L

Labor

Manual work that produces manufactured, handmade, or agricultural products.

Labor, like work, should be seen as a socially constructed category. In spite of the importance of economic and linguistic terms in denoting what constitutes work, the social context and defining worldview are very basic. In this sense, labor and its nature may be seen as affected by social circumstance and the meaning or interpretation of the activity by those concerned. It is, however, important to realize that whereas a distinction can be made between work and nonwork or leisure, labor can be used to cover mental and physical activities undertaken both as leisure and work. But it is also imperative to state that the accomplishment of tasks that labor involves is essentially economic and/or socially useful.

This fact is especially important in the contemporary world, where a difference is often assumed between exertions or activities geared toward economic profit and those driven by other less economic but often more socially useful goals. Therefore, an apt conceptualization of labor may be achieved by extending its boundaries and avoiding the limitations imposed by precision and specificity, since the forms of labor vary across and among cultures and societies. In this case, accounts of traditional societies would reveal the irrelevance of economic or monetary incentives in a cashless economy where social obligations may determine engagement in labor (e.g., kinsmen getting together to help one of them erect a new dwelling unit). Also, even in so-called industrial societies, there often exists a seamless web that embodies together what may be called work and nonwork activities. In other words, both may be embodied in one process (a good example of this can be readily seen in the area of arts or work/leisure of artists).

Moreover, as has been demonstrated in the literature, contemporary motives behind work or labor are a product of both Western civilization and the demands of industry and trade. In this sense, the motivation to work in order to fill time with productive or economic activities is a Western notion that differs from what prevails in traditional societies, where labor may be constricted by immediate needs. But this should not be misconstrued as giving weight to the notion of the lazy native often found in Western accounts, in which the native or those from other cultures are seen as inherently lazy in terms of labor and work involvement. At the same time, this should not be seen as a denial of the difficulty faced by the labor force of so many developing societies in their transformation from nonindustrial to industrial societies. The problems in such cases arise from adjusting to the strict separation between work and leisure, the geographical or spatial specificity of work venues, and the formalization of labor and economic activity in general. Therefore, labor as a concept can be seen as embodied in the rubric of work. The imperative of labor derives essentially from humanity’s need to work or indulge in some form of productive or objectively meaningful activity.

Even though a distinction is often made between work and labor, it is obvious that both are intertwined in contemporary life. On one hand, the definition of labor as a bodily activity designed to ensure the survival of the individual in which the results are consumed immediately would confine labor to the activities or work roles of blue-collar workers or manual laborers. On the other hand, work is broadly seen as an activity or effort undertaken with the individual’s hands, which gives objectivity to the world. The utility of these definitions seems doubtful both from the point of view of history and even contemporary reality. At the semantic level, one wonders what the difference is between a bodily activity and an activity undertaken with hands. In other words, where does the body end and where does the hand begin independent of the body? Moreover, even the most rudimentary form of labor involves at least a minimum coordination between the brain and the body.

For instance, the simple activity of shoveling sand into a truck cannot be effectively performed unless the brain-body coordination is intact, since efficiency depends on gauging the exact distance between the heap of sand and the truck as well as how to shovel the sand to minimize waste and conserve time. The main idea behind this distinction between labor and work is that what obtained in the preindustrial era or the period of slave labor was labor, whereas what is predominantly done now is work. But even this thinking is historically flawed.

In this sense, in many industrial societies of today’s world, many work-related activities generate objects for immediate consumption, whereas in the simple hunting and gathering or traditional society some activities involving labor do not lead to immediate consumption. For example, the process of harvesting crops involves not only getting food for immediate consumption but, more crucially, setting aside something for the next season’s planting. It would appear that regardless of the differences that exist in the nature of activity undertaken, the part of anatomy used, or the need the activity serves, the structure of society has changed over time and affected the economic activity of humanity. Basically, what is seen as both labor and work in the previous distinction can be seen as tied up neatly with the question of fulfillment of needs or economic relevance. It is in this sense that an overlaboring of any perceived difference between work and labor can only obfuscate reality. Therefore, labor can be seen rightly as embodied in work, and hence both concepts can be interchangeably and integrally used, especially when there is nothing to be gained from a distinction between the two.

In its contemporary sense, labor may be seen as engaging in a given occupation. However, this raises the problem of how to classify those who, even though they belong to a given occupational category, are not employed as such at the time in question. In this sense, there is the likelihood of separating the occupational status of the individual from his or her practice of that occupation. The use of the concept of labor can be traced historically to the emergence of slavery. The work of slaves or the drudgery of agriculture under the slave system was derogatively referred to as “labor.” Even work itself cannot boast of a more dignified origin. Work originally meant manual labor, which is undoubtedly the oldest form of work. Therefore, in medieval times, noblemen were those who were not bothered with work. No wonder the earliest dictionary definition of the word “gentleman” as one who did not have to work to earn a living. According to Keith Grint, avodah, the Hebrew word for “work,” has the same root as the word eved, meaning slavery; the Greeks had the words pono (painful activity), ergon (military or agricultural task), and techne (technique) for work. Therefore, work even in the original sense referred to physical or manual drudgery and was for the less fortunate members of society. In fact, the previous relation makes the attempt to achieve a fine distinction between work and labor all the more pointless. The conceptualization of both labor and work along the lines of physical exertion were products of the eras of slavery and feudalism, when crude agriculture made manual labor unavoidable. But these conceptions were eventually shattered or radicalized by the Industrial Revolution. It was the Industrial Revolution that broke the tradition of landed gentry who depended on the labor of others for survival.

In the understanding of labor, and particularly in the attempt to see why it had a not-too-noble beginning, the ideas of the early philosophers are important. Among these philosophers, Aristotle and Plato were instrumental in defining labor as a vocation for lesser mortals. They disliked the laboring class since they believed that those who are dependent on others cannot be free to partake in political debates. In other words, labor undermined the political process in society.

Slavery

One of the earliest places where labor was used was in the area of agriculture. Indigenous agriculture of whatever type relied entirely on human brawn. However, this labor was grossly inefficient in terms of mass production or ability to efficiently produce for the market. In other words, this form of labor was grossly inadequate in terms of meeting the economic demands of trade. This explains why the eras of feudalism in Europe and precolonialism in Africa were characterized by small-scale agriculture and a relatively rudimentary market economy that were severely limited by crude mechanization and lack of a well-defined and ungendered division of labor.

However, in the case of Africa, beyond these constraints the limitation of labor was sometimes seen by external observers as a reflection of laziness. In this case, the picture of the lazy native or local who spends six days in a week drumming and dancing and the seventh for relaxation was created. This notion has its roots in the myth of “tropical abundance.” According to the myth, the native African was seen as occupying the naturally rich tropics that were endowed with food crops and fruits that grew in overflowing abundance and within easy reach. Because of this paradise-like environment, the native African saw no challenge in labor.

Related to this notion, though of a later origin, is the idea of describing the labor supply of Africans with the backward bending supply curve in the immediate era of European contact and colonization. In this logic, given the limited wants of the African worker he would return to his village or cease further labor efforts once these needs were met. This idea was used to justify not paying higher wages to the African colonial civil servant, since he would prefer to curtail rather than increase labor even if his wages kept increasing. Therefore, according to this logic, if the wage level increased beyond a certain level, the labor supply would begin to diminish.

Needless to say, both of these notions were the result of a failure to comprehend the dynamics of the African labor process before contemporary times, of early ethnocentric scholarship, and a natural reaction or interpretation of strange sociocultural and economic contexts.

The Industrial Revolution put paid to slavery and slave labor just as the Mechanical Revolution alongside it made human labor unattractive and dear when compared to machines. The legal abolition of the slave trade in Europe and America between 1803 and 1836 brought the final end to this form of exploitative labor, especially after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865. It was first abolished by Denmark in 1803, and Portugal abolished it in 1836. Britain, which could be considered a great slave power, abolished it in 1807. Before the abolitions, slavery had been a great source of labor, and previous civilizations before the Industrial Revolution were more or less built on it.

West Africa was one of the most prominent sources of slave labor. To this end, slaves were taken from almost the whole of West Africa. Slavery is significant in the treatment of labor not because of the great use to which it was put in building civilizations before the Industrial Revolution or its basic obnoxious nature but because of the drudgery it signified for labor. The perception of labor as drudgery, which persisted through the feudal era in Europe and even in the early Industrial Revolution, was a direct result of the degrading use of slaves and labor gangs in those days. A good example of this degradation is the fact that a ton of a product like palm oil that came from the same geographic area had the same coastal price as one slave. In other words, one slave was valued as the equivalent (more or less) of a ton of palm oil. Slave labor was also boosted by the growth of what is called legitimate trade (trade in commodities and other goods apart from humans). The trade increased the demand for slaves within West Africa since export commodities such as palm oil were often produced and transported by slave labor.

It is also crucial to point out that slavery, as a practice, was not a work-induced development per se. It was rather a trade development. In this sense, the trade in human beings was part of the blossoming commerce and mercantile link among Europe, America, and Africa. Therefore, slaves, even though representing a watershed in labor history, were articles of trade. However, the trade in slavery is often distinguished from trade in other commodities. This distinction gave rise to the often-contested concept of legitimate trade—to indicate that one is referring to trade other than slavery. The trade nature of slavery is perhaps vividly captured in the fact that in West Africa, where slavery proliferated in the coastal towns that had the advantage of transportation routes (sea routes), there were prominent slave ports. The trade in slaves was the outcome of previous commercial links among Africa, Europe, and America. Actually, the trade between Africa and Europe goes backs to at least the fifteenth century. The early stages involved the exportation of goods like ivory, pepper, beeswax, and a few slaves. However, the slave trade became dominant in the seventeenth century. This development can be traced to high demand for slave labor in North and South America as well as in the Caribbean. These slaves were needed for the production of sugar, cotton, and tobacco and for the mining of different minerals.

The place of slavery and the slave trade in the evolution of labor as we know it today can be glimpsed from an observation by George Orwell. According to Orwell, civilization founded on slavery lasted for as long as 4,000 years, even though no credit for or record of these slaves exists today. It would be stating the obvious to maintain that civilizations from the Greek to the Egyptian were built on the shoulders of unknown and degraded slaves. The labor that was seen as a derogatory preoccupation for slaves is today the cornerstone of socioeconomic life in the world.

Religion and Labor

Also instrumental in the development of labor and its rise from the concern of lesser mortals to a noble engagement was religion. Christianity, specifically the Protestant version, was important in the promotion of labor. As has been reported by the sociologist Max Weber, capitalism received a boost from the Calvinists’ Protestant ethic, which saw work/labor as a route to salvation or a confirmation of salvation (if one prospers in his or her chosen occupation or vocation). This notion, which gained acceptance as a result of the remarkable progress of the Calvinists in business, elevated labor from a necessary engagement and preserve of largely the less privileged to a moral cum spiritual duty. Accounts regarding the role of religion vary, from the use of classical Christianity to create a compliant slave population, to the use of Christianity as a soothing balm for inequalities (that is, in the sense of the Marxian notion of religion as an opiate of the masses), to the accounts of the connivance between the political authority and religion in perpetrating exploitation (as classically epitomized in France before the revolution in 1789). But the fact remains that Weber’s account vividly captures the impact of a brand of religion on development of capital and labor. This fact also holds true in some early Islamic empires, where progress in trade was tied to or seen as a mark of divine favor. Such religious beliefs were basic to the transformation of labor.

Even after Weber, scholars and activists did much to make labor a moral duty for those who claim social responsibility. Thus, starting from Samuel Smile’s doctrine of “heaven helps those who help themselves,” to T. Carlyle’s Gospel of Work (1977) and other proponents of the Victorian work ethic, labor was projected as consistent with if not a sure measurement of morality and spirituality. But fundamental to the church’s involvement was the concern with trade. In spite of protestations to the contrary, the church was especially prominent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in areas with flourishing trade and commerce. Religion, as the Calvinists aptly showed, can engender a productive commerce mentality in its adherents. In Africa, for instance, it is axiomatic to state that colonialism was built on the brace of religion and trade. As a matter of fact, religion in most developing regions of the world followed the known routes of trade. It is in this sense that it is often argued that religion was a palliative in securing geographical posts for eventual trading activities by colonial powers. Be that as it may, the religious doctrines are full of exhortations on how to be good merchants and how to cultivate proper commercial productive habits.

In contemporary times, religion has also played a big role in our understanding and appreciation of labor and trade. Thus, modern religion has also anchored on instilling commitment and devotion to labor among faithfuls. This religious duty has been taken to new heights by the Pentecostal churches that preach the gospel of prosperity. For most of these relatively new churches, prosperity in one’s calling or occupation is a sure indication of good spiritual living, a brand of gospel that has received a big boost from the labor or work-filled lives of Jesus and other New Testament prophets. Jesus provided what can be considered the ultimate example of the prominence of labor in human life when he shunned the worldly piety of the Pharisees and declared that the Sabbath was made for man and not the other way around.

Industrial Revolution

As already mentioned, it was the Industrial Revolution that radicalized the existing conception of labor or manual drudgery. The Industrial Revolution, which occurred in western Europe in the eighteenth century, radically transformed the productive relations of society as well as the meaning and nature of labor.

There is controversy over whether the Industrial Revolution was the same phenomenon as the Mechanical Revolution. The fact is that the Mechanical Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, even though they took place during the same time period and influenced each other, were in essence different. In this sense, the Mechanical Revolution arose out of the development and progress in organized science, which led to new inventions in agriculture and other areas of life. But the Industrial Revolution was more of a social and financial phenomenon. The Industrial Revolution was primarily motivated by the changing nature of trade and commerce brought about by the division of labor. In a sense, the Industrial Revolution put paid to the idea of gang labor, labor as drudgery, and the animalization of human labor—the use of man as a mere work animal (classically illustrated in the plowing of fields by a combination of men and oxen or the use of men as sweating rowers in the galley of a ship). In spite of the difference in nature between the Mechanical Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, the Industrial Revolution was reinforced and even driven by the Mechanical Revolution and the related social process of many people working together under a roof as a work unit or the factory system. In concrete terms, the Industrial Revolution turned the human mind away from the ideas of slave and gang labor to the notions of mechanical power and the machine.

The Industrial Revolution, unlike the Mechanical Revolution that went on regardless of the consequences or changes it might produce, was affected by the constant changes in human and social realities occasioned by the Mechanical Revolution. The difference between the Industrial Revolution and the classic Roman Republic civilization was essentially in the character of labor and trade. The Industrial Revolution radicalized the prevailing conception of the nature and essence of labor. The process was aided by the rise of mass education. Continuous progress inevitably depended on an educated working population. The process was further aided by the spread of religion, which required enlightened adherents who would appreciate and spread the doctrine or belief.

Therefore, the Industrial Revolution discarded the idea of labor as drudgery. The world before the Industrial Revolution was built essentially on the idea that everything depended on the sheer brute effort and muscle of the human being, the muscle of ignorant and exploited human beings. In this situation, humanity in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution was engaged in purely mechanical drudgery or physical labor. Against this background, the Industrial Revolution created a scenario in which human beings were no longer needed as a source of physical power, since what could be done manually by a human being could be done faster and more efficiently by a machine. The human being now began to be seen as the supervisor of the process, who was needed where choice, decisions, and intelligence were required. The human being was now needed as a thinking being and not as a mechanical tool or chattel of the slave era. Hence, while previous civilization was built on cheap and exploited human labor, modern civilization was powered by mechanical devices under the control of men. The Industrial Revolution also necessitated the education of the labor force and the understanding of machines to bring about the industrial efficiency that was the greatest impetus to industrialization from both revolutions. The Mechanical Revolution also facilitated improvements in transportation and in the production (by way of machines) of a larger quantity of goods. These improvements boosted trade and commerce and made trade a large-scale affair responding to the needs of an ever-growing urban population.

The Industrial Revolution also reinforced the emerging factory system of production. Factories per se were the products of the increasing division of labor in society even before the Industrial Revolution. The factory system is the core root of the industrial era and gave birth to the social transformation associated with the industrial era. For Anugwom, the industrial life is a product of the factory system, both as a production and as an organizational principle. Therefore, a highly specialized division of labor as required by mechanization and the factory system is probably the most primary and basic structural feature of industrial society. Weber sees a characteristic factory as organized workshops where nonhuman means of production are fully appropriated by an owner but workers are not, where there is an internal specialization of functions, and where mechanical power and machines that must be tended are used.

Definitely, the factory system benefited from the rise of mechanization. As a matter of fact, steam power provided the initial energy required by the factory. But more crucial for labor was that the factory brought many people together as workers and fostered some level of cooperative interaction among them; in the process, it gave vent to the articulation of common problems and values on which informal groups and later labor unions were built. Equally pertinent is that the factory, machines, and energy would have been unnecessary without a corresponding growth in the nature and volume of trade. Definitely, the two revolutions and the factory changed the face of the production of goods, but these changes were driven by the economic forces of improved trade and large-scale commerce. It is in this sense that the Industrial Revolution was a social and financial response to the era.

Modern Labor Process

A critical point of departure in understanding labor in modernity is the idea of labor process. We owe much of what we know about labor process to the insightful contribution of Harry Braverman in Labor and Monopoly Capital. In this contribution, Braverman expounds the seminal idea of Karl Marx, that the main area for explaining conflict and control in society is the labor process. In this sense, the labor process refers to the place where commodities (goods) are constructed and developed by a mixture of human labor and raw materials. In other words, the derivation of the finished goods is through systematic utilization of human labor and raw materials. Needless to say, Marx saw the exploitative nature of the labor process under capitalism as a reason for its overthrow through a revolution anchored by the working class.

Braverman’s ideas can be seen as a bold attempt to extend the frontiers originally set by Taylorism and the scientific management principles. Like Frederick W. Taylor, Braverman believes that the contemporary labor process is built on the twin poles of control and achievement of maximum effort by workers for minimum reward. Thus, for Braverman the concerns are how to bring to the shop floor or factory the structurally determined cooperatives of managerial control, with the effects of this control on the workers themselves, and how to achieve monopoly capitalism through the dynamic and immanent process of de-skilling and degradation. For Braverman, effective managerial control, which is essential for monopoly capitalism, can be achieved through extending the division of labor. This creates a distinction between the conception and execution of work and contributes to the general de-skilling of the workforce. The target in these efforts is to achieve not only higher productivity, but also a pliable labor force. In effect, Braverman ideally seeks the separation of the labor process from both the worker and the control of the worker.

On the route to monopoly, capitalism, or a trade economy in which money determines the allocation of society’s valuables in a cash-and-carry manner, the conditions of work are further deteriorated. Labor is prevented from realizing this by a combination of higher wages and consumer-oriented lifestyles. Equally important in the Braverman scheme are the roles of science and technology, which function as tools of capitalism to replace labor and de-skill labor that is left. This implies that science and technology do not just aid modern production, but also reduce the relevance of labor and at the same time increase the control of management. The end point of the labor process as envisaged by Braverman is that with the aid of science and technology, the delusion of a better life, and the control of a strengthened and stratified management, control is taken from the direct producers (labor) and reinvested after the fragmentation of the labor process, through de-skilling and managerial practice, under the control of management.

In a nutshell, Braverman postulates a new kind of labor process and shop floor reality built from the original ideas of Taylor. In the new situation, the labor process is wrestled away from labor and the control of labor, that is, the interaction between labor and capital cum other factors of production in the workplace is now determined and controlled by management, aided by science and technology, which together through deskilling reduce the relevance of labor. It is in this process that monopoly capitalism emerges as the dominant order in society.

However, like all ideal conceptions of reality, Braverman’s labor process notion fails to take cognizance of the dynamic nature of labor itself, the real meaning and impact of skill, and the consistent if not rapidly transforming contestations between labor and capital in modern society. The fact is that Braverman’s conception of early and precapitalist-era labor as skilled is flawed. In other words, skill these days emanates not from the craft conception of those days, but from the ability to manipulate the tools of science and technology. So, even if one concedes that the emergence of science and technology at the workplace displaced the craft laborer, they engendered the emergence of a more adept labor. In a sense, the value of skill and what makes up skill are determined by trade or market realities in modern times. Moreover, skill per se has social and historical connotations that affect what is seen as skilled or otherwise, when, and in what context. But what seals the coffin on Braverman’s idea of de-skilling is that if de-skilling were possible as he and Taylor hypothesize, time would have left us with a huge mass of homogeneous de-skilled proletariats. The contrary reality is obvious today.

However, Braverman, in spite of the voluminous criticisms of his ideas in literature, remains an important figure in the evolvement of the labor process and labor itself by implication. Just as Taylor opened our eyes ironically to the need for a well-run organization for production and the imperative of good management, Braverman calls attention to the challenges of technology and extreme managerial control over labor. The ability of labor to survive and grow despite science and technology and even the ever-expanding control of management (in some industries) indicates the central place of human labor in life itself.

Labor Organizations

Labor developed in the capitalist system of Europe to tackle the challenge of capitalism, as it were. A significant form of this orientation is the concept of laborism. Laborism simply denotes the pursuit of reforms within the existing forms and methods of parliamentary government and collective bargaining. According to Alan Fox, this has been the dominant response of the working class in Britain to the challenges posed by capitalism. Laborism or the adoption of this form of accommodation of capital by labor was born out of two factors. The first was the general rise in real living standards and workers’ quality of life. This both diminished the revolutionary impetus and gave hope that capitalism could give more economistic rewards or accommodate such if labor readily articulated a clear position. The success of the trade unions and the readiness of most employers to find accommodation with labor greatly undermined the desire for control of the productive and political processes by labor.

Second and crucial in undermining the revolutionary cause of labor is the generally heterogeneous nature of the working class in many countries of the world. Heterogeneity by implication fragments the working class and makes the formation of the solidarity needed for revolution impossible.

Invariably, labor unions and organizations, while projecting and promoting the interests of labor, grew along the lines of the existing political and economic processes. In spite of projecting an apparently contradictory worldview, labor ironically became structured by the existing framework of society and bureaucratized. This was not as a result of leadership betrayal, whether one thinks along the lines of Robert Michels’s oligarchy or Leon Trotsky’s scenario. In the former case, the labor union is depicted as being hijacked over time by the powerful members or leaders and in this case is soon enough routinized. In the latter case, Trotsky’s thesis suggests that all labor defeats or conversely lack of victory can be ascribed to the existence of traitors in the leadership rank.

The fact is that the modern labor and trade union is more or less a product of the capitalist system. It is in this sense that Grint posits that trade unions are constructed through and reflective of capitalism. He argues that the world of trade unions and the world of employment are not automatically or naturally conducive to class solidarity, but are more likely to boost the sectionalist and sectarian ideologies on which capitalism itself is built. The previous viewpoint, which is seen as more tenable especially in developing countries or nations in transition, gives credence to the earlier postulation by Antonio Gramsci that while trade unions may be socialist subjectively, they are objectively capitalist. In fact, the contemporary history and reality of labor confirms this reality, that even though labor may appear socialist or revolutionary and radical, it is in fact molded and informed by the dominant economic and political order of the society. This fact may equally explain the absence of a clear-cut revolutionary labor movement in contemporary society. However, the aligning of the labor move ment with the dominant political and economic process has not reduced its ability to agitate for improving the conditions of life for its weaker members. It has also not deprived it of the strength for confronting inequalities in the system. But the nature of the labor movement as an organized collectivity places a limit on its radical posture. Even in Russia, where unions are seen as radical, the radicalism has been within the context of the prevalent societal reality. This tendency has been greater in the liberal parts of the world like Britain, where the drive is generally toward eform. Even where a political party emerges along the line of labor as in the case of the British Labour Party, the party has been geared toward reformist changes.

The fact is that in spite of the reverse wave or influence of such working-class tendencies as syndicalism, guild socialism, and the Communist Party, they have been swallowed up or grossly marginalized by the preeminent position of laborism. In this sense, laborism has remained the consistent and dominant response of labor to the challenges of capitalism. (However, it would be revealing to see how laborism has remained dominant or what changes labor has witnessed in view of the intensification of capitalism as represented by globalization.)

In spite of this, it seems pertinent to argue that even though the labor movement has a tendency to marginalize radical leadership, the aspirations represented by these radical members are often in consonance with those of the rank-and-file members. Thus, J. Zeitlin argues that trade union organizations are often so structured that radical local leaders are outside the boundary of national leadership, even though they are aligned more with the “real” and “larger” interests of the rank-and-file membership. Even though the nullity of local radical leadership emerging in control of the national leadership can be seen as partially reflective of the inherent oligarchical control of labor, this fact is more a reflection of the political process that is mostly beyond the control of labor. In this case, in spite of the conflicting ideals between labor and capital, labor and capital are equally well aware of the need to maintain the production process. This is a fact that has been reinforced over time by the precarious economic condition of labor and the willingness of marginal members, who incidentally are in the majority, to seek accommodation with capital in order to stave off the threats of immediate privation and hunger. To see the value of this argument, one must understand that the most successful of labor wars with capital have been those tied to the immediate economic needs or conditions of labor, rather than those that hinged on facilitating the enthronement of an ideal political and economic order, with all the adverse consequences of this on labor in the short run.

The control of national labor leadership by the reformist elites is also enabled by the political leader, who see the reformist elites as more pliable and amenable than the radicals. Thus, the state has a stake in the triumph of the reformist elites of labor. The triumph of the reformists ensures the survival of laborism as a labor response and strategy toward capitalism. It is the desire of the state to achieve this end and to work toward the separation of industrial relations from the political process that promotes the collective bargaining practice. Collective bargaining easily becomes an instrument for resolving conflicts in the productive process and achieves the dissociation of conflicts or tension between labor and capital. However, as Grint points out, this should not be conceived to mean that collective bargaining operates autonomous of political interest or exists “within the arena of equal parties” but, rather, that conflicts can be settled or dispersed before they escalate into political movements that may threaten the legitimacy of the state. The lack of collective bargaining seriously erodes laborism and engenders the adoption of more radical cum political tactics by labor. This actually accounts for the near-universalization of collective bargaining—an attempt by capitalism to cover its flanks and watch its back.

Another major shift in the understanding of labor has been its conception as a social reality or a social phenomenon by disciplines other than economic. Thus, from the 1960s a predominantly economic concern like the labor market, for instance, drew the attention of sociologists and economic historians, following the influential work of John Harry Goldthorpe et al., who conducted an extensive interview project among the Vauxhall factory workers in Luton, England. The result of this revealing study of labor was the emergence of the notion of labor segmentation. In other words, the postulation of Goldthorpe et al. drew attention to the need to examine the operation of relevant labor market(s) if one is to have an adequate insight and understanding of the determinants of both the priorities and expectations of workers in any enterprise. These concerns were made all the more apparent by studies by Michael Mann and Robert Martin Blackburn.

The concepts of “dual” and “segmented” labor markets were used to delineate a labor market structure that while appearing objective created subjective opportunities for some groups and denied others the same opportunities. In other words, low-quality employment opportunities or labor involvement were a permanent feature of labor market structures. More crucially, discriminatory recruitment policies were used to ensure that certain categories of employees were likely to fill them, as determined by sex, race, ethnicity, and social class. The inability of, for example, women and ethnic minorities to obtain better jobs did not really derive from their inferior skill or such other objective criteria, but from a discriminatory segmented labor market.

Even though the segmentation of the labor market with the division it creates in labor ranks ultimately enhances the control over labor exercised by the employer, the labor union can still play a role in checking this trend. As a matter of fact, many labor unions and human rights groups have risen to the challenge with the support of the International Labor Organization of the United Nations in fighting this malaise. The fight has been especially successful in the developed regions of the world, where no discriminatory and equal opportunity practices have received the concrete backing of government and other institutions. Apparently, labor segmentation is more of a social response than a phenomenon driven by the demands of trade or market for labor. In this sense, while labor segmentation might help maintain the labor status quo, it works against efficiency and competition in the labor market. In other words, trade demands, while met by labor, are not met to the utmost and most efficient levels.

Globalization

The most contemporary challenge to both the nature and form of labor has come from globalization. Globalization, whether seen as an entirely novel process or as a new form of interaction between different nations, should be seen mostly as a trade-related phenomenon. In this sense, the relationship among different nations has been structured through history by the nature of trade among them. Thus, what goes by the name of globalization denotes a radical change in the nature of trade relations among nations. This is a process that has been facilitated by the new wave of capitalism and the role of the Bretton Woods institutions in promoting economic, monetary, and trade ties among nations. Interestingly, a country’s profile in the new dispensation has been measured by the volume of trade it attracts and the direct foreign investments coming to it.

Besides trade, a close scrutiny of globalization would reveal that the economic dimension of the process has been fundamental. This economic dimension is linked to the issue of development, whereby development becomes a function of the economic benefits accruing from globalization. However, labor is undoubtedly a major factor in both trade and the general economy. As a result, developments in these areas inevitably affect labor. P. Dawkins and J. Kenyon and Richard B. Freeman and Lawrence F. Katz point out the various ways that globalization has affected labor and the entire work process: income inequality, work fragmentation, dichotomization of the workforce, the casualization of labor, and so on. The concern with the impact of global trade or globalization on labor was further reinforced by the World Bank, which in its 1995 World Development Report focused on workers in an integrating world.

The use of cheap labor in developing countries—as in this Reebok shoe factory in Vietnam—is an important element in the modern international economic phenomenon of globalization. (© Lou Dematteis/The Image Works)

The improved international trade expressed in globalization has been built on the notion that it will ultimately lead to an improvement in the workers’ lives. Generally, the idea is that countries will attract new industrial investments and an increasing trade volume that will eventually gain jobs for skilled workers and create new opportunities for labor in general. Labor is expected to collaborate with management to discover new international markets and improved production processes that will engender a high-skill, high-wage route to prosperity. But the reality, it appears, is far from this ideal. Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello argue that labor is now confronted by an adverse situation, in which the competition for new investment and capital among the developing countries has enabled the multinational companies to institute a regime of low wages and a stable cheap labor force. Even in the advanced nations labor has not fared any better. In these places, there are complaints of unemployment, casualization of labor, crippling of labor unions or collectivities, and the abandonment of labor rights. It would seem that the financial and trade nature of capitalism involved in globalization has put labor in greater peril than ever before. A. Roy sees globalization as simply an effort to reconstitute capitalism that, instead of creating new markets, enables takeovers of existing markets and trade opportunities by a few privileged countries.

In all, globalization and its emphasis on global trade have emasculated labor and weakened the labor union while strengthening capital. While financial capital enjoys an unhindered mobility across national boundaries, labor mobility has been constrained severely. The radicalization of the work process and the relations of production determined nowadays by global trade have created a mass of working-class labor characterized by deaggregation, de-skilling, casualization, and recomposition.

Edlyne E. Anugwom

See also: Slavery.

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