles published by Harry Braverman in Monthly Review.
See also
ハリー・ブレイバーマン
ハリー・ブレイバーマン | |
|---|---|
| 生まれつき | 1920年12月9日 |
| 死んだ | 1976年8月2日 ペンシルベニア州ホネスデール |
ハリー・ブレイバーマン(1920 – 1976)[1]は、アメリカのマルクス主義者、労働者、政治経済学者、革命家でした。ニューヨーク市で労働者階級の家族に生まれたブレイバーマンは、グローブプレスの編集者になる前に、さまざまな金属鍛冶業界で働き、後にマンスリーレビュープレスで働き、ペンシルベニア州ホーンズデールで55歳で亡くなるまで働いていました。[2]ブレイバーマンは、1974年の著書「労働と独占資本:20世紀の仕事の劣化」で最も広く知られています[3]「文字通り労働プロセス研究の新興分野を洗礼したテキスト」、そして順番に「知的感性を活性化し、歴史、社会学、経済学、政治学、人間地理などの分野で作業プロセスの研究を復活させました。」[4]:33
政治的闘争と発展[編集]
ブレイバーマンは、大恐慌の出来事によって急進的になった何千人もの産業労働者の一人でした。彼は最初に「イプセル」として知られていた若者社会主義連盟(YPSL)で政治的に活発になりました。主に学生と若い過激派で構成されているにもかかわらず、イプセルは確立された共産主義グループの地位から公然と反対し、社会主義国際主義の必要性(スペイン内戦に関連して)に確固たる姿勢を取り、労働者蜂起とCIO(産業組織会議)の形成に熱心な支援を提供し、スターリン主義の政治と歪みを丸く拒否しました。[4]:35-36ブレイバーマンは不人気な立場を恐れなかった。彼はマルクス理論の単純な定式化を分配することによって、社会主義政治を深めようと繰り返し試みた。「マルクス主義」とブレイバーマンは警告した。「既製のスロットマシンの教義ではなく、あらゆる期間に適用と再解釈を必要とする社会開発の幅広い理論です。」[5]
レッドスケア中の攪拌[編集]
第二次世界大戦中に造船業界に勤務した後、ブレイバーマンは革命的な闘争へのコミットメントを深め始め、米国で最初のトロツキスト党である社会主義労働者党(SWP)に参加しました。彼の政治的関与は、レッドスケアとして知られる社会主義者や共産主義者に対する政治的抑圧の波と一致しました。第二次世界大戦が終わる前から、18人のSWPリーダーが投獄され、「悪名高いスミス法の最初の犠牲者となり、マルクス、エンゲルス、レーニン、トロツキーのアイデアを公開し宣言することは反逆罪となった」。ブレイバーマン自身は、FBIが使用したレッドベイティング戦術の結果として、リパブリックスチールでの仕事から解雇されました。魔女狩りに抑止されずに、ブレイバーマンは政治的な仕事を続けたが、「ハリー・フランケル」という仮名で書いて活動を偽装した。[4]:36-37
社会主義統一[編集]
1950年代、ブレイバーマンは、バート・コクラン(仮名「E.」を使用した)が率いる、いわゆる「コクラナイト傾向」のリーダーの一人でした。R。フランク)より広範なSWP内。ブレイバーマンは、様々なトロツキストの傾向の中で流行している宗派政治にある程度参加しました。しかし、1953年にSWPから追放された後、ブレイバーマンは社会主義連合の設立を支援しました。これは、宗派政治を超越し、米国に焦点を当てた幅広い左翼プログラムを開発するための明示的な試みです。Bravermanは、The Socialist Unionの出版であるThe American Socialist(以前はThe Educator)の編集者になりました。[6] これらのページでは、ブレイバーマンが最初に労働、労働プロセス、機械、階級意識についてより具体的に考え始めました。これは、10年後に労働と独占資本の重要なテーマになります。
金属労働者から編集者まで[編集]
1960年代初頭、ハリー・ブレイバーマンはグローブ・プレスの編集者として働き、マルコムXの自伝の出版に尽力しました。1967年、ブレイバーマンはマンスリーレビュープレスのマネージングディレクターになり、生涯継続しました。Monthly Reviewの編集者、Paul BaranとPaul Sweezy、特に彼らの著書Monopoly Capitalは、20世紀の資本主義の労働プロセスの分析を開発していたため、Bravermanに大きな影響を与えました。
「戦闘のためのツール」としての革命理論[編集]
労働と独占資本[編集]
独占資本主義の労働プロセスに対するブレイバーマンの批判は、仕事と労働関係の社会学に永続的な影響を与えました。彼の著書「労働と独占資本」[3]ブレイバーマンは、資本主義産業の成長が労働プロセスに与える影響に関するマルクスの著作を拡張し、巨大企業や寡占有産業の成長に特に注意を払っています。[7]マルクスは、労働者のスキルが機械の世話にシフトして以来、機械の出現と労働プロセスに対する労働者の制御の増加を見ました。これは、工場の運営、機械の運営、労働力の雇用に必要な知識とスキルを管理しているため、資本の所有者を強化すると見なされました。この議論は、そのような労働力は資本と比較して弱体化した立場によって定義されていると主張したブレイバーマンによって促進されました。仕事は、スキルと経験の活用から、無意識の機械ベースの無力な活動に変身しました。彼は、フレデリック・テイラーが開発した科学的管理の教義を1.労働者のスキルからの労働プロセスの分離、2.実行からの概念の分離、3.労働プロセスの各ステップとその実行モードを制御するための知識に対する独占力の使用として要約しました。[2]ブレイバーマンは、テイラーの職場に対する処方箋は「資本主義生産モードの明示的な言語化に劣らず」と主張した。[3]: 86
参考文献[編集]
- ^ フランク・Wエルウェル、「ハリー・ブレイバーマンと労働者階級」。
- ^a b Pagano, Uno (2000)「ハリー・ブレイバーマン」。フィリップ・アレスティスとマルコム・Cでソーヤー(編)。反対する経済学者の伝記辞典。ニューヨーク:エドワード・エルガー出版。pp.79-87。ISBN 9781843761396。
- ^a b cブレイバーマン、ハリー(1998)[1974]。労働と独占資本:20世紀の仕事の劣化。ニューヨーク:マンスリーレビュープレス。ISBN 0853459401。
- ^a b c Palmer、Bryan D(1999)。ブレイバーマンの前に:ハリー・フランケルとアメリカの労働者運動。月次レビュー.50 (8): 33–46. 土井:10.14452/MR-050-08-1999-01_5.
- ^ブレイバーマン、ハリー。1956年。「新しいアメリカの急進主義へのどの道?」アメリカ社会主義者(4月)。マルクス主義インターネットアーカイブで入手できます。
- ^レントン、デイブ(2004)。反体制派マルクス主義:現在の過去の声。ニューヨーク:ゼッドブックス。ISBN 1842772937。
- ^フォスター、ジョン・ベラミー。「新しい紹介」。ブレイバーマン、ハリー(1998)[1974]。労働と独占資本:20世紀の仕事の劣化。ニューヨーク:マンスリーレビュープレス。ISBN 0853459401。
外部リンク[編集]
- ハリー・ブレイバーマンのマルクス主義インターネットアーカイブに関する著作。
- ハリー・ブレイバーマンが月刊レビューで発表した記事。
[編集]も参照してください
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— 地域通貨花子１ (@TiikituukaHana) January 15, 2022
Harry Braverman
Marxists’ Internet Archive
1920 – 1976
“... the job is not to see where ‘Marx was wrong’ so much as to make a fresh application of his theory to the world around us as it is, not as it once was. To borrow a comparison from the field of physics, we need socialist Faradays and Maxwells or if we are lucky, Einsteins and Plancks, not people who confine themselves to knocking Isaac Newton.”
– Marx in the Modern World
Biography
Harry Braverman joined the Trotskyist movement in 1937 while a member of the YPSL, the Socialist Party youth movement. Although without formal academic training, he developed into a powerful theoretician and organiser. In the early 1950s he was a leader of the so-called Cochranite tendency and was expelled with them from the SWP. He then became editor of The American Socialist until its demise in 1959. During the early 1960s he worked as an editor for Grove Press, where he was instrumental in publishing The Autobiography of Malcolm X. In 1967 he took over the editorship of Monthly Review Press, where he worked until his death. His most important work was the classic Labor and Monopoly Capitalism, which was published shortly before his death from cancer in August 1976.
Note: When writing for Fourth International and The Militant, i.e. until 1952, he used the pseudonym Harry Frankel.
Works:
ーーー
そして最後に、一九六○年代の急進主義の新しい波は、それ自体の特異な、
ある意味では前例のない諸関心によって活気づけられた。青年·知識人·女性解放運動家。スラムの住人たちな
どの不満は、資本主義の「破局」によって生み出されたのではなく、資本主義がその最高形態で機能しているこ
と、いわば、その最高の速度と強度で稼動していることによって生み出されたものであるから、反抗の焦点は、
いまや、過去のそれといくぶん異なってきた。少なくとも部分的には、不平不満は、資本主義が十分な労働を供
給しえないということよりもむしろ、それが供給する労働そのものにたいして向けられ、資本主義の生産諸過程
の崩壊にではなく、これらの過程が最大の「盛況」にあるときのその恐ろしい諸結果にたいして向けられた。こ
れは、貧困·失業,窮乏の圧力が除去されたということではなく、～～それどころか～～むしろ不満感がこれら
に追加されたということである。この不満感は、繁栄や職がさらに大量に供給されたところで、解決されえない。
なぜならば、これらの繁栄や職業こそ、この不満感を生み出す根本原因だからである。
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=48907
To reclaim the state, we have to start with ourselves
One of the joys of living is reading brilliant writing and I read a lot as a consequence. Not all of my reading is brilliant though, as you might expect, given my profession. As a young postgraduate student, one of the best books I read, among many, was – Labor and Monopoly Capital – which was written by – Harry Braverman – and published by the Monthly Review Press in 1974. It was a prescient piece of writing and is still 100 per cent relevant to the struggles today for working people against capital – both industrial and financial. It provides us with a path to resistance. It also points us in the direction of identifying the problems in the world today. And those problems start at the most elemental level – us.
Further reading
I have written about these themes before and these posts are indicative of many:
1. Why progressive values align more closely with our basic needs(January 21, 2019).
2. Neoliberalism corrupts the core of societal values (March 28, 2018).
3. Why Uber is not a progressive development (August 16, 2016).
4. The mass consumption era and the rise of neo-liberalism (January 7, 2016).
5. Self-imposed corporate regulations control workers but choke productivity (October 30, 2014).
6. Bullshit jobs – the essence of capitalist control and realisation(September 5, 2013).
7. Sport and doping – the spreading tentacles of capital (February 11, 2013).
8. We need more artists and fewer entrepreneurs (January 10, 2013).
9. The labour market is not like the market for bananas (August 17, 2012).
Harry Braverman
He began his working life as a coppersmith and these trade skills allowed him to work in industry for many years, while, at the same time developing radical frames of references for what he was experiencing.
The way the Great Depression damaged the workers and enhanced capital led him to become politically active in the Young People’s Socialist League.
He crafted his writing skills using a pseudonym (“Harry Frankel”) while the red-baiting antics of the FBI got him sacked from his job at a Steel mill.
Later in the 1960s, he became an editor in a New York-based publishing house (Grove Press) which published the works of the American beats, lots of alternative poetry and produced a literary magazine where the likes of Bertoit Brecht and Albert Camus would be published.
One of the better publishers that is.
He then moved to the managing director’s role at Monthly Review Press, his final paid job.
In 1974, he published the magnificent book – Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century – which traced the way in which Capitalism was impacting on the design of work in America.
Every person who aspires to a Left sensitivity should read this book.
Harry Braverman examined what he termed his “de-skilling” hypothesis where capital systematically restructured labour processes to enhance their control in order to extract higher profits.
He also proposed that commodification was becoming generalised under Capitalism – extending into more and more areas of our ‘social’ lives.
Progressively, these “labour processes” (market-values) subsume our whole lives – sport, leisure, learning, family – the lot.
Everything becomes a capitalist surplus-creating process.
This process has intensified under neoliberalism – it seeks to commodify everything. That is create labour processes that produce commodities for profit.
The spread of the labour process is one of the characteristic features of the last several decades.
Even those activities that have previously been part of our non-working lives – our lives away from the oppression of work – are targets for commodification.
If you read Labor and Monopoly Capital, you will find that Braverman tried to reorientate the debate on the Left back to the essence of work and the dynamics of surplus value production as it affected the way people worked and lived.
He was particularly interested in how workplaces were changing as the corporate structures became more concentrated and politically powerful.
This was the beginning of the period when the Left were becoming obsessed with ‘post modernism’ and losing touch with the essence of the Marxist tradition.
So various dead-ends starting emerging – gender, ethnicity, sexuality. Identity politics!
I am not saying these are dead-ends because of their unimportance. Each of these issues is crucially important. But as the Left splintered into various groups pursuing one identity issue or another, it lost a central organising focus – the class conflict between labour and capital – within which the pursuit of these identity issues would have been more powerful and effective.
With the two trends – an obsession with ‘individualism’ (breaking down the collective and societal understandings of poverty, unemployment etc) and the broadening of the labour processes – many aspects of our society changed fundamentally.
Harry Braverman wrote (p.14):
And finally, the new wave of radicalism of the 1960s was animated by its own peculiar and in some ways unprecedented concerns. Since the discontents of youth, intellectuals, feminists, ghetto populations, etc., were produced not by the “breakdown” of capitalism but by capitalism functioning at the top of its form, so to speak, working at its most rapid and energetic pace, the focus of rebellion was now somewhat different from that of the past. At least in part, dissatisfaction centered not so much on capitalism’s inability to provide work as on the work it provides, not on the collapse of its productive processes but on the appalling effects of these processes at their most “successful.” It is not that the pressures of poverty, unemployment, and want have been eliminated — far from it — but rather that these have been supplemented by a discontent which cannot be touched by providing more prosperity and jobs because these are the very things that produced this discontent in the first place.
Remember this was written in 1974 and he was commenting on the experience of an evolving full employment situation where workers had jobs but the jobs were being redesigned, restructured – call it how you like – into activities that increasingly alienated the workers and increased the surplus value creation for capital.
So, calling for more jobs might sound like a reasonable thing for a Leftist to advocate but our conception of full employment has to be different now to ensure we are not just satisfied with creating work.
Politicians are wont to tell us how many jobs they are creating as if that is a standard to aspire to.
But what Harry Braverman was telling us way back then was that more Capitalism of the evolved state he was commenting on is no way forward.
Contemporary commentary
Fast track to December 16, 2021, and Serbian economist – Branko Milanovic – has written an excellent Op Ed – Why it is not the crisis of capitalism: The sources of discontent – which is a recycled version of an earlier Op Ed from the same author that I read in 2019.
He clearly is influenced by Harry Braverman’s insights (whether knowingly or through a sort of ‘unity of science’ phenomenon) and notes that Capitalism has been very successful:
… both in terms of its geographical span and the expansion to the areas (like leisure time, or social media) where it has created entirely new markets and commodified things that historically were never objects of transaction.
When Harry Braverman was writing, the geographical span of Capitalism was limited by the Soviet bloc, China, Cuba, etc
That has all changed since and even China’s ‘private sector’ produces “80% of value added”.
He also notes the conversion of “non-markets” into surplus-creating (profitable) activities.
People now rent their own cars (uber) or their homes (Airbnb), in addition to a host of other areas of life that were mediated through price-setting markets.
We no longer walk to the shop to buy a pizza – a teenager on a scooter buzzes it to us – for a pittance from the franchise that runs the shop.
The point that Branko Milanovic makes here is that these new forms of capitalist expansion are just an expression of what Karl Marx identified way back then.
In this blog post – The Left confuses globalisation with neo-liberalism and gets lost (April 27, 2016) – I discussed that exact point.
In the – Communist Manifesto – published in 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels discuss the way that discoveries of new lands (America, Rounding the Cape, etc) “opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie”.
They wrote:
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
They were obviously aware of the tendency of capitalism to geographical spread to open up new markets and new spaces to extract raw materials.
The search for new markets and new ways of organising production is not new and has been going on for centuries.
The widening of this push into these non-market areas of life has had a fundamental impact on our thinking.
Branko Milanovic writes:
This does not mean that we would all immediately run to rent our homes or drive our cars as taxis, but it means that we are aware of the financial loss that we make by not doing so. For many of us, once the price is right (whether because our circumstances change or the relative price increases), we shall join the new markets and thus reinforce them.
And so the gig economy has evolved as the most recent manifestation of this market broadening phenomenon.
As Harry Braverman identified in the quote above – we cannot want more of that because it makes us unhappy.
The other point he makes is that while the expansion that Marx and Engels were writing about in the C19th benefitted the elites in Europe and allowed them to appease workers with higher wages, which morphed into the era of mass consumption era, which, in turn, morphed into something even more comprehensive where aspects of our lives that were previously considered ‘non work’ (which meant non capitalist) became markets, with commodities supplied to support.
But as capitalism’s never-ending search for ‘market’ penetration continued the beneficiaries changed.
The most recent period of global expansion has not “benefit disproportionately rich countries and their populations”.
Rather, it has “benefited especially Asia, populous countries like China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia” and created a “gap between the expectations entertained by the Western middle classes and their low income growth”.
This hollowing out of the middle class in advanced nations – which is behind phenomenon such as Brexit, Trump, Yellow Vests, etc – has also been accompanied by a ‘market’ penetration into politics:
The expansion of market-like approach to societies in all (or almost all) of their aspects, which is indeed a feature of advanced capitalism, has also transformed politics into a business activity. In principle, politics, no more than our leisure time, was regarded as an area of market transactions. But both have become so. This has made politics more corrupt.
We now distrust our polity more than ever.
And they lie, cheat, defraud and get away with it.
His overall conclusion is that this “crisis is not of capitalism per se” but rather its uneven geographical spread and the “capitalist expansion to the areas that were traditionally not considered apt for commercialization”.
His solution is to wind back the “field of action” of the capitalist system.
Which is where I diverge.
I think that Karl Marx understood that capitalism had tendencies to ensure that capital as a class could reproduce.
The sort of market penetration into our previously ‘non-market’ lives is not something that can be easily wound back.
The resistance of the capitalist class is one thing.
But as noted above, after several decades of neoliberal penetration into our lives, we – us – have become the problem that needs to be addressed first.
We need to activate along the lines we wrote about in our book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, September 2017).
But to do that we need to lift our levels of education.
Progressives have to stop saying things like “we need to tax the rich to afford hospital care” or “it is fine for the government to borrow while interest rates are low” or “if our governments are not careful with taxpayers’ money then the financial markets will exact discipline” – and all the rest of the nonsense that many well-meaning commentators pump out to sound erudite.
But all they are doing is maintaining this ‘market penetration’ mentality and distorting our own personal calculations into ‘can we make a buck’ by renting our house out while we go on holiday sort of thinking.
Conclusion
The problem is capitalism.
Because the logic of that system evolves into what we have.
Harry Braverman understood that even though he didn’t live to see the worst of what it has become.
As the first step, education.
Then, reclaim the state.
Then evolve the production and distribution system away from one that needs to colonise every aspect of our lives with ‘markets’.
That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2021 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.
Why it is not the crisis of capitalism
The sources of discontent
There has recently been an avalanche of articles and books about the ¨crisis of capitalism” predicting its demise or depassement. For those old enough to remember the 1990s, there is a strange similarity with the then literature arguing that the Hegelian end of history has arrived. The latter literature was proven wrong. The former, I believe, is factually wrong and misdiagnoses the problem.
The facts show not the crisis, but on the contrary, the greatest strength of capitalism ever, both in terms of its geographical span and the expansion to the areas (like leisure time, or social media) where it has created entirely new markets and commodified things that historically were never objects of transaction.
Geographically, capitalism is now the dominant (or even the only) mode of production all over the world whether in Sweden where the private sector employs more than 70% the labor force, the United States where it employs 85% or in China where the (capitalistically-organized) private sector produces 80% of the value added.[1] This was obviously not the case before the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and Russia, nor before China embarked on what is euphemistically called “transformation” but was in reality replacement of socialism by capitalist relations of productions.
In addition, thanks to globalization and technological revolutions, a number od new, hitherto non-existent markets have been created: a huge market for personal data, rental markets for own cars and homes (neither of which was capital until Uber, Lyft, Airbnb etc. were created), market for housing of self-employed individuals (which did not exist before WeWork) and a number of other markets such as those for taking care of the elderly, of children, or pets, market for cooking and delivery of food, market for shopping chores etc.
The social importance of these new markets is that they create new capital, and by placing a price on things that had none before transform mere goods (use-value) into commodities (exchange value). This capitalist expansion is not fundamentally different from the expansion of capitalism in the 18th and 19th century Europe, the one discussed both by Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Once new markets are created, there is a shadow value placed on all these goods or activities. This does not mean that we would all immediately run to rent our homes or drive our cars as taxis, but it means that we are aware of the financial loss that we make by not doing so. For many of us, once the price is right (whether because our circumstances change or the relative price increases), we shall join the new markets and thus reinforce them.
These new markets are fragmented, in the sense that they seldom requite a sustained full-day of work. Thus commodification goes together with gig economy. In a gig economy we are both suppliers of services (we can deliver pizza in the afternoons), and purchasers of many services that used to be non-monetized (the already mentioned: cleaning, cooking, nursing). This in turn makes it possible for individuals to satisfy all their needs on the market and in the longer term raises big issues such as the usefulness and survival of the family.
But if capitalism has spread so much in all directions, why do we speak of its crisis? Because the malaise which is limited to rich Western countries is supposed to afflict the entire world. But this is not the case. And the reason why this is not the case is because the Western malaise is the product of uneven distribution of the gains from globalization, an outcome not dissimilar to what happened in the 19th century globalization when the gains were however disproportionately reaped by the Europeans.
When this new bout of globalization began, it was politically “sold” in the West, especially as it came on the heels of “the end of history”, on the premise that it will benefit disproportionately rich countries and their populations. The outcome was the opposite. It benefited especially Asia, populous countries like China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia. It is the gap between the expectations entertained by the Western middle classes and their low income growth, as well as their slide in the global income position, that fuels dissatisfaction with globalization. This is wrongly diagnosed as dissatisfaction with capitalism.
There is also another issue. The expansion of market-like approach to societies in all (or almost all) of their aspects, which is indeed a feature of advanced capitalism, has also transformed politics into a business activity. In principle, politics, no more than our leisure time, was regarded as an area of market transactions. But both have become so. This has made politics more corrupt. It is now considered like any other activity, where even if one does not engage in explicit corruption during his political tenure, one uses the connections and knowledge acquired in politics to make money afterwards. That type of commodification has created widespread cynicism and disenchantment with mainstream politics and politicians.
Thus the crisis is not of capitalism per se, but is the crisis brought about by the uneven effects of globalization and by capitalist expansion to the areas that were traditionally not considered apt for commercialization. In other words, capitalism has become too powerful and has in some cases come into collision with strongly held beliefs. It will either continue with its conquest of more, yet non-commercialized, spheres, or it would have to be controlled and its ”field of action” reduced to what it used to be.
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