The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialize (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with or acquire specialized capabilities, and either form combinations or trade to take advantage of the capabilities of others in addition to their own. Specialized capabilities may include equipment or natural resources as well as skills. Training and combinations of equipment and other assets acting together are often important. For example, an individual may specialize by acquiring tools and the skills to use them effectively just as an organization may specialize by acquiring specialized equipment and hiring or training skilled operators. The division of labour is the motive for trade and the source of economic interdependence.
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the experience of human life as meaningless or the human self as worthless in modern capitalist society. It is Marx’s earliest recognizable attempt at a systematic explanatory theory of capitalism.
In sociology, industrial society is a society driven by the use of technology and machinery to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the Western world in the period of time following the Industrial Revolution, and replaced the agrarian societies of the pre-modern, pre-industrial age. Industrial societies are generally mass societies, and may be succeeded by an information society. They are often contrasted with traditional societies.
Temporary work or temporary employment refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", "freelance"; or the words may be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals refer to themselves as consultants. Increasingly, executive-level positions are also filled with interim executives or fractional executives.
Labour power is the capacity to do work, a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, and the physical act of working, labour. Labour power exists in any kind of society, but on what terms it is traded or combined with means of production to produce goods and services has historically varied greatly.
This is an index of sociology articles. For a shorter list, see List of basic sociology topics.
Wage labour, usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labour market where wages or salaries are market-determined.
Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular activity that has a specific useful effect within the (capitalist) mode of production.
Criticism of capitalism is a critique of political economy that involves the rejection of, or dissatisfaction with the economic system of capitalism and its outcomes. Criticisms typically range from expressing disagreement with particular aspects or outcomes of capitalism to rejecting the principles of the capitalist system in its entirety. Criticism of capitalism is generally a left-wing to far-left stance on political economy.
Metabolic rift is Karl Marx's key conception of ecological crisis tendencies under capitalism, or in Marx's own words, it is the "irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism". Marx theorized a rupture in the metabolic interaction between humanity and the rest of nature emanating from capitalist agricultural production and the growing division between town and country.
Harry Braverman (1920–1976) was an American Marxist, worker, political economist and revolutionary. Born in New York City to a working-class family, Braverman worked in a variety of metal smithing industries before becoming an editor at Grove Press, and later Monthly Review Press, where he worked until his death at the age of 55 in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Braverman is most widely known for his 1974 book Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, "a text that literally christened the emerging field of labor process studies" and which in turn "reinvigorated intellectual sensibilities and revived the study of the work process in fields such as history, sociology, economics, political science, and human geography."
Affective labor is work carried out that is intended to produce or modify emotional experiences in people. This is in contrast to emotional labor, which is intended to produce or modify one's own emotional experiences. Coming out of Autonomist feminist critiques of marginalized and so-called "invisible" labor, it has been the focus of critical discussions by, e.g., Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Juan Martin Prada, and Michael Betancourt.
In economics, deskilling is the process by which skilled labor within an industry or economy is eliminated by the introduction of technologies operated by semi- or unskilled workers. This results in cost savings due to lower investment in human capital, and reduces barriers to entry, weakening the bargaining power of the human capital. Deskilling is the decline in working positions through the machinery introduced to separate workers from the production process.
Skill is a measure of the amount of worker's expertise, specialization, wages, and supervisory capacity. Skilled workers are generally more trained, higher paid, and have more responsibilities than unskilled workers.
Marxian class theory asserts that an individual's position within a class hierarchy is determined by their role in the production process, and argues that political and ideological consciousness is determined by class position. A class is those who share common economic interests, are conscious of those interests, and engage in collective action which advances those interests. Within Marxian class theory, the structure of the production process forms the basis of class construction.
Labour process theory (LPT) is a Marxist theory of the organization of work under capitalism. Researchers in critical management studies, organization studies, and related disciplines have used LPT to explain antagonistic relationships between employers and employees in capitalist economies, with a particular focus on problems of deskilling, worker autonomy, and managerial control at the point of production.
Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century is a book about the economics and sociology of work under monopoly capitalism by the political economist Harry Braverman. Building on Monopoly Capital by Paul A. Baran and Paul Sweezy, it was first published in 1974 by Monthly Review Press.
Industrial democracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace. While in participative management organizational designs workers are listened to and take part in the decision-making process, in organizations employing industrial democracy they also have the final decisive power.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, originally published as Imperialism, the Newest Stage of Capitalism, is a book written by Vladimir Lenin in 1916 and published in 1917. It describes the formation of oligopoly, by the interlacing of bank and industrial capital, in order to create a financial oligarchy, and explains the function of financial capital in generating profits from the exploitation colonialism inherent to imperialism, as the final stage of capitalism. The essay synthesises Lenin's developments of Karl Marx's theories of political economy in Das Kapital (1867).
In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost of the materials, plant and labour power. The concept originated in Ricardian socialism, with the term "surplus value" itself being coined by William Thompson in 1824; however, it was not consistently distinguished from the related concepts of surplus labor and surplus product. The concept was subsequently developed and popularized by Karl Marx. Marx's formulation is the standard sense and the primary basis for further developments, though how much of Marx's concept is original and distinct from the Ricardian concept is disputed. Marx's term is the German word "Mehrwert", which simply means value added, and is cognate to English "more worth".
