Spectres of Marx and Braverman in the Twilight of Postmodernist Labour Process Research

Abstract

John Bellamy Foster's 1998 introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital (1998) missed an opportunity in failing to engage the industry of (largely British) postmodernist labour process scholarship that followed the first edition of the book. This research `almost universally rejects [Braverman's] understanding of the labour process' (Spencer, 2000: 223). Using Braverman (and Marx) as benchmarks, this article finds the postmodernist tradition deficient in several respects. First, it consistently underappreciates the political aims and impact of Braverman's work (notwithstanding constant rhetorical support for political engagement). Second, it remains incorrigibly philosophical (logocentric) - entrapped in incessant recycling of philosophies of undecidability. Despite claims to reject the hubris of Cartesian analysis, it remains infatuated by it. Third, it misconstrues Braverman's anthropological humanism as a degenerate form of (idealistic) humanism, and thus leaves underexplored the dialectical politics of transcendent negation. Fourth, it psychologizes social and political processes, and ultimately retreats to an unreconstructed notion of ideology, where working people are construed as wrongheaded for seeking refuge from coercion in supposedly false identities. Fifth, in urging working people to release an `inner self' from a false identity, the analysis presupposes an underlying human essence that is atheoretical and essentialist. Finally, the analysis is blind to the social and historical specificity of Braverman's political task; exposing `skill upgrading via education' as an ideology that obfuscates economic decline, recession and deindustrialization. The upgrading canard - expounded by all recent US presidents up to George W. Bush III - is dutifully discharged (to this day) by most business schools and management centres, including those in Britain.