Part 2 of a series on monopoly power and labour.

Detailed Chapter-by-Chapter Summary of Labor and Monopoly Capital by Harry Braverman (1974)

Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century is a foundational text in labor process theory, reviving Karl Marx’s analysis of work under capitalism for the 20th-century industrial and post-industrial world. It critiques how management appropriates workers’ knowledge, separates thought from execution, and progressively reduces work to routine tasks under monopoly capitalism.

The book has five parts encompassing 20 chapters. Below is a detailed chapter-by-chapter summary based on Braverman’s structure and argumentation.¹²

Part I – Labor and Management (Chapters 1–6)

Chapter 1: Labor and Society

Braverman begins by defining labor as the fundamental condition of human existence—purposeful activity that transforms nature and produces both society and self. He revisits Marx’s concept of the labor process and contrasts it with the capitalist mode of production, emphasizing how labor becomes alienated when subsumed under capital.

Chapter 2: The Management of Labor

Here, Braverman explores management as a historical development arising from capital’s need to control the labor process. He distinguishes between technical control (through machinery and process organization) and social control (through hierarchy and supervision). The capitalist buys labor power but must compel its full use value, giving rise to managerial functions.

Chapter 3: The Division of Labor

This chapter examines Adam Smith’s and Marx’s accounts of the division of labor. Braverman argues that under capitalism, what begins as an efficient specialization of tasks evolves into a means of domination: the separation of mental from manual tasks that enables managerial control over workers.

Chapter 4: The Separation of Mental and Manual Labor

Braverman identifies this separation as the defining feature of capitalist production. The monopoly of knowledge by management—controlling planning, design, and timing—renders workers dependent executors. This process paves the way for systematic deskilling.

Chapter 5: Scientific Management

He dissects Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific management (Taylorism) as the explicit codification of capitalist control. Taylor sought to remove all planning and conceptual work from laborers, creating a managerial monopoly over the labor process. While presented as efficiency, it actually enforced labor subordination. Braverman sees this as the turning point in capitalist management.

Chapter 6: The Real Subsumption of Labor

Braverman borrows Marx’s notion of real subsumption—the stage at which capital doesn’t merely dominate but restructures labor itself. The industrial labor process increasingly embodies capitalist logic not just organizationally but technologically, embedding control into machines and workflows.

Part II – Science and Mechanization (Chapters 7–13)

Chapter 7: Machinery

The focus shifts to the role of machinery in shaping labor. Machines intensify labor extraction by defining pace and procedure. For Braverman, machinery is not neutral—it is designed to extend management’s control and reduce worker autonomy.

Chapter 8: Science, Labor, and Machinery

He traces how science becomes intertwined with production. Industrial laboratories and research divisions are integrated into capitalist enterprises, converting scientific creativity into a component of capital accumulation.

Chapter 9: The Labor Process Under Modern Industry

Braverman links mechanization to the transformation of the labor process. Skills once residing in the worker’s hands are transferred to machines or technical departments. This process extends Taylorism across industries.

Chapter 10: The Universalization of the Machine Process

Here he contends that the machine process spreads beyond manufacturing into every sphere of work—from agriculture to administration. The capitalist imperative is to render all labor measurable, predictable, and controllable.

Chapter 11: Surplus Value and Surplus Labor

Braverman revisits Marx’s distinction between these concepts, stressing that the drive to increase surplus value leads management to intensify control, mechanize human effort, and cheapen labor.

Chapter 12: The Universal Market

This chapter extends the analysis to the market’s tendency to commodify all human activity. As capitalism matures, every social relation becomes subject to exchange, expanding labor subordination beyond the workplace.

Chapter 13: Monopoly Capital and Technological Change

Braverman introduces the framework of monopoly capital, explaining how corporate concentration alters technical and social control. Rather than encouraging innovation for human benefit, technology becomes centralized and profit-driven, serving to reproduce hierarchy.

Part III – Monopoly Capital and the Labor Process (Chapters 14–16)

Chapter 14: The Role of the State

Braverman treats the state as both regulator and guarantor of the capitalist system. By supporting corporate monopolies and policing labor unrest, the state ensures social conditions favorable to capital accumulation, all under the guise of neutrality.

Chapter 15: Clerical Workers

He shows that the logic of Taylorism extends into white-collar jobs. Office automation and bureaucratic standardization deskill clerical work, making it analogous to assembly-line labor despite its professional veneer.

Chapter 16: The Service Sector and Retail Trades

The growth of the service economy reproduces industrial methods. Cashiers, sales clerks, and call center workers are subjected to technical supervision and fragmented tasks, reflecting the same degradation of labor found in factories.

Part IV – The Making of the Working Class (Chapters 17–19)

Chapter 17: The Formation of a Waged Working Class

Braverman traces how independent producers—farmers, artisans, and small proprietors—were absorbed into wage labor. He conceptualizes the making of the working class structurally: as capital expands, it destroys self-employment and creates a unified wage-dependent proletariat.

Chapter 18: Middle Layers

He examines the so-called new middle class—foremen, administrators, professionals—arguing that they act as agents of control within capitalist enterprises. Although better paid, their function ties them ideologically and materially to management.

Chapter 19: Productive and Unproductive Labor

Building on Marx, Braverman distinguishes labor that directly produces surplus value (productive) from labor that facilitates circulation or management (unproductive). He explains how capitalism’s development expands unproductive labor, contributing to alienation.

Part V – The Working Class and Its Future (Chapter 20)

Chapter 20: The Working Class Today

In the concluding chapter, Braverman discusses the consequences of deskilling and fragmented labor organization. The working class now encompasses industrial, clerical, and service workers alike—each shaped by capitalist control. Yet he closes with cautious optimism: as capital homogenizes labor conditions, it unintentionally creates a collective experience that can foster solidarity.

Summary of Major Themes

• Deskilling: Capitalism continually degrades skill to transfer knowledge and control from workers to management.
• Separation of conception and execution: The split between planning and doing enables domination.
• Scientific management and technological control: Techniques like Taylorism extend managerial power under ideological cover of efficiency.
• Monopoly capital: Concentrated ownership reshapes technology and the state to serve profit, not people.
• Persistence of class: Despite apparent mobility, all workers share subordination to capital.

Braverman’s work thus reasserts Marx’s vision in the context of modern corporations: the degradation of work is central, not incidental, to capitalist progress.

If you want, I can next create a diagram or flow summary showing how Braverman’s argument moves from individual labor to global capitalism—would you like that? ^3456789