Collective Action, Work, and Partial Plans

Philosophers of action have for the most part ignored work as a case of collective action. Michael Bratman’s distinction between shared co-operative activity and prepackaged co-operation goes further, claiming that any kind of co-operation involving a division of labour is at best an attenuated form of collective action. This paper uses Bratman’s discussion to lays the groundwork for thinking about work as a genuine form of collective action. Connecting Harry Braverman’s account of the division of labour in Taylorised work and the idea that plans come at different degrees of granularity, I argue that the distinction between flexible co-operation and inflexible preplanned collective action is analogous to the distinction between fine-grained and coarse-grained partial plans in the individual case. Rethinking the difference between co-operative activity and activity characterised by the division of labour opens up the possibility of thinking about work involving a division of labour as a distinctive kind of collective action, involving centralised, front-loaded, and fine-grained planning, and helps us to get clear on the harms of Taylorised and deskilled work.