312 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS
The labor process perspective
It thus becomes essential for the capitalist that control over the labor process
pass from the hands of the worker into his own. The transition presents
itself in history as theprogressive alienation of the process of productionfrom
the worker; to the capitalist, it presents itself as the problem ofmanagement.
(Braverman 1974, 58, emphasis in original)Harry Braverman, in the much acclaimedLabor and Monopoly Capitalism: The
Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, offered a resounding critique of
conventional understandings of work processes in capitalist economic systems.
Drawing from the pioneering work of Karl Marx, Braverman asserted the primacy
of the social relations of production for any attempt to understand the manner and
modes in which goods and services are created in the capitalist economy. Specifi-
cally, Braverman (1974, 52) following Marx, suggested that thedifferentia specificaof
capitalist economies was ‘‘the purchase and sale of labor power.’’ Understanding
the historical novelty of this feature is crucial, for this defining aspect of modern
economies which we take for granted is, as a general phenomenon, unknown to
prior epochs of human history. Capitalist economies are accordingly differentiated
from prior epochs by the social relation embedded within the employment relation.
Employment relations in contrast to, say, self-employment as the general form by
which modern people earn their livelihood is an extremely recent phenomenon,
and requires that workers sell their labor power to capitalists; for a wage. This
historical reduction of persons to hired hands deprive them of their connectedness
to the production process. Treated as a commodity, labor consequently ‘‘has no
material interest in doing more that securing the highest wages and best conditions
for the minimum of sacrifice’’ (Hopperet al.1987, 445).^5
Wage labor, or hired labor, is treated within capitalist economies as a cost
of production – as any other input factor of production – which need,from the
capitalist’s point of view, to be both minimized and optimized. The minimization of
labor costs is ‘‘rational’’ since it avoids the dependence on a factor of production
that, unlike other factors, can rebel against its own use. Similarly, optimizing the
use of labor is ‘‘rational’’ since, as with any other factor of production, the efficient
use of resources is the precondition for profits. Consequently, and built into the
capitalist relations of production are the pressures to not only supplant labor by
machinery but also to control the labor process – how labor power is deployed, the
actual mode of work – in all its aspects, in the interest of capital accumulation. It
is this pressure that motivates the capitalist to gain control over the labor process
(^5) According to Braverman (1974, 53) ‘‘In the United States, perhaps four-fifths of the population
was self-employed in the early part of the nineteenth century...by 1970 only about one-tenth of
the population was self-employed.’’ Laborers in having to sell their labor power as a commodity,
are now alienated from the fruits of their labor. This is the significance of thelabor theory of value
which asserts that the value of goods and services originate from and thus belong to those who
make them. Moreover, since workers can produce far more per unit time than is necessary to
keep them alive, this surplus value created is the source and object of capitalist strategies to make
more profits. Accordingly, profits come from extracting as much labor from the purchased labor
power, and then expropriating the surplus value so generated.