Valorisation and ‘Deskilling’: A Critique of Braverman

Abstract

Braverman's work has been central to the return of attention to the study of the capitalist labour process. This paper focusses on his major theme, and rejects as inadequate both his analysis of capital's generic impulsion to deskill and his location of the consummation of that impulsion in monopoly capitalism. Instead it argues for an historically located theoris-ation of the transformation of the labour process, which would explicitly locate that transformation in relation to phases of valorisation and accu-mulation and their contradictions. Some features of such an account are discussed, with particular reference to debate about the 'labour aristo-cracy', analyses of the role of Taylorism and contemporary discussions of automation. INTRODUCTION[l] The Marxist analysis of the capitalist labour process is a relatively recent but increasingly significant aspect of the general renewal and development of Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism. Braverman's Labour and