'No More Amazons': Gender and Work Process in the Victorian Clothing Trades, 1890-1939

Abstract

In the hundred years that elapsed between the writing of Marx's Capital and the publication of Harry Braverman's book, Labor and Monopoly Capital} there was almost no debate in English-speaking Marxist circles on the labour process. Braverman's account of the history of industrial labour in the intervening period has sparked off renewed interest in the field, producing in turn numerous critiques and reinterpretations of his thesis.2 Although there are several strands to this debate, the ones which concern me here are the questions of deskilling, and the related issue of worker subordination/resistance. I will outline the main points at issue in these discussions before moving on to look at how they relate to the history of the clothing trades in Victoria. Braverman contends that industrial work in capitalist societies since the Industrial Revolution has involved the degradation of traditional craft skills, and with this degradation has come a 'real subordination of labour'. He links these changes with the development of capitalism towards monopoly capital, and the quest by the capitalist to control the labour process, the variable part of capital. According to Braverman's analysis, this quest for control led to three major processes. Firstly, by dividing the processes involved in any task and having these performed by different individuals, the skill of the worker was thereby degraded. This ultimately reduced the bargaining power of workers who could no longer rely on their monopoly of skills as a lever in collective bargaining, while at the same time standardising the way in which tasks were performed. Secondly, the introduction of what became known as scientific management meant increased control over every detail of the work process. Thus conception and execution were separated, and knowledge and discretion were removed from the worker. Workers performed the manual work while mental tasks were reserved to management. Thirdly, the development and use of new forms of technology increased direct control of management over production by tying the work process to particular machines. In the twentieth century Braverman points to the adoption of Frederick Taylor's theories and methods for factory management as being a major element in the process of deskilling of the mass of industrial operatives. Subsequent analysis has suggested five major flaws in this argument. Firstly, the deskilling thesis has been criticized as being too sweeping. Rather than a continuous, even, transformation, it is claimed that the process was in fact much more uneven, involving reskilling as well as deskilling. Braverman's notion of the 'traditional craftsman' is also far too romantic, for at a more fundamental level, the notion of 'skill' itself is under attack as having ideological and political dimensions as well as a technical one. Secondly, the assertion that Taylorism was the major agent of deskilling has been challenged, as has the exact timing of the various changes in industrial organisation. A third area of debate relates