{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","uuid":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","normalized_title":"laborandmonopolycapitalthedegradationofworkinthetwentiethcentury","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","isbns":["0853459401"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Labor%20and%20Monopoly%20Capital%20The%20Degradation%20of%20Work%20in%20the%20Twentieth%20Century","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/search"},"page":{"printed_page":"xxvi","pdf_page":12,"physical_index":12,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"216715e0c94fa1c4fb9f64bdc6a1917d84209ab3c068ec5dfb8aa3224c1b3235"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"But it is not only direct experience that is needed for the scientific study of the labor process under monopoly capitalism. Equally important is a thorough mastery of Marx's pioneering work in this field and of his dialectical method. Harry Braverman has this too, and it is the combination of practical experience and theoretical acumen—a combination excluded almost by definition from our academic social sciences—which has enabled him to produce a contribution of surpassing importance to the understanding of the society we live in.\n\nEveryone who reads this book will benefit from it. But those who will benefit particularly are the ones who read it along with Volume I of Capital, and especially Part IV (“The Production of Relative Surplus Value\"), for it is here that the analysis of the labor process under capitalism was first put on a genuinely scientific foundation. All the essential concepts and tools were provided by Marx, and indeed he used them to such good effect that for a long time his followers took it for granted that nothing new needed to be added in this field of investigation. As far as theory is concerned, they were right. But of course the outward manifestations of capitalism, though not its inner nature, have undergone tremendous changes in the last century. Capital accumulation has assumed new organizational forms; it has invaded old branches of the economy and flowed into many new ones. What needed to be done was to apply Marx's theory to the new methods and occupations invented or created by capital in its restless expansion. This is the task Harry Braverman has set himself. In terms of theory, as he would be the first to say, there is very little that is new in this book. In terms of knowledge gained from the creative application of theory, there is an enormous amount that is new, and much of it in direct contradiction to what capitalist ideology has succeeded in establishing as the society's conventional wisdom.\n\nI hasten to add, and here again I am sure Harry Braverman would be the first to agree, that in important respects the function of this work is to pose rather than answer questions, to open (or re-open) lines of inquiry which have been neglected and which cry out for research and elaboration. There is hardly an occupation or other aspect of the labor process which would not repay a great deal more detailed historical and analytical investigation than are accorded to it in this broad survey. In this sense, Harry Braverman's book is to be considered an invitation and a challenge to a younger generation of Marxist economists and sociologists to get on with the urgent task of destroying bourgeois ideology and putting in its place an honest picture of the social reality within which we are forced to live.\\*\n\nI must conclude these remarks with a confession: for me reading this book has been an emotional experience, somewhat similar, I suppose, to that which millions of readers of Volume I of Capital have been through. The sad, horrible, heart-breaking way the vast majority of my fellow countrymen and women, as well as their counterparts in most of the rest of the world, are obliged to spend their working lives is seared into my consciousness in an excruciating and unforgettable way. And when I think of all the talent and energy which daily go into devising ways and means of making their torment worse, all in the name of efficiency and productivity but really for the greater glory of the great god Capital, my wonder at humanity's ability to create such a monstrous system is surpassed only by amazement at its willingness to tolerate the continuance of an arrangement so obviously destructive of the well-being and happiness of human beings. If the same effort, or only half of it, were devoted to making work the joyous and creative activity it can be, what a wonderful world this could be.\n\nBut first of all must come widespread popular understanding of what capitalism really is, and why its seeming necessity and inevitability are in reality only ideological fig leaves to hide the naked self-interest of a tiny minority. This book, I am convinced, can make a vital contribution to that much-needed enlightenment.\n\nxxvi\n\nLabor and Monopoly Capital\n\nForeword xxvii\n\n\\* In this connection let me call attention to Chapter 17 (“The Structure of the Working Class and Its Reserve Armies\"), where the thesis is put forward that Marx's \"General Law of Capitalist Accumulation,\" according to which the advance of capitalism is characterized by the amassing of wealth at one pole and of deprivation and misery at the other, far from being the egregious fallacy which bourgeois social science has long held it to be, has in fact turned out to be one of the best founded of all Marx's insights into the capitalist system. How much more coherent and useful the voluminous literature of recent years on poverty and related questions would be if it had started from this solid foundation!","previous_page":11,"next_page":13}