Automation Skill and the Future of Capitalism

Braverman's landmark study, Labor and Monopoly CapitaL (1974) opened a fruitful arena for research with its argument that close study of the labor process could yield insight into the trajectory of the capitalist form of society. However, the empirical implausibility of his deskilling diagnosis has prompted later researchers to leave behind any effort to characterize long-run, aggregate tendencies and to focus instead on local studies and on the sources of cross-section variations in labor control systems. This article develops a new conceptual basis for better addressing the larger historical issues raised by Braverman. I argue that Braverman 's skill yardstick - the craftsman - is increasingly obsolete. I develop an alternative framework that comprises a quantitative dimension of skill - substantive complexity as measured by training-time requirements - and three qualitative dimensions - responsibility, abstractness and interdependence. The banking case and other case studies re-read in this light suggest that competitive pressures force managers to seek out more productive ways of implementing automation, and these ways typically (although not always) involve more training, higher levels of responsibility, more abstract tasks and goals, and greater functional interdependence. These trends in automation's impact on skill requirements undermine the effectiveness of traditional personnel management practices. In doing so, these trends simultaneously undermine the viability of the commodity form of labor-power and create the premise of alternative post-capitalist forms of organization