Division of Labor in the Computer Field

Abstract

Throughout the 1960s there was intense academic debate about the effects of automation, particularly as represented by the computer, on the labor process. Bourgeois economists and sociologists,while admitting that automation frequently reduced skills among many kinds of workers, pointed to the growing employment in the computer industry itself as a bright spot for labor. Many of the new jobs in this growing field were categorized as technical and professional and were considered illustrative of labor-force upgrading.… What was missing from these early evaluations was a firm understanding of the labor processes of capitalism. Marx's analysis is no less applicable to an occupation that could not have been conceived of in his day. In a short twenty-year span, work in the computer field has been transformed by capitalism to suit its needs, through carefully planned division of labor.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-28-number-3" title="Vol. 28, No. 3: July-August 1976" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>