Marx's view of labor was that labor was divided into ownership and means of production, where capitalists were owners and workers were the means of production. Workers were unable to realize their full potential in this capitalist economy, where they were moving away from a craft system towards a monopolistic system. The decline of the artisan system allows the worker to produce more, and since “The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces… The devaluation of the world of men is directly proportional to the growing value of the world of things. " This is important because it means that systems of control forced workers to mass produce even if workers were unable to reap the benefits of their labor or the wealth they were creating. Furthermore, the more standardized the work, the more the more alienated workers become: from the products of their work, from the process of their work, from their fellow workers, and from their species-being "? Get an original essayMarx predicted that a revolution would occur after workers developed class consciousness and were pressured to gain more power. Although this revolution never came to prominence, its contributions still helped us understand the negative effects of alienation caused by the move away from a craft system towards a standardized capitalist system Weber's two major contributions to the understanding of work are the ideal type and rationalization. Weber considered the bureaucracy to be very hierarchical and stated that “methodical measures are provided for the regular and continuous fulfillment of these duties and the exercise of the corresponding rights.” His concept of an ideal type was more conceptual than practical in practice, but was intended to identify the characteristics of a social form. He defined the six characteristics of the “ideal type of bureaucracy” as a hierarchy of authority, a division of labor, meritocracy, a written set of rules, impersonal relationships, and a goal of efficiency. The degree to which a bureaucratic structure possessed these characteristics determined its optimality. The characteristic of impersonal relationships in his ideal type of bureaucracy also reflected his concept of rationalization, where science and calculation reign supreme over feeling and beliefs. The concept of rationalization is important because its elements can be seen today in the McDonaldization of society, where work has elements of efficiency, predictability, control and calculability. Braverman's contribution to the understanding of work concerned the importance of the division of labor. He believed that the division of labor was not specific only to modern capitalism, stating that “methods of analysis of the labor process and its division into constituent elements have always been and are to this day common in all trades and crafts.” Going beyond the division of labor, he also believed in the necessity of the detailed worker: that in addition to dividing a complicated job into simpler parts, workers were also separated into a specific simple part. It involves the deskilling of labor or the creation of increasingly specialized jobs for mass production. Although Braverman did not recognize that workers are autonomous beings and would likely challenge authority when tasked with doing this simple work, as power struggles are ongoing, his notion of unskilled labor and detail workers helped understand the components necessary for production.
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