 CHAPTER XII of CAPITAL VOLUME I IS READING BY J. BAKER, OCTOBER 2007. CAPITAL, A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION, VOLUME I BY CARL MARKS, TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION BY SAMUEL MORR AND EDWARD AVELINGUE AND EDITED BY FREDERICK ANGELS. PART IV. CHAPTER XII. THE CONCEPT OF RELATIVE SURPLUS VALUE. That portion of the working day, which merely produces an equivalent for the value paid by the capitalist for his labour power, has, up to this point, been treated by us as a constant magnitude. And such in fact it is, under given conditions of production, and at a given stage in the economic development of society. Beyond this, his necessary labour time, the labourer we saw, could continue to work for two, three, four, six, etc. hours. The rate of surplus value and the length of the working day depended on the magnitude of this prolongation. Though the necessary labour time was constant, we saw, on the other hand, that the total working day was variable. Now suppose we have a working day whose length, and whose apportionment between necessary labour and surplus labour, are given. Let the whole line AC, A to B to C, represent, for example, a working day of 12 hours, the portion of AB, 10 hours of necessary labour, and the portion BC, 2 hours of surplus labour. How now can the production of surplus value be increased? i.e. how can the surplus labour be prolonged, without, or independently of, any prolongation of AC? Although the length of AC is given, BC appears to be capable of prolongation, if not by extension beyond its end C, which is also the end of the working day AC, yet, at all events, by pushing back its starting point B in the direction of A. Assume that B' to B in the line AB' BC is equal to half of BC, or to one hour's labour time. If now, in AC, the working day of 12 hours, we move the point B to B' BC becomes B'C. The surplus labour increases by one half, from 2 hours to 3 hours, although the working day remains as before at 12 hours. This extension of the surplus labour time from BC to B'C, from 2 hours to 3 hours, is, however, evidently impossible, without a simultaneous contraction of the necessary labour time from AB into AB' from 10 hours to 9 hours. The prolongation of the surplus labour would correspond to a shortening of the necessary labour, or a portion of the labour time previously consumed in reality for the labourer's own benefit, would be converted into labour time for the benefit of the capitalist. There would be an alteration, not in the length of the working day, but in its division into necessary labour time and surplus labour time. On the other hand, it is evident that the duration of the surplus labour is given when the length of the working day and the value of labour power are given. The value of labour power, i.e., the labour time requisite to produce labour power, determines the labour time necessary for the reproduction of that value. If one working hour be embodied in six pence, and the value of a day's labour power be five shillings, the labourer must work 10 hours a day in order to replace the value paid by capital for his labour power, or to produce an equivalent for the value of his daily necessary means of subsistence. Given the value of these means of subsistence, the value of his labour power is given, and given the value of his labour power, the duration of his necessary labour time is given. Footnote. The value of his average daily wages is determined by what the labourer requires, quote, so as to live, labour, and generate, end quote, William Petty, political anatomy of Ireland, 1672, page 64, quote, the price of labour is always constituted of the price of necessaries, whenever the labouring man's wages will not, suitably to his low rank and station, as the labouring man, support such a family as is often the lot of many of them to have, end quote, he does not receive proper wages. Jay Vanderlandt, local citato, page 15, quote, the mere workman who has only his arms and his industry has nothing unless he succeeds in selling his labour to others. In every kind of work it cannot fail to happen, as a matter of fact it does happen, that the wages of the workmen are limited to what is necessary to procure him his subsistence, end quote, Turgo, Reflexion, etc., Uvra, addition der, Tito, Premier, page 10, quote, the price of the necessaries of life is, in fact, the cost of producing labour, end quote, Malthus, Inquiry into, etc., rent, London, 1815, page 48, note, end footnote. The duration of the surplus labour, however, is arrived at by subtracting the necessary labour time from the total working day, ten hours subtracted from twelve, leave two, and it is not easy to see how, under the given conditions, the surplus labour can possibly be prolonged beyond two hours. No doubt the capitalist can, instead of five shillings, pay the labour of four shillings and six pence, or even less. For the reproduction of this value of four shillings and six pence, nine hours labour time would suffice, and consequently three hours of surplus labour instead of two would accrue to the capitalist, and the surplus value would rise from one shilling to eighteen pence. This result, however, would be obtained only by lowering the wages of the labourer below the value of his labour power. With the four shillings and six pence, which he produces in nine hours, he commands one tenth less of the necessaries of life than before, and consequently the proper reproduction of his labour power is crippled. The surplus labour would in this case be prolonged only by an overstepping of its normal limits. Its domain would be extended only by an usurpation of part of the domain of necessary labour time. Despite the important part which this method plays in actual practice, we are excluded from considering it in this place by our assumption that all commodities, including labour power, are bought and sold at their full value. Granted this, it follows that the labour time necessary for the reproduction of labour power, or for the reproduction of its value, cannot be lessened by a fall in the labourer's wages below the value of his labour power, but only by a fall in this value itself. Given the length of the working day, the prolongation of the surplus labour must of necessity originate in the curtailment of the necessary labour time. The latter cannot arise from the former. In the example we have taken, it is necessary that the value of labour power should actually fall by one-tenth, in order that the necessary labour time may be diminished by one-tenth, i.e., from ten hours to nine, and in order that the surplus labour may consequently be prolonged from two hours to three. Such a fall in the value of labour power implies, however, that the same necessaries of life which were formally produced in ten hours can now be produced in nine hours. But this is impossible without an increase in the productiveness of labour. For example, suppose a shoemaker, with given tools, makes in one working day of twelve hours one pair of boots. If he must make two pairs in the same time, the productiveness of his labour must be doubled, and this cannot be done except by an alteration in his tools or in his mode of working, or in both. Hence, the conditions of production, i.e., his mode of production, and the labour process itself, must be revolutionized. By increase in the productiveness of labour, we mean generally an alteration in the labour process of such a kind as to shorten the labour time socially necessary for the production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity of labour with the power of producing a greater quantity of use-value. Footnote Quote Perfection of the crafts means nothing other than the discovery of new ways of making a product with fewer people, or which is the same thing, in less time than previously. Footnote Cismondi etude tito primaire page twenty-two And footnote Hitherto, in treating of surplus value, arising from a simple prolongation of the working day, we have assumed the mode of production to be given and invariable, but when surplus value has to be produced by the conversion of necessary labour into surplus labour, it by no means suffices for capital to take over the labour process in the form under which it has been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong the duration of that process. The technical and social conditions of the process, and consequently the very mode of production must be revolutionized, before the productiveness of labour can be increased. By that means alone can the value of labour power be made to sink, and the portion of the working day necessary for the reproduction of that value be shortened. The surplus value produced by the prolongation of the working day, I call absolute surplus value. On the other hand, the surplus value arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respected lengths of the two components of the working day, I call relative surplus value. In order to effect a fall in the value of labour power, the increase in the productiveness of labour must seize upon those branches of industry whose products determined the value of labour power, and consequently either belong to the class of customary means of subsistence, or are capable of supplying the place of those means. But the value of commodity is determined not only by the quantity of labour, which the labourer directly bestows upon that commodity, but also by the labour contained in the means of production. For instance, the value of a pair of boots depends not only on the cobbler's labourer, but also the value of the leather, wax, thread, etc. Hence, a fall in the value of labour power is also brought about by an increase in the productiveness of labour, and by a corresponding cheapening of commodities in those industries which supply the instruments of labour and the raw material that form the material elements of the constant capital required for producing the necessaries of life. But an increase in the productiveness of labour in those branches of industry which supply neither the necessaries of life, nor the means of production of such necessaries, leaves the value of labour power undisturbed. The cheapened commodity, of course, causes only a protanto fall in the value of labour power, a fall proportional to the extent of that commodity's employment and the reproduction of labour power. Shirts, for instance, are a necessary means of subsistence, but are only one out of many. The totality of the necessaries of life consists, however, of various commodities, each the product of a distinct industry, and the value of each of those commodities enters as a component part into the value of labour power. This latter value decreases with the decrease of the labour time necessary for its reproduction, the total decrease being the sum of all the different curtailments of labour time affected in those various and distinct industries. This general result is treated here as if it were the immediate result directly aimed at in each individual case. Wherever an individual capitalist cheapens shirts, for instance, by increasing the productiveness of labour, he by no means necessarily aims at reducing the value of labour power and shortening protanto the necessary labour time. But it is only insofar as he ultimately contributes to this result that he assists in raising the general rate of surplus value. Footnote. Let us suppose the products of the manufacturer are doubled by improvement in machinery. He will be able to clothe his workmen by means of a smaller proportion of the entire return, and thus his profit will be raised. But in no other way will it be influenced. End quote. The general and necessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from their forms of manifestation. It is not our intention to consider here the ways in which the laws, imminent in capitalist production, manifest themselves in the movements of individual masses of capital where they assert themselves as corrosive laws of competition and are brought home to the mind and consciousness of the individual capitalist as the directing motives of his operations. But this much is clear. A scientific analysis of competition is not possible before we have a conception of the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are not intelligible to any but him who is acquainted with the inner real motions, motions which are not directly perceptible by the senses. Nevertheless, for the better comprehension of the production of relative surplus value, we may add the following remarks, in which we assume nothing more than the results we have already obtained. If one hour's labor is embodied in six pence, the value of six shillings will be produced in a working day of twelve hours. Suppose that with the prevailing productiveness of labor, twelve articles are produced in these twelve hours. Let the value of the means of production used up in each article be six pence. Under these circumstance, each article costs one shilling, six pence for the value of the means of production, and six pence for the value newly added in working with those means. Let some one capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of labor, and to produce in the working day of twelve hours twenty-four instead of twelve such articles. The value of the means of production remaining the same, the value of each article will fall to nine pence, made up of six pence for the value of the means of production, and three pence for the value newly added by the labor. Despite the doubled productiveness of labor, the days labor creates, as before, a new value of six shillings and no more, which however, is now spread over twice as many articles. Of this value, each article now has embodied in it one twenty-fourth instead of one twelve, three pence instead of six. Or, what amounts to the same thing, only half an hour instead of a whole hour's labor time is now added to the means of production while they are being transformed into each article. The individual value of these articles is now below their social value, in other words, they have cost less labor time than the great bulk of the same article produced under the average social conditions. Each article costs on an average one shilling, and represents two hours of social labor, but under the altered mode of production it costs only nine pence, or contains only one and a half hour's labor. The real value of the commodity is, however, not its individual value, but its social value. That is to say, the real value is not measured by the labor time that the article in each individual case costs the producer, but by the labor time socially required for its production. If, therefore, the capitalist who applies the new method sells his commodity at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for three pence above its individual value, and thus realizes an extra surplus value of three pence. On the other hand, the working day of twelve hours is, as regards him, now represented by twenty-four articles instead of twelve. Hence, in order to get rid of the product of one working day, the demand must be double what it was, i.e. the market must become twice as extensive. Other things being equal, his commodities can command a more extended market only by a diminution of their prices. He will therefore sell them above their individual but under their social value, say at ten pence each. This means he still squeezes an extra surplus value of one penny out of each. This augmentation of surplus value is pocketed by him, whether his commodities belong or not to the class of necessary means of subsistence that participate in determining the general value of labor power. Hence, independently of this latter circumstance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist to cheapen his commodities by increasing the productiveness of labor. Nevertheless, even in this case, the increased production of surplus value arises from the curtailment of the necessary labor time, and from the corresponding prolongation of the surplus labor. A man's profit does not depend upon his command of the produce of other men's labor, but upon his command of labor itself. If he can sell his goods at a higher price while his workman's wages remain unaltered, he is clearly benefited. A smaller proportion of what he produces is sufficient to put that labor into motion, and a larger proportion of what he subsequently remains for himself. End quote. Outlines of political economy. London, 1832. Pages 49 and 50. End. Footnote. Let the necessary labor time amount to ten hours, the value of a day's labor power to five shillings. The surplus labor time to two hours, and the daily surplus value to one shilling. The capitalist now produces 24 articles, which he sells at ten pence apiece, making twenty shillings in all. Since the value of the means of production is twelve shillings, fourteen and two fifths of these articles merely replace the constant capital advanced. The labor of the twelve hours working day is represented by the remaining nine and three fifths articles. Since the price of the labor power is five shillings, six articles represent the necessary labor time, and three and three fifths articles the surplus labor. The ratio of the necessary labor to the surplus labor, which under average social conditions was five to one, is now only five to three. The same result may be arrived at in the following way. The value of the product of the working day of twelve hours is twenty shillings. Of this sum, twelve shillings belong to the value of the means of production, a value that merely reappears. There remain eight shillings, which are the expression and money of the value newly created during the working day. This sum is greater than the sum in which average social labor of the same kind is expressed. Twelve hours of the latter labor are expressed by six shillings only. The exceptionally productive labor operates as intensified labor. It creates an equal periods of time greater values than average social labor of the same kind. See chapter one, section two, page forty four. But our capitalist still continues to pay as before only five shillings as the value of the day's labor power. Hence, instead of ten hours, the laborer need now work only seven and a half hours in order to reproduce this value. His surplus labor is therefore increased by two and a half hours, and the surplus value he produces grows from one into three shillings. Hence, the capitalist who applies the improved method of production appropriates to surplus labor a greater portion of the working day than the other capitalists in the same trade. Individually, what the whole body of capitalist engaged in producing relative surplus value do collectively. On the other hand, however, this extra surplus value vanishes so soon as the new method of production has become general and has consequently caused the difference between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish. The law of the determination of value by labor time, a law which brings under its sway the individual capitalist who applies the new method of production by compelling him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a cursive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the new method. Footnote If my neighbor, by doing much with little labor, can sell cheap, I must contrive to sell as cheap as he, so that every art, trade, or engine, doing work with labor of fewer hands and consequently cheaper, begets in others a kind of necessity and emulation, either of using the same art, trade, or engine, or of inventing something like it, that every man may be upon the square, that no man may be able to undersell his neighbor. The advantages of the East India trade to England, London, 1720 page 67 and footnote The general rate of surplus value is therefore ultimately affected by the whole process, only when the increase in the productiveness of labor has seized upon those branches of production that are connected with and has cheapened those commodities that form part of the necessary means of subsistence and are therefore elements of the value of labor power. The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the productiveness of labor and so too is the value of labor power, because it depends on the values of commodities. Relative surplus value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to that productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with fallen productiveness. The value of money being assumed to be constant. An average social working day of 12 hours always produces the same new value, 6 shillings, no matter how the sum may be apportioned between surplus value and wages. But if, in consequence of increased productiveness, the value of the necessaries of life fall and the value of a day's labor power be thereby reduced from 5 shillings to 3, the surplus value increases from 1 shilling to 3. 10 hours were necessary for the reproduction of the value of the labor power. Now, only 6 are required. 4 hours have been set free and can be annexed to the domain of surplus labor. Hence, there is imminent in capital an inclination and constant tendency to heighten the productiveness of labor in order to cheapen commodities and by such cheapening to cheapen the laborer himself footnote. Quote, in whatever proportion the expenses of the laborer are diminished. In the same proportion will his wages be diminished if the restraints upon industry are at the same time taken off. End quote. Considerations concerning taking off the bounty of corn exported, etc., London 1753, page 7. Quote, the interest of trade requires that corn and all provisions should be as cheap as possible for whatever makes them dear must make labor dear also. In all countries where industry is not restrained the price of provisions must affect the price of labor. This will always be diminished when the necessaries of life grow cheaper. End quote. Local Satato, page 3. Quote. Wages are decreased in the same proportion as the powers of production increase. Machinery, it is true, cheapens the necessaries of life, but it also cheapens the laborer. End quote. A prize essay on the comparative merits of competition and cooperation London, 1834, page 27. End footnote. The value of commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the capitalist. What alone interests him is the surplus value that dwells in it and is realizable by sale. Realization of the surplus value necessarily carries with it the refunding of the value that was advanced. Now, since relative surplus value increases in direct proportion to the development of the productiveness while, on the other hand, the value of commodities diminishes in the same proportion, since one and the same process cheapens commodities and augments the surplus value contained in them, we have here the solution to the riddle. Why does the capitalist whose sole concern is the production of exchange value continually strive to depress the exchange value of commodities? A riddle with which Quesne, one of the founders of political economy, commented his opponents and to which they could give him no answer. Quote, you acknowledge, he says, that the more expenses and the cost of labor can in the manufacture of industrial products be reduced without injury to production, the more advantageous is such reduction because it diminishes the price of the finished article. And yet, you believe that the production of wealth, which arises from the labor of the work people, consists in the augmentation of the exchange value of their products. And, quote, footnote, Quesne, dialogue, sur le commerce et les travaux des artisans pages 188 and 189, and footnote. The shortening of the working day is, therefore, by no means what is aimed at in capitalist production when labor is condomised by increasing its productiveness. Footnote, quote, these speculators who are so economical of the labor of workers they would have to pay, end, quote, J. and Bidot, du monopole qui se blit dans les arts industriels et les commerce, Paris, 1828, page 13, quote, the employer will be always on the stretch to economise time labor, and, quote, du Gold Stewart works edition by Sir W. Hamilton, Edinburgh, V. VII, 1855, lectures on political economy, page 318, quote, there the capitalists interest in that the productive powers of the laborers they employ should be the greatest possible. On promoting that power attention is fixed and almost exclusively fixed, and, quote, R. Jones, local citato, lecture 3, and footnote. It is only the shortening of the labour time necessary for the production of a definite quantity of commodities that is aimed at. The fact that the workman when the productiveness of his labour has been increased produces say 10 times as many commodities as before, and thus spends one tenth as much labour time on each, but no means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before, nor from producing, in those 12 hours, 1200 articles instead of 120. Nay, Moore, his working day may be prolonged at the same time, so as to make him produce, say, 1400 articles in 14 hours. In the treatisees, therefore, of economists of the stamp of McCulloch, or a senior, and Tuto Quanti, the like, we may read upon one page that the labourer owes a debt of gratitude to capital for developing his productiveness, because the necessary labour time is thereby shortened, and on the next page that he must prove his gratitude by working in future for 15 hours instead of 10. The object of all development of the productiveness of labour within the limits of capitalist production is to shorten that part of the working day, during which the workman must labour for his own benefit, and by that very shortening to lengthen the other part of the day, during which he is at liberty to work gratis for the capitalist. How far this result is also attainable without cheapening commodities will appear from an examination of the particular modes of producing relative surplus value, to which examination we now proceed. End of Chapter 12 of Capital, Volume 1 Chapter 13 of Capital, Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Anna Simon. Capital, a critical analysis of capitalist production, Volume 1 by Karl Marx, translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Eveling, and edited by Frederick Engels. Part 4, Production of Relative Surplus Value, Chapter 13 Cooperation Capitalist production only then really begins as we've already seen, when each individual capital employs simultaneously a comparatively large number of labourers. When consequently the labour process is carried on on an extensive scale and yields relatively large quantities of products. A greater number of labourers working together at the same time, in one place or if you will, in the same field of labour, in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes both historically and logically the starting point of capitalist production. With regard to the mode of production itself, manufacture in its strict meaning is hardly to be distinguished in its earliest stages from the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise then by the greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the medieval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged. At first therefore the difference is purely quantitative. We have shown that the surplus value produced by a given capital is equal to the surplus value produced by each workman, multiplied by the number of workmen simultaneously employed. The number of workmen in itself does not affect either the rate of surplus value or the degree of exploitation of labour power. If a working day of 12 hours be embodied in six shillings, 1200 such days will be embodied in 1200 times six shillings. In one case, 12 times 1200 working hours and in the other 12 such hours are incorporated in the product. In the production of value a number of workmen rank merely as so many individual workmen and it therefore makes no difference in the value produced whether the 1200 men work separately or united under the control of one capitalist. Nevertheless within certain limits a modification takes place. The labour realised in value is labour of an average social quality is consequently the expenditure of average labour power. Any average magnitude however is merely the average of a number of separate magnitudes all of one kind but differing as to quantity. In every industry each individual labourer be he Peter or Paul differs from the average labourer. These individual differences or errors as they are called in mathematics compensate one another and vanish whenever a certain minimum number of workmen are employed together. The celebrated sophist and sycophant Edmund Berg goes so far as to make the following assertion based on his practical observations as a farmer. That is that in so small a platoon as that of five farm labourers all individual differences in a labour vanish and that consequently any given five adult farm labourers taken together will in the same time do as much work as any other five. Footnote Quote Unquestionably there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labour and that of another from strength, dexterity and honest application. But I'm quite sure for my best observation that any given five man will in their total afford a proportion of labour equal to any other five within the periods of life I've stated. That is, that among such five men there will be one possessing all the qualifications of a good workman one bad and the other three meddling and approximating to the first and the last. So that in so small a platoon as that of even five you'll find the full complement of all that five men can earn. End quote. E. Berg, logo citato pages 15 and 16 compare catalept on the average individual and footnote. But however that may be it is clear that the collective working day of a large number of workmen simultaneously employed divided by the number of these workmen gives one day of average social labour. For example, let the working day of each individual be twelve hours then the collective working day of twelve men simultaneously employed consists of one hundred and forty four hours. And although the labour of each of the dozen men may deviate more or less from average social labour, each of them requiring a different time for the same operation yet since the working day of each is one twelfth of the collective working day of one hundred and forty four hours it possesses the qualities of an average social working day. From the point of view however of the capitalist who employs these twelve men is that of the whole dozen. Each individual man's day is an adequate part of the collective working day no matter whether the twelve men assist one another in their work or whether the connection between their operations consists merely in the fact that the men are all working for the same capitalist. But if the twelve men are employed in six pairs by as many different small masters it will be quite a matter of chance whether each of these masters produces the same value and consequently whether he realises the general rate of surplus value. Deviations would occur in individual cases. If one workman required considerably more time for the production of a commodity than is socially necessary the duration of the necessary labour time would in his case sensibly deviate from the labour time socially necessary on an average and consequently his labour would not count as average labour nor his labour power as average labour power. It would either be not saleable at all or only at something below the average value of labour power. A fixed minimum of efficiency in all labour is therefore assumed and we shall see later on that capitalist production provides the means of fixing this minimum. Nevertheless this minimum deviates from the average although on the other hand the capitalist has to pay the average value of labour power. Of the six small masters one would therefore squeeze out more than the average rate of surplus value another less the inequalities would be compensated for the society at large but not for the individual masters thus the laws of the production of value are only fully realised for the individual producer when he produces as a capitalist and employs a number of workmen together whose labour by its collective nature is at once stamped as average social labour. Footnote Professor Rosha claims to have discovered that one need a woman employed by Mrs. for two days does more work than two need a woman employed together during one day. The learned professor should not study the capitalist process of production in the nursery nor under circumstances where the principal personage the capitalist is wanting and footnote. Even without an alteration in the system of working the simultaneous employment of a large number of labourers affects a revolution in the material conditions of the labour process. The buildings in which they work the storehouses for the raw material the implements and utensils used simultaneously or in turns by the workmen, in short a portion of the means of production are now consumed in common. On the one hand the exchange value of these means of production is not increased for the exchange value of a commodity is not raised by its use value being consumed more thoroughly and to greater advantage. On the other hand they are used in common and therefore on a larger scale than before a room where 20 weavers work at 20 looms must be larger than the room of a single weaver with two assistants but it costs less labour to build one workshop for 20 persons than to build 10 to accommodate two weavers each. Thus the value of the means of production that are concentrated for use in common on a large scale does not increase in direct proportion to the expansion and to the increased useful effect of those means. When consumed in common they give up a smaller part of their value to each single product, partly because the total value they part with is spread over a greater quantity of products and partly because their value though absolutely greater is having regard to their sphere of action in the process relatively less than the value of isolated means of production. Owing to this the value of a part of the constant capital falls and in proportion to the magnitude of the fall the total value of the commodity also falls. The effect is the same as if the means of production had cost less. The economy in their application is entirely owing to their being consumed in common by a large number of workmen. Moreover this character of being necessary conditions of social labour a character that distinguishes them from the dispersed and relatively more costly means of production of isolated independent labourers or small masters is acquired even when the numerous workmen assembled together do not assist one another but merely work side by side. A portion of the instruments of labour acquires this social character before the labour process itself does so. Economy in the use of the means of production has to be considered under two aspects. First as cheapening commodities and thereby bringing about a fall in the value of labour power. Secondly as altering the ratio of the surplus value to the total capital advanced that is to the sum of the values of the constant and variable capital. The letter aspect will not be considered until we come to the third book to which with the object of treating them in their proper connection we also relegate many other points that relate to the present question. The march of our analysis compels the splitting up of the subject matter a splitting up that is quite in keeping with the spirit of capitalist production. For since in this mode of production the workmen finds the instruments of labour existing independently of him as another man's property. Economy in their use appears with regard to him to be a distinct operation one that does not concern him and which therefore has no connection with the methods by which his own personal productiveness is increased. When numerous labourers work together side by side whether in one and the same process or in different but connected processes they are said to co-operate or to work in co-operation. Footnote Concours de force de studio de tracie Lococetato page 80 end footnote Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry or the defensive power of a regiment of infantry is essentially different from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed when many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same undivided operation such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch or removing an obstacle. Footnote There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as not to admit a division into parts which cannot be performed without the co-operation of many pairs of hands. I would instance the lifting of a large tree onto a wane everything ensured which cannot be done unless a great many pairs of hands help each other in the same undivided employment and at the same time end quote E.G. Wakefield a view of the art of colonization London 1849 page 168 and footnote In such cases the effect of the combined labour could either not be produced at all by isolated individual labour or it could only be produced by a great expenditure of time or on a very dwarfed scale Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the individual by means of co-operation but the creation of a new power namely the collective power of masses Footnote quote As one man cannot and ten men must strain to lift a ton of weight yet one hundred men can do it only by the strength of a finger of each of them end quote John Betters proposals for raising a college of industry London 1696 page 21 and footnote Apart from the new power that arises from the fusion of many forces into one single force mere social contact begets in most industries an emulation and a stimulation of the animal spirits that heighten the efficiency of each individual workman Hence it is that a dozen persons working together will in their collective working day of 144 hours produce far more than 12 isolated men each working 12 hours or then one man who works 12 days in succession Footnote quote There is also when the same number of men are employed by one farmer on 300 acres instead of by ten farmers with 30 acres apiece an advantage in the proportion of servants which will not so easily be understood but by practical men for it is natural to say as one is to fall so are three to twelve but this will not hold good in practice for and harvest time and many other operations which require that kind of dispatch by the throwing many hands together the work is better and more expeditiously done for instance in harvest two drivers, two loaders, two pitchers two rakers and the rest of the rick or in the barn will dispatch double the work that the same number of hands would do if divided into different gangs on different farms end quote An inquiry into the connection between the present price of provisions and the size of farms by a farmer London in 1773 pages 7 and 8 end footnote the reason of this is that man is if not as Aristotle contends a political at all events a social animal footnote strictly Aristotle's definition is that man is by nature a town citizen this is quite as characteristic of ancient classical society as Franklin's definition of man as a tool making animal is characteristic of Yankee Dum end footnote although a number of men may be occupied together at the same time the same or the same kind of work yet the labor of each as a part of the collective labor may correspond to a distinct phase of the labor process through all whose phases in consequence of cooperation the subject of the labor passes with greater speed for instance if a dozen masons place themselves in a row so as to pass stones from the foot of a ladder to its summit each of them does the same thing nevertheless their separate acts form connected parts of one total operation they are particular phases which must be gone through by each stone and the stones are thus carried up quicker by the 24 hands of the row of men than they could be if each man went separately up and down the ladder with his burden footnote quote I I I I I I I I I I I I I I chacune de porter sa brique sépremont jusqu'à les chauffadages supérieurs", end quote, F. Scarbeck, théorie des richesses sociales, Paris, 1839, volume I, pages 97 and 98, and footnote. The object is carried over the same distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour occurs whenever a building, for instance, is taken in hand on different sides simultaneously. Although here also, the co-operating masons are doing the same or the same kind of work. The twelve masons, in their collective working day of 144 hours, make much more progress with the building than one mason could make working for twelve days or 144 hours. The reason is that a body of man working in concert has hands and eyes both before and behind and is to a certain degree omnipresent, the various parts of the work progress simultaneously. In the above instances we have laid stress upon the point that the men do the same or the same kind of work, because this, the most simple form of labour in common, plays a great part in co-operation, even in its most fully developed stage. If the work be complicated, then the mere number of the men who co-operate allows for the various operations being apportioned to different hands and, consequently, of being carried on simultaneously. The time necessary for the completion of the whole work is thereby shortened. Footnote Quote, est-il question d'excuter un travail compliqué, plusieurs choses doivent être faites simultaneously. L'un en fait une, pendant que l'autre en fait une autre, et tout contribuant à l'effet qu'un seul homme n'aurait pu produire. L'un rame pendant que l'autre tient la co-vernait, et qu'un troisième jette le filet en arpons le poisson, et la pêche à un succès impossible sans ses concours. End Quote De studer tracie, l'occulte cet état. End footnote In many industries, there are critical periods determined by the nature of the process during which certain definite results must be obtained. For instance, if a flock of sheep has to be shown, or a field of wheat to be cut and harvested, the quantity and quality of the product depends on the work being begun and ended within a certain time. In these cases, the time that ought to be taken by the process is prescribed, just as it is, in herring fishing. A single person cannot carve a working day of more than, say, 12 hours out of the natural day, but 100 men co-operating extend the working day to 1200 hours. The shortness of the time allowed for the work is compensated for by the large mass of labour thrown upon the field of production at the decisive moment. The completion of the task within the proper time depends on the simultaneous application of numerous combined working days. The amount of useful effect depends on the number of labourers. This number, however, is always smaller than the number of isolated labourers required to do the same amount of work in the same period. Footnote Quote The doing of it, agricultural work, at the critical juncture, is of so much the greater consequence. End Quote An inquiry into the connection between the present price, etc. Page 9 Quote In agriculture, there is no more important factor than that of time. End Quote Liby Über Theorie und Praxis in der Landwirtschaft 1856, Page 23 End Footnote It is owing to the absence of this kind of co-operation that, in the western part of the United States, quantities of corn, and in those parts of East India, where English rule has destroyed the old communities, quantities of cotton are yearly wasted. Footnote Quote The next evil is one which one would scarcely expect to find in a country which exports more labour than any other in the world, with the exception perhaps of China and England, the impossibility of procuring a sufficient number of hands to clean the cotton. The consequence of this is that large quantities of the crop are left unpicked, while another portion is gathered from the ground when it has fallen, and is of course discoloured and partially rossed, so that, for want of labour at the proper season, the cultivator is actually forced to submit to the loss of a large part of that crop for which England is so anxiously looking. End Quote Bengalhurkau, bi-monthly Overland Summary of News, 22 July 1861, End Footnote On the one hand, co-operation allows of the work being carried on over an extended space. It is consequently imperatively called for in certain undertakings such as draining, constructing dykes, irrigation works, and the making of canals, roads and railways. On the other hand, while extending the scale of production, it renders possible a relative contraction of the arena. This contraction of arena, simultaneous with and arising from extension of scale whereby a number of useless expenses are cut down, is owing to the conglomeration of labourers, to the aggregation of various processes, and to the concentration at the means of production. Footnote In the progress of culture, quote, all, and perhaps more than all, the capital and labour, which once loosely occupied five hundred acres, are now concentrated for the more complete tillage of one hundred, end quote. Although, quote, relatively to the amount of capital and labour employed, space is concentrated, it is an enlarged sphere of production as compared to the sphere of production formally occupied or worked upon by one single independent agent of production, end quote. R. Jones, an essay on the distribution of wealth, part one, on rent, London, 1831, page 191, end footnote. The combined working day produces, relatively to an equal sum of isolated working days, a greater quantity of use-values, and consequently, diminishes the labour time necessary for the production of a given useful effect. Whether the combined working day in a given case acquires this increased productive power because it heightens the mechanical force of labour, or extends its sphere of action over greater space, or contracts the field of production, relatively to the scale of production, or at the critical moment sets large masses of labour to work, or excites emulation between individuals and raises their animal spirits, or impresses on the similar operations carried on by a number of men the stamp of continuity and many-sightedness, or performs simultaneously different operations, or economises the means of production by using common, or lensed individual labour by the character of average social labour. Which ever of these be the cause of the increase, 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 is due to cooperation itself. When the labourer cooperates systematically with others, he strips off the fetus of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species. The force of each man is minimal. But the union of the minimal forces forms a total, greater, also of the sum of the medium forces, until which the forces to be combined can decrease the time and to increase the space of their action. As a general rule, labourers cannot cooperate without being brought together. Their assemblage in one place is a necessary condition of their cooperation. Hence, weight labourers cannot cooperate unless they are employed simultaneously by the same capital, the same capitalist, and unless, therefore, their labour powers are brought simultaneously by him. The total value of these labour powers, or the amount of the wages of these labourers, for a day or a week, as the case may be, must be ready in the pocket of the capitalist before the workmen are assembled for the process of production. The payment of 300 workmen at once, though only for one day, requires a greater outlay of capital than the payment of a smaller number of men, week by week, during a whole year. Hence, the number of labourers that cooperate, or the scale of cooperation, depends in the first instance on the amount of capital that the individual capitalist can spare for the purchase of labour power. In other words, on the extent to which a single capitalist has command over the means of subsistence of a number of labourers. And as with the variable, so it is with the constant capital. For example, the outlay on raw material is 30 times as great for the capitalist who employs 300 men, as it is for each of the 30 capitalists who employ 10 men. The value and quantity of the instruments of labour used in common do not, it is true, increase at the same rate as the number of workmen, but they do increase very considerably. Hence, concentration of large masses of the means of production in the hands of individual capitalists is a material condition for the cooperation of wage labourers, and the extent of the cooperation, or the scale of production, depends on the extent of this concentration. We saw in a former chapter that a certain minimum amount of capital was necessary in order that the number of labourers simultaneously employed, and consequently the amount of surplus value produced, might suffice to liberate the employer himself from manual labour, to convert him from a small master into a capitalist, and thus formally to establish capitalist production. We now see that a certain minimum amount is the necessary condition for the conversion of numerous isolated and independent processes into one combined social process. We also saw that at first the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal result of the fact that the labourer, instead of working for himself, works for and consequently under the capitalist. By the cooperation of numerous wage labourers, the sway of capital develops into a requisite for carrying on the labour process itself into a real requisite of production, that a capitalist should command on the field of production is now as indispensable as that a general should command on the field of battle. All combined labour on a large scale requires more or less a directing authority in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism as extinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violent player is his own conductor. An orchestra requires a separate one. The work of directing, superintending, and adjusting becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under control of capital becomes cooperative. Once a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics. The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labour power to the greatest possible extent. Footnote, quote, profits is the sole end of trade, end quote, J. van der Lint, logo citato, page 11, end footnote. As the number of cooperating labourers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome this resistance by counter pressure. The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function due to the nature of the social labour process and peculiar to that process, but it is at the same time a function of the exploitation of a social labour process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits. Again, in proportion to the increasing mass of the means of production, now no longer the property of the labourer, but of the capitalist, the necessity increases for some effective control over the proper application of those means. Footnote, that Philistine paper The Spectator states that after the introduction of a sort of partnership between capitalist and workmen in the wirework company of Manchester, quote, the first result was a sudden decrease in waste, the man not seeing why they should waste their own property any more than any other masters, and waste is, perhaps next to bad deaths, the greatest source of manufacturing loss, end quote. The same paper finds that the main defect in the Rochdale cooperative experiments is this, quote, they showed that associations of workmen could manage shops, mills, and almost all forms of industry with success, and they immediately improve the condition of the men, but then they did not leave a clear place for masters, end quote. And footnote. Moreover, the cooperation of weight labourers is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them. Their union into one single productive body and the establishment of a connection between their individual functions are met as foreign and external to them, are not their own act, but the act of the capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence the connection existing between their various labourers appears to them ideally in the shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist, and practically in the shape of the authority of the same capitalist, in the shape of the powerful will of another who subjects their activity to his aims. If then the control of the capitalist is in substance twofold by reason of the twofold nature of the process of production itself, which on the one hand is a social process for producing use values, on the other a process for creating surplus value, in form that control is despotic. As cooperation extends its scale, this despotism takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour, so soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such, begins, so now he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workmen and groups of workmen to a special kind of weight labourer. An industrial army of workmen under the command of capitalists requires, like a real army, officers, managers, and sergeants, foremen, overlookers, who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function. When comparing the mode of production of isolated peasants and artisans with production by slave labour, the political economist counts this labour of superintendence among the faux frae of production. Footnote. Professor Cairns, after stating that the superintendence of labour is a leading feature of production by slaves in the southern states of North America, continues, quote, the peasant proprietor of the north, appropriating the whole produce of his toil, needs no other stimulus to exertion. Superintendence is here completely dispensed with, end quote, Cairns, Locositeto, pages 48 and 49, end footnote. But when considering the capitalist mode of production, he, on the contrary, treats the work of control made necessary by the cooperative character of the labour process as identical with the different work of control necessitated by the capitalist character of that process and the antagonism of interests between capitalist and labourer. Footnote. Sir James Stewart, a writer altogether remarkable for his quick eye for the characteristic social distinctions between different modes of production, says, quote, why do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry, but by coming nearer to the simplicity of slaves, end quote, principles of political economy, London, 1767, volume one, pages 167 and 168, end footnote. 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, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge were attributes of land and property. Footnote. Auguste Comte and his school might therefore have shown that feudal lords are an eternal necessity in the same way that they have done in the case of the lords of capital. End footnote. The labourer is the owner of his labour power until he has done bargaining for its sale with the capitalist, and he can sell no more than what he has, that is, his individual isolated labour power. This state of things is in no way altered by the fact that the capitalist, instead of buying the labour power of one man, buys that of one hundred and enters into separate contracts with one hundred unconnected men instead of with one. He is at liberty to set the one hundred men to work without letting them cooperate. He pays them the value of one hundred independent labour powers, but he does not pay for the combined labour power of the hundred. Being independent of each other, the labourers are isolated persons who enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with one another. This cooperation begins only with a labour process, but they have then ceased to belong to themselves. On entering that process, they become incorporated with capital. As cooperators, as members of a working organism, they are but special modes of existence of capital. Hence the productive power developed by the labourer when working in cooperation is the productive power of capital. This power is developed gratuitously, whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is capital that places them under such conditions. Because this power costs capital nothing, and because on the other hand, the labourer himself does not develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power with which capital is endowed by nature, a productive power that is imminent in capital. The colossal effects of simple cooperation are to be seen in the gigantic structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians, Etruscans, etc. It has happened in times past that these oriental states, after supplying the expenses of their civil and military establishments, have found themselves in possession of a surplus which they could apply to works of magnificence or utility, and in the construction of these, their command over the hands and arms of almost the entire non-agricultural population has produced stupendous monuments which still indicate their power. The teeming valley of the Nile produced food for a swarming non-agricultural population, and this food belonging to the monarch and the priesthood afforded the means of erecting the mighty monuments which filled the land. In moving the colossal statues and vast masses of which the transport creates wonder, human labour almost alone was prodigially used. The number of the labourers and the concentration of their efforts sufficed. We see mighty coral reefs rising from the depths of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak and contemptible. The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to bring to the task, but their number is their strength, and the power of directing these masses gave rise to the palaces and temples, the pyramids, and the armies of gigantic statues of which there remains astonish and perplexes. It is that confinement of the revenues which feed them to one or a few hands which makes such undertakings possible. R. Jones, textbook of lecturers, etc., pages 77 and 78. The ancient Assyrian, Egyptian and other collections in London and in other European capitals make us eyewitnesses of the modes of carrying on that cooperative labour, and footnote. This power of Asiatic and Egyptians kings, Etruscan theocrats, etc., has in modern society been transferred to the capitalist, whether he be an isolated or as in joint stock companies, a collective capitalist. Cooperation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development among races who live by the chase or say in the agriculture of Indian communities, is based on the one hand on ownership in common of the means of production, and on the other hand on the fact that in those cases each individual has no more torn himself off from the naval string of his tribe or community than each bee has freed itself from connection with the hive. Footnote. Linguia is improbably right when in his Theorie de l'oeil civille, he declares hunting to be the first form of cooperation, and manhunting war one of the earliest forms of hunting. And footnote. Such cooperation is distinguished from capitalistic cooperation by both of the above characteristics, the sporadic application of cooperation on a large scale in ancient times in the Middle Ages and in modern colonies reposes on relations of dominion and servitude, principally on slavery. The capitalistic form on the country presupposes from first to last the free wage laborer who sells his labor power to capital. Historically, however, this form is developed in opposition to peasant agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts, whether in guilds or not. Footnote. Peasant agriculture on a small scale and the carrying on of independent handicrafts which together form the basis of the feudal mode of production, and after the dissolution of that system continue side by side with the capitalist mode, also form the economic foundation of the classical communities at their best, after the primitive form of ownership of land in common had disappeared and before slavery had seized on production in earnest. And footnote. From the standpoint of these, capitalistic cooperation does not manifest itself as a particular historical form of cooperation, but cooperation itself appears to be a historical form peculiar to and specifically distinguishing the capitalist process of production. Just as the social productive power of labor that is developed by cooperation appears to be the productive power of capital, so cooperation itself contrasted with the process of production carried on by isolated independent laborers or even by small employers appears to be a specific form of the capitalist process of production. It is the first change experienced by the actual labor process when subjected to capital. This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous employment of a large number of weight laborers in one and the same process, which is a necessary condition of this change, also forms the starting point of capitalist production. This point coincides with the birth of capital itself. If then, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of production presents itself to us historically as a necessary condition to the transformation of the labor process into a social process. So, on the other hand, this social form of the labor process presents itself as a method employed by capital for the more profitable exploitation of labor by increasing that labor's productiveness. In the elementary form under which we have hitherto viewed it, cooperation is a necessary concomitant of all production on a large scale, but it does not in itself represent a fixed form characteristic of a particular epoch in the development of the capitalist mode of production. At the most it appears to do so and that only approximately in the handcraft-like beginnings of manufacture, and in that kind of agriculture on a large scale which corresponds to the epoch of manufacture, and is distinguished from peasant agriculture, mainly by the number of the laborers simultaneously employed and by the mass of the means of production concentrated for their use. Footnote. Whether the united skill, industry, and emulation of many together on the same work be not the way to advance it, and whether it had been otherwise possible for England to have carried on her woollen manufacture to so great a perfection. Berkeley, the Quarist, London, 1751, page 56, paragraph 521, and footnote. Simple co-operation is always the prevailing form in those branches of production in which capital operates on a large scale, and the vision of labor and machinery play by the subordinate part. Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of production. Nevertheless, the elementary form of co-operation continues to subsist as a particular form of capitalist production side by side with the more developed forms of that mode of production. End of Part 4, Chapter 13. Chapter 14, Section 1 of Capital, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Capital, a critical analysis of capitalist production, Volume 1, by Karl Marx. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels. Part 4, Production of Relative Surplus Value. Chapter 14, Division of Labor and Manufacture. Section 1, Twofold Origin of Manufacture. That co-operation, which is based on Division of Labor assumes its typical form in 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 takes its rise in two ways. First, by the assemblage in one workshop under the control of a single capitalist of laborers belonging to various independent handicrafts, but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion. A carriage, for example, was formerly the product of the labor of a great number of independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness makers, tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe makers, glazers, painters, polishers, guilders, etc. In the manufacture of carriages, however, all these different artificers are assembled in one building where they work into one another's hands. It is true that a carriage cannot be guilt before it has been made, but if a number of carriages are being made simultaneously, some may be in the hands of the guilders, while others are going through an earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain of simple co-operation, which finds its materials ready to hand in the shape of men and things. But very soon, an important change takes place. The tailor, the locksmith, and the other artificers being now exclusively occupied in carriage making, each gradually loses, through want of practice, the ability to carry on to its full extent his old handicraft. But, on the other hand, his activity now confined in one groove assumes the form best adapted to the narrowed sphere of action. At first, carriage manufacture is a combination of various independent handicrafts. By degrees, it becomes the splitting up of carriage making into its various detail processes, each of which crystallizes into the exclusive function of a particular workman, the manufacture as a whole being carried on by the men in conjunction. In the same way, cloth manufacture, as also a whole series of other manufacturers, arose by combining different handicrafts together under the control of a single capitalist. Footnote 1. To give a more modern instance, the silk spinning and weaving of Leon and Neame Quote, est toute patriarchale. Elle emploie beaucoup de femmes et d'enfants, mais sans les épouser ni la crompe. Elle le laisse dans le bel vallice de la trompe, d'où va, de l'isère, de vos clus pour y élever des verres et d'éviter le coco. Jamais elle n'entre dans un véritable fabrique. Pour être aussi bien observé, le principe de la division du travail s'y révert dans caractère spéciale. Il y a bien d'individus, des moulinaires, des tatunis, des encoleurs, puis des tigres, mais ils ne sont pas réunis dans un même établissement. Ne dépendez pas d'un même maître, tous ils sont indépendants. The silk spinning and weaving of Leon and Neame is entirely patriarchal. It employs a large number of women and children, but without exhausting or ruining them. It allows them to stay in their beautiful valleys of the trompe, the vares, the isère, the va-clus, cultivating their silkworms and unwinding their cocoons. It never becomes a true factory industry. However, the principle of the division of labor takes on a special character here. There do indeed exist winders, thrusters, dires, sizers, and finally weavers. But they are not assembled in the same workshop, nor are are they dependent on a single master. They are all independent. Since Blanqui wrote this, the various independent laborers have to some extent been united in factories. And footnote one. Second. Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this. Namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number of artificers who all do the same or the same kind of work, such as making paper, type, or needles. This is co-operation in its most elementary form. Each of these artificers, with the help, perhaps, of one or two apprentices, makes the entire commodity, and he consequently performs in succession all the operations necessary for its production. He still works in his old handicraft-like way. But very soon external circumstances cause a different use to be made of the concentration of the workmen on one spot, and of the simultaneousness of their work. An increased quantity of the article has perhaps to be delivered within a given time. The work is therefore redistributed. Instead of each man being allowed to perform all the various operations in succession, these operations are changed into disconnected, isolated ones, carried on side by side. Each is assigned to a different artificer, and the whole of them together are performed simultaneously by the co-operating workmen. This accidental repartition gets repeated, develops advantages of its own, and gradually ossifies into a systematic division of labor. The commodity from being the individual product of an independent artificer becomes the social product of a union of artificers, each of whom performs one and only one of the constituent partial operations. The same operations which, in the case of a paper maker belonging to a German guild, merged one into the other as the successive acts of one artificer, became in the Dutch paper manufacturer so many partial operations carried on side by side by numerous co-operating laborers. The needle maker of the Nuremberg guild was the cornerstone on which the English needle manufacture was raised. But, while in Nuremberg, that single artificer performed a series of perhaps twenty operations one after another, in England it was not long before there were twenty needle makers side by side, each performing one alone of those twenty operations, and in consequence of further experience, each of those twenty operations was again split up, isolated, and made the exclusive function of a separate workman. The mode in which manufacture arises its growth out of handicrafts is therefore twofold. On the one hand, it arises from the union of various independent handicrafts which become stripped of their independence and specialized to such an extent as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial processes in the production of one particular commodity. On the other hand, it arises from the co-operation of artificers of one handicraft. It splits up that particular handicraft into its various detail operations, isolating and making these operations independent of one another, up to the point where each becomes the exclusive function of a particular laborer. On the one hand, therefore, manufacture either introduces diversion of labor into a process of production or further develops that division. On the other hand, it unites together handicrafts that were formally 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 labor 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 labor power is turned into the organ of this detail function. Secondly, this division of labor 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. And Section 1, Twofold Origin of Manufacture. Chapter 14, Division of Labor and Manufacture. Part 4, Production of Relative Surplus Value. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter 14, Section 2 of Capital, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Capital, A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1 by Karl Marx. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel More and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels. Part 4, Production of Relative Surplus Value. Chapter 14, Division of Labor and Manufacture. Section 2, The Detail Laborer and His Implements. If we now go into more detail, it is in the first place clear that a laborer who all his life performs one and the same simple operation converts his whole body into the automatic, specialized implement of that operation. Consequently, he takes less time in doing it than the artificer who performs a whole series of operations in succession. But the collective laborer who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture is made up solely of such specialized detail laborers. Hence, in comparison with the independent handicraft, more is produced in a given time, or the productive power of labor is increased. Footnote 2, quote, The more any manufacture of much variety shall be distributed and assigned to different artists, the same must needs be better done and with greater expedition, with less loss of time and labor. Unquote. The advantages of the East India Trade, London, 1720, page 71. And footnote 2, Moreover, when once this fractional work is established as the exclusive function of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The workman's continued repetition of the same simple act and the concentration of his attention on it teach him by experience how to attain the desired effect with the minimum of exertion. But since there are always several generations of laborers living at one time and working together at the manufacture of a given article, the technical skill, the tricks of the trade thus acquired, become established and are accumulated and handed down. Footnote 3, quote, Easy labor is transmitted skill. Unquote. Thomas Hodgskin, popular political economy, page 48. And footnote 3. Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detailed laborer by reproducing and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop, the naturally developed differentiation of trades which it found ready to hand in society at large. On the other hand, the conversion of fractional work into the life calling of one man corresponds to the tendency shown by earlier societies to make trades hereditary, either to petrify them into casts or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual a tendency to vary in a manner incompatible with the nature of casts, to ossify them into guilds. Casts 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 degree of development has been reached, the heredity of casts and the exclusiveness of guilds are ordained as a law of society. Footnote 4, quote, The arts also have in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection, for it is the only country where artificers may not in any way meddle with the affairs of another class of citizens but must follow that calling alone which by law is hereditary in their clan. In other countries it is found that tradesmen divide their attention between too many objects. At one time they try agriculture. At another they take to commerce. At another they busy themselves with two or three occupations at once. In free countries, they mostly frequent the assemblies of the people. In Egypt on the contrary, every artificer is severely punished if he meddles with affairs of state or carries on several trades at once. Thus there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling. Moreover, since they inherit from their forefathers numerous rules, they are eager to discover fresh advantages, unquote, Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historeca, Book 1, Chapter 1, 74, and Footnote 4, quote, The muslins of Dhaka in fineness, the calicoes and other peace goods of Koramandel in brilliant and durable colors have never been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital, machinery, division of labor, or any of those means which give such facilities to the manufacturing interest of Europe. The weaver is merely a detached individual, working a web when ordered of a customer and with a loom of the rudest construction, consisting sometimes of a few branches or bars of wood, put roughly together. There is even no expedient for rolling up the warp. The loom must therefore be kept stretched to its full length, and become so inconveniently large that it cannot be contained within the hut of the manufacturer, who is therefore compelled to ply his trade in the open air, where it is interrupted by every vicissitude of the weather, unquote. Footnote 5, historical and descriptive account of British India, etc., by Hugh Murray and James Wilson, etc., Edinburgh, 1832, volume 2, page 449. The Indian loom is upright. That is, the warp is stretched vertically, and footnote 5. It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to generation and transmitted from father to son that gives to the Hindu, as it does to the spider, this proficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindu weaver is very complicated compared with that of a manufacturing labourer. An artificer who performs one after another the various fractional operations in the production of a finished article must at one time change his place at another his tools. The transition from one operation to another interrupts the flow of his labour and creates, so to say, gaps in his working day. These gaps close up so soon as he has tied to one and the same operation all day long. They vanish in proportion as the changes in his work diminish. The resulting increased productive power is owing either to an increased expenditure of labour power in a given time, that is, to increased intensity of labour, or to a decrease in the amount of labour power unproductively consumed. The extra expenditure of power demanded by every transition from rest to motion is made up for by prolonging the duration of the normal velocity when once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity. 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, etc., 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 detailed 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 specialization of those instruments, giving to each special implement its full play only in the hands of a specific detail labourer. In Birmingham alone, 500 varieties of hammers are produced, and not only is each adapted to one particular process, but several varieties often serve exclusively for the different operations in one and the same process. The manufacturing period simplifies, improves, and multiplies the implements of labour by adapting them to the exclusively special functions of each detailed labourer. Darwin, in his epoch-making work on the origin of species, remarks with reference to the natural organs of plants and animals, quote, It thus creates at the same time one of the material conditions for the existence of machinery, which consists of a combination of simple instruments. The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest elements of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a whole, and section 2, the detail labourer and his implements. Chapter 14, division of labour and manufacture, part 4, production of relative surplus value. This recording is in the public domain.