Harry Braverman

Harry Braverman (December 9, 1920 – August 2, 1976) was an American Marxist, 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."

Braverman was one of the many thousands of industrial workers who became radicalized by the events of the Great Depression. He first became politically active in the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), whose members were known as "Yipsels." Despite being largely composed of students and young radicals, the Yipsels openly dissented from the positions of the established communist groups, taking a firm stance on the need for socialist internationalism (in connection with the Spanish Civil War), providing enthusiastic support for worker uprisings and the formation of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), and roundly rejecting Stalinist politics and distortions. Braverman was not afraid of unpopular positions. He sought repeatedly to deepen socialist politics by dispensing with simplistic formulations of Marxian theory. "Marxism," Braverman cautioned, "is not a ready-made slot-machine dogma, but a broad theory of social development which requires application and re-interpretation in every period."

...
Wikipedia