Rising productivity, and the increasing mechanisation of production, and spread of technology has a contradictory effect. On the one hand, machine industry means that labour is really subordinated to capital. It exists, now, only as factory labour. As factory labour that acts only as machine minding labour, it is homogeneous. But, even this homogeneous factory labour has different requirements to peasant labour, and even to simple handicraft labour. The worker needs some basic educational skills, to be able to read and write, so as to understand instructions, for example. But, also alongside this homogeneous factory labour grows a range of other new types of concrete labour. Machine production requires engineers able to produce and maintain machines, for example. Train drivers, and other railway workers need to be able to read, to do simple maths, to write and so on. And, as industry expands, and the role of the private capitalist is eclipsed, whole armies of workers are recruited into the role of functioning capitalist, as managers, administrators, accountants, and so on.
“The commercial worker, in the strict sense of the term, belongs to the better-paid class of wage-workers — to those whose labour is classed as skilled and stands above average labour. Yet the wage tends to fall, even in relation to average labour, with the advance of the capitalist mode of production. This is due partly to the division of labour in the office, implying a one-sided development of the labour capacity, the cost of which does not fall entirely on the capitalist, since the labourer's skill develops by itself through the exercise of his function, and all the more rapidly as division of labour makes it more one-sided. Secondly, because the necessary training, knowledge of commercial practices, languages, etc., is more and more rapidly, easily, universally and cheaply reproduced with the progress of science and public education the more the capitalist mode of production directs teaching methods, etc., towards practical purposes. The universality of public education enables capitalists to recruit such labourers from classes that formerly had no access to such trades and were accustomed to a lower standard of living. Moreover, this increases supply, and hence competition. With few exceptions, the labour-power of these people is therefore devaluated with the progress of capitalist production. Their wage falls, while their labour capacity increases. The capitalist increases the number of these labourers whenever he has more value and profits to realise. The increase of this labour is always a result, never a cause of more surplus-value.”
(Capital III, Chapter 17, p 300-301)
On the one hand, therefore, capital needs to sell new types of commodity to workers, including services such as education, and on the other, it also needs workers to consume such commodities as education, because its requirements, in terms of the concrete labour required for production, is changing. Indeed, these basic requirements, for the type of concrete labour needed, implies other changes for capital too. There is no point capital providing resources for workers education, if the worker themselves has a short lifespan, or is regularly too ill to work. That would mean having to expend resources on education for new generations of workers more frequently. Capital requires that workers, therefore, also consume commodities that encourage better health, that they be dissuaded from drinking alcohol, and so on. Hence the bourgeoisie introduces temperance campaigns, and so on. It is this, which leads capital not only to extend “free” public education, but also to establish welfare schemes, whether in the form of the company welfare schemes introduced in the US by large corporations, or in the form of state capitalist welfare schemes via national and other forms of social insurance.
So, capital requires a different type of labour, with different use values, and, in order to achieve it, it must also get workers to consume different types of use value in order to produce that type of labour. At the same time, capital, as it expands the range of goods and services it produces, and must sell these in ever larger quantities, must also encourage the workers to consume these wider range of commodities and services.
“...likewise the discovery, creation and satisfaction of new needs arising from society itself; the cultivation of all the qualities of the social human being, production of the same in a form as rich as possible in needs, because rich in qualities and relations -- production of this being as the most total and universal possible social product, for, in order to take gratification in a many-sided way, he must be capable of many pleasures [genussfähig], hence cultured to a high degree -- is likewise a condition of production founded on capital. This creation of new branches of production, i.e. of qualitatively new surplus time, is not merely the division of labour, but is rather the creation, separate from a given production, of labour with a new use value; the development of a constantly expanding and more comprehensive system of different kinds of labour, different kinds of production, to which a constantly expanding and constantly enriched system of needs corresponds.”
(The Grundrisse, Chapter 8)
This is the Civilising Mission of Capital. Productivity rises, the quantity of every type of existing commodity increases. At a certain point, even as the value of these commodities falls, as productivity rises, the demand for these commodities cannot be increased sufficiently. There is overproduction of these commodities. Their market prices fall sharply, and the rate of profit on them falls rapidly along with it, with some producers suffering losses. It is no longer possible to simply accumulate the released capital in these spheres, and so it must seek out new spheres of production, new spheres where consumption and the market can be expanded, and where profits can be made. And, the capital invested in these new spheres, also, thereby, creates a market for the capital invested in the old spheres, validating it, as exchange between these spheres is now possible.
“The value of the old industry is preserved by the creation of the fund for a new one in which the relation of capital and labour posits itself in a new form. Hence exploration of all of nature in order to discover new, useful qualities in things; universal exchange of the products of all alien climates and lands; new (artificial) preparation of natural objects, by which they are given new use values. The exploration of the earth in all directions, to discover new things of use as well as new useful qualities of the old; such as new qualities of them as raw materials etc.; the development, hence, of the natural sciences to their highest point...”
(The Grundrisse, Chapter 8)
This is the Civilising Mission of Capital.
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