Division of Labor in the Computer Field

Bibliographic Data

ID9198490
AuthorsJoan Greenbaum (corresponding author)
Year1976
Volume28
Issue3
Pages40
Publication date1976-07-04
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMonthly Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0027-0520 • E-ISSN: 0027-0520
PublisherMonthly Review Foundation (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.14452/mr-028-03-1976-07_4
OpenAlexW1464803918
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Throughout the 1960s there was intense academic debate about the effects of automation, particularly as represented by the computer, on the labor process. Bourgeois economists and sociologists,while admitting that automation frequently reduced skills among many kinds of workers, pointed to the growing employment in the computer industry itself as a bright spot for labor. Many of the new jobs in this growing field were categorized as technical and professional and were considered illustrative of labor-force upgrading.... What was missing from these early evaluations was a firm understanding of the labor processes of capitalism. Marx's analysis is no less applicable to an occupation that could not have been conceived of in his day. In a short twenty-year span, work in the computer field has been transformed by capitalism to suit its needs, through carefully planned division of labor. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website

Bourgeoisie · Capitalism · Class (philosophy) · Division of labour · Economic history · Economics · Field (mathematics) · Labour economics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · History of Computing Technologies · Law · Mathematics · Scheduling and Optimization Algorithms

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