I recently published an article in this journal articulating what I take to be the classical Marxist theory of the labor process.¹ In it, I argue that the forces of production have a relative autonomy from capitalist relations of production; that competition today puts a premium on flexibility and continuous improvement; that managers therefore face contradictory pressures to both deskill and upskill labor; that some managers are substantively empowering their workers in significant, albeit limited, ways; and that cooperation and partnership can — in certain circumstances — improve working conditions, increase workplace democracy, and help build union power and union capacity.

My goal was in part to carve out space for a position that sees capitalism as an unjust system of class-based exploitation, the transcendence of which is necessary for widespread human flourishing and self-realization, yet holds that capital, management, and labor have some overlapping interests, which provide a basis for conditional cooperation without undermining union independence. This position might be called conditional-cooperation radicalism, which may be distinguished from the traditional radical position — we might call it no-compromise radicalism — based in the Bravermanian school of Marxism.² The latter orientation maintains that the interests of capital and labor are always entirely opposed; that the employment relation is a zero-sum game; that all managerial initiatives are against the interests of labor; and that unions should therefore shun any form of cooperation with employers.

I wrote my article in part to open a dialogue with the no-compromise radical wing of the labor movement. To be sure, my article is highly critical of the Bravermanian thesis that the universal goal of capitalist management is to control labor via deskilling and antiunionism. But I began my paper noting admiration and respect for those I was engaging, characterizing the contributions of Harry Braverman, David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and David Noble as “foundational  . . .  original, insightful, and essential,” and describing Mike Parker and Kim Moody as “distinguished labor activist-scholars.”³ I note points of agreement with Parker and Moody: since the 1970s, capital has waged a “class struggle” resulting in “wage stagnation, rising inequality, increasing labor market insecurity, and widespread work intensification,” with “substantial degradation of formerly good jobs” occurring under lean production for “an entire generation of auto workers.”⁴