å Wednesday, September 21st, 2016

Due Sunday, September 25th, by midnight. Word count: 400 words. Please note that you will not receive full credit if your assignment includes quotes. Make sure everything is in your own words. If you paraphrase (which I encourage you to do) make sure to include the proper citation.

In his writing on wage-labor, Marx argues that wages “are not a share of the worker in the commodities produced by himself.” From the text, use the example of the weaver that Marx points to in order to explain how he is characterizing the relationship of labor activity to the commodity that is produced.

Braverman walks through a thorough history of the sociology of capital. Understanding the pre-industrial (before 1920) economic transition from craftsmen and farmers who cultivated their skills for at least five years. This yielded to the basis of  small proprietorship and entrepreneurship faded when imperial capitalism became the United States dominate economic system. During the industrial era, capitalism transformed into production dominance. This genre of capitalism was enforced by ex-slaves and farmers because the agricultural business was in the making of becoming an mass agricultural enterprise. No longer did we have the opportunity to invest years in learning a trade but were given on the job training in industries, such as coal mining, manufacturing and construction. These jobs Braverman describes as production labor. Production labor can be define by the goods/ commodities which are made in a certain measurement of time.  The feminist movement changed the job market by empowering women to take their domestic skills into employment opportunities. Capitalism has taken advantage of the migration of Europeans and South-Americans who fled their countries for freedom and and an increase in prosperity. With such an increase of people wanting to work it was easy to keep wages low, production high and profit higher. As new industries began to grow, for example, techonology, unemployment rates started to rise because technology was now aiding a faster production turnout (meaning less human labor and higher capital gains). Braverman considers finance, real estate, insurance, retail and wholesale unproductive work (even though during this time this text was written these industries were paid lower). Braverman’s point was that the production of these industries did not result in commodities  that were bought and sold in the economic market turning a constant profit. Productive work is broken down into managed labor and hired labor. Hired labor, the employee is the cog in the wheel that churns out capital for the one percent. The difference between these economic systems pre and post- Industrial era is that the laborer no longer has an investment in the company, they have no understanding how they influence the corporation as a whole, only how their protocol adhere’s to themselves. Braverman’s analysis of the working class is still true to this day. Not necessarily production and non-production work but how the laborer is exploited by capitalism and then dis-guarded without much retirement to be replaced by someone who’s younger and willing to work for measly benefits.