Labor, Work, and Organizing: Theoretical
How do we understand and analyze this? What concepts and frameworks help us see what is happening?
See the pedagogy document for what this lens does across all themes.
The core concepts this lens builds are labor power, the labor process, exploitation and surplus value, the working day as a site of struggle, social reproduction, and the union as a contested form. It extends the analysis begun in the theoretical lens of the capitalism theme from the wage relation in general to the specific question of what happens at work and who controls it. The reading can be hard. We do it together, slowly, and we do not pretend to understand more than we do.
Anchor questions
- What exactly does an employer buy when they hire you? How is that different from buying a thing?
- Why is so much work broken into small, deskilled, repetitive tasks? Who benefits from organizing it that way?
- Where does profit come from if workers are paid for their time?
- What is the difference between a job and the work that keeps people alive and able to work? Why is one paid and the other often not?
- Is a union a threat to capitalism, a part of it, or both? What does the theory say?
Materials
Free unless marked otherwise. Read the short Marx texts first, then approach Braverman and the social reproduction readings with a group.
Foundational texts
- Karl Marx (1818 to 1883), Wage-Labour and Capital (1847). A short, accessible statement of labor power, wages, and the antagonism between capital and labor, in language meant to be spoken to workers. The best on-ramp before the harder chapters of Capital, and shared with the capitalism theme. Free: marxists.org
- Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 10: “The Working Day” (1867). Marx’s analysis of the struggle over the length of the working day, showing the wage relation as a contested limit rather than a settled exchange. The direct theoretical link from capitalism in general to the fight over work. Free: marxists.org
The labor process
- Harry Braverman (1920 to 1976), Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974). The book that revived labor process theory, arguing that Taylorism and modern management deskill work by separating conception from execution. The core anchor for analyzing work itself, not just the wage. Free: libcom.org
- Michael Burawoy (b. 1947), Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism (1979). Based on ten months working a Chicago engine plant, it asks why workers consent to their own exploitation and answers with a theory of how the shop floor manufactures that consent. The essential response to Braverman. Free to borrow: archive.org
- Beverly J. Silver (b. 1957), Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870 (2003). Uses a global database of labor unrest to theorize where and why workers gain bargaining power, connecting the shape of struggle to capital’s movement across the world economy. Free: libcom.org
Social reproduction
- Silvia Federici (b. 1942), Caliban and the Witch (2004). Reads the witch hunts and the disciplining of women’s bodies as central to the birth of capitalism, providing the historical grounding for social reproduction theory. Shared with the capitalism theme and a bridge to Gender, Reproduction, and the Household. Free PDF: files.libcom.org
- Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework (1975). A short manifesto arguing that unwaged domestic work sustains the wage relation, the classic bridge text from the wages-for-housework campaign into today’s debates over care and social reproduction. Free: caringlabor.wordpress.com
- Tithi Bhattacharya (b. 1970), What is Social Reproduction Theory? (2013). A concise explainer of how labor power is produced and maintained outside the workplace, linking struggles over care and community to struggles at work. A clear teaching entry to the framework. Free: socialistworker.org
The strike and the union form
- Rosa Luxemburg (1871 to 1919), The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906). Drawing on the 1905 Russian Revolution, Luxemburg theorizes the mass strike as a living process and criticizes cautious union and party leadership. A theory of the strike and the union that also opens the liberatory debate. Free: marxists.org
Films, lectures, and audio
- “Why Managers Exist (It’s Not Why You Think)” (Second Thought, 2023). Roughly 15 minutes, about 516,000 views. Traces management to control over the labor process rather than efficiency, an ideal popular entry to Braverman. youtube.com/watch?v=jnsRU3JJ_rs
- “Fundamentals of Marx: Surplus Labor and Value” (The Marxist Project, 2019). Roughly 10 minutes, about 98,000 views. A clear explainer of labor power, surplus value, and the rate of exploitation, useful for settling terms before the reading. youtube.com/watch?v=xzqm9QHls60
- “What is a gig economy?” (TED-Ed, 2022). Roughly 6 minutes, about 451,000 views. A short animated primer on gig work and precarity. A neutral explainer to open a session and then complicate with the readings. youtube.com/watch?v=OXT8xdqcAoU
A note on method
Do not try to master Braverman or Capital in one sitting. The point of the theoretical lens is to build a shared vocabulary the group can use, labor power, the labor process, surplus value, social reproduction, not to produce experts. Read short, read together, and let people name what they do not yet understand. The social reproduction readings are here for a reason: much of the most important work in any economy is unpaid, and a theory of labor that only looks at the waged job misses most of it.
Status
This lens has a developed first pass for this theme. Resources continue to be added as the project grows. Contributions welcome, especially on the labor process in service and digital work, and on labor theory from the Global South.