Apprenticeship and De-skilling in Britain, 1850–1914

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9969446
AutoresWilliam Knox (0000-0002-0162-7791, autor de correspondencia)
Año1986
Volumen31
Número2
Páginas166-184
Fecha de publicación1986-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859000008142
OpenAlexW2081085433
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas13

The publication of Harry Braverman's seminal study – Labor and Monopoiy Capital (1974) – marked a turning-point for labour and social historians. Since then they have increasingly concerned themselves with the nature of the labour process in industrial capitalism. Central to this concern has been the debate on de-skilling and the destruction of craft control over the labour process and its subordination to the needs of capital. Braverman has been heavily criticised for the one-sidedness and simplicity of his account of this development. Among the weaknesses identified in Labor and Monopoly Capital is the omission of any mention of class struggle, or worker resistance to technical change; the failure to grasp how de-skilling can be mediated and, therefore, modified through labour, market and product particularisms; the lack of a detailed analysis of the transformation of formal to real subordination (in the Marxist sense) of labour to capital – the process seems to occur automatically; and, the failure to realise how formally skilled workers can continue to occupy a privileged position in the workforce through either the mechanism of custom, or by their strategic placing in the production process, or both

Apprenticeship · Capital (architecture · Capitalism · Craft · Economic growth · Economics · Labour economics · Market economy · Marxist philosophy · Monopoly · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Subordination (linguistics · Workforce · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Political Economy and Marxism