Harry Braverman

Independent activity Trotskyism Academic Marxism 1920.12.9.–1976.8.2. ○ Natural causes

American Marxist whose Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974) opened the labour process debate

Born in New York City to a working-class family, Braverman worked in metal trades and shipbuilding. Radicalised by the Great Depression, he joined the Young People's Socialist League and, after the Second World War, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, writing under the pseudonym "Harry Frankel". Expelled from the SWP in 1953, he helped found the Socialist Union and edited its paper The American Socialist. After working as an editor at Grove Press he became managing director of Monthly Review Press in 1967, a post he held until his death. His Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974), built on Baran and Sweezy's Monopoly Capital, argued that Taylorist management separated conception from execution and stripped workers of skill, and started what came to be called the labour process debate.