The Labor Process and Control of Labor: The Labor Process and Control of Labor:
The Changing Nature of Work Relations in the Late Twentieth Century
Berch Berberoglu (ed.)
As the twentieth century comes to a close, the prospects for organized labor in the United States look bleak, and no clear path out of labor's crisis and indeed out of the general crisis of capitalism is envisioned by those who occupy the highest levels of the trade union bureaucracy. The continued deterioration of life under capitalism in the United States is now posing a challenge to the U.S. working class to reverse the decline in influence and position of labor in this country in recent decades, and forge ahead with an independent program of action to fulfill the interests and aspirations of workers throughout this nation.
The development of capitalism and the capitalist labor process in the United States in the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century has resulted in control over workers to assure the continued exploitation of labor and the generation of ever higher levels of surplus value, which constitutes the very basis of the accumulation of capital under the capitalist system. This process of control and exploitation of labor has developed and matured during the past century in line with the growth and development of capitalism in the United States from its competitive to monopoly stages in all major sectors of industry across the domestic and now the world economy.
An examination of the nature and dynamics of the labor process in various sectors of the U.S. economy -- from auto to steel to computers to agriculture to services -- would provide us with the necessary insight to an understanding of the nature of work relations at the point of production. Such relations, which are at base a manifestation of larger, capitalist relations of production (i.e., class relations), become evident in their social form as workers confront capital and capitalist management who extract from them an evergrowing amount of profits. It is in this context of the struggle between labor and capital at the point of production that we begin also to see the class nature of this struggle to maintain or to transform the prevailing relations of production -- a struggle that in its broader class context becomes a political struggle, a struggle for state power. The balance of forces in this class struggle beyond point-of-production work relations translates into a struggle for preservation or transformation of the capitalist system itself.
It is for a clear understanding of the labor process and control of labor under capitalist production relations at the point of production -- a process that explains the structure of work relations within the context of broader class forces in late twentieth-century capitalism -- that this project was conceived and carried out with the collective participation of the contributors of this volume. The ten chapters prepared exclusively for this book thus involved the intellectual labor of a dedicated group of progressive academics and activists who, deeply concerned with the condition of labor and its prospects, have expended much time and effort to expose the inner logic of capitalist production, with the hope that such understanding of the underlying processes at work in our economy and society can be utilized by those on the side of labor to effect positive change toward the ultimate transformation of capitalist society into a social order based on the power of labor.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Berch Berberoglu
1. Class Formation and Class Capacities: A New Approach to the Study of Labor and the Labor Process
Jerry Lembcke
2. The Historical Roots of the Division of Labor in the U.S Auto Industry
David Gartman
3. Transformation in Hierarchy and Control of the Labor Process in the Post-Fordist Era: The Case of the U.S. Steel Industry
Harland Prechel
4. The Labor Process and Control of Labor in the U.S. Computer Industry
Navid Mohseni
5. Gender and Control over the Labor Process: Women's Power as Wage Earners
Marina A. Adler
6. Race, Nationality, and the Division of Labor in U.S. Agriculture: Focus on Farm Workers in California
John C. Leggett
7. The Labor Force in Transition: The Growth of the Contingent Work Force in the United States
Robert E. Parker
8. Transformations in the Labor Process on a World Scale: Women in the New International Division of Labor
Julia D. Fox
9. Transnational Capital, the Global Labor Process, and the International Labor Movement
Cyrus Bina and Chuck Davis
10. The Labor Process and Class Struggle: Political Responses to the Control and Exploitation of Labor
Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Editor and Contributors
To read the "Introduction" to this book, click here [pdf file]
Publication date: 1993
ISBN: 0-275-94459-X
Phone: 1-800-225-5800 Ext.700
