Transition from the previous chapter

“Through the combination of workers in the cooperative labour process capital overcomes the limits which are imposed by the expenditure of labour power as individual by using the social potency of labour, which lie in its combination. Yet cooperation is dependent on the quality of labour of the individual worker: it determines how much the combination with other labour power is a productive force of capital. Insofar, the mere combination of workers is at odds with capital, which accumulates due to their joint effect. Workers are part of a productive process, yet their unity only consists of their common dependence on capital, it is only formal. Capital which is based on a cooperatively executed labour process overcomes this limit of its valorisation by using its power over the collaboration of many in order to determine the labour process of the individual and in order to subordinate the independence of those working next to each other to their function of being a social productive force. Capital turns the labour of the individual into a partial operation whose independence only consists in the relation to those with whom it collaborates: this is the principle of the manufacture.” (Red Cells commentary for Capital, Volume 1, own translation)

1 – The Dual Origin of Manufacture

Manufacture originates in two ways:

By the assembling together in one workshop, under the control of a single > capitalist, of workers belonging to various independent handicrafts, through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion.” (p.455) Example: production of carriages. At first, only simple combination of different activities takes place – simple co-operation. However, gradually this leads to (a) that workers loose the ability to exercise their craft in its whole breadth and (b) that their activities take the form most appropriate and effective for the particular task: the workers’ “activity, which is now entirely one-sided, assumes the form most appropriate to its narrow sphere of effectiveness. (455)

and:

Manufacture can also arise in exactly the opposite way. One capitalist simultaneously employs in one workshop a number of craftsmen who all do the same work, or the same kind of work.” (p.456) Every worker performs all steps of production sequentially. However, external circumstances soon lead to a distribution of different production steps to different workers. From this random distribution a planned and systematic division of labour emerges due its advantages. A previously single or whole craft is this way split into various sub-operations. “The commodity, from being the individual product of an independent craftsman, becomes the social product of a union of craftsmen, each of whom performs one, and only one, of the constituent partial operations. (457)

From both points of origins a new productive mechanism develops “whose organs are human beings” (457). Those partial operations however remain handicraft in the manufacture and thus are dependent on the skill of the particular worker. This also prevents a proper “scientific division of the production process into its component parts, since every partial process undergone by the product must be capable of being done by hand, and of forming a separate handicraft.” (p.458) That is, the subdivision of the production process has its limit in the ability of the workers and not in the technical properties of the production process (NB: transition to big machinery). Thus, capital has not achieved the independence from the individual worker yet.

2 – The specialised worker and his tools

A „worker who performs the same simple operation for the whole of his life converts his body into the automatic, one-sided implement of that operation. Consequently he takes less time in doing it than the craftsman who performs a whole series of operations in succession.“ (458) Also, time is saved by the fact that the one-sided labourer only needs to be present at one place of work with one set of tools. Thus, no time is lost changing the place, the mode of labour or tools. This specialisation is taught to new generations of workers by older workers which means that this increased productivity is handed down from one generation to the next and doesn’t have to be re-learned in each generation.

“The productivity of labour depends not only on the proficiency of the worker, but also on the quality of his tools.” (460) The differentiation of labour brings about a differentiation of tools, each sub-operation gets its own kind of hammer etc. suitable for the task. This is a requirement for the development of big machinery since those consist of a combination of smaller instruments themselves.

The continuity of labour which is produced by this division labour has negative effects on the worker both in a physical and mental sense.

The productivity of labour when specialised was discovered by previous societies and was for instance expressed by “the tendency shown by earlier societies towards making trades hereditary.” (459)

“Castes and guilds arise from the action of the same natural law that regulates the differentiation of plants and animals into species and varieties, except that, when a certain level of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and the exclusiveness of guilds are ordained as a low of society.” (459) WTF?

3 – The two fundamental forms of manufacture – heterogeneous and organic

Manufacture has two possible fundamental forms which arise from the „nature of the article produced“ (p.461), i.e. are dictated to capital by the nature of the labour process. Either the product can be the result of a mechanical combination of independent parts – heterogeneous manufacture – or the result of a series of related processes – organic manufacture.

In the heterogeneous manufacture the independent parts of the commodity that is to be produced are produced independently and are only combined in the very end (e.g. watches) “The external relation between the finished product and its various and diverse elements makes it a matter of chance […], whether the specialized workers are brought together in one workshop or not.” (p.462)

Organic manufacture on the other hand is characterised by the fact that the final product is a result of a series of related production phases. One worker provides the raw material for the next. The combination of workers in one workshop is here required by cooperation. Also the number of workers working on various stages of the product is dictated by the nature of the product: “Different operations, however, require unequal lengths of time, and therefore, in equal lengths of time, yield unequal quantities of the specialized products. Thus, if the same worker has to perform the same operation day after day, there must be a different number of workers for each operation.” (p.465) A true organic productive mechanism develops.

It is clear that the direct mutual interdependence of the different pieces of work, and therefore the workers, compels each one of them to spend on his no more than the necessary time. This creates a continuity, a uniformity, a regularity, and order, and even an intensity of labour, quite different from that found in an independent handicraft or even in simple cooperation. The rule that the labour-time expended on a commodity should not exceed the amount socially necessary to produce it is one that appears, in the production of commodities in general, to be enforced from outside by the action of competition: to put it superficially, each single producer is obliged to sell his commodity at its market price. In manufacture, on the contrary, the provision of a given quantity of the product in a given period of labour is a technical law of the process of production itself. (465)

The various specialized labours have different requirements for the skill of the employed workers. The assignment of workers is done in accordance with their skills. This again provides an increase in productivity compared to the crafts. Also, the various specialized labours require different levels of training which is reflected in a hierarchy of wages. But manufactures also provide many specialized jobs which can be performed by anyone without training, the manufacture thus produces a class of unskilled workers: here capital uses unskilled, simple labour and combines it for production under its rule: labour – the unskilled one – looses the ability to produce without capital.

Insofar previously independent craftsmen are replaced by an organic manufacture the time needed to transport an intermediate product from one workshop to another is shortened and thus the productivity of labour is increased compared to the crafts. “On the other hand, the manufacture of the product may be united with other manufactures, in which the very same product serves in turn as raw material […]. The various manufactures which have been combined together in this way form more or less separate departments of a complete manufacture, but they 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 attains a complete technical unity on its foundation. Thus unity only arises when it has been transformed into an industry carried on by machinery. (467)

4 – The division of labour in manufacture, and the division of labour in society

Leaving aside the stuff about the development of the division of labour. The bottom line is that the division of labour in society develops spontaneously between communities and eventually within communities.

Since the production and the circulation of commodities are the general prerequisites of the capitalist mode of production, division of labour in manufacture requires that a division of labour within society should have already attained a certain degree of development. Inversely, the division of labour in manufacture reacts back upon that society, developing and multiplying it further. With the differentiation of the instruments of labour, the trades which produce these instruments themselves become more and more differentiated. (473)

But in spite of the numerous analogies and links connecting them, the division of labour in the interior of society, and that in the interior of the workshop, differ not only in degree, but also in kind.” (p.474) While the social division of labour is mediated by the exchange of commodities, in the workshop the individual labour is dependent on others since “the specialized worker produces no commodities. It is only the common product of all the specialized workers that becomes a commodity. (475)

Hereby the character of capitalist private labour is determined: If the individual worker is merely a specialized worker, this implies that he cannot exchange the product of his labour separately. In the capitalist mode of production being a immediate producer of commodities and being an owner of commodities exclude each other.

The division of labour within manufacture presupposes a concentration of the means of production in the hands of one capitalist; the division of labour within society presupposes a dispersal of those means among many independent producers of commodities.” (p.476) “Division of labour within the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over men, who are merely the members of a total mechanism which belongs to him. The division of labour within society brings into contact independent producers of commodities, who acknowledge no authority other than that of competition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure of their reciprocal interests … (477)

The fact that the despotism of the manufacture and the anarchy of the market condition each other is also expressed when apologists defend the factory system:

The same bourgeois consciousness which celebrates the division of labour in the workshop, the lifelong annexation of the worker to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as an organization of labour that increases its productive power, denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to control and regulate the process of production socially, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights to property, freedom and the self-determining ‘genius’ 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 organization of labour in society than that it would turn the whole of society into a factory. (477)

This relationship of the division of labour in manufacture and in society, i.e. that bourgeois freedom is the basis for exploitation, which relies on the separation of the immediate producers from the means of production and hence the products, distinguishes the capitalist mode production from earlier modes of production. Those were characterised by a division of labour by law either based on common ownership of the means of production (Indian communities) or individual ownership of the means of production (gilds) and thus made a division of labour like in manufacture impossible:

While the division of labour in society at large, whether mediated through the exchange of commodities or not, can exist in the most diverse economic formations of society, the division of labour in the workshop, as practised by the manufacture, is an entirely specific creation of the capitalist mode of production.” (480)

5 – The capitalist character of manufacture

The starting-point of manufacture is the command of capital over a large number of workers. The minimum number of workers required increases within the manufacture as the degree of the division of labour increases. This implies that a rising minimal capital in the hands of a capitalist is required.

[Manufacture] converts the worker into a crippled monstrosity by furthering his particular skill” (p.482) such that the expenditure of his labour outside of the productive process of manufacture becomes impossible.

If, in the first place, the worker sold his labour-power to capital because he lacked the material means of producing a commodity, now his own individual labour-power withholds its services unless it has been sold to capital. (482)

The worker is instead confronted with capital which now also commands the knowledge of production, his own activity:

It is the result of the division of labour in manufacture that the worker is brought face to face with the intellectual potentialities of the material process of production as the property of another and as a power which rules over him. … This process process separation starts in simple co-operation … [and] develops in manufacture.” (p.482) However, it is only completed in large-scale industry, “which makes science a potentiality for production which is distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital. (482)

During the manufacturing period proper, i.e. the period in which manufacture is the predominant form taken by capitalist production, the full development of its own peculiar tendencies comes up against obstacles from many directions. (489)

The overall production does not attain a basis which is independent from the individual worker but remains dependent on their skill. Workers oppose the interests of the capitalists for example by opposing women and child labour or by insisting on a long period of apprenticeship. Capital struggles with the subjection of workers since it is still fundamentally dependent on their skill.

[M]anufacture was unable either to seize upon the production of society to its full extent, or to revolutionize that production to its very core … At a certain stage of its development, the narrow technical basis on which manufacture rested came into contradiction with requirements of production which it had itself created.” (p.490)

However it produces machines which finally overcome capitals reliance on handicraft and abolish it as the “regulating principle of social production. (491)