Marx's definition of "industry" is rooted in his discussion and definition
of "machines". Computer aided design and manufacture, robots, cybernetics
in production, the current "revolution" in the instruments of production
increases the use of machines, and decreases the use of human hands in
production. This is an _increase_ , not a decrease in industry. Robots are a
further replacement of human hands and arms in production, a process that
began with the revolution in machine industry that Marx discusses in
_Capital_ Vol. I. (excerpt below). Robots increase industry and decrease
manufacture or human hands ("manu") in making things. So the current
situation of production is far from "post-industrial". It is
super-industrial compared with the Industrial Revolution that Marx analyzed.
The organic (1) composition of capital has increased in the long run.
Footnote: (1) "organic" here has a different sense than as it is used in
"organic chemistry" i.e. the chemistry of carbon atoms, so central to
biochemistry and the chemistry of organisms. Marx means the opposite of "the
number of human organisms increases relative to the amount of inorganic
machines", because the organic composition of capital increases with the
increase relatively in the amount of machines to human hands and arms.
I think the sense of "organic" here might be closer to the Sociologist
Emile Durkheim's sense of "organic solidarity", that is the affinity of
complementary parts. ( For Durkheim "mechanical solidarity" is the affinity
between like parts). Maybe. Durkheim came after Marx , of course, but he
would be evidence of a common meaning of "organic" that could have been in
Marx's mind when he chose the term.
^^^^^^^
Karl Marx
Capital Volume One
________________________________
Part IV:
Production of Relative Surplus-Value
________________________________
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
MACHINERY AND MODERN INDUSTRY
________________________________
Contents
Section 1 - The Development of Machinery
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S1>
Section 2 - The Value Transferred by Machinery to the Product
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S2>
Section 3 - The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S3>
A. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital.The Employment of
Women and Children
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S3a>
B. Prolongation of the Working-Day
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S3b>
C. Intensification of Labour
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S3c>
Section 4 - The Factory
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S4>
Section 5 - The Strife Between Workman and Machine
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S5>
Section 6 - The Theory of Compensation as Regards the Workpeople Displaced
by Machinery
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S6>
Section 7 - Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople by the Factory System.
Crises in the Cotton Trade
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S7>
Section 8 - Revolution Effected in Manufacture, Handicrafts, and Domestic
Industry by Modern Industry
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8>
A. Overthrow of Co-operation Based on Handicraft and on the Division of
Labour <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8a>
B. Reaction of the Factory System on Manufacture and Domestic Industries
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8b>
C. Modern Manufacture
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8c>
D. Modern Domestic Industry
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8d>
E. Passage of Modern Manufacture, and Domestic Industry into Modern
Mechanical Industry. The Hastening of this Revolution by the Application of
the Factory Acts to those Industries
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8e>
Section 9 - The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Educational Clauses of the same.
Their General Extension in England
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S9>
Section 10 - Modern Industry and Agriculture
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S10>
________________________________
SECTION 1
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MACHINERY
________________________________
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." [1]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n1> 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.
Our first inquiry then is, how the instruments of labour are converted from
tools into machines, or what is the difference between a machine and the
implements of a handicraft? We are 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 are
geological epochs.
Mathematicians and mechanicians, and in this they are 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, &c. [2]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n2> 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 the historical element is wanting.
Another explanation of the difference between tool and machine is that in
the case of a tool, man is the motive power, while the motive power of a
machine is something different from man, as, for instance, an animal, water,
wind, and so on.[3]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n3> According
to this, a plough drawn by oxen, which is a contrivance common to the most
different epochs, would be a machine, while Claussen's circular loom, which,
worked by a single labourer, weaves 96,000 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 18th 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 "to spin without
fingers." [4]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n4>
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 whole in motion.
It either generates its own motive power, like the steam-engine, the caloric
engine, the electromagnetic machine, &c., or it receives its impulse from
some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel from a head of
water, the wind-mill from wind, &c. The transmitting mechanism, composed of
fly-wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands,
pinions, and gearing of the most varied 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 labour 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 manufacture, 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 handicraftsman or manufacturing workman;
with this difference, that instead of being human implements, they are the
implements of a mechanism, or mechanical implements. Either the entire
machine is only a more or less altered mechanical edition of the old
handicraft tool, as, for instance, the power-loom,[5]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n5> 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 manufacture, and are afterwards fitted into the body of the machine,
which is the product of machinery. [6]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n6> 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
workman 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 m-an, 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 treddle 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 its very birth, spun with 12-18 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 mere motive power,
and man as the 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 the 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 labour 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, [7]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n7> by
pumping, by moving up and down the arm of a bellows, by pounding with a
mortar, &c., such implements soon call for the application of animals, water
[8] <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n8> 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 1836-7, 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 a steam-engine. The steam-engine itself, such as it was at its
invention, during the manufacturing period at the close of the 17th century,
and such as it continued to be down to 1780, [9]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n9> 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 labour, 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 the mechanism that was originally
constructed to be driven by man alone. Now-a-days, all machines that have
their way to make, such as sewing-machines, bread-making machines, &c., 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? [10]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n10> 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 is evident that
he can be replaced by natural forces. Of all the great motors handed down
from the manufacturing period, horse-power 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.[11]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n11>
Nevertheless the horse was extensively used during the infancy of Modern
Industry. This is proved, as well by the complaints of contemporary
agriculturists, 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
fly-wheel, which afterwards plays so important a part in Modern Industry.
[12] <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n12> In
this way, during the manufacturing period, were developed the first
scientific and technical elements of Modern Mechanical Industry. Arkwright's
throstle-spinning mill was from the very first turned by water. But for all
that, the use of water, as the 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. [13]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n13> Not till
the invention of Watt's second and so-called double-acting steam-engine, was
a prime mover found, that begot its own force by the consumption of coal 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, [14]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n14> that was
of universal technical application, and, relatively speaking, little
affected in its choice of residence by local circumstances. The greatness of
Watt'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, Boulton 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 wide-spreading
apparatus.
We now proceed to distinguish the co-operation 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
handicraftsman successively, either separately or as members of a system of
Manufacture. [15]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n15> For
example, in the manufacture of envelopes, one man folded the paper with the
folder, another laid on the gum, 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 Manufacture, was split up 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
specialised by Manufacture, in either case, in the factory, i.e., in the
workshop in which machinery alone is used, we meet again with simple
co-operation; and, leaving the workman out of consideration for the moment,
this co-operation presents itself to us, in the first instance, as the
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 labour goes through a connected
series of detail processes, that are carried out by a chain of machines of
various kinds, the one supplementing the other. Here we have again the
co-operation by division of labour that characterises Manufacture; only now,
it is a combination of detail machines. The special tools of the various
detail workmen, such as those of the beaters, cambers, spinners, &c., in the
woollen manufacture, are now transformed into the tools of specialised
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
organisation, of the process of production. [16]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n16>
Nevertheless an essential difference at once manifests itself. In
Manufacture it is the workmen 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 labour no longer exists in production by
machinery. Here, the process as a whole is examined objectively, in itself,
that is to say, without regard to the question of its execution by human
hands, it is analysed 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, &c. [17]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n17> 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 are 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 co-operation of the detail labourers
establishes a numerical proportion between the special groups, so in an
organised system of machinery, where one detail 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 organised 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 effected, not by the hand of man, but
by the machinery itself. In Manufacture the isolation of each detail process
is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labour, 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 co-operation of
similar machines, as in weaving, or on a 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 workman 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 workman like a manual tool; this was the case in
machine-makers' 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 distinctions between
modes of production based on different means of production, but also the
connexion 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 organised 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 the 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 labourers, whose
exclusive occupation it was to make mules and steam-engines; just as men
wore clothes before there were such people as tailors. The inventions of
Vaucanson, 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 handicraftsman of various
trades, others were grouped together in manufactures, in which, as
before-mentioned, division of labour 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 labour in these manufactures was more
and more developed. Here, then, we see in Manufacture the immediate
technical foundation of Modern Industry. Manufacture produced the machinery,
by means of which Modern Industry abolished the handicraft and manufacturing
systems in those spheres of production that it first seized upon. The
factory system was therefore raised, in the 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 is 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 motive
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 on the muscular development, the keenness of
sight, and the cunning of hand, with which the detail workmen in
manufactures, arid the manual labourers in 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, multiformity and regularity of the details of these
machines, as they more and more departed from the model of those originally
made by manual labour, and acquired a form, untrammelled except by the
conditions under which they worked, [18]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n18> 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 a stumbling-block in the personal restrictions, which
even the collective labourer 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 carding 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 labour, in such a
way, that each of them produces an independent commodity. Thus spinning by
machinery made weaving by machinery a 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 fibre; it was only by means of this invention, that
the production of cotton became possible on the enormous scale at present
required. [19]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n19> 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 labour, its concentration of
the instruments of labour, and of the workmen, and its colonial markets,
that they became in fact revolutionised. 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 labour
from one sphere of production into another, and its newly-created connexions
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, cyclopean 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, simultaneously
with the increasing use of it, in the first decades of this 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 cyclopean
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 detail parts of the machines. This problem Henry Maudsley solved in the
first decade of this 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 "with a
degree of ease, accuracy, and speed, that no accumulated experience of the
hand of the most skilled workman could give." [20]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n20>
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 re-appearing, 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, 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 hammer head, but of
such a weight that not Thor himself could wield it. [21]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n21> These
steam-hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there is one that weighs over
6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7 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, a nail into a piece of soft wood. [22]
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#n22>
The implements of labour, 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
organisation of the social labour-process is purely subjective; it is a
combination of detail labourers; in its machinery system, Modern Industry
has a productive organism that is purely objective, in which the labourer
becomes a mere appendage to an already existing material condition of
production. In simple co-operation, and even in that founded on division of
labour, the suppression of the isolated, by the collective, workman still
appears to be more or less accidental. Machinery, with a few exceptions to
be mentioned later, operates only by means of associated labour, or labour
in common. Hence the co-operative character of the labour-process is, in the
latter case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument of labour
itself.
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