and automation (technology, as we usually think of it). This can create some confusion, since Marx sometimes bundles all these strategies together under the heading “productive forces,” but then on occasion uses the term “technology” as if it were the same thing. He is clearly as interested in organizational form (the software, as it were) as he is in the machines (the hardware). I think it best to assume that Marx’s theory of technology/productive forces is machinery plus organizational form. I find his stance on this particularly relevant since, in recent times, transformations in organizational form—subcontracting, just-in-time systems, corporate decentralization and the like—have played a major role in the quest to increase productivity. While the profitability of Wal-Mart has its basis in the exploitation of cheap Chinese labor, the efficiency of its organizational form sets it apart from many of its competitors. Similarly, the Japanese conquest of the US auto market at the expense of Detroit had as much to do with the organizational form (just-in-time and subcontracting) of the Japanese car companies as with the new hardware and automation they deployed. Indeed, ever since time-and-motion studies (and what became known as Taylorism) became fashionable around 1900, there has always been a strong link between the hardware and the software of capitalist production systems.
Marx begins by examining how two organizational forms—cooperation and divisions of labor—can be used by capital under existing technological conditions of artisanal and handicraft labor to increase productivity. Innovations in these two aspects of organizational form have been integral to the acquisition of relative surplus-value throughout the history of capitalism, and we should never forget them. As in the chapter on the labor process, however, where the potential nobility of the process is stressed in contrast to its alienated form under capitalism, Marx casts neither cooperation nor division of labor in an inherently negative light. He views them as potentially creative, beneficial and gratifying for the laborer. Cooperation and well-organized divisions of labor are wonderful human capacities that add to our collective powers. Socialism and communism would presumably have great need of them. What Marx will seek to show is how these positive potentialities are seized on by capital to its own particular advantage and thereby turned into something negative for the laborer.
“When numerous workers work together side by side in accordance with a plan, whether in the same process, or in different but connected processes, this form of labour is called co-operation.” Note the word “plan” here, since it’s going to become an important idea. Cooperation permits, for example, an increasing scale of production, and the resultant economies of scale can generate increases in labor efficiency and productivity. This is made much of in conventional economic theory, and Marx does not demur. “Not only do we have here an increase in the productive power of the individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new productive power, which is intrinsically a collective one” (443). This collective power
begets in most industries a rivalry and a stimulation of the ‘animal spirits’, which heightens the efficiency of each individual worker. This is why a dozen people working together will produce far more, in their collective working day of 144 hours than twelve isolated men each working for 12 hours. (443–4)
Furthermore, “co-operation allows work to be carried on over a large area” while rendering
possible a relative contraction of its arena. This simultaneous restriction of space and extension of effectiveness, which allows a large number of incidental expenses … to be spared, results from the massing together of workers and of various labour processes, and from the concentration of the means of production. (446)
There is an interesting tension here between geographical expansion (work conducted over a large area) and geographical concentration (bringing workers together for purposes of cooperation in a particular space). The latter, as Marx points out, can have political consequences as workers get together and organize.
He insists, however, that “the special productive power of the combined working day is, under all circumstances, the social productive power of labour, or the productive power of social labour. This power arises from co-operation itself.” Furthermore, “when the worker co-operates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species” (447). This is one of those instances where Marx reverts to some notion of universal species being, which was an important theme in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. At this point, it is hard to view this discussion of cooperation in a negative light. We strip off the fetters of our individuality and develop the capability of the species. To the degree that this capability has not been realized, we have yet to realize the potentiality of our species being.
But what happens when we return to the world of “our would-be capitalist”? First off, the capitalist needs an initial mass of capital in order to organize cooperation. How much, and where does it come from? There are what we now usually refer to as barriers to entry into any production process. In some instances, the start-up costs can be considerable. But there are ways to ameliorate this problem. Marx here introduces an important distinction. “At first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal result of the fact that the worker, instead of working for himself, works for, and consequently under, the capitalist.” But as time goes on, “through the co-operation of numerous wage-labourers, the command of capital develops into a requirement for carrying on the labour process itself, into a real condition of production” (448). The distinction here is between the “formal” subsumption of labor under capital versus its “real” subsumption.
What does this difference mean? Under what was called the putting-out system, merchant capitalists would take materials to laborers in their cottages and return to collect the worked-up product at a later date. The laborers would not be supervised, and the labor process would be left up to the cottagers (it often entailed family labor and was dovetailed with subsistence agricultural practices). But the cottagers depended on the merchant capitalists for their monetary incomes and did not own the product they worked up. This is what Marx means by formal subsumption. When laborers are brought into the factory for a wage, then both they and the labor process are under the direct supervision of the capitalist. This is real subsumption. So the formal is out there, dependent, while the real is inside the factory under the supervision of the capitalist. The latter entails more start-up costs, more initial capital; in the early stages of capitalism, when capital was scarce, the formal system of exploitation could well be more advantageous. Marx believed that over time, the formal would give way to the real. But he was not necessarily correct in this. The revival of contract work, home working and the like in our times indicates that some reversion to formal kinds of subjection and subsumption is entirely possible.
When laborers are brought into a collective structure of cooperation in a factory, they come under the directing authority of the capitalist. Any cooperative endeavor requires some directing authority, much as a conductor directs an orchestra. The problem is that “the work of directing, superintending and adjusting becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under capital’s control becomes co-operative.” Furthermore, “as a specific function of capital, the directing function acquires its own special characteristics.” This function is to recognize that moments are the elements of profit and to squeeze as much labor-time out of the laborer as possible. On the other hand, “as the number of co-operating workers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and, necessarily, the pressure put on by capital to overcome this resistance” (449).
The struggle between capital and labor, which we earlier encountered in the labor market, gets internalized on the shop floor. This happens because cooperation is organized through the power of capital. What was once a power of labor now appears as a power of capital.
The interconnection between their various labours confronts [the laborers], in the realm of ideas, as a plan drawn up by the capitalist, and, in practice, as his authority, as the powerful will of a being outside them, who subjects their activity to his purpose. (450)
The capitalist’s
