History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0094/00940.txt

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$Title{Das Kapital: A Critique Of Political Economy
Chapter XIV: Division Of Labour And Manufacture}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Marx, Karl}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{labour
division
manufacture
production
detail
society
capitalist
capital
labourer
workshop}
$Date{}
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Title:       Das Kapital: A Critique Of Political Economy
Book:        Part IV:  Production Of Relative Surplus-Value
Author:      Marx, Karl

Chapter XIV: Division Of Labour And Manufacture

Section I: Twofold Origin Of Manufacture

     That co-operation which is based on division of labour, assumes its
typical form in the manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic form of
the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing period
properly so called.  That period, roughly speaking, extends from the middle
of the 16th to the last third of the 18th century.

     Manufacture either introduces division of labour into a process of
production, or further developes that division; on the other hand, it unites
together handicrafts that were formerly separate.  But whatever may have been
its particular starting point, its final form is invariably the same - a
productive mechanism whose parts are human beings.

     For a proper understanding of the division of labour in manufacture, it
is essential that the following points be firmly grasped.  First, the
decomposition of a process of production into its various successive steps
coincides, here, strictly with the resolution of a handicraft into its
successive manual operations.  Whether complex or simple, each operation has
to be done by hand, retains the character of a handicraft, and is therefore
dependent on the strength, skill, quickness, and sureness, of the individual
workman in handling his tools.  The handicraft continues to be the basis.
This narrow technical basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any
definite process of industrial production, since it is still a condition that
each detail process gone through by the product must be capable of being done
by hand and of forming, in its way, a separate handicraft.  It is just
because handicraft skill continues, in this way, to be the foundation of the
process of production, that each workman becomes exclusively assigned to a
partial function, and that for the rest of his life, his labour-power is
turned into the organ of this detail function.

     Secondly, this division of labour is a particular sort of co-operation,
and many of its disadvantages spring from the general character of
co-operation, and not from this particular form of it.

Section 2: The Detail Labourer And His Implements

     The productiveness of labour depends not only on the proficiency of the
workman, but on the perfection of his tools.  Tools of the same kind, such as
knives, drills, gimlets, hammers, &c. may be employed in different processes;
and the same tool may serve various purposes in a single process.  But so
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 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
characterized by the differentiation of the instruments of labour - a
differentiation whereby implements of a given sort acquire fixed shapes,
adapted to each particular application, and by the specialisation of those
instruments, giving to each special instrument its full play only in the
hands of a specific detail labourer....  The manufacturing period
simplifies, improves, and multiplies the implements of labour by adapting
them to the exclusively special functions of each detail labourer.  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.

Section 4: Division Of Labour In Manufacture, And Division Of Labour In
Society

     Since the production and the circulation of commodities are the general
pre-requisites of the capitalist mode of production, division of labour in
manufacture demands, that division of labour in society at large should
previously have attained a certain degree of development.  Inversely, the
former division reacts upon and develops and multiplies the latter.
Simultaneously, with the differentiation of the instruments of labour, the
industries that produce these instruments, become more and more
differentiated.  If the manufacturing system seize upon an industry, which,
previously, was carried on in connexion with others, either as a chief or as
a subordinate industry, and by one producer, these industries immediately
separate their connexion, and become independent.  If it seize upon a
particular stage in the production of a commodity, the other stages of its
production become converted into so many independent industries....  In
order to carry out more perfectly the division of labour in manufacture, a
single branch of production is, according to the varieties of its raw
material, or the various forms that one and the same raw material may assume,
split up into numerous, and to some extent, entirely new manufactures.

     In spite of the numerous analogies and links connecting them, division
of labour in the interior of a society, and that in the interior of a
workshop, differ not only in degree, but also in kind.  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.  Now it is quite
possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference between the above
social division of labour, and the division in manufacture, is merely
subjective, exists merely for the observer, who, in a manufacture, can see
with one glance, all the numerous operations being performed on one spot,
while in the instance given above, the spreading out of the work over great
areas, and the great number of people employed in each branch of labour,
obscure the connexion.  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 labourers that 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, are 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.  The
different spheres of production, it is true, constantly tend to an
equilibrium: for, on the one hand, while each producer of a commodity is
bound to produce a use-value, to satisfy a particular social want, and while
the extent of these wants differs quantitatively, still there exists an inner
relation which settles their proportions into a regular system, and that
system one of spontaneous growth; and, on the other hand, the law of the
value of commodities ultimately determines how much of its disposable
working-time society can expend on each particular class of commodities.  But
this constant tendency to equilibrium, of the various spheres of production,
is exercised, only in the shape of a reaction against the constant upsetting
of this equilibrium.  The a priori system on which the division of labour,
within the workshop, is regularly carried out, becomes in the division of
labour within the society, an a posteriori, nature-imposed necessity,
controlling the lawless caprice of the producers, and perceptible in the
barometrical fluctuations of the market prices.  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; just as in the animal kingdom, the bellum omnium contra omnes more
or less preserves the conditions of existence of every species.  The same
bourgeois mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, lifelong
annexation of the labourer to a partial operation, and his complete
subjection to capital, as being an organization 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 organization of the labour of
society, than that it would turn all society into one immense factory.

     If, in a society with capitalist production, anarchy in the social
division of labour and despotism in that of the workshop are mutual
conditions the one of the other, we find, on the contrary, in those earlier
forms of society in which the separation of trades has been spontaneously
developed, then crystallized, and finally made permanent by law, on the one
hand, a specimen of the organization of the labour of society, in accordance
with an approved and authoritative plan, and on the other, the entire
exclusion of division of labour in the workshop, or at all events a mere
dwarf-like or sporadic and accidental development of the same.

     While division of labour in society at large, whether such division be
brought about or not by exchange of commodities, is common to economical
formations of society the most diverse, division of labour in the workshop,
as practised by manufacture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode of
production alone.

Section 5: The Capitalistic Character Of Manufacture

     An increased number of labourers under the control of one capitalist is
the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation generally, as of
manufacture in particular.  But the division of labour in the manufacture
makes this increase in the number of workmen a technical necessity.  The
minimum number that any given capitalist is bound to employ is here
prescribed by the previously established division of labour.  On the other
hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only by adding to the
number of workmen, and this can be done only by adding multiples of the
various detail groups.  But an increase in the variable component of the
capital employed necessitates an increase in its constant component, too, in
the workshops, implements, &c., and, in particular, in the raw material,
the call for which grows quicker than the number of workmen.  The quantity of
it consumed in a given time, by a given amount of labour, increases in the
same ratio as does the productive power of that labour in consequence of its
division.  Hence, it is a law, based on the very nature of manufacture, that
the minimum amount of capital, which is bound to be in the hands of each
capitalist, must keep increasing; in other words, that the transformation
into capital of the social means of production and subsistence must keep
extending.

     In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collective
working organism is a form of existence of capital.  The mechanism that is
made up of numerous individual detail labourers belongs to the capitalist.
Hence, the productive power resulting from a combination of labourers appears
to be the productive power of capital.  Manufacture proper not only subjects
the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital,
but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves.
While simple co-operation 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....  Not only is the detail work
distributed to the different individuals, but the individual himself is made
the automatic motor of a fractional operation....  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 knowledge, the judgment, and the will, which, though in ever so
small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman,
in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the
exercise of his personal cunning - these faculties are now required only for
the workshop as a whole.  Intelligence in production expands in one
direction, because it vanishes in many others.  What is lost by the detail
labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them.  It is a result
of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face
to face with the intellectual potencies of the material process of
production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power.  This
separation begins in simple co-operation, 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.

     By decomposition of handicrafts, by specialisation of the instruments of
labour, by the formation of detail labourers, and by grouping and combining
the latter into a single mechanism, division of labour in manufacture creates
a qualitative gradation, and a quantitative proportion in the social process
of production; it consequently creates a definite organization of the labour
of society, and thereby develops 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 -
usually called social wealth, "Wealth of Nations," &c.  It increases the
social productive power of labour, not only for the benefit of the capitalist
instead of for 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 and as a necessary phase in the economic development of
society, 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, views the social division of labour
only from the standpoint of manufacture, and sees in it 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.  Hence both product
and producer are improved by division of labour.  If the growth of the
quantity produced is occasionally mentioned, this is only done with reference
to the greater abundance of use-values.

     During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period during which
manufacture is the pre-dominant 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, owing to the preponderating influence of the skilled, 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 on 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 be superfluous, is
jealously insisted upon by the workmen.  In England, for instance, we find
the laws of apprenticeship, with the seven years' 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, and since the mechanism of manufacture as a whole
possesses no framework, apart from the labourers themselves, capital is
constantly compelled to wrestle with the insubordination of the workmen.