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Albert Felipe: The Making of the U.S. Working Class – Assignment 3

During our conversations in class, we had a discussion that related to this weeks’ reading. One of the comments made during that conversation was in relation to creating a workforce of “doers” and “thinkers”. “Doers” representing the workers who provide manual labor and/or create thing with their hands. “Thinkers” being represented by the workers who use more of the intangible elements of labor that do not require maximum physical effort. In Braverman’s “The Making of the U.S. Working Class” we tend to dive a bit deeper into this discussion and analyze the development of the workforce in the U.S. and the authors’ perspective on how it works.

It was interesting but not surprising to understand how the workforce is technically divided into categories and then sub categories.  The understanding being that while the working class is broken down into categories of sex, region and race, the underlying goal is to separate them into one of 2 categories. the “employers” and the “employees”. In order for this to work within our society, the workforce has to be created in the fashion that the employers provide the materials and goods, while the employees provide the manual labor that produce the product. He also mentions how not introducing education to the masses of laborers solidifies the separation of these classes and keeps the rich richer, and the work to the side of the laborers.

According to Baverman, the idea of capitalism is the reasoning why these two categories exist. He argues that the goal of producing labor and creating the workforce is to gain capital. The creation of a labor workforce is to maintain employer’s production of capital. As I read into the article, I argue that employees do not reap the benefits of capital but are conditioned to understand that labor is the basis of their work ethic and survival. He uses our history here in the U.S. and slavery to help us understand this ideal as slaves were used as free labor and the land owners benefited through their production.

It just seems interesting to me how the idea of capitalism and the creation of working classes seems to always end in how society benefits from the struggles of others. We tend to see in this article that the privileged, who have access to resources, property and capital still grow off the sweat and tears of the individuals who breaks their backs to survive. Leaves me to wonder if there will ever be a shift in the construction of the working class in the near future.