3) The Two Fundamental Forms Of Manufacture: Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture
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| William Petty |
Manufacture can be divided into two forms, though they are sometimes combined. Firstly, there is the kind of manufacture where a number of individual components are assembled. Marx gives the example provided by William Petty of watch making. A whole series of components are made by separate detailed workers, and then assembled by another set of specialised workers. The individual components can be produced as separate products, in separate factories or even industries, or may be produced in parallel by groups of workers all working in one factory.
The second
type of manufacture is where a series of processes are undertaken to
bring about a transformation that creates the final product. An
example would be wire being transformed into needles, but various
chemical processes, such as brewing, are of this type too. By
bringing together all of the scattered trades required for such
production, such manufacture shortens the time required for moving
from one stage to another. On the one hand, the division of labour
requires the various tasks involved in each stage to be separated,
and kept independent, on the other the need to exploit the additional
productivity from co-operative labour, requires that the work pass
incessantly from one worker to the next in each stage of the process.
Looking at
some particular raw material its progress can be viewed as occurring
through a series of stages. However, standing back and looking at
the production process as a whole, the situation appears differently.
From this viewpoint, the same raw material is being used
simultaneously at all stages of production. What is an output of one
stage of the process, appears simultaneously as an input of the next
stage and so on.
“On the
other hand, if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw
material in all the stages of its production at the same time. The
collective labourer, with one set of his many hands armed with one
kind of tools, draws the wire, with another set, armed with different
tools, he, at the same time, straightens it, with another, he cuts
it, with another, points it, and so on. The different detail
processes, which were successive in time, have become simultaneous,
go on side by side in space. Hence, production of a greater quantum
of finished commodities in a given time. This simultaneity, it is
true, is due to the general co-operative form of the process as a
whole; but Manufacture not only finds the conditions for co-operation
ready to hand, it also, to some extent, creates them by the
sub-division of handicraft labour. On the other hand, it accomplishes
this social organisation of the labour-process only by riveting each
labourer to a single fractional detail.” (p 326)
This is another example of where the Temporal Single System Interpretation (TSSI) is wrong, because it denies the possibility of the simultaneity described here by Marx. Working with a syllogistic rather than dialectical logic, it can only see in these production processes, discrete tasks being undertaken in discrete periods of time, rather than production as a continual flow as described by Marx. Remember that for Marx, as he described in the first Chapters, every individual commodity is merely a representative of its class, and so he is not bound by the fetishism of trying to identify the price or value of any particular individual commodity within the production process. Remember too that for Marx, raw material means any material that has been the subject of past human labour, so when he speaks of raw material here, he means the cloth that makes the clothes, as much as he means the cotton that makes the cloth. Moreover, as Marx does repeatedly throughout Capital, he provides an analysis here at the level of "Many Capitals", in other words he is looking at how this process works at the level of particular firms or industries, but that can also be scaled up to the level of "Capital In General", that is the way in which Capital operates at an economy wide level. At that level, the same kinds of interaction, with one industry providing the raw material for another, and so on, the same kind of analysis, of the "collective worker" performing all of these functions with his/her many hands, applies equally as his description here.
This is another example of where the Temporal Single System Interpretation (TSSI) is wrong, because it denies the possibility of the simultaneity described here by Marx. Working with a syllogistic rather than dialectical logic, it can only see in these production processes, discrete tasks being undertaken in discrete periods of time, rather than production as a continual flow as described by Marx. Remember that for Marx, as he described in the first Chapters, every individual commodity is merely a representative of its class, and so he is not bound by the fetishism of trying to identify the price or value of any particular individual commodity within the production process. Remember too that for Marx, raw material means any material that has been the subject of past human labour, so when he speaks of raw material here, he means the cloth that makes the clothes, as much as he means the cotton that makes the cloth. Moreover, as Marx does repeatedly throughout Capital, he provides an analysis here at the level of "Many Capitals", in other words he is looking at how this process works at the level of particular firms or industries, but that can also be scaled up to the level of "Capital In General", that is the way in which Capital operates at an economy wide level. At that level, the same kinds of interaction, with one industry providing the raw material for another, and so on, the same kind of analysis, of the "collective worker" performing all of these functions with his/her many hands, applies equally as his description here.
The workers
in this process are made increasingly dependent on each other.
“The
result of the labour of the one is the starting-point for the labour
of the other. The one workman therefore gives occupation directly to
the other.” (p 326)
Experience
dictates how much labour-time is required for each stage so that
sufficient supply can be built up to ensure that material is passed
to the next stage without any interruption or delay. This has been
raised to new heights with today's production systems based around
“Just In Time”.
This
dependence produces other results.
“It is
clear that this direct dependence of the operations, and therefore of
the labourers, on each other, compels each one of them to spend on
his work no more than the necessary time, and thus a continuity,
uniformity, regularity, order, and even intensity of labour, of quite
a different kind, is begotten than is to be found in an independent
handicraft or even in simple co-operation. The rule, that the
labour-time expended on a commodity should not exceed that which is
socially necessary for its production, appears, in the production of
commodities generally, to be established by the mere effect of
competition; since, to express ourselves superficially, each single
producer is obliged to sell his commodity at its market-price. In
Manufacture, on the contrary, the turning out of a given quantum of
product in a given time is a technical law of the process of
production itself.” (p 326-7)
Because of
the point made earlier that a sufficient supply of components is
required to ensure a constant flow and because each stage requires
different amounts of labour-time, more workers have to be employed on
certain stages of the process than others. This establishes given
proportions of the numbers of workers and equipment required for the
greatest efficiency. Marx quotes Charles Babbage,
““When
(from the peculiar nature of the produce of each manufactory), the
number of processes into which it is most advantageous to divide it
is ascertained, as well as the number of individuals to be employed,
then all other manufactories which do not employ a direct multiple of
this number will produce the article at a greater cost.... Hence
arises one of the causes of the great size of manufacturing
establishments.” (C. Babbage. “On the Economy of Machinery,”
1st ed. London. 1832. Ch. xxi, pp. 172-73.)” (Note 2, p 327)
As these
proportions are scaled up there are other economies of scale to be
achieved. For example, in supervision or the transport of components
from one stage to another. In fact, only at a certain scale of
production does it become economic to make these functions the task
in turn of specific workers.
Some
processes, for example glass making, require workers each having
different functions to work as a team simultaneously on the same
task. The driver and fireman on a steam locomotive operate in a
similar manner. None can achieve the end result without the other,
and so each is like a part of a single organism. But, similarly,
such processes can be scaled up. The glass furnace, for example, has
six openings, each having its own work group, whilst the factory
itself can have several furnaces.
Different
types of such manufacture can expand so that different types of
manufacture are combined. For example, because glass manufacture
required earthenware pots, to contain the molten glass, the
manufacturers expanded into ceramics manufacture, to ensure quality.
Various glass products, like mirrors, had brass fittings, so glass
makers expanded into brass founding. These only develop into
separate types of production with the introduction of machine
industry.
The
development of manufacture on an increasing scale, and the
recognition, early on, of the need to economise on the labour-time
required for production, leads to the sporadic introduction of
machinery. Marx points out that the Roman Empire had provided the
“elementary form of all machinery in the water-wheel.” (p 329)
In the
handicraft period, prior to manufacture, it is the division of
labour, rather than machinery, which plays the most significant role.
“The
sporadic use of machinery in the 17th century was of the greatest
importance, because it supplied the great mathematicians of that time
with a practical basis and stimulant to the creation of the science
of mechanics.” (p 329)
Under
manufacturing, it is the collective labourer, which acts like a
machine.
“The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a number
of detail labourers, is the machinery specially characteristic of the
manufacturing period. The various operations that are performed in
turns by the producer of a commodity, and coalesce one with another
during the progress of production, lay claim to him in various ways.
In one operation he must exert more strength, in another more skill,
in another more attention; and the same individual does not possess
all these qualities in an equal degree. After Manufacture has once
separated, made independent, and isolated the various operations, the
labourers are divided, classified, and grouped according to their
predominating qualities. If their natural endowments are, on the one
hand, the foundation on which the division of labour is built up, on
the other hand, Manufacture, once introduced, develops in them new
powers that are by nature fitted only for limited and special
functions. The collective labourer now possesses, in an equal degree
of excellence, all the qualities requisite for production, and
expends them in the most economical manner, by exclusively employing
all his organs, consisting of particular labourers, or groups of
labourers, in performing their special functions. The one-sidedness
and the deficiencies of the detail labourer become perfections when
he is a part of the collective labourer. The habit of doing only one
thing converts him into a never failing instrument, while his
connexion with the whole mechanism compels him to work with the
regularity of the parts of a machine.” (p 330)
But,
“Since
the collective labourer has functions, both simple and complex, both
high and low, his members, the individual labour-powers, require
different degrees of training, and must therefore have different
values. Manufacture, therefore, develops a hierarchy of
labour-powers, to which there corresponds a scale of wages.” (p
330)
Manufacturing
then creates a class of unskilled workers whose function is separated
off from all those specific functions that require a degree of skill
or specialisation. Such a group did not exist under handicraft
production.
“If it
develops a one-sided speciality into a perfection, at the expense of
the whole of a man’s working capacity, it also begins to make a
speciality of the absence of all development. Alongside of the
hierarchic gradation there steps the simple separation of the
labourers into skilled and unskilled. For the latter, the cost of
apprenticeship vanishes; for the former, it diminishes, compared with
that of artificers, in consequence of the functions being simplified.
In both cases the value of labour-power falls. An exception to this
law holds good whenever the decomposition of the labour-process
begets new and comprehensive functions, that either had no place at
all, or only a very modest one, in handicrafts. The fall in the value
of labour-power, caused by the disappearance or diminution of the
expenses of apprenticeship, implies a direct increase of
surplus-value for the benefit of capital; for everything that
shortens the necessary labour-time required for the reproduction of
labour-power, extends the domain of surplus-labour. “ (p 331)
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