Lecture 10

1. Lecture 10 Work in the Post-Industrial Economy

2. Social Organization of Work • As our society becomes more interdependent, the ways in which we organize the production and consumption of goods become more complex • The advent of industrialization brought about a new type of economic organization that we call capitalism • Modern capitalism has both encouraged globalization and has been intensified by globalization

3. Modern Capitalism • Modern Capitalism is an economic system based on private property where goods are bought and sold on a market and prices are determined by supply and demand • Profit is an incentive • Free competition to buy goods, sell products, and buy cheap labor • Drive to expand and accumulate capital ($) • Capitalism is driven by rational thinking & organization with the goal of finding the most efficient means to gain profit • What type of organizational form helps achieve this goal and dominates in modern capitalism?

4. Corporations • Corporations are the primary organizational form utilized in capitalist system • They are a legal form of public and capitalist organization in which control passes to a managerial group and which owners have limited liability • Organized rationally with the goal of maximizing profit • A corporation is a social and legal creation that under US law is a legal person • They can own property, sign contracts, go bankrupt, pay taxes, and enjoy some constitutional rights

5. Corporate Society • Today we can consider our society a Corporate Society, which is asociety in which large scale corporations organize and are involved in social, political decision-making process • Secondary groups that organize our lives • Globalization is bringing about a global corporate society • Multinational Corporations: operate and coordinate production, distribution and consumption across national borders

6. Working in a Corporate Society • As a global corporate society grows, we can ask: How does it affect workers and the social organization of work? • To begin to answer this question we want to examine how labor is socially reproduced • The wages, working conditions, and social relations of work are determined by economic, social, and political contexts (social structure)

7. Selling Our Labor • To examine the social reproduction of labor in the modern global economy we need to start at the beginning and examine how capitalism organizes labor • Capitalism creates an institution of wage labor that forms the foundation of our social structure • How many of you work? • Why do you work?

8. Work and Alienation • One sociologist, Karl Marx, spent his life examining capitalism and its affect on workers and society as a whole • According to Marx, in an industrial society workers no longer own the means to produce the things they need and are therefore required to sell their labor • In this regard, Marx argues that our labor is no longer voluntary, but forced • What do you think he means by this?

9. Modern Capitalism: Alienated Labor • According to Marx, workers in Industrial society (the many who do not own the means of production) become alienated since they are required to sell their labor • They become alienated in three ways • From themselves • From the labor process • From other people

10. Alienated from ourselves • Marx believed that work is the essence of humanity • The ability to produce for ourselves is what makes us human • When workers must sell their labor they are alienated from their own labor power, creativity, and the products they make • “the worker cannot use the things he produces to keep alive or to engage in further productive activity....” • The more productive workers are the cheaper they become

11. Alienated from the labor process/products • According to Marx, when we must sell our labor we (in general) lose control over how we will labor • We have no say over the conditions in which we work and how our work is organized, and how it affects us physically and mentally • Through the rationalization of the labor process (deskilling) workers become “a mere appendage of flesh on a machine of iron”

12. Alienated from fellow humans • We are alienated from those that control our labor and those who produce goods for us • The commodities of each individual producer appears in depersonalized form, regardless of who produced them, where, or in what specific conditions • Ask yourself: do you know where your shoes came from? The food you ate for lunch? And who were the workers that contributed to bringing them to you? • Alienated form fellow workers • According to Marx, since we must sell our labor we are forced to compete with other workers for jobs; instead of having class consciousness and unity among workers we become alienated from them

13. Alienation at Work • (1) Explain your worst work experience. • How were you alienated from yourself, your labor/ the product of your labor, and/or your fellow workers? • (2) Explain your best work experience. • How were you NOT alienated from yourself, your labor/ the product of your labor, and/or your fellow workers? (in other words, did you feel connected to your own labor, what you were making, and/or the people you were working with?)

14. Rational Organization of Labor • Capitalist economies rationally organize production to find the most efficient means to achieve profit accumulation • Therefore, corporations (the dominant organizations) look to find the cheapest inputs possible for profit maximization – including labor • However, the cost of labor is socially reproduced • As companies seek out the cheapest labor on the market they encounter social, political, and economic contexts that determine the cost and conditions of labor/work

15. The Changing Context of Labor • We can examine how labor is socially reproduced by looking at how the organization of rational production changes when we move from an Industrial economy to a Post-Industrial economy • The Industrial economy = Fordist organization • The Post-Industrial economy = Post-Fordist organization

16. Fordist Organization of Production • Fordism is defined as a system of mass production tied to mass consumption; in others words workers needed to be paid enough to buy the goods that are being produced in the economy • A Fordist style of economic organization requires: • A stable workforce – workers generally worked for one company their whole loves • Automation technology and deskilling – the creation of the assembly line • High level of unionization – where workers were able to bargain for high wages and benefits

17. Industrial Economic Growth • The Fordist style of economic organization created significant economic growth, a large middle class, and the birth of the consumer economy in American society • With automation technology, workers become more productive and earned high enough wages to consume the goods produced • However, a capitalist system creates increasing competition among corporations and therefore they are looking for ways to cut the cost of their inputs including labor • One of these ways was to look for workers who did not need to consume at the levels that American workers had become accustomed to

18. Post-Fordism • Post-Fordism is defined as the social organization of production based on flexibility and innovation being maximized to meet market demand • The primary change from Fordism to post-Fordism is that those who produce most of the goods around the world are no longer the ones that consume most of these goods • A Fordist style of economic organization requires: • A contingent workforce – workers are generally hired for short periods of time • Automation technology and deskilling – the creation of the assembly line, but around the world • Information technology – allows corporations to make decisions in one location and hire labor in other locations • No unionization – workers are not able to bargain for high wages and benefits or improved working conditions

19. Changing organization of labor; changing cost of labor • The cost of labor is socially reproduced by the type of organization of production • With Fordist organization, automation and the assembly created a demand for deskilled labor and therefore reduced the cost of labor, however workers still needed to earn high enough wages to purchase the goods produced in this type of economy • With Post-Fordism this changes with information technology which makes it possible to move around the world and utilize automation technology to find workers who do not need to earn wages to consume at the level of American workers

20. Cheap people or Cheap Labor ? • What we want to remember is no one’s labor is cheaper than someone else’s labor – it is the social organization of a society that makes ‘cheap labor’ possible • There are no ‘cheap’ people, just ‘cheap’ wages • When thinking about cheap labor, ask yourself: “How is my labor socially reproduced in this society to be more expensive that the labor of workers in Mexico, China, Jamaica, etc?” • For example, some of the political policies that make American labor more expensive are: minimum wage, unemployment insurance, medical leave, workplace safety, etc.

21. Increasing Alienation? • To conclude, we can think about how globalization and Post-Fordist organization of production affects the alienation of workers that Marx discussed • Do you think that globalization increases the alienation of workers? • From themselves? • From the labor process? • From other people?