5) THE STRIFE BETWEEN WORKMAN AND MACHINE
The struggle between wage labour and capital takes
place from the beginning of capitalist relations. However, its only
with the introduction of machinery that this struggle takes the form
of a struggle with the instruments of labour themselves. This is not
just because the machinery is seen as replacing workers and depriving
them of their livelihood. The introduction of machinery, along with
all of the other deterioration of the workers' conditions, also
brought a large increase in deaths, accidents and industrial diseases
that did not exist with handicraft production, or manufacture. In
its flush of youth, Capital rushes forward without any concern for
the effects this has on the longer term consequences for the value
creating substance – Labour – and, therefore, its own longer term
interests. This is illustrated by Marx’s quote from Leonard
Horner,
“I have heard some mill-owners speak with
inexcusable levity of some of the accidents; such, for instance, as
the loss of a finger being a trifling matter. A working-man’s
living and prospects depend so much upon his fingers, that any loss
of them is a very serious matter to him. When I have heard such
inconsiderate remarks made, I have usually put this question: Suppose
you were in want of an additional workman, and two were to apply,
both equally well qualified in other respects, but one had lost a
thumb or a forefinger, which would you engage? There never was a
hesitation as to the answer....” (Note 1, p 402)
But, it should not be assumed from this that
Capital did not learn the lessons of its longer term interests. Marx
gives a further quote,
“In those factories that have been longest
subject to the Factory Acts, with their compulsory limitation of the
hours of labour, and other regulations, many of the older abuses have
vanished. The very improvement of the machinery demands to a certain
extent “improved construction of the buildings,” and this is an
advantage to the workpeople. (See “Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st
Oct., 1863,” p. 109.)” (Note 2, p 402)
In Lenin's
The Development Of Capitalism In Russia,
which is a brilliant application of Marx’s analysis and method in
Capital, he argues vehemently against the Narodniks, who could only
see the negative aspects of Capitalism. In it, Lenin demonstrates
that, in fact, in Russia, the conditions of workers, in general, were
better in manufacture than in handicraft production, and were better
in the larger capitalist machine industry than in manufacture.
Once capital is able to extract relative surplus
value, this is a much more effective means of raising the rate of
exploitation than is absolute surplus value. Moreover, the
conditions required to effectively extract relative surplus value,
frequently conflict with attempts to extract absolute surplus value.
That does not mean capital abandons the latter. It always seeks to
exploit more labour-time and, at certain times, - high, persistent
unemployment, periods when increases in productivity decline – its
focus returns to absolute surplus value.
Protests against machinery begin in Europe as
early as the 17th Century, with widespread action against
the ribbon loom, invented in Germany. Marx details other such
protests including those of the Luddites.
“It took both time and experience before the
workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment
by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material
instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are
used.” (p 404)
Marx highlights the difference of the change from
handicraft industry to manufacture compared to the change of the
latter to machine industry.
“The contests about wages in Manufacture,
pre-suppose manufacture, and are in no sense directed against its
existence. The opposition against the establishment of new
manufactures, proceeds from the guilds and privileged towns, not from
the workpeople.” (p 404)
Under manufacture, it was handicraft labour that
still formed the basis of production, though its productivity is
raised by the division of labour.
“Hence the writers of the manufacturing
period treat the division of labour chiefly as a means of virtually
supplying a deficiency of labourers, and not as a means of actually
displacing those in work.” (p 404)
As demand rose from Britain's colonial markets,
there were not enough workers to meet it, and as Marx demonstrated
previously, in this early period, capital had difficulty getting
workers to work more than three or four days a week anyway. The
division of labour, plus employing more workers from the countryside,
as the feudal system broke down, was a means of satisfying this
demand.
“At that time, therefore, division of labour
and co-operation in the workshops, were viewed more from the positive
aspect, that they made the workpeople more productive.” (p 405)
By contrast the introduction of machinery has
different consequences.
“If it be said that 100 millions of people
would be required in England to spin with the old spinning-wheel the
cotton that is now spun with mules by 500,000 people, this does not
mean that the mules took the place of those millions who never
existed. It means only this, that many millions of workpeople would
be required to replace the spinning machinery. If, on the other hand,
we say, that in England the power-loom threw 800,000 weavers on the
streets, we do not refer to existing machinery, that would have to be
replaced by a definite number of workpeople, but to a number of
weavers in existence who were actually replaced or displaced by the
looms.” (p 404)
In agriculture, the concentration of the means of
production in a few hands, along with the introduction of principles
of co-operation and division of labour, creates a revolution in
production. But, this leads not to conflict between wage labour and
capital, but between the larger landholders, able to introduce these
methods, and the smaller ones, who cannot. It creates the conditions
for trying to establish larger farms via land grabs, as happened with
the Enclosure Acts in Britain, not to mention outright theft, by
members of the landed aristocracy.
“Hence this subversion of agriculture puts
on, at first, more the appearance of a political revolution.” (p
405)
It is machinery which really creates the
conditions for the conflict between wage workers and capital. As
Ricardo says,
Marx describes the consequence.
“The
whole system of capitalist production is based on the fact that the
workman sells his labour-power as a commodity. Division of labour
specialises this labour-power, by reducing it to skill in handling a
particular tool. So soon as the handling of this tool becomes the
work of a machine, then, with the use-value, the exchange-value too,
of the workman’s labour-power vanishes; the workman becomes
unsaleable, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal
enactment. That portion of the working-class, thus by machinery
rendered superfluous, i.e., no longer immediately necessary for the
self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the unequal
contest of the old handicrafts and manufactures with machinery, or
else floods all the more easily accessible branches of industry,
swamps the labour-market, and sinks the price of labour-power below
its value. It is impressed upon the workpeople, as a great
consolation, first, that their sufferings are only temporary (“a
temporary inconvenience"), secondly, that machinery acquires the
mastery over the whole of a given field of production, only by
degrees, so that the extent and intensity of its destructive effect
is diminished. The first consolation neutralises the second. When
machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, it produces chronic
misery among the operatives who compete with it. Where the transition
is rapid, the effect is acute and felt by great masses. History
discloses no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinction of the
English hand-loom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several
decades, and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of starvation,
many with families vegetated for a long time on 2½ d. a day.” (p
405-6)
Marx’s description here also has important
lessons for today, at a micro and macro level. Marx describes the
way the hand-loom workers' misery was perpetuated, because they
continued to be employed in competition with the power loom. It
meant a terrible reduction in their wages below what was necessary
for their subsistence. A part of the difference was made up by
payments of Poor Relief out of Parish funds. That just prolonged the
agony of the workers, whilst allowing a form of production whose time
had passed to continue. It also drained resources from other workers
and producers, who had to pay Poor Rates, to the Parish, to cover the
relief which became an increasing burden.
We see the same thing today in the way various
forms of Welfarism allow low-paying employers to keep going, usually
also providing their workers with poor and unstable working
conditions, because their workers wages are supplemented by transfers
from other workers via the tax and benefits system. This drain from
workers wages means a drain on funds that could go to creating demand
in some other industry able to employ workers at a higher rate of
pay. It would then force the low paying, inefficient producers to
modernise their production. As with the Poor Law, Welfarism gives
the impression of providing subsidies to workers, but in reality is a
subsidy from better paid workers to bad employers, who as a
consequence can continue to pay low wages. A good example of that is
Wal-Mart in the US, which refuses to negotiate a health insurance
scheme with its workers, preferring instead to force them to use
Medicare and Medicaid provided by the State and funded by other
workers taxes.
The same thing applies at a macro level in the
current Eurozone Debt Crisis, where entire economies that are,
overall, uncompetitive, impose prolonged misery and austerity on
their workers, which is facilitated by a similar kind of Welfarism
paid for by workers elsewhere in Europe. What these economies
require is not a long slow death like that suffered by the hand loom
weavers, but the injection of large amounts of new capital to create
new competitive industries, which can provide the workers with decent
stable jobs, at decent wages, and with decent conditions. If Capital
cannot do that, then workers have to organise to bring it about
themselves.
Marx, describing the effects of machinery, in this
respect, also provides a damning indictment of the kind of Welfarist
attitudes many on the Left today promote or defend. That Welfarism,
offers no solution to the workers problems, merely prolongs their
misery and at the same time degrades and debases them, as well as
undermining their independence from capital.
 |
| Welfarism degrades and debases workers turning them into a version of Oliver Twist, pleading with the Capitalist State for a bit more gruel. It undermines their indpendence from that State, and undermines what Marx and Engels argued was fundamental, the collective self-activity of the working-class to resolve its problems, and liberate itself. |
“The competition between hand-weaving and
power-weaving in England, before the passing of the Poor Law of 1833,
was prolonged by supplementing the wages, which had fallen
considerably below the minimum, with parish relief. “The Rev. Mr.
Turner was, in 1827, rector of Wilmslow in Cheshire, a manufacturing
district. The questions of the Committee of Emigration, and Mr.
Turner’s answers, show how the competition of human labour is
maintained against machinery. ‘Question: Has not the use of the
power-loom superseded the use of the hand-loom? Answer: Undoubtedly;
it would have superseded them much more than it has done, if the
hand-loom weavers were not enabled to submit to a reduction of
wages.’ ‘Question: But in submitting he has accepted wages which
are insufficient to support him, and looks to parochial contribution
as the remainder of his support? Answer: Yes, and in fact the
competition between the hand-loom and the power-loom is maintained
out of the poor-rates.’ Thus degrading pauperism or expatriation,
is the benefit which the industrious receive from the introduction of
machinery, to be reduced from the respectable and in some degree
independent mechanic, to the cringing wretch who lives on the
debasing bread of charity. This they call a temporary inconvenience.”
(“A Prize Essay on the Comparative Merits of Competition and
Co-operation.” Lond., 1834, p. 29.) (Note 1, p 406)
The conflict between the machine and the worker is
most acute where machines are introduced to replace existing
handicraft or manufacture, rather than where an improved machine
merely replaces an existing one. But, it is a perpetual struggle.
Capital continually seeks to replace human labour wherever its
peculiarities allow the worker to exercise any kind of power, or to
be able to bargain for higher wages.
We see that today in the form of computerised
“expert systems” whose sole function is to replace expert
workers, as well as with the introduction of robots into areas such
as surgery. In the Financial Services Industry, extremely highly
paid workers operating as traders are increasingly being replaced by
computer systems based on neural nets, which learn with each trade.
Just as machines elsewhere have revolutionised the mode of
production, so too here. These computer traders have led to what is
called “High Frequency Trading”. The computers can now buy
billions of shares, or other financial assets, and sell them again
many times a second, making gains by rapidly trading huge volumes
with tiny changes in prices.
Also, part of the reason that elements of State
Capitalism are being privatised is precisely for the reasons
identified by Aglietta and others nearly thirty years ago. That is
developments in computing and technology mean that various services
like education and healthcare, which previously capital could only
provide efficiently by Fordist techniques, based on State owned, mass
production education and health factories, can now be more
efficiently delivered in the private sector by Neo-Fordist, more
flexible provision. Its now possible to obtain very expensive
Harvard and other University courses over the Internet, for much less
than enrolling on the course. In places like Singapore, with ultra
high speed broadband, a lot of education for school students is now
provided for students in their own homes rather than in schools.
“Whenever a process requires peculiar dexterity and steadiness
of hand, it is withdrawn, as soon as possible, from the cunning
workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is
placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a
child can superintend it.” (Quoted from Ure, p 407)
 |
| The old, state owned, Fordist Education and Health Factories are no longer efficient, necessary or appropriate now that technological developments make possible, more flexible provision. |
In fact, computer scientists have found that it is
many of these expert functions that are the most easily computerised.
A doctor is no different from a TV repairman. The diagnosis of both
is essentially done by going through a check list, and comparing the
answers to a database of possible faults, that can be refined until a
likely problem is identified. In fact, a computer containing a
patient's full medical history is technically more capable of doing
that faster, and more reliably. But, also, just as new cars now have
computer chips in them, which constantly monitor their operation for
faults, so similar chips are now available to constantly monitor
humans for high blood pressure, blood sugar levels and so on, and to
warn of likely health problems. These developments, along with other
technological innovations, in health, mean that the old Fordist model
is no longer necessary or appropriate.
““On the automatic plan skilled labour gets
progressively superseded.” “The effect of improvements in
machinery, not merely in superseding the necessity for the employment
of the same quantity of adult labour as before, in order to produce a
given result, but in substituting one description of human labour for
another, the less skilled for the more skilled, juvenile for adult,
female for male, causes a fresh disturbance in the rate of wages.””
(Quoted from Ure, p 407-8)
As Marx set out against Weston in
Value, Price and Profit,
capital always has the whip hand against wage labour, and whenever
the latter is able to take advantage of a temporary situation to
improve its position, capital responds to reverse it. Machinery has
been one of the main ways it has achieved that.
 |
| In the 1980's, the print workers were not really defeated by Thatcher and the anti-union laws. They were defeated by the introduction of new technology, that allowed newspaper owners like Eddie Shah to set up new papers with unskilled, un-unionised workers, as well as the establishment of thousands of "Instant Print" shops on high streets across the country. |
“But machinery not only acts as a competitor
who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of
making him superfluous. It is also a power inimical to him, and as
such capital proclaims it from the roof tops and as such makes use of
it. It is the most powerful weapon for repressing strikes, those
periodical revolts of the working-class against the autocracy of
capital. According to Gaskell, the steam-engine was from the very
first an antagonist of human power, an antagonist that enabled the
capitalist to tread under foot the growing claims of the workmen, who
threatened the newly born factory system with a crisis. It would be
possible to write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830,
for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the
revolts of the working-class. At the head of these in importance,
stands the self-acting mule, because it opened up a new epoch in the
automatic system." (p 410-11)
Whenever workers' position has allowed, them any
kind of leverage, capital has responded by replacing labour with
machines. It did so in the print industry, it has done so in mining,
and is doing so now with the introduction of automatic trains.
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