The People's Marx, Abridged Popular Edition of the the Three Volumes of Capital, Borchardt 1921
(Extracted from vol. I, ch. 13.)
Capitalist production begins when each individual capital employs simultaneously a comparatively large number of labourers. A greater number of labourers working together at the same time in one place (or, if you will, in the same field of labour), in order to produce the same sort of commodity, constitutes both historically and logically the starting point of capitalist production. With regard to the mode of production itself, manufacture (for instance) is originally hardly to be distinguished from the handicraft trades, of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater number of labourers simultaneously employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the master handicraftsman is simply enlarged.
At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative. Nevertheless, within certain limits, a material modification takes place. In every industry each individual labourer, be he Peter or Paul, differs more or less from the a labourer. These individual differences compensate one another and vanish, whenever a certain number of labourers are employed together. Edmund Burke asserted (in the 18th century) on the strength of his practical experiences as farmer, that even if only five farm labourers work together, all individual differences vanish, and that consequently any given five adult farm labourers taken together will in the same time do as much work as any other five. But however that may be, it is clear that the collective working-day of a large number of labourers simultaneously employed gives one day of average social labour. If, for instance, the capitalist employs 12 labourers during 12 hours each, this means for the capitalist a working-day of 144 hours. And although the labour of each of the dozen men may deviate more or less from average social labour, and each of them require a different time for the same operation the capitalist reckons the working-day of each individual as 1 /12 th. of the total working-day of 144 hours. But if the 12 men are employed in six pairs by as many different small masters, it will be a matter of chance whether each of these masters produces the same value, and consequently realises the general rate of surplus-value. Deviations would occur in individual cases. If one labourer required considerably more time for the production of a commodity than is socially necessary, his labour would not count as average labour. Of the six small masters, one would therefore squeeze out more than the average rate of surplus-value, another less. The inequalities would be compensated for society at large, but not for the individual masters.
Even if the system of working remains the same, the simultaneous employment of a large number of labourers brings about a total change in the material conditions of the labour process. Buildings in which many are at work, storehouses for raw materials, receptacles, implements, utensils, etc. which serve, simultaneously or otherwise, the purpose of many labourers, are now consumed in common. The increased utilisation of the value in use of these means, of production does not raise their exchange-value; they do not cost more. And this advantage increases in proportion to the amount of the capital. A room where 20 weavers work at 20 looms must be larger than the room of a single independent weaver with two apprentices. But it costs less to construct a single workshop for 20 persons than to build 10 to accommodate two persons each; thus the value of the means of production which are concentrated for use in common on a large scale does not increase in direct proportion to the expansion and the increased useful effects of those means. When consumed in common, they give up a smaller part of their value to each product. In this way, the total value of the commodity decreases. The economy in the application of the means of production is entirely owing to their being consumed in common by a large number of labourers even if the latter merely work side by side, and do not assist one another.
When numerous labourers work systematically together or side by side in one and the same process of production, or in different but connected processes, they are said to work in cooperation.
Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive power of an infantry regiment, is essentially different from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of each individual cavalry or infantry soldier, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed when many hands take part simultaneously in the same operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch or removing an obstacle. In such cases the effect of the combined labour could either not be produced at all by isolated individual labour, or it could only be produced with a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the individual by means of cooperation, but the creation of a new power - namely the collective power of masses. (As one man cannot, and ten men must strain to lift a tun of weight, yet one hundred men 'can do it only by the strength of a finger of each of them. John Bellers, London, 1696).
Apart from the new power that arises from the fusion of many forces into one collective force, the mere social contact begets, in the case of most productive labourers, an emulation and a stimulation of the animal spirits that heighten the efficiency of each individual labourer. Hence a dozen persons working together will, in their collective working day of 144 hours, produce far more than 12 isolated men working 12 hours each, or than one man who works twelve days in succession. The reason is that man, if not, as Aristotle contends, a political animal, is at all events a social one.
Although a number of men may be occupied together at the same time on the same, or the same kind of, labour yet the labour of each, as a part of the collective labour, may correspond to a distinct phase of the labour process, through all whose phases the object of their labour passes, in consequence of cooperation, with greater speed. For instance, if 12 masons line up so as to pass stones from the foot of a ladder to its summit, each of them does the same thing; nevertheless, their separate acts form connected parts of one total operation whereby the stones are carried up quicker by the 24 hands of the line of labourers than they could be if each man went separately up and down the ladder with his burden. The object is carried over the same distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour occurs whenever a building, for instance, is taken in hand on different sides simultaneously; although here also the cooperating masons are doing the same, or the same kind of, work. The 12 masons in their collective working-day of 144 hours make much more progress than one mason could make working for 12 days or 144 hours. The reason is, that a body of men working in concert has hands and eyes both before and behind, and is, to a certain degree, omnipresent. The various parts of the work progress simultaneously.
If the work be complicated, then the mere number of the men who cooperate allows of the various operations being apportioned to different hands, and consequently of being carried on simultaneously. The time necessary for the completion of the whole work is thereby shortened. (All together obtain a result which could not be obtained by a single individual. The one rows, while the other steers and a third casts the net or harpoons the fish; in this way the fishermen obtain a success which would have been impossible without cooperation. - Destutt de Tracy, Traité de la Volonté et de ses Effets. Paris, 1826. p. 78).
In many branches of production there are critical periods, determined by the nature of the labour process, during which certain definite results must be obtained. For instance if a flock of sheep has to be shorn, or a field of wheat to be mown and harvested, the quantity and quality of the product are dependent on the labour being begun and ended within a certain time. In these cases, the time that ought to be taken by the labour process is prescribed, just as it is in herring fishing. The completion of the task within the proper time depends on the simultaneous application of numerous combined working-days; the amount of useful effect depends on the number of labourers; this number, however, is invariably smaller than the number of isolated labourers required to do the same amount of work in the same period. It is owing to the absence of such cooperation that in the western part of the United States, quantities of corn, and in those parts of East India, where English rule has destroyed the ancient communities, quantities of cotton, are yearly wasted.
On the one hand, cooperation admits of the work 1 carried on over an extended space; it is consequently imperatively called for in certain undertakings, such as draining, constructing dykes, irrigation works, and the construction of canals, roads, railways etc. On the other hand, while extending the scale of production, it renders possible a relative contraction of the arena. This contraction of the arena of labour, simultaneous with extension of scale, where-by a number of expenses are saved, is owing to the conglomeration of the labourers, and to the concentration of the means of production.
The combined working-day, compared with an equal sum of isolated working-days, produces a greater quantity of values in use, and thereby diminishes the working-time necessary for the production of a given useful effect. As our analysis has shown, this increase of productive power is in all cases due to cooperation itself. But wage labourers cannot cooperate unless they are employed simultaneously by the same capital, the same capitalist, and unless therefore their labour powers are simultaneously bought by him. The total values of these labour powers, or the sum of the wages of these labourers for a day, or a week, as the case may be, must be available in the pocket of the capitalist, before the various labour powers are themselves assembled for the process of production. The payment of 300 labourers at once, though only for one day, requires a greater outlay of capital than does the payment of a smaller number week by week, during the whole year. Hence the number of the labourers who cooperate (or the so-called scale of cooperation) depends in the first place on the amount of capital that the individual capitalist can advance for the purchase of labour power.
As with the variable, so it is with the constant capital. For instance the outlay for raw materials is 30 times larger for the capitalist who employs 300 labourers, than it is for each of the 30 capitalists who employ respectively 10 men. The value and quantity of the instruments of labour used in common do not, it is true, increase at the same rate as the number of labourers employed, but they do increase considerably. The concentration of large quantities of the means of production in the hands of individual capitalists is thus a material condition for the cooperation of wage-labourers; and the extent of the cooperation (or the?scale of production) depends on the extent of this concentration.
We saw that, at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal consequence of the fact that the labourer, instead of working for himself, works for, and therefore under, the capitalist. By the cooperation of numerous wage-labourers the sway of capital developes into a requisite for carrying on the labour process itself, into a real requisite of production. That a capitalist should command on the field of production, is now as indispensable as that a general should command on the field of battle.
All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, which secures the harmonious working of the individual activities, and performs the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violinist is his own conductor, whereas an orchestra requires a separate one. This work of directing, superintending and adjusting, becomes a function of capital, from the moment that the labour under the latter's control becomes cooperative. Once a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics.
The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist pro-duction is, in the first place, to extract. the greatest possible amount of surplus-value; and consequently, to exploit labour power to the greatest possible extent, in the interest of the capitalist. As the number of simultaneously employed (cooperating) labourers increases, so does also their resistance, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome this resistance by counter-pressure. Again, in proportion to the increasing mass of the means of production, now no longer the property of the wage-labourer, the necessity in-creases for control over the proper application of those means. The cooperation of the wage-labourers is, further, entirely brought about by the capital that simultaneously employs them. The connexion between their individual functions and their union into one single productive body are matters external to them, and are but the act of the capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence the connexion existing between their various labours appears to them, ideally, in the shape of a plan of the capitalist, and, practically, in the shape of the authority of the same capitalist, in the shape of the will of another, who subjects their activities to his aims. Hence the authority of the capitalist is despotic. As cooperation extends its scale, this despotism assumes forms peculiar to itself. The capitalist hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual worker and groups of workers, to a special kind of wage labourer. An industrial army of workers, under the command of a single capitalist, requires, like a military organisation, officers (directors, managers), and non-commissioned officers, (foremen, overlookers), who command in the name of the capitalist while the work is being done.
We see therefore that the subjection and supervision of labour by capital have two distinct origins; in the first place, they derive from the fact that all labour performed in common requires a directing authority; in the second place, that such labour in the capitalist period is destined to produce surplus-value for capital. It is necessary to differentiate clearly between these two origins, which must on no account be confounded with each other if we wish to rightly understand the nature of the process.
We have seen that new productive forces develope from the mere fact that many labourers work in common, and that this cooperation further increases the already existing forces. These advantages have their origin in cooperation. This cooperation begins only with the labour process, and as soon as the labourers have begun to cooperate they have ceased to belong to themselves and become incorporated with capital. The productive power developed by the labourer when working in cooperation, is therefore the productive power of capital. This power is developed gratuitously, whenever the labourers are placed under such given conditions, and it is capital that places them under such conditions. Because the social productive power of labour (i. e. the productive power developed by cooperation with other labourers) costs capital nothing, and because that productive power is not developed by the labourer before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power with which capital is endowed by nature a productive power that is immanent in capital.
The colossal effects of simple cooperation are to be in the gigantic constructions of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians, Etruscans. etc.?It has happened in times past that these Oriental States, after applying the expenses of their civil and military establishments, have found themselves in possession of a surplus which they could apply to works of magnificence or utility. In the construction of these, their command over the hands and arms of almost the entire non-agriculture population, and the exclusive sway of the monarch and the priesthood over the aforementioned surplus, afforded the means of erecting the mighty monuments which filled the land .... In moving the colossal statues and vast masses, of which the transport creates wonder, human labour, almost alone, was prodigally used. . . . The number of the labourers and the concentration of their efforts sufficed. . . . The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to bring to the task, but their number is their strength, and the power of directing these masses gave rise to those gigantic structures. It is that confinement of the revenues which feed them, to one or a few hands, which makes such undertakings possible. (R. Jones, Text-book of Lectures, 1852, p. 77). This power of Asiatic and Egyptian kings, Etruscan theocrats, etc., has in modern society been transferred to the capitalist.
Cooperation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development, among tribes who live by the chase, or, say, in the agriculture of Indian communities, is based, on the one hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, and, on the other hand, on the fact that in those cases each individual has no more torn himself off from the navel-string of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself from connexion with the hive. Such cooperation is distinguished from capitalist cooperation by both the above characteristics. The sporadic application of cooperation on a large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in modern colonies reposes on relations of dominion and servitude, principally on slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, presupposes from first to last the free wage-labourer, who sells his labour power to capital. Historically, however, this form is developed in opposition to peasant agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts. From the standpoint of these, capitalistic cooperation does not manifest itself as a particular historical form of cooperation; but cooperation itself appears to be a historical form peculiar to, and specifically distinguishing, the capitalist process of production.
The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers in one and the same process, forms the starting point of capitalist production. It is the first change effected in the real process of labour by its subjection to capital.
(Extracted from vol. I, ch. 14.)
That cooperation which is based on division of labour, assumes its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic form of the capitalist process of production from about the middle of 16th to the last third of the 18th century. Manufacture takes its rise in two ways:
(1) By the assemblage in one workshop, under the control of a single capitalist, of labourers belonging to various independent handicrafts, and through whose hands a given article must pass before completion. For instance, a coach was formerly the product of the labour of a great number of independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers, tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers, glaziers, painters, polishers, gilders, etc. In the manufacture of coaches all these different artificers are assembled in one building, where they simultaneously work into one another's hands. True, a coach cannot be gilt before being made. But if a number of coaches are being made simultaneously, some may be in the hands of the gilders while others are going through an earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain of simple cooperation, which finds its materials ready to hand in the shape of men and things. But very soon an important change occurs. The tailor, the locksmith, the upholsterer etc., being now exclusively occupied in making coaches, each gradually loses through want of practice the capacity to carry-on his old handicraft to its full extent. On the other hand, his activity, now confined to one groove, assumes the form best adapted to the narrowed sphere of action. Originally, coach manufacture appeared as a combination of independent handicrafts. It becomes gradually the splitting-up of coach making into its various detail processes, each of which crystallises into the exclusive function of a particular labourer - the manufacture, as a whole, being carried-on by the men in conjunction. In the same way, cloth manufacture and a whole series of other manufactures arose by the combination of different handicrafts under the control of one and the same capitalist.
(2) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this -- namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number of ' artificers, who all do the same or the same kind of work, e. g. making paper, types, or needles. This is cooperation in its most elementary form. Each of these artificers (with the help, perhaps, of one or two apprentices) makes the entire commodity, and he consequently performs successively all the operations necessary for its production. He still works in his old handicraft-like way. But very soon external circumstances cause a different use to be made of the concentration of the labourers on one spot, and of the simultaneousness of their work. For instance, an increased quantity of the finished article has to be supplied within a given time. The work is therefore redistributed. Instead of each man performing successively all the different operations, each of these operations is henceforth assigned to a different artificer, and thus all of them together are carried out simultaneously. This accidental repartition is repeated, developes advantages of its own, and gradually ossifies into a permanent systematic division of labour. The commodity, from being the individual product of an independent artificer, who does many different things, is transformed into the social product of a union of artificers, each of whom performs continuously but a single one of the constituent partial operations.
If we now go into more detail, it is, in the first place, clear that a labourer who all his life performs one and the same simple operation, converts his whole body into the automatic specialised implement of that operation, consequently, he takes less time in doing it than the artificer who performs successively a whole series of operations. But the collective labourer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture, is made up solely of such specialised detail labourers. Hence, in comparison with the independent handicraft, more is produced in less time in other words, the productive power of labour is increased. Moreover, when once this fractional work 'is established as the exclusive function of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The continued repetition of the same simple act, and , the concentration of his attention on it, teach the labourer by experience how to attain the desired effect with the minimum of effort. But since there are always several generations of labourers living at one and the same time, working together at the manufacture of a given article, the technical skill thus acquired becomes established, is accumulated, and is handed down. Manufacture, in fact, developes the skill of the detail labourer, by reproducing and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop the naturally developed differentiation of trades, which it found ready to hand in society at large.?The muslins of Dakka in fineness, the calicoes and other piece goods of Coromandel in brilliant and durable colours, have never been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital, machinery, division of labour, or any of those means which give such facilities to 'the manufacturing interest of Europe. The weaver is a detached individual, working a web when ordered of a customer, and with a loom of the rudest construction, consisting sometimes of a few branches or bars of wood, put roughly together. There is even no expedient for rolling up the warp; the loom must therefore be kept stretched to its full length and becomes so inconveniently large, that it cannot be contained within the hut of the manufacturer, who is therefore compelled to ply his trade in the open air, where it is interrupted by every vicissitude of the weather.[1]It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to generation, and transmitted from father to son, that gives to the Hindu, as it does to the spider, this proficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindu weaver is very complicated, compared with that of a manufacturing labourer.
An artificer, who performs one after another the various fractional operations in the production of a finished article, must at one time change his place, at another his tools. The transition from one operation to another interrupts the flow of his labour, and creates, so to say, gaps in his working-days. These gaps close up as soon as he is tied to one and the same operation all day long; they vanish in pro-portion as the changes in his work diminish. The resulting increased productive power is owing either to increased intensity, of labour, because more labour power is expended in a given time; or to a decrease in the amount of labour power unproductively consumed. Every transition from rest to motion requires a certain expenditure of power, and this expenditure ceases once the acquired normal velocity has lasted a certain time. On the other hand, constant labour of one uniform kind destroys the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirit, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.
The productiveness of labour depends not only on the proficiency of the labourer, but on the perfection of his tools. Tools of the same kind, e. g. knives, drills, gimlets, hammers etc., may be employed in different processes; and the same instrument may serve various purposes in a single process. But as soon as the different operations of a labour process are disconnected the one from the other and each fractional operation acquires in the hands of the detail labourer, a suitable and consequently peculiar form, alterations become necessary in the implements that previously served more than one purpose. The direction taken by this change is determined by the difficulties experienced in consequence of the unchanged form of the implement. Manufacture is characterised by the differentiation of the instruments of labour. In Birmingham alone 500 varieties of hammers are produced, and not only is each adapted to one particular process, but several varieties often serve exclusively for the different operations in one and the same process. Manufacture simplifies, improves, and multiplies the implements of labour, by adapting them to the exclusively special functions of each detail labourer.[2] It thus creates at the same time one of the material conditions for the existence of machinery, which consists of a combination of simple instruments.
The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest elements of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a whole.
The organisation of manufacture has two essentially different fundamental forms, which, especially in the subsequent transformation of manufacture into modern industry carried on by machinery, play very distinct parts. This double character arises from the nature of the article produced. Such an article, either results from the mere mechanical fitting together of partial products made independently, or owes its completed shape to a series of connected processes and manipulations.
A locomotive, for instance, consists of more than 5000 independent parts. It cannot, however, serve as an example of the first kind of genuine manufacture, because it is a product of modern industry. But a watch can. Formerly the individual work of a Nuremberg artificer, the watch has been transformed into the social product of an immense number of detail labourers, such as mainspring makers, dial makers, spiral spring makers, jewelled hole makers, ruby lever makers, hand makers, case makers, screw makers, gilders with numerous subdivisions, such as wheel makers (brass and steel separate), pin makers, movement makers, acheveur de pignon (fixes the wheels on the axles, polishes the facets etc.), pivot makers, planteur de finissage (puts the wheels and springs in the works), finisseur de barillet (cuts teeth in the wheels, makes the holes of the right size etc.), escapement makers, cylinder makers for cylinder escapements, escapement wheel makers, balance wheel makers, raquette makers (apparatus for regulating the watch), planteur d'echappement (escapement maker proper); then the repasseur de barillet (finishes the box for the spring), steel polishers, wheel polishers, screw polishers, figure painters, dial enamelters (melts the enamel on the copper), fabricant de pendants (makes the ring by which the case is hung), finisseur de charniere (puts the brass hinge in the cover, etc.), faiseur de secret (puts in the springs that open the case), graveur, ciseleur, polisseur de boite, etc., etc., and last of all the repasseur, who fits together the whole watch and hands it over in a going state. Only a few parts of the watch pass through several hands; and all these scattered parts come finally together in the hand that binds them into one mechanical whole. The external relation between the finished product and its various and diverse elements makes it, in this case as in the case of all similar finished articles, a matter of chance whether the detail labourers are brought together in one workshop or not. The detail operations may further be carried on like so many independent handicrafts, as they are in the cantons of Vaud and Neufchatel; while in Geneva there exist large watch manufactories where the detail labourers work together under the control of a single capitalist. And even in the latter case the dial, the springs, and the case are seldom made in the factory itself. To carry on the trade as a manufacture with concentration of workmen is in the watch trade profitable only under exceptional conditions, be-cause competition is greater between the labourers who desire to work at home, and because the splitting-up of the work into a number of heterogeneous processes permits but little use of the instruments of labour in common, and the capitalist, by scattering the work, saves the outlay on workshops, etc. [3] Nevertheless the position of this detail labourer, who, though he works at home, does so for a capitalist, is very different from that of the independent artificer who works for his own customers. [4]
The second kind of manufacture, its perfected form, produces articles that go through connected phases of development, through a series of processes, step by step, like the wire in the manufacture of needles, which passes through the hands of 72, sometimes even 92 detail workmen.
If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw materials, of rags, for instance, in paper manufacture, or of wire in needle manufacture, we perceive that it passes in succession through a series of stages in the hands of the various detail workmen until completion. On the other hand, if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw material in all the stages of its production at the same time. The collective labourer, with one set of his many hands armed with one kind of tools, draws the wire, with another set, armed with different tools, he, at the same time, straightens it, with another, he cuts it, with another, points it, and so on. Hence, production of a greater quantity of finished commodities in a given time. Manufacture accomplishes this social organisation of the labour process only by riveting each labourer to a single fractional detail.
Since the fractional product of each detail labourer is, at the same time, only a particular stage in the development of one and the same finished article, each labourer, or each group of labourers, prepares the raw material for another labourer or group. The result of the labour of the one is the starting point for the labour of the other. The labour-time necessary in each partial process, for attaining the desired effect, is learned by experience; and the mechanism of manufacture, as a whole, is based on the assumption that a given result will be obtained in a given time. It is only on this assumption that the various supplementary labour-processes can proceed uninterruptedly, simultaneously, and side by side. It is clear that this direct dependence of the operations, and therefore of the labourers, on each other, compels each one of them to spend on his work no more than the necessary time, and thus a continuity, uniformity, regularity, order, and especially intensity of labour, of quite a different kind, is begotten than is to be found in an independent handicraft or even in simple co-operation.
Different operations take, however, unequal periods, and yield therefore, in equal times unequal quantities of fractional products. If, therefore, the same labourer has, day after day, to perform the same operation, there must be a different number of labourers - a number exactly adapted to their mutual relations - for each operation; for instance, in type manufacture, there are four founders and two breakers to one rubber: the founder casts 2000 types an hour, the breaker breaks up 4000, and the rubber polishes 8000.
When once the most fitting proportion has been experimentally established for the numbers of the detail labourers in the various groups when producing on a given scale, that scale can be extended only by employing a multiple of each particular group. For instance, in type manufacture it is impossible to employ a single extra rubber without employing simultaneously two extra breakers and four extra founders. There is this to boot, that the same individual can do certain kinds of work just as well on a large as on a small scale; for instance, the labour of superintendence, the carriage of the fractional product from one stage to the next, &c. The isolation of such functions, their allotment to a particular labourer, does not become advantageous till after an increase in the number of labourers employed; but this increase must at once affect every group proportionally.
In many manufactures, however, the group itself is an organised body of labour. Take, for instance, the manufacture of glass bottles. It may be resolved into three essentially different stages. First, the preliminary stage, consisting of the preparation of the components of the glass, mixing the sand and lime, &c., and melting them into a fluid mass of glass. Various detail labourers are employed in this first stage, as also in the final one of removing the bottles from the drying furnace, sorting and packing them, &c. In the middle, between these two stages, comes the glass melting proper, the manipulation of the fluid mass. At each mouth of the furnace, there works a group, called the hole, consisting of one bottlemaker or finisher, one blower, one gatherer, one putter-up or whetter-off, and one taker-in. These five detail workers are so many special organs of a single working organism that acts only as a whole, and therefore can operate only by the direct cooperation of the whole five. The whole body is paralysed if but one of its members be wanting. But a glass furnace has several openings (in England from 4 to 6), each of which contains an earthenware melting-pot full of molten glass, and employs a similar five-membered group of workers. The organisation of each group is based directly on division of labour, but the bond between the different groups is simple co-operation, which, by using in common one of the means of production, the furnace, causes it to be more economically consumed. Such a furnace, with its 46 groups, constitutes a glass house; and a glass manufactory comprises a number of such glass houses, together with the apparatus and workmen requisite for the preparatory and final stages.
Finally, manufacture can develop into a combination of various manufactures. The larger English glass manufacturers, for instance, make their own earthenware melting-pots, because on the quality of these depends, to a great extent, the success or failure of the process. Thus, we find the manufacture of flint glass combined with that of glass cutting and brass founding; the latter for the metal settings of various articles of glass. The various manufactures so combined form more or less separate departments of a larger manufacture, but are at the same time independent processes, each with its own division of labour. In spite of the many advantages offered by this combination of manufactures, it never grows into a complete technical system on its own foundation. That happens only on its trans-formation into an industry carried on by machinery.
Early in the manufacturing period, the principle of lessening the necessary labour-time in the production of commodities, was accepted and formulated: and the use of machines, especially for certain simple first processes that have to be conducted on a very large scale, and with the application of great force, sprang up here and there. Thus at an early period in paper manufacture, the tearing up of the rags was done by paper mills; and in metal works, the pounding of the ores was effected by stamping mills. The Roman Empire had handed down the elementary form of all machinery in the waterwheel. [5] The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of the compass, of gunpowder, of type-printing, and of the automatic clock. But, on the whole, machinery played a subordinate part in comparison with division of labour. The sporadic use of machinery supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a practical basis and stimulant to the creation of the science of mechanics.
The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a number of detail labourers, is the machinery specially characteristic of the manufacturing period. The various operations that are performed in turns by the producer of a commodity, lay claim to him in various ways. In one operation he must exert more strength, in another more skill, in another more attention &c; and the same individual does not possess all these qualities in an equal degree. After manufacture has once separated, made independent, and isolated the various operations the labourers are divided, classified, and grouped according to their predominating qualities. If their natural endowments are, on the one hand, the foundation on which the division of labour is built up, on the other hand, manufacture, once introduced, developes in them new powers that are by nature fitted only for limited and special functions. The collective labourer now possesses, in an equal degree of excellence, all the qualities requisite for production, and expends them in the most suitable manner, by exclusively employing all his organs, consisting of particular labourers, or groups of labourers, in performing their special functions. The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer become perfections when he is a part of the collective labourer. [6] The habit of doing only one thing, converts him into a never-failing instrument, while his connexion with the whole mechanism compels him to work with the regularity of the parts of a machine.
Since the collective labourer has functions, both simple and complex, both high and low, his members, the individual labour powers, require different degrees of training, and must therefore have different values. Manufacture, therefore, develops a hierarchy of labour powers, to which there corresponds a scale of wages. Every process of production, however, requires certain simple manipulations, which every man is capable of doing. They too are now severed from their connexion with the more pregnant moments of activity, and ossified into exclusive functions of specially appointed labourers. Hence, manufacture begets, in every handicraft that it seizes upon, a class of so-called unskilled labourers, a class which handicraft industry strictly excluded. Alongside of the hierarchic gradation there steps the simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled. For the latter, the cost of apprenticeship vanishes; for the former, it diminishes, compared with that of artificers, in consequence of the functions being simplified. In both cases the value of labour power falls. An exception to this law holds good whenever the decomposition of the labour process begets new and comprehensive functions, that either had no place at all, or only a very modest one, in handicrafts.
The division of labour in manufacture, which we have just described, was the continuation of the division of labour which has gone on ever since the earliest records of history, and which, in the pre-manufacturing period, found its most complete expression in handicraft. It is evident that the new process of division due to capital, manifested numerous analogies with the former process, and that the two processes reacted on each other mutually. None the less are the two. processes i e. the division of labour known for many centuries past, and which organised the labourers in the various handicrafts, on the one hand, and the division within one and the same workshop caused by capital, on the other essentially different from each other. The analogy appears most indisputable where there is an invisible bond uniting the various branches of trade for instance, the cattle-breeder produces hides, the tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoemaker the leather into boots. Here the thing produced by each of them is but a step towards the final form, which is the product of all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker with the means of production. But what is it that forms the ^bond between the independent labours of the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker? It is the fact that their respective products are commodities. What, on the other hand, characterises division of labour in manufactures? The fact that the detail labourer produces no commodities. It is only the common product of all the detail labourer becomes a commodity. Division of labour in a society is brought about by the purchase and sale of the products of different branches of industry, while the connexion between the detail operations in a workshop is due to the sale of the labour power of several workmen to one capitalist, who applies it as combined labour power. The division of labour in the workshop implies concentration of the means of production in the hands of one capitalist; the division of labour in society implies their dispersion among many independent producers of commodities. While within the workshop, the iron law of proportionality subjects definite numbers of workmen to definite functions, in the society outside the workshop chance and caprice have full play in distributing the producers and their means of production among the various branches of industry. Division of labour within the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over men, that are but parts of a mechanism that belongs to him. The division of labour within the society brings into contact independent commodity-producers, who acknowledge no other authority but that of competition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure of their mutual interests. The same bourgeois mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, life-long annexation of the labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as being an organisation of labour that increases its productiveness - that same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist. It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organisation of the labour of society, than that it would turn all society into one immense factory.
The rules of the guilds, by limiting most strictly the number of apprentices and journeymen that a single master could employ, prevented him from becoming a capitalist. Moreover, he could not employ his journeymen in any other handicraft than the one in which he was a master. The guilds jealously repelled every encroachment by the capital of merchants, the only form of free capital with which they came in contact. A merchant could buy every kind of commodity, but labour as a commodity he could not buy. He existed only on sufferance, as a dealer in the products of the handicrafts. If circumstances called for a further division of labour, the existing guilds split themselves up into varieties, or founded new guilds by the side of the old ones; all this, however, without concentrating various handicrafts in a single workshop. Hence, the guild organisation, however much it may have contributed, by separating, isolating, and perfecting the handicrafts, to create the material conditions for the existence of manufacture, excluded division of labour in the workshop. On the whole, the labourer and his means of production remained closely united, like the snail with its shell, and thus there was wanting the principal basis of manufacture, the separation of the labourer from his means of production, and the conversion of these means into capital.
While division of labour in society at large, whether such division be brought about or not by exchange of commodities, is common to the most diverse economical formation* of society, division of labour in the workshop, as practised by manufacture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production alone.
Once manufacture has been introduced, every further progress of the division of labour requires an increase of the capital available in the hand of the individual capitalist. As we have seen, the minimum number of labourers that any given capitalist is bound to employ is here prescribed by the previously established division of labour. (We need only recall the example of type manufacture. For one rubber employed, there must be two breakers and four founders; the capitalist must employ at least these seven workmen, if he wishes to keep his foundry going. Any extension of business requires the employment of at least seven new workmen). This renders necessary a corresponding increase of the implements and materials of labour, and also an increase in the workshops, furnaces, &*c., and especially in the raw materials, the call for which grows quicker than the number of workmen. For the extension of business increases the productive power of labour; a larger quantity of raw material is worked-up in the same length of time by the same number of labourers. This raw material must be available in the hand of the capitalist. In the same proportion, therefore, in which manufacture extends, the necessaries of life and the means of production existing in society must be converted into capital in the hands of the capitalist.
It is not sufficient that capital(the writer should have said the necessary means of subsistence and of production)required for the sub-division of handicrafts should he in readiness in the society: it must also be accumulated in the hands of the employers in sufficiently large quantities to enable them to conduct their operations on a large scale . . . The more the division increases, the more does the constant employment of a given number of labourers require a greater outlay of capital in tools, raw material, &c (Storch: Cours d'Econ. Polit. Paris Ed., t. I., pp. 250, 251.).
Manufacture, like simple cooperation, is due to capital. The productive power-derived from the combination of labour thus appears to be the productive power of capital. But there is an essential difference between simple cooperation and manufacture. While simple cooperation leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it, and seizes labour power by its very roots. It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts; just as in the states of La Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals, but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation, and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised. If, at first, the workman sells his labour power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labour power refuses its services unless it has been sold to capital. Its functions can be exercised only in an environment that exists in the workshop of the capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently, the manufacturing labourer develops productive activity as a mere appendage of the capitalist's workshop. The workman who is capable of performing an entire handicraft can everywhere exercise his industry and find the means of subsistence; the other (the manufacturing labourer) is but an accessory, who, separated from his comrades, is no longer either capable or independent, and is compelled to accept any law which the employer may find it convenient to impose on him.[7]
The knowledge, the judgment, and the will, which, though in ever so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman, are now required only for the workshop as a whole. The detail labourers lose the intellectual potencies of production, which concentrate themselves in the capital that employs them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufacture that the individual labourer is deprived of the intellectual potencies of production, which are brought face to face with him as the property of another and as a ruling power. This separation begins in simple cooperation, where the capitalist represents to the single workman, the oneness and the will of the associated labour. It is developed in manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail labourer. It is completed in modern industry, which makes science a productive force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital. In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer, and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers. Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a habit of moving the hand or the foot is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may . . . be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men. (J. D. Tuckett: A History of the Post and Present State of the Labouring Population. Lond., 1846, vol. 1, p. 149.) As a matter of fact, some few manufactures in the middle of the 18th century preferred, for certain operations that were trade secrets, to employ half idiotic persons.
Adam Smith has described graphically (in Wealth of Nations, 1776, vol. V., ch. 'l, section 2) the intellectual crippling resulting from manufactures:
"The understandings of the greater part of men, says Adam Smith, are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations . . . has no occasion to exert his understanding. ... He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become."
But also the body of the detail labourer is crippled, and thus manufacture is the first to afford the materials for, and to give a start to, industrial pathology.
To subdivide a man is to execute him, if he deserves the sentence, to assassinate him if he does not . . . The sub-division of labour is the assassination of a people. (D. Urquhart: Familiar Words. Lond., 1855, p. 119.)
Co-operation based on division of labour, in other words, manufacture, commences as a spontaneous formation. So soon as it attains some consistence and extension, it becomes the recognised methodical and systematic form of capitalist production. History shows how the division of labour peculiar to manufacture, strictly so called, acquires the best adapted form at first by experience, as it were behind the backs of the actors, and then, like the guild handicrafts, strives to hold fast that form when once found, and here and there succeeds in keeping it for centuries. Any alteration in this form, except in trivial matters, is solely owing to a revolution in the instruments of labour. Modern manufacture, in the large towns where it arises - I do not here allude to modern industry based on machinery - either finds the disjecta membra poetae ready to hand, and only waiting to be collected together, as is the case in the manufacture of clothes, or it can easily apply the principle of division, simply by exclusively assigning the various operations of a handicraft (such as bookbinding) to particular men. In such cases, a week's experience is enough to determine the proportion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the various functions. [8]
Division of labour in manufacture consequently creates a definite organisation of ^he labour of society, and thereby developes at the same time new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist form and under the given conditions it could take no other form than a capitalistic one manufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative surplus-value, or of augmenting at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital. It increases the social productive power of labour, not only for the benefit of the capitalist instead of that of the labourer, but it does this by crippling the individual labourers. It creates new conditions for the lordship of capital over labour. If, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a progress, on the other hand it is a refined and civilised method of exploitation.
Political economy, which as an independent science, first sprang into being during the period of manufacture, sees in the social division of labour only the means of producing more commodities with a given quantity of labour, and, consequently, of cheapening commodities and hurrying on the accumulation of capital. In most striking contrast with this accentuation of quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of classical antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use-value. In consequence of the separation of the social branches of production, commodities are better made, the various bents and talents of men select a suitable field, and without some restraint no important results can be obtained anywhere. During the manufacturing period proper, i. e., the period during which manufacture is the predominant form taken by capitalist production, many obstacles are opposed to the full development of the peculiar tendencies of manufacture. Although manufacture creates, as we have already seen, a simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled, simultaneously with their hierarchic arrangement in classes, yet the number of the unskilled labourers remains very limited. Although it adapts the detail operations to the various degrees of maturity, strength, and development of the living instruments of labour, thus conducing to exploitation of women and children, yet this tendency as a whole is wrecked by the habits and the resistance of the male labourers. Although the splitting, up of handicrafts lowers the cost of forming the workman, and thereby lowers his value, yet for the more difficult detail work a longer apprenticeship is necessary, and, even where it would he superfluous, is jealously insisted upon by the workmen. In England, for instance, we find the laws of apprenticeship, with their seven year's probation, in full force down to the end of the manufacturing period; and they are not thrown on one side till the advent of modern industry. Since handicraft skill is the foundation of manufacture, capital is constantly compelled to wrestle with the insubordination of the workmen. Hence throughout the whole manufacturing period there runs the complaint of want of discipline among the workmen. During the period between the 10th century and the epoch of modern industry capital failed to become the master of the whole disposable working-time of the manufacturing labourers, and manufactures had to change their locality from one country to another with the emigrating or immigrating workmen.
At the same time manufacture was unable, either to seize upon the production of society to its full extent, or to revolutionise that production to its very core. One of its most finished creations was the workshop for the production of the instruments of labour themselves, including especially the complicated mechanical apparatus then already employed. This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufacture, produced in its turn - machines. Thus the fetters fall away, which the dependence of the work on I he personal capacity of the workmen still laid on the dominion of capital.
(Extracted from vol. II, ch. 15, sections 1 & 2.)
Applied by capital, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and, ty shortening that portion of the working-day, in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen the other portion that he gives without an equivalent to the capitalist. In short, it is a means for producing surplus-value.
In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production begins with the labour power, in modern industry it begins with the instruments of labour. Our first inquiry then is, how the instruments of labour are converted from tools into machines.
Mathematicians and mechanicians call a tool a simple machine, and a machine a complex tool. They see no essential difference between them. As a matter of fact, every machine is a combination of those simple tools, no matter how they may be disguised. From the economical standpoint this explanation is worth nothing. Another explanation of the difference between tool and machine is that in the case of a tool, man is the motive power, while the motive power of a machine is something different from man, is, for instance, an animal, water, wind, and so on. According to this, a plough drawn by oxen, which is a contrivance common to the most different epochs, would be a machine, while Claussen's circular loom, which, worked by a single labourer, weaves 96,000 picks per minute, would be a mere tool. Nay, this very loom, though a tool when worked by hand, would, if worked by steam, be a machine. And since the application of animal power is one of man's earliest inventions, production by machinery would have preceded production by handicrafts.
All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor mechanism is that which puts the whole in motion. It either generates its own motive power, like the steam engine, the caloric engine, the electro-magnetic machine, &c., or it receives its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel from a head of water, the wind-mill from wind. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly-wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing of the most varied kinds, regulates the motion, changes its form where necessary, as for instance, from linear to circular, and divides and distributes it among the working machines. These two first parts of the whole mechanism are there solely for putting the working machines in motion, by means of which motion the subject of labour is seized upon and modified as desired. The tool or working-machine is that part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of the 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves as such a starting point} whenever a handicraft, or a manufacture, is turned into an industry carried on by machinery.
On a closer examination of the working-machine proper, we find .in it, as a general rule, though often, no doubt, under very altered form, the apparatus and tools used by the handicraftsman or manufacturing workman. Either the entire machine is only a more or less altered mechanical edition of the old handicraft tool, as, for instance, the power-loom; or the working parts fitted in the frame of the machine are old acquaintances, as spindles, needles, saws and knives. The machine proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool proper is taken from man, and fitted into a mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere implement.
The difference strikes one at once, even in those cases where man himself continues to be the prime mover. The number of implements that he himself can use simultaneously, is limited by the number of his own natural instruments of production, by the number of his bodily organs. In Germany, they tried at first to make one spinner work two spinning wheels, that is, to work simultaneously with both hands and both feet. This was too difficult. Later, a treddle spinning wheel with two spindles was invented, but adepts in spinning who could spin two threads at once, were almost as scarce as two-headed men. The Jenny, on the other hand, even at its very birth, spun with 12 - 18 spindles, and the stocking-loom knits with many thousand needles at once. The number of tools that a machine can bring into play simultaneously, is from the very first emancipated from the limits that hedge in the tools of a handicraftsman.
The steam-engine itself, such as it was at its invention, during the manufacturing period at the close of the 17th century, and such as it continued to be down to 1780, did not give rise to any industrial revolution. It was, on the contrary, the invention of machines that made a revolution in the form of steam-engines necessary.
The machine, which is the starting point of the industrial revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool, by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of that power may be. (The union of all these simple instruments, set in motion by a single motor, constitutes a machine. Babbage, London, 1832).
Increase in the size of the machine, and in the number of the working tools, calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it; and this mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resistance a mightier moving power than that of man, apart from the fact that man is a very imperfect instrument for producing uniform continued motion. Natural forces can now replace him as moving power, and thus a single mover can simultaneously drive many machines.
There were mules and steam-engines before there were any labourers, whose exclusive occupation it was to make mules and steam-engines; just as men wore clothes before there were such people as tailors. The inventions of Vaucanson, Arkwright, Watt, and others, were, however, practicable only because those inventors found, ready to hand, a considerable number of skilled mechanical workmen, placed at their disposal by the manufacturing period. As inventions increased in number, and the demand for the newly discovered machines grew larger, the machine-making industry split up, more and more, into numerous independent branches and division of labour in these manufactures was more and more developed- Here, then, we see in manufacture the immediate technical foundation of modern industry. Manufacture produced the machinery, by means of which modern industry abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems in those spheres of production that it first seized upon. The factory system was therefore raised, in the natural course of things, on an inadequate foundation. Modern industry was crippled in its complete development, so long as its characteristic instrument of production, the machine, owed its existence to personal strength and personal skill, and depended on the muscular development, the keenness of sight, and the cunning of hand, with which the detail workmen in manufactures, and the manual labourers in handicrafts, wielded their dwarfish implements. Thus, apart from the dearness of the machines made in this way, the expansion of industries carried on by means of machinery, and the invasion by machinery of fresh branches of production, were dependent on the growth of a class of workmen, who, owing to the almost artistic nature of their employment, could increase their numbers only gradually, and not by leaps and bounds. But besides this, at a certain stage of its development, modern industry became technologically incompatible with the basis furnished for it by handicraft and manufacture. The construction of machines was confronted by tasks which manufacture was unable to fulfil. Such machines as the modern hydraulic press, the modern power loom, and the modern carding engine, could never have been furnished by manufacture.
A radical change of the mode of production in one sphere of industry involves a similar change in other spheres. Thus spinning by machinery made weaving by machinery a necessity, and both together made the mechanical and chemical revolution that took place in bleaching, printing, and dyeing, imperative. So too, on the other hand, the revolution in cotton-spinning called forth the invention of the gin, for separating the seeds from the cotton fibre; it was only by means of this invention, that the production of cotton became possible on the enormous scale at present required. But more especially, the revolution in the modes of production of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the means of communication and of transport. The means of communication and transport handed down from the manufacturing period soon became unbearable trammels on modern industry, with its feverish haste of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of capital and labour -from one sphere of production into another, and its newly-created connexions with the markets of the whole world. Hence, apart from the radical changes introduced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of communication and transport became gradually adapted to the modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and telegraphs. But the huge masses of iron that had now to be forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped, demanded, on their part, cyclopean machines, for the construction of which the methods of the manufacturing period were utterly inadequate. Modern industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to construct machines by machines.
If we now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery employed in the construction of machines, which constitutes the operating tool, we find the manual implements reappearing, but on a cyclopean scale. The boring machine operates with the help of an immense borer which is propelled by a steam-engine and without which, on the other hand, the cylinders of large steam-engines and of hydraulic presses could not be made. The mechanical lathe is only a cyclopean reproduction of the ordinary foot-lathe; the planing machine, an iron carpenter, that works on iron with the same tools that the human carpenter employs on wood; the instrument that, on the London wharves, cuts the veneers, is a gigantic razor; the tool of the shearing machine, which shears iron as easily as a tailor's scissors cut cloth, is a monster pair of scissors; and the steam hammer works with an ordinary hammer head, but of such a weight that not Thor himself could wield it. There is one that weighs over 6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7 feet, on an anvil weighing 36 tons. It is mere child's-play for it to crush a block of granite into powder, yet it is no less capable of driving, with a succession of light taps, a nail into a piece of soft wood.
In simple co-operation, and even in that founded on division of labour, the suppression of the isolated, by the collective workman still appears to be more or less accidental. Machinery, with a few exceptions to be mentioned later, operates only by means of associated labour, or labour in common. Hence the cooperative character of the labour power is, in the latter case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument of labour itself.
We saw that the productive forces resulting from co-operation and division of labour cost capital nothing. They are natural forces of social labour. So also physical forces, like steam, water, &c., when appropriated to productive processes, cost nothing. But just as a man requires lungs to breathe with, so he requires something that is work of man's hand, in order to consume physical forces productively. A water-wheel is necessary to exploit the force of water, and a steam-engine to exploit the elasticity of steam. The case of science is similar to that of natural powers. Once discovered, the law of the deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an electric current, or the law of the magnetisation of iron, around which an electric current circulates, costs never a penny. But the exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy &c., necessitates a costly and expensive apparatus. Although, therefore, it is clear at the first glance that, by incorporating both stupendous physical forces and the natural sciences with the process of production, modern industry raises the productiveness of labour to an extra-ordinary degree, it is by no means equally clear that this increased productive force is not, on the other hand, purchased by an increased expenditure of labour. Machinery, like every other component of constant capital, creates no new value, but yields up its own .value to the product that it serves to beget. And it is clear as noon-day, that machines and systems of machinery, the characteristic instruments of labour of modern industry, are incomparably more loaded with value than the implements used in handicrafts and manufactures. Instead of cheapening the product, they render the latter dearer in proportion to their own value.
It must be observed that the machine never adds more value to the individual product than it loses on an average through wear and tear. There is thus a great difference between the value of a machine and the fraction of value transferred each time by it to the product. This Traction is smaller, the longer the machine lasts. This holds good for every implement of labour and every instrument of production. But the difference between utilisation, on the one hand, and wear and tear, on the other, is greater in the case of the machine than in that of the tool. For the former, being made of more lasting material, is more durable; its application, governed by strictly scientific laws, permits of greater economy being realised; and, finally, its sphere of production is much greater than that of the tool. Mr. Baynes, of Blackburn, in a lecture published in 1858, estimates that each real mechanical horse-power will drive 450 self-acting mule spindles, with preparation, or 200 throstle spindles, or 15 looms for 40 inch cloth with the appliances for warping, sizing, &c. In the first case, it is the day's produce of 450 mule spindles, in the second, of 200 throstle spindles, in the third, of 15 power-looms, over which the daily cost of one horse power, and the wear and tear of the machinery set in motion by that power, are spread; so that only a very minute value is transferred by such wear and tear to a pound of yarn or a yard of cloth. The same is the case with the steam-hammer mentioned above. Since its daily wear and tear, its coal consumption, &c., are spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in a day, only a small value is added to a hundredweight of iron, but the value would be very great if the cyclopean instrument were employed in driving in nails.
Already when considering cooperation and manufacture, we saw that certain necessities of production, such as buildings &c. undergo less wear and tear in consequence of their use in common, and thus increase but inconsiderably the dearness of the product. But this reduction of dearness augments in the case of machinery; for not only is a working-machine consumed in common by its several operating tools, but the same motor-machine, together with a part of the transmitting apparatus, is consumed in common by numerous working-machines.
Given the rate at which machinery transfers its values to the product, the amount of value so transferred depends on the total value of the machinery. The less labour it contains, the less value it imparts to the product. The less value it gives/up, so much the more productive it is, and so much the more its services approximate to those of natural forces.
It is evident that whenever it costs as much labour to produce a machine as is saved by the employment of that machine, there is nothing but a transposition of labour; consequently the total labour required to produce a commodity is not lessened, or the productiveness of labour is not increased. It is clear, however, that the difference between the labour a machine costs, and the labour it saves does not depend on the difference between its own value and the value of the implement it replaces. This difference lasts as long as the labour spent on a machine, and consequently the portion of its value added to the product, remains smaller than the value added by the workman to the product with his tool. The productiveness of a machine is therefore measured by the human labour power it replaces. The labour saved by a machine must not, however, be confounded with wages. Suppose, then, a machine cost as much as the wages for a year of the 150 men it displaces, say £3000; this £3000 is by no means the expression in money of the labour added to the object produced by these 150 men before the introduction of the machine, but only of that portion of their year's labour which was expended for themselves and represented by their wages. They received £ 3000 wages for the year, but they furnished in return for that sum a greater value. If now, the machine costs £ 3000, in which all the labour applied during its production is included -- no matter in what proportion such labour is divided into wages for the workmen and surplus-value for the capitalist -- the value of the machine is less than the value formerly produced by the 150 labourers. Therefore, though a machine cost as much as the labour power displaced by it costs, yet the labour materialised in it is even then much less than the living labour it replaces.
If it were only a question of cheapening the products, the employment of the machine would be profitable as long as its production costs less labour than its employment renders superfluous. Let us illustrate this by means of figures. In the above cited case, 150 labourers received £ 3000 wages per annum, and furnished in return, let us Say £ 6000 of labour, the surplus-value thus amounting to 100 per cent of their wages. As long as the production of the machine, which the labour of the 150 men undertakes, costs less than I, the employment of the machine would be profitable for society, seeing that it saves labour. But the capitalist cannot calculate in this way. He pays only £ 3000 for the labour performed by 150 men, and the machine can therefore not be utilised by him as soon as it costs more than £ 3000. (In a communist society, machinery would hence be employed on a quite different scale than in a bourgeois society). The wages effectively paid alone play a part for the capitalist in his costs of production. These wages vary for the same amount of labour, in the different countries. They also vary by sinking below the value of labour power, or rising above it. Hence the invention now-a-days of machines in England that are employed only in North-America; just as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, machines were invented in Germany to be used only in Holland, and just as many a French invention of the eighteenth century was exploited in England alone. In the older countries, machinery, when employed in some branches of industry, creates such a redundancy of labour in other branches that in these latter the fall of wages below the value of labour power impedes the use of machinery. In some branches of the woollen manufacture in England the employment of children has during recent years been considerably diminished, and in some cases has been entirely abolished. Why? Because the factory Acts made two sets of. children necessary, one working six hours, the other four, or each working five hours. But the parents refused to sell the 'half-timers' cheaper than the 'full-timers'. Hence the substitution of machinery for the 'half-timers'. Before the labour of women and of children under 10 years of age was forbidden in mines, capitalists considered the employment of naked women and girls, often in company with men, so far sanctioned by their moral code, and especially by their ledgers, that it was only after the passing of the Act that they had recourse to machinery. The Yankees have invented a stonebreaking-machine. The English do not make use of it, because the wretch who does this work gets paid for such a small portion of his labour, that machinery would increase the cost of production to the capitalist. ('Wretch' is the recognised term in English political economy for the agricultural labourer). In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats (1860), because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation, Hence nowhere do we find a more shameful squandering of human labour power for the most despicable purposes than in England, the land of machinery.
[1]Historical and descriptive account of British India, by Hugh Murray and James Wilson, etc., v. II, p. 449. Edinburgh, 1832. The Indian loom is upright, i. e, the warp is stretched vertically.
[2] Darwin in his epoch-making work on The Origin of Species, remarks, with reference to the natural organs of plants and animals: "So long as one and the same organ has different kinds of work to perform, a ground for its changeability may possibly be found in this, that natural selection preserves or suppresses each small variation of form less carefully than if that organ were destined for one special purpose alone. Thus, knives that are adapted to cut all sorts of things may, on the whole, be of one shape; but an implement destined to be used exclusively in one way must have a different shape for every different use."
[3] In 1854 Geneva produced 800000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the production in the canton of Neufchatel. La Chaux-de-Fonds alone, which we may look upon as a huge watch manufactory, produces yearly twice as many as Geneva. From 1850 to 1861 Geneva produced 750 000 watches. The want of connexion alone, between the processes into which the production of articles that merely consist of parts fitted together is split Up, makes it very difficult to convert such a manufacture into a branch of modern industry carried-on by machinery; but in the case of a watch there are two other impediments in addition, the minuteness and delicacy of its parts, and its character as an article of luxury. Hence their variety, which is such that in the best London houses scarcely a dozen watches are made alike in the course of a year. The watch manufactory of Messrs. Vacheron & Constantin, in which machinery has been employed with success, produces at the most 3 or 4 different watches of size and form.
[4]In watch-making, that classical example of heterogeneous manufacture, we may study with great accuracy the above-mentioned differentiation and specialisation of the instruments of labour caused by the subdivision of handicrafts.
[5] The whole history of the development of machinery can be traced in the history of the corn mill. The factory in England is still a 'mill'. In German technological works of the first decade of the 19th century, the term 'Mühle' is still found in use, not only for ail machinery driven by the forces of Nature, but also for ail. manufactures where apparatus in the nature of machinery is applied.
[6] For instance, abnormal development of some muscles,curvature of bones, &c.
[7] Storch, 1. c. Petersb. edit. 1815. t. 1. p. 204,
[8] The simple belief in the inventive genius exercised a priori by the individual capitalist in the various manipulations of the division of labour, exists now-a-days only among German professors, of the stamp of Herr Roscher, who, to recompense the capitalist from whose Jovian head division of labour sprang ready formed, dedicates to him "various wages". The more or less extensive application of division of labour depends on length of purse, not on greatness of genius.