What characterizes degradation of work in capitalist society according to Marx?. (UPSC CSE Mains 2022 - Sociology, Paper 1)
- Marx and Engels saw work as central to human existence. Along with the growing complexity of society, however, came private property, the separation of people into classes, and a social division of labor—all of which deeply altered the meaning of work.
- According to Marx, capitalist society is divided into two classes - the bourgeoisie (ruling capitalist class) and the proletariat (working class). Through the unequal distribution of resources and ownership, the ruling class exploits the working class.
- The working class use their labour power to produce what is called a commodity, which is a good or service produced by human labour that is bought and sold on the market. Such a worker who sells his labour to the ruling class is called wage labour and the amount of money he receives from the bourgeoisie is known as a wage.
- Marx explained that the wealth generated and distributed in a capitalist society is measured in terms of the commodity produced. He called this the ‘theory of commodities''. According to him, a commodity is characterised by two sets of values:
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- Use-value- by satisfying specific needs through its use, and
- Exchange value - by being exchanged in a society
- Labour is also such a commodity. It derives its use-value by satisfying specific needs through its use. This is what leads us to the Marxist theory of labour value.
- Through his theory of labour, Marx wanted to highlight a theory of exploitation. He argued that the socially derived labour was essentially being exploited when used to exchange every commodity.
- By deducing that all commodities have a certain value and are exchanged for prices that reflect their true value (which in this case, is measured in the form of human labour/labour hours), its use-value creates an amount that is greater than the exchange value.
- Therefore, the labour is exploited when the capitalists enjoy profits but pay them less than the actual value of their labour. In this way, the capitalists buy labour in the form of a commodity and exhaust its use-value, ensuring that the value of the ultimate good produced is more than the exchange value of the labour.
- The amount of money the employer pays his workers (the wage) is always below the profit (the price of the commodity produced). Marx calls the difference between the two surplus value.
- Karl Marx''s Theory of Alienation states that in a capitalist establishment, worker is alienated from his work. Often what matters most for capital owner is the labour power of the worker and not his full personality. Worker feels separate from his labour and monotonously keep on doing work. In this kind of establishment, it is the dead labour (capital) which controls the living labour (worker). Workers do not have any control on what they produce. In fact, product controls producers as employment of a worker depends on the impersonal forces of demand and supply. Since work forms a very important part of life, alienation from work also results in alienation in the society and hindered growth of personality.
- Degradation-of-work thesis proposed that skilled work has declined in importance with the rise of capitalist industrialization—most notably during the twentieth century and following the rise of the scientific management movement.
- The most notable proponents of this thesis have been neo-Marxists such as Georges Friedmann and Harry Braverman. The latter argues that private capitalists pursue increased control over their workforces, both as a means of increasing labour productivity by extracting greater profits, and for the political purpose of subduing the working class.
- The principal means for securing this control is said to be the separation of conception and execution, that is, appropriation of all planning and design knowledge by managers, with the workers being delegated only the responsibility for operating pre-programmed machinery and performing routinized and de-skilled tasks. This process was characterized as the ‘degradation of work’ because it stripped formerly skilled employees (for example craft-workers and clerical workers) both of their skills and their self-respect. The thesis formed the core of the so-called labour process debate that preoccupied neo-Marxist sociologists of work during the 1980s.
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