History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0094/00941.txt

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$Title{Das Kapital: A Critique Of Political Economy
Chapter XV: Machinery And Modern Industry}
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$Author{Marx, Karl}
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$Subject{labour
machinery
value
capital
machine
industry
workmen
labour-power
production
working}
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Title:       Das Kapital: A Critique Of Political Economy
Book:        Part IV:  Production Of Relative Surplus-Value
Author:      Marx, Karl

Chapter XV: Machinery And Modern Industry

     John Stuart Mill says in his Principles of Political Economy: "It is
questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the
day's toil of any human being."  That is, however, by no means the aim of the
capitalistic application of machinery.  Like every other increase in the
productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and,
by shortening that portion of the working-day, in which the labourer 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
labour-power, in modern industry it begins with the instruments of labour.

Section 2: The Value Transferred By Machinery To The Product

     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 magnetisation of iron, around which an electric current circulates,
cost never a penny.  But the exploitation of these laws for the purposes of
telegraphy, &c., necessitates a costly and expensive apparatus.  The tool, as
we have seen, is not exterminated by the machine.  From being a dwarf
implement of the human organism, it expands and multiplies into the implement
of mechanism created by man.  Capital now sets the labourer 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 labour 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 labour.  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.  In so far 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 ... that
machines and systems of machinery, the characteristic instruments of labour
of Modern Industry, are incomparably more loaded with value than the
implements used in handicrafts and manufactures.

     In the first place, it must be observed that the machinery, while always
entering as a whole into the labour-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 labour-process, the
greater is that difference.  It is true, no doubt, as we have already seen,
that every instrument of labour enters as a whole into the labour-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 a
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....  The greater the
productive power of the machinery compared with that of the tool, the greater
is the extent of its gratuitously service compared with that of the tool.  In
Modern Industry man succeeded for the first time in making the product of his
past labour work on a large scale gratuitously, like the forces of nature.

     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 labour, 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. ^1

[Footnote 1: 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 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 a
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 labour a 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 implement it 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.

     The use of machinery for the exclusive purpose of cheapening the
product, is limited in this way, that less labour must be expended in
producing the machinery than is displaced by the employment of that
machinery.  For the capitalist, 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 of the labourer 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 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.  But it is the former
difference alone that determines the cost, to the capitalist, of producing a
commodity, and, through the pressure of competition, influences his action.
Hence the invention now-a-days of machines in England that are employed only
in North America; just as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
machines were invented in Germany to be used only in Holland, and just as
many a French invention of the eighteenth century was exploited in England
alone.

Section 3: The Approximate Effects Of Machinery On The Workman

     The starting point of Modern Industry is ... the revolution in the
instruments of labour, and this revolution attains its most highly developed
form in the organised system of machinery in a factory. . . .  Let us
consider some general effects of this revolution on the labourer himself.

     In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means
of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and those whose bodily
development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple.  The
labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by
capitalists who used machinery.  That mighty substitute for labour and
labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of
wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member
of the workman's family, without distinction of age or sex.  Compulsory work
for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children's play, but
also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the
family.

     The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time
necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that
necessary to maintain his family.  Machinery, by throwing every member of
that family on to the labour market, spreads the value of the man's
labour-power over his whole family.  It thus depreciates his
labour-power. . . .  Thus we see, that machinery, while augmenting the human
material that forms the principal object of capital's exploiting power, at
the same time raises the degree of exploitation.

     Machinery also revolutionises out and out the contract between the
labourer and the capitalist, which formally fixes their mutual relations.
Taking the exchange of commodities as our basis, our first assumption was
that capitalist and labourer met as free persons, as independent owners of
commodities; the one possessing money and means of production, the other
labour-power.  But now the capitalist buys children and young persons under
age.  Previously, the workman sold his own labour power, which he disposed of
nominally as a free agent.  Now he sells wife and child.  He has become a
slave dealer.

     If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the
productiveness of labour - i.e., for shortening the working time required in
the production of a commodity, it becomes in the hands of capital the most
powerful means, in those industries first invaded by it, for lengthening the
working day beyond all bounds set by human nature.  It creates, on the one
hand, new conditions by which capital is enabled to give free scope to this
its constant tendency, and on the other hand, new motives with which to whet
capital's appetite for the labour of others.

     In the first place, in form of machinery, the implements of labour
become automatic, things moving and working independent of the workman.  They
are thenceforth an industrial perpetuum mobile, that would go on producing
forever, did it not meet with certain natural obstructions in the weak bodies
and the strong wills of its human attendants.

     Given the length of the working day, all other circumstances remaining
the same, the exploitation of double the number of workmen demands, not only
a doubling of that part of constant capital which is invested in machinery
and buildings, but also of that part which is laid out in raw material and
auxiliary substances.  The lengthening of the working day, on the other hand,
allows of production on an extended scale without any alteration in the
amount of capital laid out on machinery and buildings.  Not only is there,
therefore, an increase of surplus-value, but the outlay necessary to obtain
it diminishes.  It is true that this takes place, more or less, with every
lengthening of the working day; but in the case under consideration, the
change is more marked, because the capital converted into the instruments of
labour preponderates to a greater degree.  The development of the factory
system fixes a constantly increasing portion of the capital in a form, in
which, on the one hand, its value is capable of continual self-expansion, and
in which, on the other hand, it loses both use-value and exchange-value
whenever it loses contact with living labour.

     Machinery produces relative surplus-value; not only by directly
depreciating the value of labour-power, and by indirectly cheapening the same
through cheapening the commodities that enter into its reproduction, but
also, when it is first introduced sporadically into an industry, by
converting the labour employed by the owner of that machinery, into labour of
a higher degree and greater efficacy, by raising the social value of the
article produced above its individual value, and thus enabling the capitalist
to replace the value of a day's labour-power by a smaller portion of the
value of the day's product.  During this transition period, when the use of
machinery is a sort of monopoly, the profits are therefore exceptional, and
the capitalist endeavours to exploit thoroughly "the sunny time of this his
first love," by prolonging the working-day as much as possible.  The
magnitude of the profit whets his appetite for more profit.

     As the use of machinery becomes more general in a particular industry,
the social value of the product sinks down to its individual value, and the
law that surplus-value does not arise from the labour-power that has been
replaced by the machinery, but from the labour-power actually employed in
working with the machinery, asserts itself.  Surplus-value arises from the
variable capital alone, and we saw that the amount of surplus-value depends
on two factors, viz., the rate of surplus-value and the number of the workmen
simultaneously employed.  Given the length of the working day, the rate of
surplus-value is determined by the relative duration of the necessary labour
and of the surplus-labour in a day.  The number of the labourers
simultaneously employed depends, on its side, on the ratio of the variable to
the constant capital.  Now, however much the use of machinery may increase
the surplus-labour at the expense of the necessary labour by heightening the
productiveness of labour, it is clear that it attains this result, only by
diminishing the number of workmen employed by a given amount of capital.  It
converts what was formerly variable capital, invested in labour-power, into
machinery, which, being constant capital, does not produce surplus-value.

     If, then, the capitalistic employment of machinery, on the one hand,
supplies new and powerful motives to an excessive lengthening of the working
day, and radically changes, as well the methods of labour, as also the
character of the social working organism, in such a manner as to break down
all opposition to this tendency, on the other hand it produces, partly by
opening out to the capitalist new strata of the working class, previously
inaccessible to him, partly by setting free the labourers it supplants, a
surplus working population, which is compelled to submit to the dictation of
capital.

     The immoderate lengthening of the working day, produced by machinery in
the hands of capital, leads to a reaction on the part of society, the very
sources of whose life are menaced; and, thence, to a normal working day whose
length is fixed by law.  Thenceforth . . . the intensification of labour,
develops into great importance.

     It is self-evident, that in proportion as the use of machinery spreads,
and the experience of a special class of workmen habituated to machinery
accumulates, the rapidity and intensity of labour increase as a natural
consequence. . . .  Apart from the increased yield of relative surplus-value
through the heightened productiveness of labour, the same mass of value is
now produced for the capitalist, say, by 3 1/3 hours of surplus labour, and 6
2/3 hours of necessary labour, as was previously produced by four hours of
surplus labour and eight hours of necessary labour.

     We now come to the question: How is the labour intensified?  This is
effected in two ways: by increasing the speed of the machinery, and by giving
the workman more machinery to tend.  Improved construction of the machinery
is necessary, partly because without it greater pressure cannot be put on the
workman, and partly because the shortened hours of labour force the
capitalist to exercise the strictest watch over the cost of production.  The
improvements in the steam-engine have increased the piston speed, and at the
same time have made it possible, by means of a greater economy of power, to
drive with the same or even a smaller consumption of coal more machinery with
the same engine.  The improvements in the transmitting mechanism have
lessened friction, and, what so strikingly distinguishes modern from the
older machinery, have reduced the diameter and weight of the shafting to a
constantly decreasing minimum.  Finally, the improvements in the operative
machines have, while reducing their size, increased their speed and
efficiency, as in the modern power-loom; or, while increasing the size of
their frame-work, have also increased the extent and number of their working
parts, as in spinning mules, or have added to the speed of these working
parts by imperceptible alterations of detail, such as those which ten years
ago increased the speed of the spindles in self-acting mules by one-fifth.

Section 4: The Factory

     Along with the tool, the skill of the workman in handling it passes over
to the machine.  The capabilities of the tool are emancipated from the
restraints that are inseparable from human labour-power.  Thereby the
technical foundation on which is based the division of labour in manufacture,
is swept away.  Hence, in the place of the hierarchy of specialised workmen
that characterises manufacture, there steps, in the automatic factory, a
tendency to equalise and reduce to one and the same level every kind of work
that has to be done by the minders of the machines; in the place of the
artificially produced differentiations of the detail workmen, step the
natural differences of age and sex.

     So far as division of labour re-appears in the factory, it is primarily
a distribution of the workmen among the specialised machines; and of masses
of workmen, not however organised into groups, among the various departments
of the factory, in each of which they work at a number of similar machines
placed together; their co-operation, therefore, is only simple.  The
organised group, peculiar to manufacture, is replaced by the connexion
between the head workman and his few assistants.  The essential division is,
into workmen who are actually employed on the machines (among whom are
included a few who look after the engine), and into mere attendants (almost
exclusively children) of these workmen.  Among the attendants are reckoned
more or less all "Feeders" who supply the machines with the material to be
worked.  In addition to these two principal classes, there is a numerically
unimportant class of persons, whose occupation it is to look after the whole
of the machinery and repair it from time to time; such as engineers,
mechanics, joiners, &c.  This is a superior class of workmen, some of them
scientifically educated, others brought up to a trade; it is distinct from
the factory operative class, and merely aggregated to it.  This division of
labour is purely technical.

     To work at a machine, the workman should be taught from childhood, in
order that he may learn to adapt his own movements to the uniform and
unceasing motion of an automaton.  When the machinery, as a whole, forms a
system of manifold machines, working simultaneously and in concert, the
co-operation based upon it, requires the distribution of various groups of
workmen among the different kinds of machines.  But the employment of
machinery does away with the necessity of crystallising this distribution
after the manner of Manufacture, by the constant annexation of a particular
man to a particular function.  Since the motion of the whole system does not
proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can
take place at any time without an interruption of the work. . . .  At the
same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it
does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom
of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity....  Every kind of
capitalist production in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also
a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the
workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour
that employ the workman.  But it is only in the factory system that this
inversion for the first time acquires technical and palpable reality.  By
means of its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labour confronts
the labourer, during the labour-process, in the shape of capital, of dead
labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power.  The separation
of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labour, and the
conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we
have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the
foundation of machinery.  The special skill of each individual insignificant
factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science,
the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied in
the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power
of the "master." . . .  The technical subordination of the workman to the
uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar composition of
the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of individuals of both sexes
and of all ages, give rise to a barrack discipline, which is elaborated into
a complete system in the factory, and which fully developes the before
mentioned labour of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into
operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an
industrial army. . . .  The factory code in which capital formulates, like a
private legislator, and at his own good will, his autocracy over his
workpeople, unaccompanied by that division of responsibility, in other
matters so much approved of by the bourgeoisie, and unaccompanied by the
still more approved representative system, this code is but the capitalistic
caricature of that social regulation of the labour-process which becomes
requisite in co-operation on a great scale, and in the employment in common,
of instruments of labour and especially of machinery.  The place of the
slave driver's lash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties.  All
punishments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deductions from
wages, ... so ... that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more
profitable to him than the keeping of them.

     Is Fourier wrong when he calls factories "tempered bagnos?"

Section 6: The Theory Of Compensation As Regards The Workpeople Displaced By
Machinery

     James Mill, MacCulloch, Torrens, Senior, John Stuart Mill, and a whole
series besides, of bourgeois political economists, insist that all machinery
that displaces workmen, simultaneously and necessarily sets free an amount of
capital adequate to employ the same identical workmen.

     The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of economists, are
as follows: The labourers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery,
are thrown upon the labour market, and there add to the number of workmen at
the disposal of the capitalists....  The labourers that are thrown out of
work in any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in some
other branch.  If they find it, and thus renew the bond between them and the
means of subsistence, this takes place only by the intermediary of a new and
additional capital that is seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary
of the capital that formerly employed them and was afterwards converted into
machinery.  And even should they find employment, what a poor look-out is
theirs!  Crippled as they are by division of labour, these poor devils are
worth so little outside their old trade, that they cannot find admission into
any industries, except a few of inferior kind, that are over-supplied with
underpaid workmen.  Further, every branch of industry attracts each year a
new stream of men, who furnish a contingent from which to fill up vacancies,
and to draw a supply for expansion.  So soon as machinery sets free a part of
the workmen employed in a given branch of industry, the reserve men are also
diverted into new channels of employment, and become absorbed in other
branches; meanwhile the original victims, during the period of transition,
for the most part starve and perish.

     Although machinery necessarily throws men out of work in those
industries into which it is introduced, yet it may, notwithstanding this,
bring about an increase of employment in other industries.  This effect,
however, has nothing in common with the so-called theory of compensation.
Since every article produced by a machine is cheaper than a similar article
produced by hand, we deduce the following infallible law: If the total
quantity of the article produced by machinery, be equal to the total quantity
of the article previously produced by a handicraft or by manufacture, and now
made by machinery, then the total labour expended is diminished.  The
new labour spent on the instruments of labour, on the machinery, on the coal,
and so on, must necessarily be less than the labour displaced by the use of
the machinery; otherwise the product of the machine would be as dear, or
dearer, than the product of the manual labour.  But, as a matter of fact, the
total quantity of the article produced by machinery with a diminished number
of workmen, instead of remaining equal to, by far exceeds the total quantity
of the hand-made article that has been displaced.

     Hence, as the use of machinery extends in a given industry, the
immediate effect is to increase production in the other industries that
furnish the first with means of production.  How far employment is thereby
found for an increased number of men, depends, given the length of the
working-day and the intensity of labour, on the composition of the capital
employed, i.e., on the ratio of its constant to its variable component.  This
ratio, in its turn, varies considerably with the extent to which machinery
has already seized on, or is then seizing on, those trades.

Section 10: Modern Industry And Agriculture

     If the use of machinery in agriculture is for the most part free from
the injurious physical effect it has on the factory operative, its action in
superseding the labourers is more intense, and finds less resistance.

     In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry has a more revolutionary
effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that is annihilates the peasant, that
bulwark of the old society, and replaces him by the wage labourer.  Thus the
desire for social changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the same
level in the country as in the towns.  The irrational, old fashioned methods
of agriculture are replaced by scientific ones.  Capitalist production
completely tears asunder the old bond of union which held together
agriculture and manufacture in their infancy.  But at the same time it
creates the material conditions for a higher synthesis in the future, viz.,
the union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the more perfected
forms they have each acquired during their temporary separation.  Capitalist
production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an
ever increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand
concentrates the historical motive-power of society; on the other hand, it
disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents
the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food
and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting
fertility of the soil.  By this action it destroys at the same time the
health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer.
But while upsetting the naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of
that circulation of matter, it imperiously calls for its restoration as a
system, as a regulating law of social production, and under a form
appropriate to the full development of the human race.  In agriculture as in
manufacture, the transformation of production under the sway of capital,
means, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of
labour becomes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the
labourer; the social combination and organization of labour-processes is
turned into an organized mode of crushing out the workman's individual
vitality, freedom, and independence.  The dispersion of the rural labourers
over larger areas breaks their power of resistence while concentration
increases that of the town operatives.  In modern agriculture, as in the
urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set
in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease
labour-power itself.  Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a
progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the
soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time,
is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility.  The
more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry,
like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of
destruction.  Capitalist production, therefore, developes technology, and the
combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping
the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.