From Marxists Internet Archive
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Thirteen: Co-operation
Capitalist production only then really begins, as we have already seen, when
each individual capital employs simultaneously a comparatively large number of
labourers; when consequently the labour-process is carried on on an extensive
scale and yields, relatively, large quantities of products. A greater number of
labourers working together, at the same time, in one place (or, if you will, in
the same field of labour), in order to produce the same sort of commodity under
the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logically,
the starting-point of capitalist production. With regard to the mode of
production itself, manufacture, in its strict meaning, is hardly to be
distinguished, in its earliest stages, from the handicraft trades of the guilds,
otherwise than by the greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one
and the same individual capital. The workshop of the medieval master
handicraftsman is simply enlarged.
At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative. We have shown
that the surplus-value produced by a given capital is equal to the surplus-value
produced by each workman multiplied by the number of workmen simultaneously
employed. The number of workmen in itself does nor affect, either the rate of
surplus-value, or the degree of exploitation of labour-power. If a working-day
of 12 hours be embodied in six shillings, 1,200 such days will be embodied in
1,200 times 6 shillings. In one case 12 × 1,200 working-hours, and in the other
12 such hours are incorporated in the product. In the production of value a
number of workmen rank merely as so many individual workmen; and it therefore
makes no difference in the value produced whether the 1,200 men work separately,
or united under the control of one capitalist.
Nevertheless, within certain limits, a modification takes place. The labour
realised in value, is labour of an average social quality; is consequently the
expenditure of average labour-power. Any average magnitude, however, is merely
the average of a number of separate magnitudes
all of one kind, but differing as to quantity. In every industry, each
individual labourer, be he Peter or Paul, differs from the average labourer.
These individual differences, or “errors” as they are called in mathematics,
compensate one another, and vanish, whenever a certain minimum number of workmen
are employed together. The celebrated sophist and sycophant, Edmund Burke, goes
so far as to make the following assertion, based on his practical observations
as a farmer; viz., that “in so small a platoon” as that of five farm
labourers, all individual differences in the labour vanish, and that
consequently any given five adult farm labourers taken together, will in the
same time do as much work as any other five. [1]
But, however that may be, it is clear, that the collective working-day of a
large number of workmen simultaneously employed, divided by the number of these
workmen, gives one day of average social labour. For example, let the
working-day of each individual be 12 hours. Then the collective working-day of
12 men simultaneously employed, consists of 144 hours; and although the labour
of each of the dozen men may deviate more or less from average social labour,
each of them requiring a different time for the same operation, yet since the
working-day of each is one-twelfth of the collective working-day of 144 hours,
it possesses the qualities of an average social working-day. From the point of
view, however, of the capitalist who employs these 12 men, the working-day is
that of the whole dozen. Each individual man’s day is an aliquot part of the
collective working-day, no matter whether the 12 men assist one another in their
work, or whether the connexion between their operations consists merely in the
fact, that the men are all working for the same capitalist. But if the 12 men
are employed in six pairs, by as many different small masters, it will be quite
a matter of chance, whether each of these masters produces the same value, and
consequently whether he realises the general rate of surplus-value. Deviations
would occur in individual cases. If one workman required
considerably more time for the production of a commodity than is socially
necessary, the duration of the necessary labour-time would, in his case,
sensibly deviate from the labour-time socially necessary on an average; and
consequently his labour would not count as average labour, nor his labour-power
as average labour-power. It would either be not saleable at all, or only at
something below the average value of labour-power. A fixed minimum of efficiency
in all labour is therefore assumed, and we shall see, later on, that capitalist
production provides the means of fixing this minimum. Nevertheless, this minimum
deviates from the average, although on the other hand the capitalist has to pay
the average value of labour-power. Of the six small masters, one would therefore
squeeze out more than the average rate of surplus-value, another less. The
inequalities would be compensated for the society at large, but not for the
individual masters. Thus the laws of the production of value are only fully
realised for the individual producer, when he produces as a capitalist, and
employs a number of workmen together, whose labour, by its collective nature, is
at once stamped as average social labour. [2]
Even without an alteration in the system of working, the simultaneous
employment of a large number of labourers effects a revolution in the material
conditions of the labour-process. The buildings in which they work, the
store-houses for the raw material, the implements and utensils used
simultaneously or in turns by the workmen; in short, a portion of the means of
production, are now consumed in common. On the one hand, the exchange-value of
these means of production is not increased; for the exchange-value of a
commodity is not raised by its use-value being consumed more thoroughly and to
greater advantage. On the other hand, they are used in common, and therefore on
a larger scale than before. A room where twenty weavers work at twenty looms
must be larger than the room of a single weaver with two assistants. But it
costs less labour to build one workshop for twenty persons than to build ten to
accommodate two weavers each; thus the value of the means of production that are
concentrated for use in common on a large scale does not increase in direct
proportion to the expansion and to the increased useful effect of those means.
When consumed in common, they give up a smaller part of their value to each
single product; partly because the total value they part with is spread over a
greater quantity of products, and partly because their value, though absolutely
greater, is, having regard to their sphere of action in the process, relatively
less than the value of isolated means of production. Owing to this, the value of
a part of the constant capital falls, and in proportion to the magnitude of the
fall, the total value of the commodity also falls. The effect is the same as if
the means of production had cost less. The economy
in their application is entirely owing to their being consumed in common by a
large number of workmen. Moreover, this character of being necessary conditions
of social labour, a character that distinguishes them from the dispersed and
relatively more costly means of production of isolated, independent labourers,
or small masters, is acquired even when the numerous workmen assembled together
do not assist one another, but merely work side by side. A portion of the
instruments of labour acquires this social character before the labour-process
itself does so.
Economy in the use of the means of production has to be considered under two
aspects. First, as cheapening commodities, and thereby bringing about a fall in
the value of labour-power. Secondly, as altering the ratio of the surplus-value
to the total capital advanced, i.e., to the sum of the values of the constant
and variable capital. The latter aspect will not be considered until we come to
the third book, to which, with the object of treating them in their proper
connexion, we also relegate many other points that relate to the present
question. The march of our analysis compels this splitting up of the
subject-matter, a splitting up that is quite in keeping with the spirit of
capitalist production. For since, in this mode of production, the workman finds
the instruments of labour existing independently of him as another man’s
property, economy in their use appears, with regard to him, to be a distinct
operation, one that does not concern him, and which, therefore, has no connexion
with the methods by which his own personal productiveness is increased.
When numerous labourers work together side by side, whether in one and the
same process, or in different but connected processes, they are said to
co-operate, or to work in co-operation. [3]
Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive power
of a regiment of infantry is essentially different from the sum of the offensive
or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken
separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated
workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when many hands take
part simultaneously in one and the same undivided operation, such as raising a
heavy weight, turning a winch, or removing an obstacle. [4]
In such cases the effect of the combined labour
could either not be produced at all by isolated individual labour, or it could
only be produced by a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not
only have we here an increase in the productive power of the individual, by
means of co-operation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the collective
power of masses. [5]
Apart from the new power that arises from the fusion of many forces into one
single force, mere social contact begets in most industries an emulation and a
stimulation of the animal spirits that heighten the efficiency of each
individual workman. Hence it is that a dozen persons working together will, in
their collective working-day of 144 hours, produce far more than twelve isolated
men each working 12 hours, or than one man who works twelve days in succession. [6]
The reason of this is that man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political, [7]
at all events a social animal.
Although a number of men may be occupied together at the same time on the
same, or the same kind of work, yet the labour of each, as a part of the
collective labour, may correspond to a distinct phase of the labour-process,
through all whose phases, in consequence of co-operation, the subject of their
labour passes with greater speed. For instance, if a dozen masons place
themselves in a row, so as to pass stones from the foot of a ladder to its
summit, each of them does the same thing; nevertheless, their separate acts form
connected parts of one total operation; they are particular phases, which must
be gone through by each stone; and the stones are thus carried up quicker by the
24 hands of the row of men than they could be if each man went separately up and
down the ladder with his burden. [8]
The object is carried over the
same distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour occurs whenever
a building, for instance, is taken in hand on different sides simultaneously;
although here also the co-operating masons are doing the same, or the same kind
of work. The 12 masons, in their collective working-day of 144 hours, make much
more progress with the building than one mason could make working for 12 days,
or 144 hours. The reason is, that a body of men working in concert has hands and
eyes both before and behind, and is, to a certain degree, omnipresent. The
various parts of the work progress simultaneously.
In the above instances we have laid stress upon the point that the men do the
same, or the same kind of work, because this, the most simple form of labour in
common, plays a great part in co-operation, even in its most fully developed
stage. If the work be complicated, then the mere number of the men who
co-operate allows of the various operations being apportioned to different
hands, and, consequently, of being carried on simultaneously. The time necessary
for the completion of the whole work is thereby shortened. [9]
In many industries, there are critical periods, determined by the nature of
the process, during which certain definite results must be obtained. For
instance, if a flock of sheep has to be shorn, or a field of wheat to be cut and
harvested, the quantity and quality of the product depends on the work being
begun and ended within a certain time. In these cases, the time that ought to be
taken by the process is prescribed, just as it is in herring fishing. A single
person cannot carve a working-day of more than, say 12 hours, out of the natural
day, but 100 men co-operating extend the working-day to 1,200 hours. The
shortness of the time allowed for the work is compensated for by the large mass
of labour thrown upon the field of production at the decisive moment. The
completion of the task within the proper time depends on the simultaneous
application of numerous combined working-days; the amount of useful effect
depends on the number of labourers; this number, however, is always smaller than
the number of isolated labourers required to do the same amount of work in the
same period. [10] It is owing
to the absence of this kind ofco-operation that, in the western part of the
United States, quantities of corn, and in those parts of East India where
English rule has destroyed the old communities, quantities of cotton, are yearly
wasted. [11]
On the one hand, co-operation allows of the work being carried on over an
extended space; it is consequently imperatively called for in certain
undertakings, such as draining, constructing dykes, irrigation works, and the
making of canals, roads and railways. On the other hand, while extending the
scale of production, it renders possible a relative contraction of the arena.
This contraction of arena simultaneous with, and arising from, extension of
scale, whereby a number of useless expenses are cut down, is owing to the
conglomeration of labourers, to the aggregation of various processes, and to the
concentration of the means of production. [12]
The combined working-day produces, relatively to an equal sum of isolated
working-days, a greater quantity of use-values, and, consequently, diminishes
the labour-time necessary for the production of a given useful effect. Whether
the combined working-day, in a given case, acquires this increased productive
power, because it heightens the mechanical force of labour, or extends its
sphere of action over a greater space, or contracts the field of production
relatively to the scale of production, or at the critical moment sets large
masses of labour to work, or excites emulation between individuals and raises
their animal spirits, or impresses on the similar operations carried on by a
number of men the stamp of continuity and many-sidedness, or performs
simultaneously different operations, or economises the means of production by
use in common, or lends to individual labour the character of average social
labour whichever of these be the cause of the increase, the special productive
power of the combined working-day is, under all circumstances, the social
productive power of labour, or the productive power of social labour. This power
is due to co-operation itself. When the labourer co-operates systematically with
others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the
capabilities of his species. [13]
As a general rule, labourers cannot co-operate without being brought
together: their assemblage in one place is a necessary condition of their
co-operation. Hence wage-labourers cannot co-operate, unless they are employed
simultaneously by the same capital, the same capitalist, and unless therefore
their labour-powers are bought simultaneously by him. The total value of these
labour-powers, or the amount of the wages of these labourers for a day, or a
week, as the case may be, must be ready in the pocket of the capitalist, before
the workmen are assembled for the process of production. The payment of 300
workmen at once, though only for one day, requires a greater outlay of capital,
than does the payment of a smaller number of men, week by week, during a whole
year. Hence the number of the labourers that co-operate, or the scale of
co-operation, depends, in the first instance, on the amount of capital that the
individual capitalist can spare for the purchase of labour-power; in other
words, on the extent to which a single capitalist has command over the means of
subsistence of a number of labourers.
And as with the variable, so it is with the constant capital. For example,
the outlay on raw material is 30 times as great, for the capitalist who employs
300 men, as it is for each of the 30 capitalists who employ 10 men. The value
and quantity of the instruments of labour used in common do not, it is true,
increase at the same rate as the number of workmen, but they do increase very
considerably. Hence, concentration of large masses of the means of production in
the hands of individual capitalists, is a material condition for the
co-operation of wage-labourers, and the extent of the co-operation or the scale
of production, depends on the extent of this concentration.
We saw in a former chapter, that a certain minimum amount of capital was
necessary, in order that the number of labourers simultaneously employed, and,
consequently, the amount of surplus-value produced, might suffice to liberate
the employer himself from manual labour, to convert him from a small master into
a capitalist, and thus formally to establish capitalist production. We now see
that a certain minimum amount is a necessary condition for the conversion of
numerous
isolated and independent processes into one combined social process.
We also saw that at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a
formal result of the fact, that the labourer, instead of working for himself,
works for and consequently under the capitalist. By the co-operation of numerous
wage-labourers, the sway of capital develops into a requisite for carrying on
the labour-process itself, into a real requisite of production. That a
capitalist should command on the field of production, is now as indispensable as
that a general should command on the field of battle.
All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing
authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual
activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the
action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its
separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra
requires a separate one. The work of directing, superintending, and adjusting,
becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under
the control of capital, becomes co-operative. Once a function of capital, it
acquires special characteristics.
The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract
the greatest possible amount of surplus-value, [14]
and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible extent. As the
number of the co-operating labourers increases, so too does their resistance to
the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome
this resistance by counterpressure. The control exercised by the capitalist is
not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour-process, and
peculiar to that process, but it is, at the same time, a function of the
exploitation of a social labour-process, and is consequently rooted in the
unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw
material he exploits.
Again, in proportion to the increasing mass of the means of production, now
no longer the property of the labourer, but of the capitalist, the necessity
increases for some effective control over the proper application of those means.
[15] Moreover, the co-operation of
wage-labourers
is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them. Their union into
one single productive body and the establishment of a connexion between their
individual functions, are matters foreign and external to them, are not their
own act, but the act of the capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence
the connexion existing between their various labours appears to them, ideally,
in the shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist, and practically in the
shape of the authority of the same capitalist, in the shape of the powerful will
of another, who subjects their activity to his aims. If, then, the control of
the capitalist is in substance two-fold by reason of the two-fold nature of the
process of production itself, which, on the one hand, is a social process for
producing use-values, on the other, a process for creating surplus-value in form
that control is despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism
takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from
actual labour so soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which
capitalist production, as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct
and constant supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a
special kind of wage-labourer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command
of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants
(foremen, overlookers), who,
while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of
supervision becomes their established and exclusive function. When comparing the
mode of production of isolated peasants and artisans with production by slave-labour,
the political economist counts this labour of superintendence among the faux
frais of production. [16] But,
when considering the capitalist mode of production, he, on the contrary, treats
the work of control made necessary by the co-operative character of the labour-process
as identical with the different work of control, necessitated by the capitalist
character of that process and the antagonism of interests between capitalist and
labourer. [17] It is not because he
is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a
leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an
attribute of capital,
just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge, were attributes of
landed property. [18]
The labourer is the owner of his labour-power until he has done bargaining
for its sale with the capitalist; and he can sell no more than what he has i.e.,
his individual, isolated labour-power. This state of things is in no way altered
by the fact that the capitalist, instead of buying the labour-power of one man,
buys that of 100, and enters into separate contracts with 100 unconnected men
instead of with one. He is at liberty to set the 100 men to work, without
letting them co-operate. He pays them the value of 100 independent labour-powers,
but he does not pay for the combined labour-power of the hundred. Being
independent of each other, the labourers are isolated persons, who enter into
relations with the capitalist, but not with one another. This co-operation
begins only with the labour-process, but they have then ceased to belong to
themselves. On entering that process, they become incorporated with capital. As
co-operators, as members of a working organism, they are but special modes of
existence of capital. Hence, the productive power developed by the labourer when
working in co-operation, is the productive power of capital. This power is
developed gratuitously, whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions,
and it is capital that places them under such conditions. Because this power
costs capital nothing, and because, on the other hand, the labourer himself does
not develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power with
which capital is endowed by Nature a productive power that is immanent in
capital.
The colossal effects of simple co-operation are to be seen in the gigantic
structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians, Etruscans, &c.
“It has happened in times past that these Oriental States,
after supplying the expenses of their civil and military establishments, have
found themselves in possession of a surplus which they could apply to works of
magnificence or utility and in the construction of these their command over the
hands and arms of almost the entire non-agricultural population has produced
stupendous monuments which still indicate their power. The teeming valley of the
Nile ... produced food for a swarming non-agricultural population, and this
food, belonging to the monarch and the priesthood, afforded the means of
erecting the mighty monuments which filled the land.... In moving the colossal
statues and vast masses of which the transport creates wonder, human labour
almost alone, was prodigally used.... The number of the
labourers and the concentration of their efforts sufficed. We see mighty coral
reefs rising from the
depths of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor
is puny, weak, and contemptible. The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic
monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to bring to the task,
but their number is their strength, and the power of directing these masses gave
rise to the palaces and temples, the pyramids, and the armies of gigantic
statues of which the remains astonish and perplex us. It is that confinement of
the revenues which feed them, to one or a few hands, which makes such
undertakings possible.” [19]
This power of Asiatic and Egyptian kings, Etruscan theocrats, &c., has in
modern society been transferred to the capitalist, whether he be an isolated, or
as in joint-stock companies, a collective capitalist.
Co-operation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development, among
races who live by the chase, [20]
or, say, in the agriculture of Indian communities, is based, on the one hand, on
ownership in common of the means of production, and on the other hand, on the
fact, that in those cases, each individual has no more torn himself off from the
navel-string of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself from
connexion with the hive. Such co-operation is distinguished from capitalistic
co-operation by both of the above characteristics. The sporadic application of
co-operation on a large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in
modern colonies, reposes on relations of dominion and servitude, principally on
slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, pre-supposes from first to
last, the free wage-labourer, who sells his labour-power to capital.
Historically, however, this form is developed in opposition to peasant
agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts whether in guilds
or not. [21] From the standpoint of
these, capitalistic co-operation does not manifest itself as a particular
historical form of co-operation, but co-operation itself appears to be a
historical form peculiar to, and specifically distinguishing, the capitalist
process of production.
Just as the social productive power of labour that is developed by
co-operation, appears to be the productive power of capital, so co-operation
itself, contrasted with the process of production carried on by isolated
independent labourers, or even by small employers, appears to be a specific form
of the capitalist process of production. It is the first change experienced by
the actual labour-process, when subjected to capital. This change takes place
spontaneously. The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers,
in one and the same process, which is a necessary condition of this change, also
forms the starting-point of capitalist production. This point coincides with the
birth of capital itself. If then, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of
production presents itself to us historically, as a necessary condition to the
transformation of the labour-process into a social process, so, on the other
hand, this social form of the labour-process presents itself, as a method
employed by capital for the more profitable exploitation of labour, by
increasing that labour’s productiveness.
In the elementary form, under which we have hitherto viewed it, co-operation
is a necessary concomitant of all production on a large scale, but it does not,
in itself, represent a fixed form characteristic of a particular epoch in the
development of the capitalist mode of production. At the most it appears to do
so, and that only approximately, in the handicraft-like beginnings of
manufacture, [22] and in that kind
of agriculture on a large scale, which corresponds to the epoch of manufacture,
and is distinguished from peasant agriculture, mainly by the number of the
labourers simultaneously employed, and by the mass of the means of production
concentrated for their use. Simple co-operation is always the prevailing form,
in those branches of production in which capital operates on a large scale, and
division of labour and machinery play but a subordinate part.
Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of
production, nevertheless the elementary form of co-operation continues to
subsist as a particular form of capitalist production side by side with the more
developed forms of that mode of production.
Footnotes
1.
“Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one
man’s labour and that of another from strength, dexterity, and honest
application. But I am quite sure, from my best observation, that any given five
men will, in their total, afford a proportion of labour equal to any other five
within the periods of life I have stated; that is, that among such five men
there will be one possessing all the qualifications of a good workman, one bad,
and the other three middling, and approximating to the first, and the last. So
that in so small a platoon as that of even five, you will find the full
complement of all that five men can earn.” (E. Burke, 1. c., pp. 15, 16.)
Compare Quételet on the average individual.
2.
Professor Roscher claims to have discovered that one needlewoman employed by
Mrs. Roscher during two days, does more work than two needlewomen employed
together during one day. The learned professor should not study the capitalist
process of production in the nursery, nor under circumstances where the
principal personage, the capitalist, is wanting.
3.
“Concours de forces.” (Destutt de Tracy, l.c., p. 80.)
4.
There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as not to admit a division
into parts, which cannot be performed without the co-operation of many pairs of
hands. I would instance the lifting of a large tree on to a wain .., everything,
in short, which cannot be done unless a great many pairs of hands help each
other in the same undivided employment and at the same time.” (E. G.
Wakefield: “A View of the Art of Colonisation.” London, 1849, p. 168.)
5.
“As one man cannot, and ten men must strain to lift a ton of weight, yet 100
men can do it only by the strength of a finger of each of them.” (John
Betters: “Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry.” London, 1696, p.
21.)
6.
“There is also” (when the same number of men are employed by one farmer on
300 acres, instead of by ten farmers with 30 acres a piece) “an advantage in
the proportion of servants, which will not so easily be understood but by
practical men; for it is natural to say, as 1 is to 4, so are 3 to 12; but this
will not hold good in practice; for in harvest time and many other operations
which require that kind of despatch by the throwing many hands together, the
work is better and more expeditiously done: f i. in harvest, 2 drivers, 2
loaders, 2 pitchers, 2 rakers, and the rest at the rick, or in the barn, will
despatch double the work that the same number of hands would do if divided into
different gangs on different farms.” (“An Inquiry into the Connexion between
the Present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms.” By a Farmer. London,
1773, pp. 7, 8.)
7.
Strictly, Aristotle’s definition is that man is by nature a town-citizen. This
is quite as characteristic of ancient classical society as Franklin’s
definition of man, as a tool-making animal, is characteristic of Yankeedom.
8.
“On doit encore remarquer que cette division partielle de travail peut se
faire quand même les ouvriers sont occupés d’une même besogne. Des maçons
par exemple, occupés à faire passer de mains en mains des briques à un échafaudage
supérieur, font tous la même besogne, et pourtant il existe parmi eux une espèce
de division de travail, qui consiste en ce que chacun d’eux fait passer la
brique par un espace donné, et que tous ensemble la font parvenir beaucoup plus
promptement à l’endroit marqué qu’ils ne le feraient si chacun d’eux
portait sa brique séparément jusqu’à l’échafaudage supérieur.” [It
should be noted further that this partial division of labour can occur even when
the workers are engaged in the same task. Masons, for example, engaged in
passing bricks from hand to hand to a higher stage of the building, are all
performing the same task, and yet there does exist amongst them a sort of
division of labour. This consists in the fact that each of them passes the brick
through a given space, and, taken together, they make it arrive much more
quickly at the required spot than they would do if each of them carried his
brick separately to the upper storey] (F. Skarbek: “Théorie des
richesses sociales.” Paris, 1839, t. I, pp. 97, 98.)
9.
“Est-il question d’exécuter un travail compliqué, plusieurs choses doivent
être faites simultanément. L’un en fait une pendant que l’autre en fait
une autre, et tous contribuent à l’effet qu’un seul homme n’aurait pu
produire. L’un rame pendant que l’autre tient le gouvernail, et qu’un
troisième jette le filet on harponne le poisson, et la pêche a un succès
impossible sans ce concours.” [Is it a question of
undertaking a complex piece of labour? Many things must be done simultaneously.
One person does one thing, while another does something else, and they all
contribute to an effect that a single man would be unable to produce. One rows
while th eother holds the rudder, and a third casts the net or harpoons the
fish; in this way fishing enjoys a success that would be impossible without this
cooperation] (Destutt de Tracy, l.c.)
10.
“The doing of it (agricultural work) at the critical juncture is of so much
the greater consequence.” (“An Inquiry into the Connexion between the
Present Price,” &c., p. 9.) “In agriculture, there is no more important
factor than that of time.” (Liebig: “Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der
Landwirtschaft.” 1856, p. 23.)
11.
“The next evil is one which one would scarcely expect to find in a country
which exports more labour than any other in the world, with the exception,
perhaps, of China and England the impossibility of procuring a sufficient number
of hands to clean the cotton. The consequence of this is that large quantities
of the crop are left unpicked, while another portion is gathered from the ground
when it has fallen, and is of course discoloured and partially rotted, so that
for want of labour at the proper season the cultivator is actually forced to
submit to the loss of a large part of that crop for which England is so
anxiously looking.” (“Bengal Hurkaru.” Bi-Monthly Overland Summary of
News, 22nd July, 1861.)
12.
In the progress of culture “all, and perhaps more than all, the capital and
labour which once loosely occupied 500 acres, are now concentrated for the more
complete tillage of 100.” Although “relatively to the amount of capital and
labour employed, space is concentrated, it is an enlarged sphere of production,
as compared to the sphere of production formerly occupied or worked upon by one
single independent agent of production.” (R. Jones: “An Essay on the
Distribution of Wealth,” part I. On Rent. London, 1831. p. 191.)
13.
“La forza di ciascuno uomo è minima, ma la riunione delle minime forze forma
una forza totale maggiore anche della somma delle forze medesime fino a che le
forze per essere riunite possono diminuere il tempo ed accrescere lo spazio
della loro azione.” (G. R. Carli, Note to P. Verri, l.c., t. xv., p. 196.)
14.
“Profits ... is the sole end of trade.” (J. Vanderlint, l.c., p. 11.)
15.
That Philistine paper, the Spectator, states that after the
introduction of a sort of partnership between capitalist and workmen in the
“Wirework Company of Manchester,” “the first result was a sudden decrease
in waste, the men not seeing why they should waste their own property any more
than any other master’s, and waste is, perhaps, next to bad debts, the
greatest source of manufacturing loss.” The same paper finds that the main
defect in the Rochdale co-operative experiments is this: “They showed that
associations of workmen could manage shops, mills, and almost all forms of
industry with success, and they immediately improved the condition of the men;
but then they did not leave a clear place for masters.” Quelle horreur!
16.
Professor Cairnes, after stating that the superintendence of labour is a leading
feature of production by slaves in the Southern States of North America,
continues: “The peasant proprietor (of the North), appropriating the whole
produce of his toil, needs no other stimulus to exertion. Superintendence is
here completely dispensed with.” (Cairnes, l.c., pp. 48, 49.)
17.
Sir James Steuart, a writer altogether remarkable for his quick eye for the
characteristic social distinctions between different modes of production, says:
“Why do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry, but
by coming nearer to the simplicity of slaves?” (“Prin. of Pol. Econ.,”
London, 1767, v. I., pp. 167, 168.)
18.
Auguste Comte and his school might therefore have shown that feudal lords are an
eternal necessity in the same way that they have done in the case of the lords
of capital.
19.
R. Jones. “Textbook of Lectures,” &c., pp. 77, 78. The ancient Assyrian,
Egyptian, and other collections in London, and in other European capitals, make
us eye-witnesses of the modes of carrying on that co-operative labour.
20.
Linguet is improbably right, when in his “Théorie des Lois Civiles,” he
declares hunting to be the first form of co-operation, and man-hunting (war) one
of the earliest forms of hunting.
21.
Peasant agriculture on a small scale, and the carrying on of independent
handicrafts, which together form the basis of the feudal mode of production, and
after the dissolution of that system, continue side by side with the capitalist
mode, also form the economic foundation of the classical communities at their
best, after the primitive form of ownership of land in common had disappeared,
and before slavery had seized on production in earnest.
22.
“Whether the united skill, industry, and emulation of many together on the
same work be not the way to advance it? And whether it had been otherwise
possible for England, to have carried on her Woollen Manufacture to so great a
perfection?” (Berkeley. “The Querist.” London, 1751, p. 56, par. 521.)
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