 Capital, Volume 1. Part 4. Production of Relative Surplus Value. Chapter 15. Machinery and Modern Industry. Section 1. The Development of Machinery. 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 15. Machinery and Modern Industry. Section 1. The Development of Machinery. John Stuart Mill says in his Principles of Political Economy, quote, It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being, end of quote, footnote one. Mill should have said, quote, of any human being not fed by other people's labor, end of quote, for without doubt machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers, end of footnote one. That is, however, by no means the aim of the capitalistic application of machinery. Like every other increase in the productiveness of labor, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and by shortening that portion of the working day in which the laborer works for himself, to lengthen the other portion that he gives without an equivalent to the capitalist. In short, it is a means for producing surplus value. In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production begins with the labor power. In modern industry it begins with the instruments of labor. Our first inquiry, then, is how the instruments of labor are converted from tools into machines, or what is the difference between a machine and the implements of a handicraft. We're only concerned here with striking and general characteristics, for epochs in the history of society are no more separated from each other by hard and fast lines of demarcation than our geological epochs. For instance, and mechanicians, and in this air, followed by a few English economists, call a tool a simple machine and a machine a complex tool. They see no essential difference between them, and even give the name of machine to the simple mechanical powers, the lever, the inclined plane, the screw, the wedge, etc. Footnote two. See, for instance, Hutton, course of mathematics, end of footnote two. As a matter of fact, every machine is a combination of those simple powers, no matter how they may be disguised. From the economic standpoint, this explanation is worth nothing, because a historical element is wanting. Another explanation of the difference between tool and machine is that, in the case of a tool, man is the mode of power, while the mode of power of a machine is something different from man, as, for instance, an animal, water, wind, and so on. Footnote three. From this point of view, we may draw a sharp line of distinction between a tool and a machine, spades, hammers, chisels, etc., combinations of levers and of screws, in all of which, no matter how complicated they may be in other respects, man is the mode of power. All this falls under the idea of a tool, but the plow, which is drawn by animal power, and windmills, etc., must be classed among machines. End of quote. Wilhelm Schultz, Die Bewegung der Produktion, Zurich, 1843, page 38. In many respects, a book to be recommended. End of footnote three. According to this, a plow drawn by oxen, which is a contrivance common to the most different epochs, would be a machine. According to this, a plow drawn by oxen, which is a contrivance common to the most different epochs, would be a machine. While Clausen's circular loom, which worked by a single laborer, weave's ninety-six thousand picks per minute, would be a mere tool. Nay, this very loom, though a tool when worked by hand, would, if worked by steam, be a machine. And since the application of animal power is one of man's earliest inventions, production by machinery would have preceded production by handicrafts. When in 1735 John Wyatt brought out his spinning machine, and began the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century, not a word did he say about an ass driving it instead of a man, and yet this part fell to the ass. He described it as a machine, quote, to spin without fingers, end of quote. Footnote four. Before this time, spinning machines, although very imperfect ones, had already been used, and Italy was probably the country of their first appearance. A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the eighteenth century are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there's no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of nature's technology, i.e. in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organization, deserve equal attention? One would not such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter. Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them. Every history of religion, even, that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical. It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialized forms of those relations. The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one. The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesman whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality. End of footnote four. All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor mechanism is that which puts the hole in motion. It either generates its own motive power like the steam engine, the caloric engine, the electromagnetic machine, etc. Or it receives its impulse from some already existing natural force like the water wheel from ahead of water, the windmill from wind, etc. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pulley, straps, ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing of the most various kinds, regulates the motion, changes its form where necessary, as for instance from linear to circular, and divides and distributes it among the working machines. These two first parts of the whole mechanism are there solely for putting the working machines in motion. By means of which motion the subject of labor is seized upon and modified as desired. The tool or working machine is that part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of the 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves as such a starting point whenever a handicraft or a manufacturer is turned into an industry carried on by machinery. On a closer examination of the working machine proper, we find in it as a general rule, though often no doubt under very altered forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicraftsmen or manufacturing workmen. With this difference, that instead of being human implements, they're the implements of a mechanism or mechanical implements. Either the entire machine is only a more or less altered mechanical addition of the old hand-to-graft tool as, for instance, the power loom, footnote five, especially in the original form of the power loom, we recognize that the first glance the ancient loom. In its modern form the power loom has undergone essential alterations, end of footnote five. Or the working parts fitted in the frame of the machine are old acquaintances as spindles are in a mule, needles in a stocking loom, saws in a sawing machine, and knives in a chopping machine. The distinction between these tools and the body proper of the machine exists from their very birth, for they continue for the most part to be produced by handicraft or by manufacturer and are afterwards fitted into the body of the machine, which is the product of machinery. Footnote six. It is only during the last fifteen years, i.e. since about eighteen fifty, that a constantly increasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery, and that not by the same manufacturers who make the machines. Instances of machines for the fabrication of these mechanical tools are the automatic bobbin-making engine, the card-setting engine, shuttle-making machines, and machines for forging mule and throttle spindles. End of footnote six. The machine proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the workmen with similar tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man or from some other machine makes no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool proper is taken from man and fitted into a mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere implement. The difference strikes one at once, even in those cases where man himself continues to be the prime mover. The number of implements that he himself can use simultaneously is limited by the number of his own natural instruments of production by the number of his bodily organs. In Germany they tried at first to make one spinner work two spinning wheels, that is, to work simultaneously with both hands and both feet. This was too difficult. Later, a treadled spinning wheel with two spindles was invented, but adepts in spinning who could spin two threads at once were almost as scarce as two-headed men. The Jenny, on the other hand, even at his very birth, spun with 12 to 18 spindles and the stocking loom knits with many thousand needles at once. The number of tools that a machine can bring into play simultaneously is from the very first emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the tools of a handicraftsman. In many manual implements, the distinction between man as a mere motive power and man as a workman or operator properly so-called is brought into striking contrast. For instance, the foot is merely the prime mover of the spinning wheel while the hand working with the spindle and drawing and twisting performs a real operation of spinning. It is this last part of the handicraftsman's implement that is first seized upon by the Industrial Revolution. Leaving to the workman, in addition to his new labor of watching the machine with his eyes and correcting its mistakes with his hands, the merely mechanical part of being the moving power. On the other hand, implements in regard to which man has always acted as a simple motive power, as for instance by turning the crank of a mill, footnote seven. Moses says, quote, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn, end of quote. The Christian philanthropists of Germany, on the contrary, fastened to wooden board round the necks of the serfs whom they used as a motive power for grinding, in order to prevent them from putting flour into their mouths with their hands. End of footnote seven. By pumping, by moving up and down the arm of the bellows, by pounding with a mortar, etc., such implements soon call for the application of animals, water, footnote eight. It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them and partly their battles with superabundance of water and other respects that compelled the Dutch to resort to wind as a motive power. The windmill itself they got from Germany, where its invention was the origin of a pretty squabble between the nobles, the priests and the emperor, as to which of those three the wind belonged. The air makes bondage, was the cry in Germany, at the same time that the wind was making Holland free. What had reduced to bondage in this case was not the Dutchman, but the land for the Dutchman. In 1836, 12,000 windmills of 6,000 horsepower were still employed in Holland to prevent two-thirds of the land from being reconverted into morasses. End of footnote eight. And wind as motive powers. Here and there, long before the period of manufacture and also to some extent during that period, these implements pass over into machines but without creating any revolution in the mode of production. It becomes evident in the period of modern industry that these implements, even under their form of manual tools, are already machines. For instance, the pumps with which the Dutch in 1836 and 7 emptied the lake of Harlem were constructed on the principle of ordinary pumps, the only difference being that their pistons were driven by cyclopean steam engines instead of by men. The common and very imperfect bellows of the blacksmith is in England occasionally converted into a blowing engine by connecting its arm with the steam engine. The steam engine itself, such as it was at its invention during the manufacturing period of the close of the 17th century and such as it continued to be down to 1780, footnote nine. It was indeed very much improved by what's first so-called single-acting engine, but in this form it continued to be a mere machine for raising water and the liquor from salt mines. End of footnote nine. Did not give rise to any industrial revolution. It was, on the contrary, the invention of machines that made a revolution in the form of steam engines necessary. As soon as man, instead of working with an implement on the subject of his labor, becomes merely the motive power of an implement machine, it is a mere accident that motive power takes the disguise of human muscle, and it may equally well take the form of wind, water, or steam. Of course, this does not prevent such a change of form from producing great technical alterations in a mechanism that was originally constructed to be driven by man alone. Nowadays, all machines that have their way to make, such as sewing machines, bread-making machines, et cetera, are, unless from their very nature, their use on a small scale is excluded, constructed to be driven both by human and by purely mechanical motive power. The machine which is the starting point of the industrial revolution supersedes the workman who handles a single tool by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools and set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of that power may be. Footnote 10. Quote, the union of all these simple instruments set in motion by a single motor constitutes a machine. End of quote, Babbage, location cited. End of footnote 10. Here we have the machine, but only as an elementary factor of production by machinery. Increase in the size of the machine and in the number of its working tools calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it. And this mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resistance, a mightier moving power than that of man, apart from the fact that man is a very imperfect instrument for producing uniform, continued motion. But assuming that he is acting simply as a motor, that a machine has taken the place of his tool, it's evident that he can be replaced by natural forces. Of all the great motors handed down from the manufacturing period, horsepower is the worst, partly because a horse has a head of his own, partly because he is costly, and the extent to which he is applicable in factories is very restricted. Footnote 11. In January, 1861, John C. Morton, read before the Society of Arts a paper on the forces employed in agriculture. He there states, quote, Every improvement that furthers the uniformity of the land makes the steam engine more and more applicable to the production of pure mechanical force. Horsepower is requisite wherever crooked fences and other obstructions prevent uniform action. These obstructions are vanishing day by day. For operations that demand more exercise of will than actual force, the only power applicable is that controlled every instant by the human mind, in other words, manpower. End of quote. Mr. Morton then reduces steam power, horsepower, and manpower. Through the unit in general use for steam engines, namely, the force required to raise 33,000 pounds, one foot in one minute, and reckons the cost of one horsepower from a steam engine to be three pence, and from a horse to be five and a half pence per hour. Further, if a horse must fully maintain its health, it can work no more than eight hours a day. Three, at the least, out of every seven horses used on tillage land during the year can be dispensed with by using steam power at an expense not greater than that which the horse is dispensed with would cost during the three or four months in which alone they can be used effectively. Lastly, steam power in those agricultural operations in which it can be employed improves, in comparison with horsepower, the quality of the work. To do the work of a steam engine would require 66 men at a total cost of 15 shillings an hour, and to do the work of a horse, 32 men, at a total cost of eight shillings an hour. End of footnote 11. Nevertheless, the horse was extensively used during the infancy of modern industry. This is proved as well by the complaints of contemporary agricultureists, as by the term horse power, which has survived to this day as an expression for mechanical force. Wind was too inconstant and uncontrollable, and besides, in England, the birthplace of modern industry, the use of water power preponderated even during the manufacturing period. In the 17th century, attempts had already been made to turn two pairs of millstones with a single water wheel, but the increased size of the gearing was too much for the water power, which had now become insufficient, and this was one of the circumstances that led to a more accurate investigation of the laws of friction. In the same way, the irregularity caused by the motive power in mills that were put in motion by pushing and pulling a lever led to the theory and the application of the flywheel, which afterwards plays so important a part in modern industry. Footnote 12. Foulhaber 1625, Decause 1688. End of footnote 12. In this way, during the manufacturing period, we're developed the first scientific and technical elements of modern mechanical industry. Arkwright's throttle spinning mill was from the very first turned by water, but for all that, the use of water as a predominant motive power was beset with difficulties. It could not be increased at will. It failed at certain seasons of the year, and above all, it was essentially local. Footnote 13. The modern turbine frees the industrial exploitation of water power from many of its former fetters. End of footnote 13. Not till the invention of Watts second in so-called double acting steam engine was a prime mover found that begot its own force by the consumption of cold and water, whose power was entirely under man's control that was mobile and a means of locomotion that was urban and not like the waterwheel rural, that permitted production to be concentrated in towns instead of like the water wheels being scattered up and down the country. Footnote 14. Quote, in the early days of textile manufacturers, the locality of the factory depended upon the existence of a stream having a sufficient fall to turn a waterwheel. And all the establishment of the water mills was the commencement of the breaking up of the domestic system of manufacture, yet the mills necessarily situated upon streams and frequently at considerable distances, the one from the other form part of a rural rather than an urban system. And it was not until the introduction of the steam power as a substitute for the stream that factories were congregated in towns and localities where the cold and water required for the production of steam were found in sufficient quantities. The steam engine is the parent of manufacturing towns. End of quote, a red grave in reports of the inspector of factories, 30th April 1860, page 36. End of footnote 14. That was a universal technical application and relatively speaking, little affected in his choice of residence by local circumstances. The greatness of what's genius showed itself in the specification of the patent that he took out in April 1784. In that specification, his steam engine is described not as an invention for a specific purpose but as an agent universally applicable in mechanical industry. In it he points out applications, many of which, as for instance the steam hammer, were not introduced till half a century later. Nevertheless, he doubted the use of steam engines in navigation. His successors, Bolton and Watt, sent to the exhibition of 1851, steam engines of colossal size for ocean steamers. As soon as tools had been converted from being manual implements of man into implements of a mechanical apparatus, of a machine, the motive mechanism also acquired an independent form entirely emancipated from the restraints of human strength. Thereupon the individual machine that we have hitherto been considering sinks into a mere factor in production by machinery. One motive mechanism was now able to drive many machines at once. The motive mechanism grows with the number of the machines that are turned simultaneously and the transmitting mechanism becomes a widespreading apparatus. We now proceed to distinguish the cooperation of a number of machines of one kind from a complex system of machinery. In the one case, the product is entirely made by a single machine, which performs all the various operations previously done by one handicraftsman with his tool. As for instance, by a weaver with his loom or by several handicraftsmen successively, either separately or as members of a system of manufacture. Footnote 15. From the standpoint of division of labor and manufacture, weaving was not simple, but on the contrary, complicated manual labor. And consequently, the power loom is a machine that does very complicated work. It's altogether erroneous to suppose that modern machinery originally appropriated those operations alone, which division of labor had simplified. Spinning and weaving were during the manufacturing period, split up into new species and the implements were modified and improved, but the labor itself was in no way divided and it retained its handicraft character. It's not the labor, but the instrument of labor that serves as the starting point of the machine. End of footnote 15. For example, in the manufacture of envelopes, one man folded the paper with a folder, another laid on the gun, a third turned the flap over on which the device is impressed, a fourth embossed the device, and so on. And for each of these operations, the envelope had to change hands. One single envelope machine now performs all these operations at once and makes more than 3,000 envelopes in an hour. In the London exhibition of 1862, there was an American machine for making paper cornets. It cut the paper, pasted, folded, and finished 300 in a minute. Here the whole process, which when carried on as manufacturer, was split into and carried out by a series of operations, is completed by a single machine working a combination of various tools. Now, whether such a machine be merely a reproduction of a complicated manual implement, or a combination of various simple implements specialized by manufacture, in either case in the factory, i.e. in the workshop in which machinery alone is used, we meet again with simple cooperation. And, leaving the workman out of consideration for the moment, this cooperation presents itself to us in the first instance as a conglomeration in one place of similar and simultaneously acting machines. Thus a weaving factory is constituted of a number of power looms working side by side, and a sewing factory of a number of sewing machines, all in the same building. But there is here a technical oneness in the whole system, owing to all the machines receiving their impulse simultaneously and in an equal degree from the pulsations of the common prime mover by the intermediary of the transmitting mechanism. And this mechanism to a certain extent is also common to them all, since only particular ramifications of it branch off to each machine. Just as a number of tools then form the organs of a machine, so a number of machines of one kind constitute the organs of the motive mechanism. A real machinery system, however, does not take the place of these independent machines until the subject of labor goes through a connected series of detailed processes that are carried out by a chain of machines of various kinds, the one supplementing the other. Here we have again the cooperation by division of labor that characterizes manufacture, only now it is a combination of detailed machines. The special tools of the various detailed workmen, such as those of the beaters, cambers, spinners, et cetera in the woolen manufacture, are now transformed into the tools of specialized machines, each machine constituting a special organ with a special function in the system. In those branches of industry in which the machinery system is first introduced, manufacture itself furnishes in a general way the natural basis for the division and consequent organization of the process of production. Footnote 16. Before the epoch of mechanical industry, the wool manufacturer was a predominant manufacturer in England. Hence it was in this industry that in the first half of the 18th century, the most experiments were made. Cotton, which required less careful preparation for its treatment by machinery, derived the benefit of the experience gained in wool, just as afterwards a manipulation of wool by machinery was developed on the lines of cotton spinning and weaving by machinery. It was only during the 10 years immediately preceding 1866 that isolated details of the wool manufacturer such as wool combing were incorporated in the factory system. Quote, the application of power to the process of combing wool, extensively in operation since the introduction of the combing machine, especially listers, undoubtedly had the effect of throwing a very large number of men out of work. Wool was formerly combed by hand, most frequently in the cottage of the Comber. It is now very generally combed in the factory and hand labor is superseded, except in some particular kinds of work in which hand combed wool is still preferred. Many of the hand combers found employment in the factories, but the produce of the hand comers bears so small a proportion to that of the machine that the employment of a very large number of comers has passed away. End of quote. Report of the inspector of factories for 31st October, 1856, page 16. End of footnote 16. Nevertheless, an essential difference at once manifests itself. In manufactured is the workman who, with their manual implements, must either singly or in groups carry on each particular detail process. If, on the one hand, the workman becomes adapted to the process, on the other, the process was previously made suitable to the workman. This subjective principle of the division of labor no longer exists in production by machinery. Here the process as a whole is examined objectively in itself. That's to say, without regard to the question of its execution by human hands, it is analyzed into its constituent phases and the problem how to execute each detail process and bind them all into a whole is solved by the aid of machines, chemistry, and et cetera. Footnote 17. Quote. The principle of the factory system then is to substitute the partition of a process into its essential constituents for the division or graduation of labor among artisans. End of quote. Andrew Yure, the philosophy of manufacturers, London 1835, page 20. End of footnote 17. But of course, in this case also, theory must be perfected by accumulated experience on a large scale. Each detail machine supplies raw material to the machine next in order. And since they're all working at the same time, the product is always going through the various stages of its fabrication and is also constantly in a state of transition from one phase to another. Just as in manufacture, the direct cooperation of the detailed laborers establishes a numerical proportion between the special groups. So in an organized system of machinery where one detailed machine is constantly kept employed by another, a fixed relation is established between their numbers, their size, and their speed. The collective machine, now an organized system of various kinds of single machines and of groups of single machines, becomes more and more perfect. The more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one, i.e. the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its last. In other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is affected not by the hand of man but by the machinery itself. In manufacture, the isolation of each detailed process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labor. But in the fully developed factory, the continuity of those processes is on the contrary, imperative. A system of machinery, whether it reposes on the mere cooperation of similar machines as in weaving or on the combination of different machines as in spinning, constitutes in itself a huge automaton whenever it is driven by a self-acting prime mover. But although the factory as a whole be driven by its steam engine, yet either some of the individual machines may require the aid of the workmen for some of their movements. Such aid was necessary for the running in of the mule carriage before the invention of the self-acting mule and is still necessary in fine spinning mills. Or to enable a machine to do its work, certain parts of it may require to be handled by the workmen like a manual tool. This was the case in machine maker's workshops before the conversion of the slide rest into a self-actor. As soon as a machine executes without man's help, all the movements requisite to elaborate the raw material, needing only attendance from him, we have an automatic system of machinery and one that is susceptible of constant improvement in its details. Such improvements as the apparatus that stops a drawing frame whenever a sliver breaks and the self-acting stop that stops the power loom so soon as the shuttle bobbin is emptied of weft are quite modern inventions. As an example, both of continuity of production and of the carrying out of the automatic principle, we may take a modern paper mill. In the paper industry generally, we may advantageously study in detail not only the distinction between modes of production based on different means of production, but also the connection of the social conditions of production with those modes. For the old German paper making furnishes us with a sample of handicraft production that of Holland in the 17th and of France in the 18th century, with a sample of manufacturing in the strict sense and that of modern England with a sample of automatic fabrication of this article. Besides these, there still exist in India and China two distinct antique asiatic forms of the same industry. An organized system of machines to which motion is communicated by the transmitting mechanism from a central automaton is the most developed form of production by machinery. Here we have in place of the isolated machine a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories and whose demon power at first veiled under the slow and measured motions of his giant limbs. At length breaks out into the fast and furious whirl of his countless working organs. There were mules and steam engines before there were any laborers whose exclusive occupation it was to make mules and steam engines, just as men were clothes before there were such people as tailors. The inventions of Valkensohn, Arkwright, Watt and others were, however, practicable only because those inventors found ready to hand a considerable number of skilled mechanical workmen placed at their disposal by the manufacturing period. Some of these workmen were independent handicraftsmen of various trades. Others were grouped together in manufacturers in which, as before mentioned, division of labor was strictly carried out. As inventions increased in number and the demand for the newly discovered machines grew larger, the machine-making industry split up more and more into numerous independent branches and division of labor in these manufacturers was more and more developed. Here, then, we see and manufacture the immediate technical foundation of modern industry. Manufacture produced a machinery by means of which modern industry abolished the handicraft of manufacturing systems in those spheres of production that it first seized upon. The factory system was therefore raised in a natural course of things on an inadequate foundation. When the system attained to a certain degree of development it had to root up this ready-made foundation which in the meantime had been elaborated on the old lines and to build up for itself a basis that should correspond to its methods of production. Just as the individual machine retains a dwarfish character so long as it has worked by the power of man alone and just as no system of machinery could be properly developed before the steam engine took the place of the earlier emotive powers, animals, wind and even water, so too, modern industry was crippled in its complete development so long as its characteristic instrument of production, the machine, owed its existence to personal strength and personal skill and depended upon a muscular development, the keenness of sight and the cunning of hand with which the detailed workmen in manufacturers and the manual laborers and handicrafts wielded their dwarfish implements. Thus, apart from the dearness of the machines made in this way, a circumstance that is ever present to the mind of the capitalist, the expansion of industries carried on by means of machinery and the invasion by machinery of fresh branches of production were dependent on the growth of a class of workmen who, owing to the almost artistic nature of their employment, could increase their numbers only gradually and not by leaps and bounds. But besides this, at a certain stage of its development, modern industry became technologically incompatible with the basis furnished for it by handicraft and manufacture. The increasing size of the prime movers of the transmitting mechanism and of the machines proper, the greater complication, multi-formity and regularity of the details of these machines, as they more and more departed from the model of those originally made by manual labor and acquired a form untrammeled except by the conditions under which they worked, footnote 18. The power loom was at first made chiefly of wood. In its improved modern form, it is made of iron. To what an extent the old forms of the instruments of production influence their new forms at first starting is shown by, amongst other things, the most superficial comparison of the present power loom with the old one, of the modern blowing apparatus of a blast furnace with the first inefficient mechanical reproduction of the ordinary bellows and perhaps more strikingly than in any other way by the attempts before the invention of the present locomotive to construct a locomotive that actually had two feet which after the fashion of a horse it raised alternately from the ground. It's only after considerable development of the science of mechanics and accumulated practical experience that the form of a machine becomes settled entirely in accordance with mechanical principles and emancipated from the traditional form of the tool that gave rise to it. End of footnote 18. The perfecting of the automatic system and the use every day more unavoidable of a more refractory material such as iron instead of wood. The solution of all these problems which sprang up by the force of circumstances everywhere met with the stumbling block in the personal restrictions which even the collective laborer of manufacture could not break through except to a limited extent. Such machines as the modern hydraulic press, the modern power loom and the modern carting engine could never have been furnished by manufacture. A radical change in the mode of production in one sphere of industry involves a similar change in other spheres. This happens at first in such branches of industry as are connected together by being separate phases of a process and yet are isolated by the social division of labor in such a way that each of them produces an independent commodity. Thus, spinning by machinery made weaving by machinery in necessity and both together made the mechanical and chemical revolution that took place in bleaching, printing and dyeing imperative. So too on the other hand, the revolution in cotton spinning called forth the invention of the gin for separating the seeds from the cotton fiber. It was only by means of this invention that the production of cotton became possible on the enormous scale at present required. Footnote 19. Eli Whitney's cotton gin had until very recent times undergone less essential changes than any other machine of the 18th century. It's only during the last decade, i.e. since 1856, that another American, Mr. Emory of Albany, New York, has rendered Whitney's gin antiquated by an improvement as simple as it is effective. End of footnote 19. But more especially, the revolution in the modes of production of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of the social process of production, i.e. in the means of communication and of transport. In a society whose pivot, to use an expression of Fourier, was agriculture on a small scale with its subsidiary domestic industries and the urban handicrafts, the means of communication and transport were so utterly inadequate to the productive requirements of the manufacturing period with its extended division of social labor, its concentration of the instruments of labor and of the workmen, and its colonial markets that they became in fact revolutionized. In the same way, the means of communication and transport handed down from the manufacturing period soon became unbearable trammels on modern industry with its feverish haste of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of capital and labor from one sphere of production into another, and its newly created connections with the markets of the whole world. Hence, apart from the radical changes introduced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of communication and transport became gradually adapted to the modes of production of mechanical industry by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and telegraphs. But the huge masses of iron that had now to be forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped, demanded on their part cyclopian machines for the construction of which the methods of the manufacturing period were utterly inadequate. Modern industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this that it built up for itself a fitting technical foundation and stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneous with the increasing use of it in the first decades of the century, appropriated by degrees the fabrication of machines proper. But it was only during the decade preceding 1866 that the construction of railways and ocean steamers on a stupendous scale called into existence the cyclopian machines now employed in the construction of prime movers. The most essential condition to the production of machines by machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any amount of force, and yet under perfect control. Such a condition was already supplied by the steam engine, but at the same time it was necessary to produce the geometrically accurate straight lines, planes, circles, cylinders, cones, and spheres required in the detailed parts of the machines. This problem Henry Maudsley solved in the first decade of the century by the invention of the slide rest, a tool that was soon made automatic and in a modified form was applied to other constructive machines besides the lathe for which it was originally intended. This mechanical appliance replaces not some particular tool, but the hand itself, which produces a given form by holding and guiding the cutting tool along the iron or other material operated upon. Thus it became possible to produce the forms of the individual parts of machinery quote, with a degree of ease, accuracy, and speed that no accumulated experience of the hand of the most skilled workman could give end of quote, footnote 20. The industry of nations, in London 1855, part two, page 239. This work also remarks quote, simple and outwardly unimportant as this appendage to lathe's may appear, it is not we believe a very too much to state that its influence in improving and extending the use of machinery has been as great as that produced by what's improvements of the steam engine itself. Its introduction went at once to perfect all machinery, to cheapen it, and to stimulate invention and improvement, end of quote, end of footnote 20. If we now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery employed in the construction of machines which constitutes the operating tool, we find the manual implements reappearing but on a cyclopean scale. The operating part of the boring machine is an immense drill driven by a steam engine. Without this machine on the other hand, the cylinders of large steam engines and of hydraulic presses could not be made. The mechanical lathe is only a cyclopean reproduction of the ordinary foot lathe. The planing machine is an iron carpenter that works on iron with the same tools that the human carpenter employs on wood. The instrument that on the London wharves cuts the veneers is a gigantic razor. The tool of the shearing machine which shears iron as easily as a tailor's scissors cut cloth is a monster pair of scissors. And the steam hammer works with an ordinary hammerhead but of such weight that not Thor himself could wield it. Footnote 21. One of these machines used for forging paddle wheel shafts in London is called Thor. It forges a shaft of 16 and a half tons with as much ease as a blacksmith forges a horseshoe. End of footnote 21. These steam hammers are an invention of Nasmith and there's one that weighs over six tons and strikes with a vertical fall of seven feet on an anvil weighing 36 tons. It is mere child's play for it to crush a block of granite into powder yet it is no less capable of driving with a succession of light taps and nail into a piece of soft wood. Footnote 22. Woodworking machines that are also capable of being employed on a small scale are mostly American inventions. End of footnote 22. The implements of labor in the form of machinery necessitate the substitution of natural forces for human force and the conscious application of science instead of rule of thumb. In manufacture the organization of the social labor process is purely subjective. It is a combination of detail laborers. In its machinery system modern industry has a productive organism that is purely objective in which the laborer becomes a mere appendage to an already existing material condition of production. In simple cooperation and even in that founded on division of labor the suppression of the isolated by the collective workmen still appears to be more or less accidental. Machinery with a few exceptions to be mentioned later operates only by means of associated labor or labor in common. Hence the cooperative character of the labor process is in the latter case a technical necessity dictated by the instrument of labor itself. End of part four, production of relative surplus value. Chapter 15, machinery in modern industry. Section one, the development of machinery. Chapter 15, section two of capital volume one. 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 one by Karl Marx. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Eveling and edited by Frederick Engels. Part four, production of relative surplus value. Chapter 15, machinery in modern industry. Section two, the value transferred by machinery to the product. We saw that the productive forces resulting from cooperation and division of labor cost capital nothing. They are natural forces of social labor. So also physical forces like steam, water, et cetera when appropriated to productive processes cost nothing. But just as a man requires lungs to breathe with so he requires something that is work of man's hand in order to consume physical forces productively. A water wheel is necessary to exploit the force of water and a steam engine to exploit the elasticity of steam. Once discovered, the law of the deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an electric current or the law of the magnetization of iron around which an electric current circulates cost never a penny. Footnote. Science, generally speaking, costs the capitalist nothing. A fact that by no means hinders him from exploiting it. The science of others is as much annexed by capital as the labor of others. Capitalistic appropriation and personal appropriation whether of science or of material wealth are, however, totally different things. Dr. Ure himself deplores the gross ignorance of mechanical science existing among his dear machinery exploiting manufacturers and Liebich can a tale unfold about the astounding ignorance of chemistry displayed by English chemical manufacturers. And footnote. But the exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy, et cetera, necessitates a costly and extensive apparatus. The tool, as we've seen, is not exterminated by the machine. From being a dwarf implement of the human organism it expands and multiplies into the implement of a mechanism created by man. Capital now sets the laborer to work not with a manual tool but with a machine which itself handles the tools. Although therefore it is clear at the first glance that by incorporating both stupendous physical forces and the natural sciences with the process of production modern industry raises the productiveness of labor to an extraordinary degree it is by no means equally clear that this increased productive force is not, on the other hand, purchased by an increased expenditure of labor. Machinery, like every other component of constant capital, creates no new value but yields up its own value to the product that it serves to beget. Insofar as the machine has value and in consequence parts with value to the product it forms an element in the value of that product. Instead of being cheapened the product is made dearer in proportion to the value of the machine and it is clear as noonday that machines and systems of machinery the characteristic instruments of labor of modern industry are incomparably more loaded with value than the implement used in handicrafts and manufacturers. In the first place it must be observed that the machinery while always entering as a whole into the labor process enters into the value-begetting process only by bits. It never adds more value than it loses on an average by wear and tear. Hence there is a great difference between the value of a machine and the value transferred in a given time by that machine to the product. The longer the life of the machine in the labor process the greater is that difference. It is true no doubt as we've already seen that every instrument of labor enters as a whole into the labor process and only piecemeal proportionally to its average daily loss by wear and tear into the value-begetting process. But this difference between the instrument as a whole and its daily wear and tear is much greater in the machine than in a tool because the machine being made from more durable material has a longer life. Because its employment being regulated by strictly scientific laws allows of greater economy in the wear and tear of its parts and in the materials it consumes and lastly because its field of production is incomparably larger than that of a tool. After making allowance both in the case of the machine and of the tool for their average daily cost that is for the value they transmit to the product by their average daily wear and tear and for their consumption of auxiliary substance such as oil, coal and so on they each do their work gratuitously just like the forces furnished by nature without the help of man. The greater the productive power of the machinery compared with that of the tool the greater is the extent of its gratuitous service compared with that of the tool. In modern industry man succeeded for the first time in making the product of his past labor work on a large scale gratuitously like the forces of nature. Footnote Ricardo lays such stress on this effect of machinery of which in other connections he takes no more notice than he does of the general distinction between the labor process and the process of creating surplus value that he occasionally loses sight of the value given up by machines to the product and puts machines on the same footing as natural forces. Thus, quote Adam Smith nowhere under values the services which the natural agents and machinery perform for us but he very justly distinguishes the nature of the value which they add to commodities as they perform their work gratuitously the assistance which they afford us adds nothing to value in exchange. End quote Ricardo Lococeteto pages three hundred and thirty six and three hundred and thirty seven. This observation of Ricardo is of course correct insofar as it is directed against JBC who imagines that machines render the service of creating value which forms a part of profits and footnote. In treating of cooperation and manufacture it was shown that certain general factors of production such as buildings are in comparison with the scattered means of production of the isolated workmen economized by being consumed in common and that they therefore make the product cheaper. In a system of machinery not only is the framework of the machine consumed in common by its numerous operating implements but the prime mover together with a part of the transmitting mechanism is consumed in common by the numerous operative machines. Given the difference between the value of the machinery and the value transferred by it in a day to the product the extent to which this latter value makes the product dearer depends in the first instance upon the size of the product so to say upon its area. Mr. Baines of Blackburn in a lecture published in 1858 estimates that quote each real mechanical horsepower will drive 450 self-acting mule spindles with preparation or 200 throttle spindles or 15 looms for 40-inch cloth with the appliances for warping, sizing, etc. end quote footnote. A horsepower is equal to a force of 33,000 foot-pounds per minute that is to a force that raises 33,000 pounds one foot in a minute or one pound 33,000 feet. This is the horsepower meant in the text. In ordinary language and also here and there in quotations in this work a distinction is drawn between the nominal and the commercial or indicated horsepower of the same engine. The old or nominal horsepower is calculated exclusively from the length of piston stroke and the diameter of the cylinder and leaves pressure of steam and piston speed out of consideration. It expresses practically this. This engine would be one of 50 horsepower if it were driven with the same low pressure of steam and the same slow piston speed as in the days of Bolton and Watt. But the two latter factors have increased enormously since those days. In order to measure the mechanical force exerted today by an engine an indicator has been invented which shows the pressure of the steam in the cylinder. The piston speed is easily a certain. Thus the indicated or commercial horsepower of an engine is expressed by a mathematical formula involving diameter of cylinder length of stroke piston speed and steam pressure simultaneously and showing what multiple of 33,000 pounds is really raised by the engine in a minute. Hence one nominal horsepower may exert three, four or even five indicated or real horsepower. This observation is made for the purpose of explaining various citations in the subsequent pages. F, E and footnote. In the first case it is the day's produce of 450 mule spindles in the second of 200 throttle spindles in the third of 15 power looms over which the daily cost of one horsepower and the wear and tear of the machinery set in motion by that power are spread so that only a very minute value is transferred by such wear and tear to a pound of yarn or a yard of cloth. The same is the case with the steam hammer mentioned above. Since its daily wear and tear its coal consumption etc. are spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in a day only a small value is added to a hundred weight of iron. But that value would be very great if the cyclopean instrument were employed in driving in nails. Given a machine's capacity for work that is the number of its operating tools or where it is a question of force, their mass, the amount of its product will depend on the velocity of its working parts on the speed for instance of the spindles or on the number of blows given by the hammer in a minute. Many of these colossal hammers strike 70 times in a minute and Ryder's patent machine for forging spindles with small hammers gives us many as 700 strokes per minute. Given the rate at which machinery transfers its value to the product the amount of value so transferred depends on the total value of the machinery. Footnote The reader who is imbued with capitalist notions will naturally miss here the interest that the machine in proportion to its capital value adds to the product. It is however easily seen that since the machine no more creates new value than any other part of constant capital it cannot add any value under the name of interest. It is also evident that here where we are treating of the production of surplus value we cannot assume our priori the existence of any part of that value under the name of interest. The capitalist mode of calculating which appears prima facie absurd and repugnant to the laws of the creation of value will be explained in the third book of this work and footnote. The less labor it contains the less value it imparts of the product. The less value it gives up so much the more productive it is and so much the more its services approximate to those of natural forces but the production of machinery by machinery lessens its value relatively to its extension and efficacy. An analysis and comparison of the prices of commodities produced by handicrafts or manufacturers and of the prices of the same commodities produced by machinery shows generally that in the product of machinery the value due to the instruments of labor increases relatively but decreases absolutely. In other words its absolute amount decreases but its amount relatively to the total value of the product of a pound of yarn for instance increases. Footnote. This portion of value which is added by the machinery decreases both absolutely and relatively when the machinery does away with horses and other animals that are employed as mere moving forces and not as machines for changing the form of matter. It may here be incidentally observed that Descartes in defining animals as mere machines saw with eyes of the manufacturing period while to eyes of the Middle Ages animals were assistants to man as they were later to von Haller in his Restoration der Staatswissenschaften. That Descartes, like Bacon, anticipated an alteration in the form of production and the practical subjugation of nature by man as a result of the altered methods of thought is plain from his Descours de la méthode. He there says End quote. In the preface to Sir Dudley North's discourses upon trade, 1691, it is stated that Descartes method had begun to free political economy from the old fables and superstitious notions of gold, trade, etc. On the whole, however, the early English economists sided with Bacon and Hobbes as their philosophers while at a later period the philosopher of political economy in England, France and Italy was Locke and Footnote. It is evident that whenever it costs as much labour to produce a machine as is saved by the employment of that machine there is nothing but the transposition of labour. Consequently, the total labour required to produce a commodity is not lessened or the productiveness of labour is not increased. It is clear, however, that the difference between the labourer machine costs and the labour it saves, in other words, that the degree of its productiveness does not depend on the difference between its own value and the value of the implemented replaces. As long as the labour spent on a machine and consequently the portion of its value added to the product remains smaller than the value added by the workman to the product with his tool, there is always a difference of labour saved in favour of the machine. The productiveness of a machine is therefore measured by the human labour power it replaces. According to Mr. Baines, two operatives are required for the 450 mule spindles inclusive of preparation machinery that are driven by one horsepower. Each self-acting mule spindle working 10 hours produces 13 oz of yarn, average number of thickness. Consequently, two and a half operatives spin weakly 365 5-8 pounds of yarn. Footnote According to the annual report 1863 of the Essent Chamber of Commerce that was produced in 1862 at the Cast Steelworks of Krupp with its 161 furnaces, 32 steam engines. In the year 1800 this was about the number of all the steam engines working in Manchester, and 14 steam hammers representing an all 1236 horsepower, 49 forges, 203 tool machines, and about 2,400 workmen, 13 million pounds of cast steel. Here there are not two workmen to each horsepower. And footnote Hence leaving waste on one side 366 pounds of cotton absorbed during their conversion to yarn only 150 hours labour or 15 days labour of 10 hours each. But with a spinning wheel supposing the hand spinner to produce 13 ounces of yarn in 60 hours the same weight of cotton would absorb 2,700 days labour of 10 hours each or 27,000 hours labour. Footnote Babbage estimates that in Java the spinning labour alone adds 117 percent to the value of the cotton. At the same period 1832 the total value added to the cotton by machinery and labour in the fine spinning industry amounted to about 33 percent of the value of the cotton. On the economy of machinery pages 165 and 166 and footnote. Where block printing the old method of printing calico by hand has been superseded by machine printing a single machine prints with the aid of one man or boy as much calico of four colons in one hour as it formally took 200 man to do. Footnote Machine printing also economizes colour and footnote. Before Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 the separation of the seed from a pound of cotton cost an average day's labour. By means of his invention one negro's was enabled to clean 100 pounds daily and since then the efficacy of the gin has been considerably increased. A pound of cotton wool previously costing 50 cents to produce included after that invention more unpaid labour and was consequently sold with greater profit at 10 cents. In India they employ for separating the wool from the seed an instrument, half machine, half tool called a chirka. With this one man and a woman can clean 28 pounds daily. With the chirka invented some years ago by Dr. Forbes one man and a boy produced 250 pounds daily. If oxen, steam or water be used for driving it only a few boys and girls as feeders are required. 16 of these machines driven by oxen do as much work in a day as formally 750 people did on an average. Footnote See paper read by Dr. Watson reporter on products to the government of India before the Society of Arts 17th April 1860 and footnote As already stated a steam plow does as much work in one hour at a cost of threepence as 66 men at a cost of 15 chillings. I return to this example in order to clear up an erroneous notion. The 15 chillings are by no means the expression in money of all labour expended in one hour by the 66 men. If the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour were 100% these 66 men would produce in one hour a value of 30 chillings although their wages 15 chillings represent only their labour for half an hour. Suppose then a machine costs as much as the wages for a year of the 150 men it displaces say 3,000 pounds sterling. This 3,000 pounds sterling is by no means the expression in money of the labour added to the object produced by these 150 men before the introduction of the machine but only of that portion of their year's labour which was expended for themselves and represented by their wages. On the other hand the 3,000 pounds sterling the money value of the machine expresses all the labour expended on its production no matter in what proportion this labour constitutes wages for the workmen and surplus value for the capitalists. Therefore though a machine costs as much as the labour power displaced by it costs yet the labour materialised in it is even then much less than the living labour it replaces footnote quote these mute agents machines are always the produce of much less labour than that which they displace even when they are of the same money value end quote Ricardo Lococetato page 40 end footnote thus the use of machinery for the exclusive purpose of cheapening the product is limited in this way that less labour must be expanded in producing the machinery than is displaced by the employment of that machinery for the capitalists however this use is still more limited instead of paying for the labour he only pays the value of the labour power employed therefore the limit to his using a machine is fixed by the difference between the value of the machine and the value of the labour power replaced by it since the division of the day's work into necessary and surplus labour differs in different countries and even in the same country at different periods or in different branches of industry and further since the actual wage for the labour at one time sinks below the value of his labour power at another rises above it it is possible for the difference between the price of the machinery and the price of the labour power replaced by that machinery to vary very much although the difference between the quantity of labour requisite to produce the machine and the total quantity replaced by it remain constant footnote hence in a communistic society there would be a very different scope for the employment of machinery than there can be in a bourgeois society and a footnote but it is the former difference alone that determines the cost to the capitalists of producing a commodity and through the pressure of competition influences his action hence the invention nowadays of machines in England that are employed only in North America just as in the 16th and 17th centuries machines were invented in Germany to be used only in Holland and just as many a French invention of the 18th century was exploited in England alone in the older countries machinery when employed in some branches of industry creates such a redundancy of labour in other branches that in these letter the fall of wages below the value of labour power impedes the use of machinery and from the standpoint of the capitalist whose profit comes not from a diminution of the labour employed but of the labour paid for renders that use superfluous and often impossible in some branches of the woolen manufacture in England the employment of children has during recent years been considerably diminished and in some cases has been entirely abolished why? because the factory acts made two sets of children necessary one working six hours the other full or each working five hours but the parents refused to sell the half timers cheaper than the full timers hence the substitution of machinery for the half timers footnote quote employers of labour would not unnecessarily retain two sets of children under thirteen in fact one class of manufacturers the spinners of woolen yarn now rarely employ children under thirteen years of age that is half timers they have introduced improved and new machinery of various kinds which altogether supersedes the employment of children that is under thirteen years for information I will mention one process as an illustration of this diminution in the number of children wherein by the addition of an apparatus called a piecing machine to existing machines the work of six or four half timers according to the peculiarity of each machine can be performed by one young person over thirteen years the halftime system stimulated the invention of the piecing machine end quote reports of inspectors of factories for 31st october 1858 end footnote before the labour of women and of children under ten years of age was forbidden in mines capitalists considered the employment of naked women and girls often in company with men so far sanctioned by their moral code and especially by their ledges that it was only after the passing of the act that they had recourse to machinery the Yankees have invented a stone breaking machine the English do not make use of it because the wretch who does this work gets paid for such a small portion of his labour that machinery would increase the cost of production to the capitalist footnote wretch is the recognised term in English political economy for the agricultural labourer quote machinery can frequently not be employed until labour he means wages rises end quote Ricardo Lococitato page 479 end footnote in England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling kennel boats because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation footnote see report of the social science congress at Edinburgh october 1863 end footnote hence nowhere do we find a more shameful squandering of human labour power for the most despicable purposes than in England the land of machinery end of part 4 chapter 15 section 2