David Ramsay (communist)

Transcription

I think you see how, concepts that are launched at one point in the text then actually become the simple basis for an advance of an argument at a later point in the text. Now, if you remember, Marx starts off with a theory of the commodity. And so, the first question is: What fixes the value, or how does he define, the value of the commodity? So, how did he define it? What's the value of a commodity? Socially necessary labour time, okay? So, the value is socially necessary labour time. Now if you go back to the passages where he talked about socially necessary labour time, you'll find this immediately followed, and this is back on page 130-131. It's immediately followed by a discussion of the impact of changing productivity upon the value of commodities. So, the question is: What does rising productivity do to the value of commodities? -Lowers them. So, it lowers the unit value of commodities. We then combine that with a discussion of the value of labour power. What was it that fixed the value of labour power? » STUDENT: The time necessary to reproduce the labourer. » HARVEY: Can you be a bit more elabourate? It's not just simply the time necessary to reproduce. » STUDENT: The value of labour power is the means of subsistence required… » HARVEY: It's the value of the means of subsistence needed to reproduce the labourer at a given standard of living. So, it's the value of that bundle of commodities that the labourer needs to survive. Now, when he was discussing this, he pointed out that that value varies a great deal, according to the conditions of class struggle, the degree of civilization in a country. So, the bundle commodities was not constant across space and time. But then he said: At a given society, a given time, we know what that bundle is and therefore we have a datum which we can establish, which is the value of labour power. But then what he does is to go one step further, and say this: We're not simply dealing with this historical and moral element. So, you go to page 276, and then you'll find a little short paragraph down there, where he gives a definition, which we've given: "The value of labour-power can be resolved into the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of the means of subsistence, i.e. with the quantity of labour-time required to produce them." So, what happens to the value of this bundle of commodities when there's rising productivity? -Falls. Therefore, the value of labour-power declines, not in terms of what people are physically receiving, you still get the same bundle of commodities. But they just cost you much less. The value has gone down. Now, that happens as a connection between these two, but there's a funny thing about this connection: Does any increase in productivity do this? » STUDENT: Just the increase in the goods that go into the… » HARVEY: Just in, what we'll call, this only operates with respect to what we'll call wage goods, i.e. those which enter into this bundle of commodities. So, an increase in productivity in making mink coats for the bourgeoisie doesn't do it. The increase in productivity, which makes a Lexus cheaper doesn't do it. So, for anything that goes into this bundle of commodities, which is affected by this, generates, therefore, a lower value of labour power. Now, how does Marx define the rate of exploitation? What is the rate of exploitation? » STUDENT: The ratio of the surplus worker's time to necessary worker's time. » HARVEY: Okay. Simply put: S over V. What happens to 'S over V' as 'V' goes down? The rate of exploitation increases. Of course, what he does in this section, is to start out by saying: 'Well, imagine that the working day is fixed, that you can't change the length of the working day anymore', and we'll remember, the previous chapter took up the question of limits. What are the limits on the mass of the surplus-value which the capitalist can gain? And those limits are fixed by two things: (1) the rate of surplus-value and (2) by the number of labourers you employ. So, if the number of labourers you employ, is fixed, and the length of the working day is fixed, then the only way you can hope to increase the rate of exploitation and the rate of surplus-value, is by decreasing the amount you spend on 'V'. He starts off this section, by saying 'Well, we know that capitalists are very anxious to reduce wages as much as they can.' We just heard, right? 'But I'm not going to consider that case.' So, he sets up an argument which is again, based on the propositions of political economy about a perfectly functioning world. So, he says on page 431: 'I know that capitalists will try to reduce wages below value.' He says, but "the surplus labour would in this case be prolonged only by transgressing the normal limits; its domain would be extended only by a usurpation of part of the domain of necessary labour-time. Despite the important part which this method plays in practice, we are excluded from considering it here by our assumption that all commodities, including labour-power, are bought and sold at their full value." Now, this again, is another instance, and we've come across them many times in 'Capital' and we're going to come across them again, where Marx, in order to make his argument, stays within the assumptions of a perfectly functioning, political-economic system, as depicted by the political economists of the 18th and early 19th centuries. As we've already discussed, the reason he does that is because he wants to say: 'Even if their system worked, according to their utopian plans, we would get a very different result than that which Adam Smith predicted.' So, he's being very rigorous about staying within these assumptions. But he's saying: 'Look, we can't get this effect of an increased rate of exploitation, simply by combining the argument about the value of the commodity with the argument about the value of labour power.' Now, this immediately raises some very interesting questions. Which Marx does not, at this point, immediately take up. For example, let's suppose there is a dramatic increase in productivity, and wage goods come way, way down in value. What would happen, if you gave a bit of that saving to the working class? You could actually increase the rate of exploitation, while increasing the physical living standard of the workers. Now, this is a very, very important element in the argument, because one of the things people'll always say to you is 'Marx is always talking about an increasing rate of exploitation, but, my god, look how well off the working class are now, in terms of the products they've got as opposed to what they had 150 years ago. So, his thesis about an increasing rate of exploitation is obvious nonsense.' Well, the answer to that is: It's not obvious nonsense at all. It's perfectly feasible, within a capitalist system, that increasing productivity, produces such an increase in the quantities of commodities which are available, That a certain segment has to go to the working-class, otherwise you wouldn't have a market, and that segment that does go to the working class is, of course, one of the great ways in which you can pull the working class into support for capitalism, by saying 'Look you're getting better off all of the time, you have more goods now that you had 30, 40 years ago.' Now, whether that sharing of the gains of productivity actually occurs, depends on class struggle, of course. Like the length of the working day. Marx does not actually introduce that here. But, elsewhere in 'Capital' and elsewhere in his writings, he does, in fact, entertain this possibility. But, historically, I think there's a very interesting thing we have to look at. You look at the history of American labour, up until around 1970. American labour always benefited by an increase in its living standards, as it shared somewhat in rising productivity. And in fact, a typical trade union bargaining thing in the 1960's was precisely to say to the unions: 'You agree to these means by which we will increase productivity, and we'll agree to give you more money, so that you get more in the marketplace.' So, it's a kind of productivity-sharing agreement. Since the 1970's, all of the data in this country show, not necessarily globally, but in this country show, that the working class has not benefited from gains in productivity, hardly at all. In other words, real wages have remained pretty stagnant, for the last 20, 30 years, a little bit increased in the 1990's. But, pretty much stagnant, which means that the working class has not shared in the benefits that come from rising productivity. So, guess who has taken it all? Well, you know hedge-fund folk and all the rest of it. So we get an incredible increase in inequality over the last 30 years which is partly an indicator of the fact that the working class in this country has not benefited from this, at all. Again, that has a lot to do with the state of class struggle, how class struggle is being set up, and all the rest of it. Marx does not deal with that in this chapter, but it is implicit in the analysis and I think it's very important at this point in the argument to insert it as part and parcel of what is possible here. So the proposition would simply be this: It is entirely feasible for there to be an increase in the physical living standards of the working-class, at the same time as there'd be an increase in the rate of exploitation. Bear that proposition in mind. Secondly, there's another issue, which he does raise in this chapter, but which I want to suggest might have a slightly different answer. What happens when somebody increases productivity? An individual capitalist increases the productivity in shoe production and the value of the shoes goes down and this is what workers need. See what happens. An individual capitalist does something, which is a benefit to the whole working-class, to the whole capitalist class, sorry. It's a benefit to everybody in the capitalist class. Because the value of labour power goes down, because shoes are cheaper, all capitalists can pay less value. So, he raises the question: Why would an individual capitalist do something which is for the benefit of the whole capitalist class? I mean, maybe they're endowed with incredible class consciousness, when they do this. But at some point they're likely to get really teed off, in the sense that they'll say 'well, look, I'm putting in all this effort in innovating and raising productivity. Everybody's benefiting, you're all sitting around doing nothing, you're playing what's called the free rider game. You're, all the rest of you, you're doing nothing. I mean even you people making mink coats are benefiting from this. So, why would I as an individual capitalist do that? What is the incentive for me? Well, yes, I can pay my labourer just a little bit less, because shoes are a bit cheaper. But it's it's a very small amount of gain I get for a large amount of effort.' So, Marx is going to talk about, how is it that individual capitalists are persuaded to do this. And his answer is going to be based on something that we have come up against before, which is the idea of the coercive laws of competition. Now, Marx is very restrained about how to look at competition, throughout 'Capital'. In part, I think, because he wants to view it, a bit like demand and supply, as something that equilibrates the system, rather than being fundamental to the character of the system. So what he does, is to then immediately introduce the idea that we have to look at the rules of competition. So, on 433, he says: "It is not our intention here to consider the way in which the immanent laws of capitalist production manifest themselves in the external movement of the individual capitals, assert themselves as the coercive laws of competition, and therefore enter into the consciousness of the individual capitalist as the motives which drive him forward, this much is clear: a scientific analysis of competition is possible only if we can grasp the inner nature capital,…" That is, you got to understand what it is that competition is going to do, if you can't understand what competition is going to do, you can't understand why a capitalist society tolerates or likes competition. And as he says: This "scientific analysis … is possible only only if we can grasp the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are intelligible only to someone who is acquainted with their real motions, which are not perceptible to the senses." Again, there's a notion here, which goes back a bit, close to fetishism, right? That, there's a disguise, but if we just look at competition in itself, we're gonna miss the point, it's disguising something else. What is it disguising? What it is disguising, he points out on page 434-435, is this: Socially necessary labour time is a social average. So the value of commodities is a social average. And at any one particular moment, some capitalists will be working above that average and some will be working below that average. Those who'll be working below that average, will be selling at the average but producing at below average, therefore they'll be getting a little bit more surplus-value. Those selling above will be getting less surplus-value than the social average. So, there's a distinction: Everybody's selling at the social average, but [there are] those who are producing above the social average and those who are producing below the social average. And if you go back to those passages about socially necessary time and productivity, Marx introduces the question: What happens when you get hand loom weavers against power loom weavers? The productivity of the power loom weavers is immensely greater, so what happens to value? Well, value starts to come down and eventually, of course, the hand loom weavers are gonna be driven out of business because they can't compete anymore. But notice what happens in the midst of this process; let's suppose the social average, we're doing it in a graph kind of form, at any one particular moment, the social average is -that-. Ten units to produce a widget or whatever. Let's suppose I come up with a superior way of making widgets. Then I'm still going to sell at -this average- but I'm going to produce at -this one here-, So what I get is an extra piece of surplus-value. But then what happens? At some point maybe I start to produce a lot more widgets because I've gotten so productive, so I will start to try to outcompete everybody else and extend my market by bringing the value down, -this- is the original time, to time 2. In which case I'm still getting extra, but I'm now outcompeting everybody else, so anybody else who is producing much above that, is beginning to get into competitive trouble. What do you do if you're in competitive trouble? You say: 'What on earth is my competitor doing that allows my competitor to go into the market and produce so cheaply? Oh, they've got a new machine! Okay, I can get a new machine.' So what my competitor does is then say 'Ah! I'm gonna follow you into your technological innovation, I'm going to come down to -here-.' And pretty soon, everybody is down to -here-; the value's -here- and my surplus-value has disappeared, my extra surplus- value has disappeared. So, what Marx says about this, is that there is a form of surplus-value, driven in this way by the coercive laws of competition, which is ephemeral. It only lasts as long as I'm ahead of the pack, in terms of my production technique, my organizational technique, but it will disappear as soon as everybody catches up with me. And this is what individual capitalists are after when they innovate. They're not after -this form- of surplus-value at all, they would have the 'surplus rider' problem, they would probably stop it. But they are after -this-. Because as an individual capitalist, I can get this ephemeral kind of surplus-value, just for a while, by having a superior technology. But, notice something immediately. I then think to myself: 'Well there's something about a superior technology that was extremely advantageous to me, so I'm going to find another superior technology.' And pretty soon my competitors, well most will get on the idea and say superior technology seems a pretty good idea. So I'm going to get superior technologies. So what the coercive laws of competition tend to do, is to generate leapfrogging innovations in which there is a competitive fight to try to get the most superior technology, in that search for this ephemeral form of surplus-value which gives me windfall profits, if you want to call it that. Ephemeral, excess surplus-value just for that period of time. Here's a very happy coincidence: The individual motivation of the capitalist, driven by the coercive laws of competition, produce this effect i.e. the reduction in the value of labour power. It's interesting here, what Marx is doing is taking individual behavior and setting it alongside class perspective. And this is also very important, that capitalists rarely act individually, in a class interest. But, what drives them individually is to do something which is in the class interest, which is why he wants you to understand that the reason that capitalists keep on yacking on about competition and everybody goes on and on about the importance of the competition and being competitive and so on, is because it produces this kind of result. This happy coincidence between what's happening to the individual capitalist, and what's happening to the class interest, is really very strongly presented here. This also produces something else. I suggested that capitalists driven by the coercive laws of competition are going to be pushed towards innovation. Now there's an interesting thing, in a lot of studies you will find innovation treated as something which is 'outside of', it's external to the dynamics, it's an exogenous variable, it's outside of, it just happens, you know. Edison had an idea or somebody else had an idea, you know, it just happened. What Marx is doing here is actually internalizing it within the logic of capital itself. That is, when you see what he's doing here, you immediately would understand there is no way in which a capitalist society can not be technologically dynamic, it has to be. And of course, historically, many people now would look at other modes of production and say 'Well, the problem was they weren't technologically dynamic'. One of the criticisms of the ex-Soviet Union was: They weren't technologically dynamic, they didn't come up with new brands of toothpaste, two a month, or something like that. They didn't do those kinds of things. Actually, they were technologically dynamic in certain areas, laser technologies and all those kinds of things, but they were not technologically dynamic in the way that capitalism is. But what comes out of this is that technological dynamism is both inevitable, and a good thing. If somebody came from outer space to put a moratorium upon technological change under capitalism, then the whole system would collapse. So Marx is saying that there's an internal necessity. That's what the value theory goes back to, the socially necessary, What is socially necessary for capitalism to survive? Technological dynamism, along, of course, with growth, capitalism either grows or dies, it's technologically dynamic or it dies. What Marx is doing here is explaining to us why and how that internalization of technological dynamism becomes so important. So you don't go back to the great inventors and all that kind of stuff, and explain technological dynamism simply by talking about the great inventors. You explain it by a system that begins to particularly kick in towards the end of the 18th century, in which this internalization of technological dynamism really takes off. And that is, if you like, a central aspect of a capitalist mode of production. Then this leads to one other question: Is there any way in which capitalists could realize this increased exploitation through collective action? Marx here does not raise that possibility, but actually that possibility was raised in the chapter on the working day. Can you remember what it was? What was it that the industrial interests wanted? Final hour… ? -No. The working day broadened… -No. What they wanted was cheap what? Cheap bread! They wanted the Corn Laws repealed, they wanted cheap imports of wheat, so they could have cheap bread, so they could lower wages, so that they could be more competitive on the global economy. That's what the Manchester school of economics was about, that's what Compton and Bright and the anti-Corn Law agitation was about. It was cheap bread. So actually, there is a way in which a capitalist class interest can be expressed, in tariff policy. Where do you think most of the gains in physical living standards, insofar as they're there at all, over the last 20 or 30 years, has come from? Where has it come from? Cheap Chinese imports, Walmart… And you fool around with a Walmart economy and you fool around which cheap Chinese imports, see what it does to the physical standards of living of the working class. In other words, tariff policy becomes very much mixed up. And part of what you're seeing right now is a kind of crazy business, the AFL-CIO saying 'We got to stop the export of jobs to China because that means loss of jobs here.' But in so doing of course they're likely to undermine the standard of living of the working class. And actually, it turns out that most of the job losses in this country are not due to outsourcing. What are they due to? Technological change. About sixty percent of the job reduction amongst the working class in this country over the last 30 years has been due to technological change. When I arrived in Baltimore [early 1970's] there were something of about 27,000 people employed in 'Bethlehem Steel'. By the time you get to 1990, there about 5,000 people employed in Bethlehem Steel producing the same amount of steel. Eventually, of course it all disappears, it's gone to China and Korea and Japan and all the rest of it. But the point, the point here is that you can see immediately what the collective interest might be over things like free-trade, tariff policy and all the rest of it. And why it actually makes it rather complicated for a working-class movement to argue for protectionism and at the same time, want to have cheap goods to support it's standards of living. So, in other words, you have to mix up this external dynamic. There are other places where this collective interest comes out, consider the tax system: What is exempt from sales tax in New York state? -Food. It's pretty good example, right? What about agricultural subsidies which give you cheap cheap milk, cheap agricultural products? Europe has maintained a lot of its standard of living through agricultural subsidies. So there's a whole arena here of class politics, around 'what is going to be the value of this bundle of commodities'. So, if you suddenly taxed all the food, at the same rate you're taxing everything else, then that would raise (…) I mean, wage demands would go skyrocketing up, immediately. So, again, there are, it turns out collective ways. And some of them have historically been very very interesting, for example: the industrial interest has on occasions supported subsidized housing for the workers, rent control. In some countries, for instance in France in the 1920s the industrial interest was fiercely behind rent control. And subsidized housing has played a very important role in keeping the country competitive in terms of the wages it had to pay. One of the long-term effects of Margaret Thatcher privatizing all of the social housing in Britain, was to raise the cost of housing to the point where Britain became non-competitive in many areas of industrial activity. So, its car industry, the British car industry sort of disappeared and all kind of things like that. So politics gets played around what is it that is fixing the value of this bundle of commodities? Marx does a great job in this chapter, of talking about the way in which this individual incentive has this effect. But he does not take up the other part of the story, which is the collective way in which capitalist class interests and working class interests and 0:39:50.259,,0:40:01.469 the interest of those classes who have no immediate stake in the issue get involved in a struggle over tariff policy, taxation policy, subsidies policy to agriculture. And all kinds of arguments of that sort, so the class character of that starts to become significant. And as I said, I think it's a pity that Marx didn't mention this here and actually doesn't take it up elsewhere, to my knowledge. So, this is, if you like, the theory of relative surplus-value. It's a very simple formulation, as I suggested, but it's one you have to really think about and get straight, by going back over these propositions going back over, for example: What is it that fixes the value of labour power? And then asking the question: What is it that fixes the value of that bundle of commodities? You've got to get those connections straight, because for some reason or other people often seem to have difficulty in seeing the difference between this social class form that I'm talking, and the individual form, and what the relationship is between the two. But I think you can see it immediately when you say: Rising productivity arises out of this search for ephemeral relative surplus-value, and it generates a social form, provided it affects the value of labour power. It seems to me important when reading these two chapters and the long chapter on machinery that follows, to recognize that Marx is as interested in organizational form, if you like, the software, as he is in the machines, the hardware, and all the rest of it. So you have to look at Marx's theory of technology as not simply being about machinery but also being about organizational form. And the two organizational forms, which are basic, right through to our situation are: co-operation and division of labour, and how those work. The distinctive form under capitalism is, of course, the development of machinery, and the machine culture in general. But that doesn't mean that co-operation or division of labour disappear, they are integral to the acquisition of relative surplus-value because both co-operation and division of labour, when you look at the reorganizations, are about finding ways to increase productivity. What you'll find also in these chapters, is again a question which was posed very much in the chapter on the labour process. Where Marx does not actually view the labour process as something negative, he views it is something potentially creative, potentially beneficial and satisfying etc. It's only under capitalism that this is turned into something rather negative, and I think you'll get a similar atmosphere in these chapters which suggest that co-operation is not bad thing. In fact, it's a wonderful capacity we have. Division of labour is not a bad thing. The only interesting question for Marx is: How are divisions of labour and co-operation mobilized under capitalism and with what effects? Which we'll see are broadly going to be negative with some positive qualities as well. The chapter on machinery is gonna be much more controversial, because the issue there will be: To what degree the machines themselves are inherently so capitalistic that you can't hold with them very much longer if you want to be socialist, or to what degree is it possible also, to convert them into something which is positive for humanity in general, and for the labourer in particular. Now the chapter on co-operation takes up this first way of thinking about things. Marx points out immediately that one of the benefits that comes from co-operation is the capacity for increasing the scale of production. And there is, of course, a long theory in the history of political economy about increasing scale and the way in which increasing scale can increase productivity. So the doctrine of increasing scale is a very important one to Marx. Over the first few pages, he spends time talking about this. In which he's prepared to acknowledge the potential positive aspects of it. On page 443, he defines co-operation by saying: "When numerous workers work together side by side in accordance with a plan, whether in the same process, or in different but connected processes, this form of labour is called co-operation." Note the word 'plan' there, it's going to become an important idea. The result, he says towards the bottom of page 443: "Not only do we have here an increase in the productive power of the individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new productive power, which is intrinsically a collective one." And this collective one, he says, "begets in most industries a rivalry and a stimulation of the 'animal spirits', which heightens the efficiency of each individual worker. This is why a dozen people working together will produce far more, in their collective working day of 144 hours than twelve isolated men each working for 12 hours." He then talks about the way in which that co-operation can be mobilized within industry and what this allows to occur. On page 446-447, he talks about the way in which "co-operation allows work to be carried on over a large area… On the other hand, while extending the scale of production it renders possible a relative contraction of its arena. This simultaneous restriction of space and extension of effectiveness, which allows a large number of incidental expenses to be spared, results from the massing together of workers and of various labour processes, and from the concentration of the means of production." Interesting tension here between the expansion, the geographical expansion, the spatial expansion and the geographical concentration. And as he will point out later on, this geographical concentration, bringing workers together, has certain political consequences as well. But, he insists on page 447, towards the middle there: "The special productive power of the combined working day is, under all circumstances the social productive power of labour, or the productive power of social labour. This power arises from co-operation itself. When the worker co-operates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species." Occasionally, Marx goes back to some notion of 'species being' which is very important in the economic and philosophic manuscripts, and here is one of those moments. And at this point it's very hard to view this discussion of co-operation in a negative light, you strip off the fetters of your individuality, and develop the capabilities of the species, there's an almost positive tone about this. But as in the chapter on the labour process, he then says 'Well let us now return to what our capitalist does with this'. And the first point he makes on page 448, is that the capitalist, in order to launch co-operation has to have a mass of capital available at the start. So one of the big questions is: How much do they need to start off this whole process and where does it come from? There are, if you like, what we now call 'barriers to entry' into a production process. How much do you need to start up? This also introduces, in a shadowy way, at the bottom of page 448, a distinction which is going to come back again. He says: "We also saw that, at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal result of the fact that the worker, instead of working for himself, works for, and consequently under, the capitalist." Then he goes on to say: "Through the co-operation of numerous wage-labourers, the command of capital develops into a requirement for carrying on the labour process itself, into a real condition of production." He's introducing here this distinction between a formal subjection to capital, or a formal subsumption under capital, against a real, subjection to capital, subsumption under capital. What he means by this is that, if you had a putting out system, you had individuals all over the place, and I'm a merchant capitalist each one of those labourers out there in the cottages will be working for themselves. I wouldn't be overseeing them at all. I wouldn't even know what they're doing. But I go out there and I get their goods. So that will be the formal subsumption: They depend upon me for their livelihood but I'm not in control of their production process. When I round up all of those people and bring them into a factory, they're under my supervision. Under my direct supervision, that is the real subsumption. So formal is out there, dependent, the real is inside the factory, and totally under the supervision of the capitalist. One of first things that happens is that the labourer moving into collective co-operation in a factory environment, starts to be under the directing authority of the capitalist. He starts to compare this with that of the orchestra conductor, and says: "The work of directing, superintending and adjusting becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under capital's control becomes co-operative." That is, the real subsumption results in this. "As a specific function of capital, the directing function acquires its own character." But the reverse of that, in next paragraph, is: "As the number of the co-operating workers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and, necessarily, the pressure put on by capital to overcome this resistance." In other words, class struggle gets internalized on the shop floor. Now we start to see that the co-operation of wage labourers is brought about, in this instance, through the power of capital and the result of that is that co-operation, instead of appearing as a power of labour, now appears as a power of capital. He says on the top of page 450: "The interconnection between their various labours confronts them, in the realm of ideas, as a plan drawn up by the capitalist and, in practice, as his authority, as the powerful will of a being outside them, who subjects their activity to his purpose." So here you move into the negative mode. The result of this, he says, a little bit further down the page: "If capitalist direction is thus twofold in content, on the one hand a social labour process for the creation of a product, and on the other hand capital's process of valorization - in form it is purely despotic." He then introduces the idea that there's going to be work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workers, and groups of workers to a special kind of wage labourer. "An industrial army of workers under the command of a capitalist requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and N.C.O.s (foremen, overseers)…" So you end up with a certain structure of supervision of the co-operation which is despotic. As he goes on, the bottom of the page, to say: "It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital…" Then he says very explicit, in the middle of page 451, because what happens to the labourer, as he says, is "they enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with each other. Their co-operation only begins with the labour process, but by then they have ceased to belong to themselves. On entering the labour process they are incorporated into capital. As co-operators, as members of a working organism, they merely form a particular mode of existence of capital." This is what he means by real subsumption of labour within capital. "The socially productive power labour develops as a free gift to capital whenever the workers are placed under certain conditions, and it is capital which places them under these conditions. Because this power costs capital nothing, while on the other hand it is not developed by the worker until his labour itself belongs to capital, it appears as a power which capital possesses by its nature - a productive power inherent in capital." We get this inversion, from something that is an inherent power of labour, the social power of labour, to something that is appropriated entirely by capital, made to appear as a power of capital over the workers. This leads him to talk a little bit about some of the history of co-operation. And here he says, that there has been, of course, enforced co-operation, middle ages, slavery, colonies, slave labour, but under capitalism, it develops as a form in which wage labour is manifest. On page 453 he says: "The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers in the same labour process, which is a necessary condition for this change, also forms the starting-point of capitalist production. This starting-point coincides with the birth of capital itself. If then, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of production is a historically necessary condition for the transformation of the labour process into a social process, so, on the other hand, this social form of the labour process is a method employed by capital for the more profitable exploitation of labour, by increasing its productive power." There is an interesting thing here, where Marx is talking about a co-evolution. Capital originates; as it originates, it animates, appropriates certain forms of co-operation. Certain forms of co-operation allow capital to start to raise productivity to produce surplus-value. We can never forget however that this originary point stays with the whole history of capitalism, so he concludes on page 454: "Simple co-operation has always been, and continues to be, the predominant form in those branches of production in which capital operates on a large scale, but the division of labour and machinery play only an insignificant part. Co-operation remains the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of production, although in its simple shape it continues to appear as one particular form alongside the more developed ones." So you cannot imagine a capitalist mode of production without co-operation, but co-operation under the despotic control of the capitalist, with a whole kind of structure, supervisory authority, which introduces, by the way, the notion of a sudden fragmentation or layering within the working class itself. That there's a managerial strata, foremen, operatives. So that, instead of talking about of 'the wage labourer', we now start to envision a working class which is stratified according to these kinds of functions within a cooperative apparatus, which is fiercely despotic. Then we look at 'The Division of labour and Manufacture, the next chapter. and again, we look at the reorganization of existing handicrafts, existing skills, existing tool, technologies and the like, into something different. And he points out immediately, there are two ways you can do the reorganizing. One is: You bring together, in the same workshop under the control of a single capitalist, workers belonging to various independent handicrafts. He talks about carriage making on page 456, he makes a contrast with something like making nails or needles: You start off with raw materials and you have a continuous process. So in this case you're talking about a continuous process of one material which is being continually reorganized until it comes out the end as a needle. Whereas in the making of a carriage you have a complicated process of bringing together multiple handicrafts. So there are two ways in which you can do the reorganizing. But in both cases he points out on page 457: "Whatever may have been its particular starting-point, its final form is always the same - a productive mechanism whose organs are human beings." That is, you bring human beings into a certain kind of relationship inside of the cooperative regime at the factory space. Furthermore, as you bring these divisions of labour together, you start to reorganize it in another way. He says, at the bottom of page 457: "The analysis of a process of production into its particular phases here coincides completely with the decomposition of a handicraft into its different partial operations." That is, when you start to see the production process as a whole you start to see that you can split it up into smaller fragments and get specialized workers engaging at each point, either in terms of the sequence or in terms of the bringing together of the heterogeneity of many different handicrafts. But he says, on page 458: "Handicraft remains the basis, a technically narrow basis which excludes a really scientific division of the production process into its component parts…" A barrier, right? Marx recognizes that capital doesn't like barriers, that's gonna be a barrier that has to be overcome, here he's saying it's a barrier. "Every partial process undergone by the product must be capable of being done by hand, and of forming a separate handicraft. It is precisely because the skill of the craftsman thus continues to be the foundation of the production process that every worker becomes exclusively assigned to a partial function and that his labour-power becomes transformed into the life-long organ of this partial function." So now, workers, instead of having the freedom to move, from one activity to another, are increasingly locked into a particular skill, a particular handicraft, a particular set of tools. He raises the question of the worker and his tools in section two. He says: "It is firstly clear that 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." Could be an interesting discussion here as to whether the worker is in control of the tools, or the tool is in control of the worker; and what's the relationship between tool and worker. And he's suggesting that the social imprisonment of somebody in a particular aspect or a particular specialization within the division of labour, puts them in a position of essentially being so connected to their tool that they cannot be liberated. On page 460, he talks further about this: "A craftsman who performs the various partial operations must at one time change his place, at another time his tools. The transition from one operation to another interrupts the flow of his labour and creates gaps in his working day, so to speak." -We have already seen that capital doesn't like gaps in the working day- "These close up when he is tied to the same operation the whole day long…" At the bottom of that paragraph: "As against this, constant labour of one uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's vital forces, which find recreation and delight in the change of activity itself." This is a partial concession to Fourier, Fourier's view of the labour process, as against the imprisonment of one person with one tool and a division of labour for a lifetime. So we're beginning to see this discussion of the positive and negative aspects of how the division of labour is working under capitalist control. The next section deals with two fundamental forms of manufacture: heterogeneous and organic. It really takes up what he did in the first section, where he elabourates on the way which heterogeneous processes are brought together and then also how the continuous processes get reorganized. This leads him to again introduce a new concept which we've not encountered yet, on page 464. Where he starts to talk about the collective worker. "The collective worker, formed from the combination of the many specialized workers, draws the wire with one set of tooled-up hands, straightens the wire with another set, armed with different tools, cuts it with another set, points it with another set, and so on. These different stages of the process previously successive in time have become simultaneous and contiguous in space. " And here he goes, in the next couple of pages to talk about the space-time organization of this process, and the efficiencies which can be won through efficient spatio-temporal reconstruction of how the labour process fits together. By not losing any time you gain in productivity. By rationalizing the way in which space is organized you could save on movement costs. So the whole space-time structure becomes an organizational question, and he here introduces it as being fundamental to how capitalism works. There was a big innovation of the Japanese, introduced into the labour processes in the 1970's-80's. What was it? » STUDENT: Collective working spaces… » HARVEY: Well it was collective but something else: just-in-time production. Just in time. (JIT) That is, scheduling of flows and goods in space and time such that you had almost no inventories anywhere in the system. The typical way in which a car factory would work, was: somebody would bring the wheels or something like that, then you'd have a whole stack of wheels outside, they'd be sitting there; you have a big stack of them, you have a big stack of brake parts and a big stack of upholstery and things like that. What the Japanese did was to use a just in time system. They organized the flows so that you could see almost no inventory out there, none at all. The trucks would come up to the place and exactly the same number of wheels you needed on that day will be on the truck, exactly the number of other component parts would be on the truck. This is a tremendous innovation in industrial production. It actually was the innovation which gave the Japanese car industry its big competitive advantage over all others during the 1980's. So suddenly you find all of the car companies everywhere around the world are engaging in the JIT system. General Motors goes for it, they all go for it. So the just in time system is I think a very good contemporary example of exactly what Marx is talking about. And it was of course - put in that competitive stuff about the role of surplus-value- when the Japanese got this organizational form of the JIT system, they got this extra surplus-value, they got the ephemeral form, so everybody else scrambles to catch up. This also allowed, by the way, increasing subcontracting to go on, you no longer need to have everything in the plant. You have plants out there that were independent, and you're not responsible for their healthcare or their pensions or anything like that. You got a just in time system where you'd organize those plants outside, so on a given day they'd have exactly what you need there. This, of course is rather vulnerable to disruption. For instance, Ford motors in Europe had a JIT system between its works, and one workforce went on strike and all factories around Europe had to close down, and they had to close down very fast because none of them had any inventories of whatever it was it was producing. It actually empowers workers to some degree, by the fact that if they go on strike they can stop the whole thing because it is so tightly scheduled, so tightly organized. I think what's interesting about these passages on page 464-465, is that Marx is recognizing that a major organizational aspect of a capitalistic system is how space and time get set up and understood. This requires however an internal plan. He introduces this theme which is going to come back later, on page 465, he talks about "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…" "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." The distinction between what the market enforces and what is done by internal planning, and here he's talking about internal planning, and the way in which that internal planning, by re-orchestrating how space and time gets used, can produce these efficiencies. But again there's a barrier. And the barrier lies in the fact that you're still dealing with handicrafts. He then says, on page 468, -the technologies of different social orders is interesting- he says: "The Roman Empire handed down the elementary form of all machinery in the shape of the water-wheel. The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of the compass, gunpowder, type-printing and the automatic clock. But on the whole, machinery played that subordinate part which Adam Smith assigns to it in comparison with the division of labour." That is, up until the end of the 18th century, capitalists were not really homing in on machinery etc. as a way to improve their productive efficiency, they were using these other methods. And of course there were innovations like the compass and gunpowder etc. but, we haven't got this internalization of technological innovation within the capitalist mode of production which happens later on, with machinery and and modern industry. But nevertheless there's an impact on the workers even at this early stage, and the impact is already foreseen a little bit earlier. Page 469, he repeats the argument: "The habit of doing only one thing converts him into an organ which operates with the certainty of a force of nature, while his connection with the whole mechanism compels him to work with the regularity of a machine." Further down: "Manufacture therefore develops a hierarchy of labour-powers, to which there corresponds a scale of wages." And this derives from the fact, as he said at the top, that "workers are divided, classified and grouped according to their predominant qualities." We get introduced therefore, even at this stage, as he says on page 470, a distinction between skilled and unskilled labourers. As he says on page 470: "Alongside the gradations of the hierarchy, there appears the simple separation of the workers into skilled and unskilled. For the latter, the cost of apprenticeship vanishes; for the former, it diminishes, compared with that required of the craftsman,…" "In both cases the value of labour-power falls." This deskilling, he's going to talk about a deskilling process which is going on. But "an exception to this law occurs whenever the decomposition of the labour process gives rise to new and comprehensive functions, which either did not appear at all in handicrafts or not to the same extent. The relative devaluation of labour-power caused by the disappearance or reduction of the expenses of apprenticeship directly imply higher degree of valorization of capital; for everything that shortens the necessary labour-time required for the reproduction of labour-power, extends the domain of surplus labour." What we're dealing with here is the fact that, in any reorganization of the labour process, there can be deskilling but there's going to be a smaller group that's reskilled, if you want call it that, and put in a superior position. So you cannot divorce, you cannot simply say it's all deskilling; you gotta say it's deskilling and reskilling going on at the same time. And the reskilling can sometimes empower certain segments of the workers relative to other segments of the workers. Then comes the key section: The Division of Labour in Manufacture, and the Division of Labour in Society. What he's really concerned to do here is to make a big distinction between the detailed division of labour in the workshop, which occurs under the planned design of the capitalist, under the direct supervision of the capitalist. And the division of labour that occurs through market coordination. We have to see those two in relationship to each other. That is, they're not independent of each other. so we have to look at these two kinds of division of labour which get set up in this manufacturing period. As he says, on page 471: "The division of labour within society develops from one starting-point; the corresponding restriction of individuals to particular vocations or callings develops from another starting-point, which is diametrically opposed to the first. This second starting-point is also that of the division of labour within manufacture. Within a family and, after further development, within a tribe, there springs up naturally a division of labour caused by differences of sex and age, and therefore based on a purely physiological foundation." Marx might get some criticism for that but that's his view. "On the other hand, as I have already remarked, the exchange of products springs up at the points where different families, tribes or communities come into contact; for at the dawn of civilization it is not private individuals but families, tribes, etc. that meet on an independent footing. Different communities find different means of production and different means of subsistence in their natural environment. Hence their modes of production and living, as well as their products, are different." This brings him then to talk about exchange relations between different communities with different assets, different resources, different kinds of products. And beyond that, we get his argument, which is very briefly set up here but which is important in general: "The foundation of every division of labour which has attained a certain degree of development, and has been brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation of town from country." That is, the relation between town and country, and that dialectic is important historically. He's not going to go into it very much more here but elsewhere he does in some considerable detail. That leads him to think about "the number and density of the population, which here corresponds to the collection of workers together in one workshop,…" This, he says "…is a precondition of the division of labour within society Nevertheless, this density is more or less relative. A relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed means of communication, has a denser population than a more numerously populated country with badly developed means of communication. In this sense, the northern states of the U.S.A. for instance, are more thickly populated than India." Interesting: Marx is using the notions of relative space-time here in actually quite an innovative way, so he's not seeing the terrain upon which this is happening as fixed. It is, in fact varying depending upon density of population and transport and communication technologies and availabilities. The division of labour in manufacture however, assumes that "society has already attained a certain degree of development. Inversely, the division of labour in manufacture reacts back upon that in society, developing and multiplying it further." What we're getting here is the beginnings of the argument that there is, what is called 'increasing roundaboutness in production', increasing complexity of production. That is, you go from a simple situation where somebody makes something, to a situation where you start to make pieces of something which then get traded in the market for other pieces of something which then get collectively put together to make 'the something' that is eventually going to be consumed. And this increasing roundaboutness of production is also associated, he says on page 475, with increasing emphasis upon territorial divisions of labour, territorial specializations of labour. Page 474 in the middle, he says: "The territorial division of labour, which confines special branches of production to special districts of a country, acquires fresh stimulus from the system of manufacture, which exploits all natural peculiarities. The colonial system and the extension of the world market, both of which form part of the general conditions for the existence of the manufacturing period, furnish us with rich materials for displaying the division of labour in society." He's going to insist, towards the bottom, that while there are analogies and links between division of labour in society and within the workshop, they "differ not only in degree, but also in kind." He then gets into some serious discussion of Adam Smith, which brings him to what I think the crucial passages. Right at the bottom of page 475, under 476: "The division of labour within society is mediated through the purchase and sale of the products of different branches of industry, while the connection between the various partial operations in a workshop is mediated through the sale of the labour-power of several workers to one capitalist, who applies it as combined labour-power." "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. While, within the workshop, the iron law of proportionality subjects definite numbers of workers to definite functions, in the society outside the workshop, the play of chance and caprice results in a motley pattern of distribution of the producers and their means of production among the various branches of social labour." Okay, he says, "different spheres of production constantly tend towards equilibrium…" because that's the way the market works. And he then explains why, going back over the laws of exchange of commodities. He then goes on point out: "This constant tendency on the part of the various spheres of production towards equilibrium comes into play only as a reaction against the constant upsetting of this equilibrium." That is, when demand and supply gets out of kilter, all kinds of messes happen and prices yo-yo all over the place. And there's an adjustment, producers have to adjust what they're producing and how much. He says: "The planned and regulated a priori system on which the division of labour is implemented within the workshop becomes, in the division of labour within society, an a posteriori necessity imposed by nature, controlling the unregulated caprice of the producers, and perceptible in the fluctuations of the barometer of market prices. 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, just as in the animal kingdom the 'war of all against all' more or less preserves the conditions of existence of every species." He then goes on to say: "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 of 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." "In contrast…", he then goes on to say, "…anarchy in the social division of labour and despotism in the manufacturing division of labour mutually condition each other,…" What he's saying here is that capitalists actually love the planned organization of production within their factory, and they abhor however the idea of any kind of social planning of production outside of the factory. So, when you hear people going on and on about how planning is a bad thing, why don't you say: Well, why do they do it so much inside of General Motors? Why are they doing it so much in all of these corporations? Why is it they're engaging in things like total-quality management, input-output analysis etc. ? Why are they absolutely interested in optimal scheduling and design, all that sort if thing? They're planning everything down to the finest detail. So next time, somebody says 'planning is a bad thing', just say 'Well okay, abandon it in General Motors and see what happens to any company that that the fails to plan.' And if they can plan very well, then why can't we? Well the answer then would be: Then you'd turn the whole world into one big factory and look how appalling the factory is. And you say 'yes well, that's precisely the point, right? The factory is indeed appalling. that's because you're planning in that particular kind of way, that you make the factory appalling'. And you're admitting it's so appalling by saying 'oh my god, if you made the whole world like a factory, just think, I mean you might even make us work in that kind of fashion, instead of liberating our individual genius to go about and to all these kind of innovative things we like to do, through constant reorganizations of the production process'. So what Marx is doing here is mocking a little bit this whole attempt to say that you cannot plan. And there are people who've been saying 'Well no, centralized planning is is impossible, I mean look at what the Soviet Union got into and all the rest if it. Obviously it doesn't work, and it doesn't work because it's so complex, the complexity is just too much.' You say 'Well actually, if you look at the complexity involved in a large corporation producing electronic goods or something like that, actually, you find it pretty complex.' So you can't make the argument of complexity against it. So what Marx is doing here is contrasting these two divisions of labour, the detailed division of labour which is mathematically worked out, scheduled optimally scheduled, optimally configured, planned down to the last detail with labourers put in slots in certain kinds of ways to maximize efficiency, against the incredible inefficiencies of the market system, which nevertheless through the coercive laws of competition reinforce the despotism that occurs inside of the capitalist system, inside the workplace. Because you can see immediately that if I have a super system of exploitation, which gives me surplus-value, then others are going to have to follow me. I've mentioned the just in time system. If I come up with a super efficient four-way of organizing labour which is very repressive for labour but is super efficient for me, then all my competitors are going to have to follow me. So the repressions inside of the factory are not independent of the competitive pressures that are organized outside. 'The capitalist reorganization of the manufacturing system', section five. Just briefly. Again we get on page 481 the strong idea that what's going on here, is the appropriation of the productive powers of labour by capital. And in both of these sections Marx is trying to say to the working class and the labourers: These are your productive powers! Capital is appropriating them! And as it appropriates them, that makes it seem as if they're their productive powers of capital. He says on page 481: "The productive power which results from the combination of various kinds of labour appears as the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only subjects the previously independent worker to the discipline and command of capital, but creates in addition a hierarchical structure amongst the workers themselves. It converts the worker into a crippled monstrosity by furthering his particular skill as in a forcing-house, through the suppression of a whole world of productive drives and inclinations, 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 specialized work distributed among the different individuals, but the individual himself is divided up, and transformed into the automatic motor of a detail operation, thus realizing the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which presents man is a mere fragment of his own body." The body politics of this, that the workers are reduced to being fragments of themselves, part of that fragmentation is also leading to, as he says on page 482: "Unfitted by nature…" -he's being a bit ironic here- "to make anything independently, the manufacturing worker develops his productive activity only as an appendage of that workshop." That is, the worker is now an appendage of the workshop rather than in command of it. Further: "The possibility of an intelligent direction of production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the specialized workers is concentrated in the capital which confronts them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufacture that the worker is brought face to face with the intellectual potentialities [geistige Potenzen]. of the material process of production as the property of another and as a power which rules over him." That is, intellectual labour, mental activities, also become in the domain of capital. "This process of separation starts in simple co-operation,…" "It is developed in manufacture, which mutilates the worker, turning him into a fragment of himself. It is 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." The result of this is "the impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power." He then quotes Adam Smith, interesting quote: "'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.' After describing the stupidity of the specialized worker, he goes on: 'The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind … It corrupts even the activity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employments than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall.' Now, Marx is partially inclined to accept to some degree Adam Smith's argument, that the repression of the workplace does indeed produce this kind of situation. And it's something I like to ask to my academic colleagues: to what degree is your ordinary employment corrupting the courage of your mind? It's not hard, to have the courage of your mind corrupted by ordinary employment at all. And it's not just workers who suffer from this problem, journalists, media folk, university professors, we all have it. You're lucky, you're students you don't have it yet. I hope. Marx goes on to say in the next page: "Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from the division of labour in society as a whole." And this does indeed produce what he calls "industrial pathology". Marx is not going to pathologize the whole of working-class at all, but he's going to say 'look, there are impacts of all of this on people's abilities to react, to think', and for those of you have done much organizing with, people working 80 hours a week, you find it's not an implausible thing at all to point out that indeed, they don't have time to think about most of the things that we would expect them to think about given their working-class position. They're so busy trying to make ends meet, so busy trying to get enough food on the table for their kids in time. and do all those kinds of things, they don't have time and they don't even have the time and the ability to sit around and think through a lot of these issues. So Marx is quoting Adam Smith as being extreme about this, but nevertheless there is something to it which we have to recognize. The division of labour then, is something that comes about through this transformation in the manufacturing period. Marx is here setting up a manufacturing system and a manufacturing period, this has limits. And the limit, he says, is of course going to be the technology. Right at the end of the chapter he says, page 490-491: "…manufacture was unable either to seize upon the production of society to its full extent, or to revolutionize that production to its very core. It towered up…" -Marx is admiring of it really- "…as an artificial economic construction, on the broad foundation of the town handicrafts and the domestic industries of the countryside. 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." Which is of course going to lead, right at the end: "It is machines that abolish the role of the handicraftsman as the regulating principle of social production." It is the next chapter then that we're gonna deal with machines. Since we're out of time, I want to go trough the machinery and large-scale industry chapter as possible, next time. and I would suggest you tried to read at least up to page 588. No sorry, do it to page 564. But, I also want you to do something else, I want you to read very very carefully the footnote on page 493 that goes over into 494. I'm gonna spend a good deal of time on that footnote, page 493-494. One of the few places where Marx actually says something very concrete about his method. I think it's very important to understand what he's talking about. So it's footnote 4, about Darwin and technology etc. that we need to look at so we'll take that up next time okay. Let's leave it there.