Marx says that in general workers cannot co-operate unless they are
brought together. On one level this is true, on another it is not.
Even in Marx's day, the division of labour was creating whole new
industries producing intermediate products. That is commodities
whose only function was as a component in some other commodity.
Today, the international division of labour means that components can
be produce in many different countries and assembled in another.
But, for the production of any specific Use Value, Marx is correct.
“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.” (p 312)
The capitalist must lay out a greater quantity of capital to employ a
large number of workers simultaneously, than to employ a the same
number in smaller amounts over a longer period. This is important
later for understanding Marx's analysis of the Rate of Turnover of
Capital.
“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.” (p 312)
And, of course, to employ these workers, the capitalist also has to
have sufficient capital to buy the constant capital needed to set
these workers in motion. As described earlier, a function of
economies of scale is that the amount of constant capital required
does not increase in the same proportion as the number of workers,
but a large increase in the number of workers (given the same level
of technology) still requires a large increase in constant capital.
A dialectical relation exists here.
“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.” (p 312)
A minimum of capital was required initially for the small master to
become a capitalist, living off surplus value. Now, a larger minimum
of capital is required so that the capitalist can produce on a scale
large enough to benefit from such a co-operative labour.
“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.” (p 313)
Where workers, even in a factory, worked as individual workers, there
was no need for a separate commanding or co-ordinating function. It
is precisely the fact that labour becomes co-operative that the
requirement for the commanding and co-ordinating function arises, and
is taken on by Capital. It then acquires special characteristics.
Under capitalism, this function becomes inseparable from the other
function, its driving force, the extraction of surplus value.
Moreover, as an increasing number of workers are brought together,
and the individual worker, selling his labour-power on the market
disappears, replaced by the mass worker, so as was seen in the
struggle over the working day, these workers are led to act
co-operatively and collectively in other ways i.e. to defend their
collective interest as against capital.
“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 counter
pressure. 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.” (p 313)
One function, as with the slave master was to ensure that materials
and equipment were not wasted and abused. Once again, Marx
illustrates the way the workers co-operatives were superior to
private capital in this regard.
“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!” (Note 2, p 313)
The Irish
Marxist James Connolly noted the same feature of the Agricultural and
Manufacturing Co-operative at Ralahine. He writes,
“To
those who fear that the institution of common property will be
inimical to progress and invention, it must be reassuring to learn
that this community of ‘ignorant’ Irish peasants introduced into
Ralahine the first reaping machine used in Ireland, and hailed it as
a blessing at a time when the gentleman farmers of England were still
gravely debating the practicability of the invention. From an address
to the agricultural labourers of the County Clare, issued by the
community on the introduction of this machine, we take the following
passages, illustrative of the difference of effect between invention
under common ownership and capitalist ownership: –
“This
machine of ours is one of the first machines ever given to the
working classes to lighten their labour, and at the same time
increase their comforts. It does not benefit any one person among us
exclusively, nor throw any individual out of employment. Any kind of
machinery used for shortening labour – except used in a
co-operative society like ours – must tend to lessen wages, and to
deprive working men of employment, and finally either to starve them,
force them into some other employment (and then reduce wages in that
also) or compel them to emigrate. Now, if the working classes would
cordially and peacefully unite to adopt our system, no power or party
could prevent their success.”
This was published by order of the committee,
21st August, 1833, and when we observe the date we cannot but wonder
at the number of things Clare – and the rest of Ireland – has
forgotten since.”
Under
capitalism, it is not the conscious will of the workers which brings
them together as a single, co-operative, productive body, but only
capital. The relations between each other and the means of
production appear to them only as part of some plan imposed by the
capitalist. And so this control, on the one hand, a co-ordinating
and controlling role, whose function is the efficient production of
Use Values, and on the other, the efficient production of surplus
value, appears as despotic. This is in clear distinction to that
function in the workers co-operatives, for example, where the manager
fulfilling that co-ordinating role is employed by the workers
themselves.
Under
capitalist production, the function, when production reaches a
certain dimension is also undertaken by specialist managers, a
specialised form of wage labourer. Marx compares them to officers,
whose function is to co-ordinate and command the other troops in the
army. But, those managers are employed by capital itself.
These
officers (the managers) and the sergeants (supervisors an
overlookers) develop as a specific social strata, with a specific
function. Despite the view developed on the basis of Marx's comments
in the Communist Manifesto, about society dividing into two great
class camps, later in Capital, Marx describes how the increasing
centralisation and concentration of capital, and its technological
development, must lead to the increase in size of this middle class
strata.
So,
it becomes clear that “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.”
(p 315)
The
capitalist buys the labour-power of individual workers, but by
employing a large number of them, and combining their activity, the
capitalist not only enjoys the benefit of the labour of each
individual worker, and the value and surplus value they create, but
also benefits from their greater combined output and creation of
value and surplus value.
“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.” (p 315)
Marx details a number of examples of the gigantic achievements of
co-operative labour under the AMP, as referred to earlier.
“Co-operation,
such as we find it at the dawn of human development, among races who
live by the chase, 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.
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.”
(p 316)
“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.” (p 317)
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