Marx quotes Proudhon, at length, where he sets out his argument that machinery is the antithesis/antidote to the division of labour. Proudhon says that a machine is,
“A way of uniting different portions of labour which had been separated by the division of labour. Every machine can be defined as a summary of several operations.... Thus, through the machine there will be a restoration of the worker.... Machinery, which in political economy places itself in contradiction to the division of labour, represents synthesis, which in the human mind is opposed to analysis.” (p 124)
But, as Marx points out, this division of labour, as against the previously described social division of labour, only arises after the development of the workshop and factory production. This division of labour is a consequence of, not a cause of factory production. Proudhon also says,
“Division merely separated the different parts of labour, letting each one devote himself to the speciality which most suited him; the workshop groups the workers according to the relation of each part to the whole.... It introduces the principle of authority in labour.” (p 124)
If what is meant is the social division of labour, then, its true that, as independent commodity production expanded, some of these producers specialised in spinning, some in weaving and so on. But, most of this was driven by the expansion of towns, which, in turn, was spurred by the disbanding of the old feudal retinues, and a continual flow, into the towns, of failed peasants and agricultural workers. The majority of social production continued to be direct production, in which there was very little, even of this social division of labour. Inside the peasant household, it amounted only to different members doing more of the spinning, whilst others did weaving and so on.
Marx notes,
“The separation of the different parts of labour, leaving to each one the opportunity of devoting himself to the speciality best suited to him – a separation which M. Proudhon dates from the beginning of the world – exists only in modern industry under the rule of competition.” (p 124)
And, contrary to Proudhon, its not this division of labour that results in the capitalist arising as an authority over labour, but the failure of individual commodity producers, who, then, find themselves formally subordinated to capital. Proudhon give a romanticised version of history, reminiscent of Rousseau, and The Social Contract, in which someone seizes upon the idea of division of labour, and proposes it to their fellow citizens, each acting as equals, who, then, as a result of this division, results in them becoming the workmen of the capitalist who first proposed the idea. In other words, a reworking of Rousseau's idea that man begins free, but everywhere is in chains. Proudhon says,
“But this is not all; the machine or the workshop, after degrading the worker by giving him a master, completes his abasement by making him sink from the rank of artisan to that of common labourer.... The period we are going through at the moment, that of machinery, is distinguished by a special characteristic, the wage worker. The wage worker is subsequent to the division of labour and to exchange.” (p 124)
However, this is false as already described. The Putting Out System involved the labourer being paid a wage, as did the handicraft workshop and manufacture. This precedes the development both of the division of labour, and machine production.
“Society as a whole has this in common with the interior of a workshop, that it too has its division of labour. If one took as a model the division of labour in a modern workshop, in order to apply it to a whole society, the society best organized for the production of wealth would undoubtedly be that which had a single chief employer, distributing tasks to different members of the community according to a previously fixed rule. But this is by no means the case. While inside the modern workshop the division of labour is meticulously regulated by the authority of the employer, modern society has no other rule, no other authority for the distribution of labour than free competition.” (p 125)
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