[1569206X - Historical Materialism] Contradictions of the Labour Process, Worker Empowerment and Capitalist Inefficiency.pdf (605.45 kB)
Contradictions of the labour process, worker empowerment and capitalist inefficiency
I articulate a classical-Marxist theory of technical change in the capitalist labour process, highlighting two contradictions. The management contradiction is the conflict managers experience between coordination (to increase efficiency) and discipline (to ensure valorisation). The workforce contradiction is the tension workers experience between productive socialisation and alienation. I submit that both contradictions were substantially muted from the earliest stages of capitalism through the Fordist stage but have become intensified in the postfordist period. Under postfordism, the basis of efficiency is economies of scope and flexibility, and thus there is a real efficiency advantage to empowering workers, via both multiskilling and employee involvement in problem solving and decision making. Postfordist capitalism has thus initiated an intensification of the management and workforce contradictions. In response, capitalist management is increasingly impeding the growth of the productive forces by failing to empower workers.
History
School
- Loughborough University London
Published in
Historical MaterialismVolume
28Issue
2Pages
170 - 204Citation
VIDAL, M., 2019. Contradictions of the labour process, worker empowerment and capitalist inefficiency. Historical Materialism, 28 (2), pp.170-204.Publisher
Brill Academic PublishersVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© Matt VidalPublisher statement
This is an open access article. It is published by Brill under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2019-01-11Publication date
2019-11-26Copyright date
2019ISSN
1465-4466eISSN
1569-206XPublisher version
Language
- en