In Weimar, as in the late 1970's/early 80's, there was economic stagnation, and unemployment, and yet still squeezed profits and high inflation. It simply produces stagflation. Only the technological innovations of the 1920's, and 1970's, as they were introduced in the 1930's, and 1980's, resolved that contradiction.
“The greater division of labour enables one worker to accomplish the work of five, ten, or twenty; it therefore multiplies competition among the workers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The workers do not only compete by one selling himself cheaper than another; they compete by one doing the work of five, ten, twenty; and the division of labour, introduced by capital and continually increased compels the workers to compete among themselves in this way.
Further, as the division of labour increases, labour is simplified. The special skill of the worker becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous productive force that does not have to intense bodily or intellectual faculties. His labour becomes a labour that anyone can perform. Hence, competitors crowd upon him on all sides, and besides we remind the reader that the more simple, the more easily learned the labour is, the lower the cost of production needed to master it, the lower do wages sink, for, like the price of every other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production.” (p 41-2)
Indeed, we see the foundations of the new cycle of such innovation with the development of AI. Here, too, however, it is a contradictory process, unlike the crude catastrophism of the petty-bourgeois pessimists. Marx never said that mechanisation leads to absolute falls in employment, only to relative falls, and he distinguishes between the power looms that actually threw existing hand-loom weavers out of work, as against the millions of spinners that would have been required to produce the current level of yarn produced with machines, but who never existed.
Similarly, he distinguishes between the workers thrown out of work by machines, and the ability to simply employ them, instead, in machine production. But, that does not mean that other workers were not employed in that machine production, and so on.
Marx points out that machine production itself becomes the subject of machine production, rather than skilled handicraft production, but the skilled labour of a toolmaker, operating a lathe or milling machine is not the same as the unskilled labour of a machine minder. The labour-saving technologies, introduced in every Innovation Cycle, have not resulted in any absolute fall in employment, but instead, in a huge rise in the range and quality of commodities produced, and only a relative fall in employment, compared to it.
The rise in productivity creates a relative surplus population, increasing competition amongst the workers, and reducing wages. The lack of competitiveness of small producers, and even small capitalists, throws them into the ranks of the proletariat, increasing its numbers and competition for jobs. As wages fall, each worker is led to work more hours to compensate, and, thereby, increases the supply of labour, increasing, further, the competition between them, pushing wages lower.
More labour is recruited as households throw other members of the family into the labour market. That was noticeable in the Industrial Revolution, but, in the 1950's, it was also seen as married women entered the labour market, facilitated by the introduction of domestic appliances, to speed up domestic labour, as well as the introduction of socialised welfare provision, in relation to childcare, education and health and social care.
All of this formerly domestic production, occurring outside the market, also, now, became commoditised, and collectively bought by workers via social insurance payments, in the same way they bought house or car insurance. In short, the most favourable conditions, for workers, are those in which capital expands freely and rapidly, so that more labour is employed, and wages rise. But, those conditions, in turn, lead to increased competition between capitals, and crises in which not only firms are destroyed, but capital is destroyed, with millions of workers thrown out of work. The crisis itself, and the competition between capitals, leads to technological revolutions that reduce the demand for labour, and reduce wages. Even if they result in higher real wages, they result in lower relative wages, further subordinating labour to capital. The only means of ending this cycle, within which the workers can never win, is by moving beyond the limitations of capitalism, and commodity production, to the development of Socialism.
No comments:
Post a Comment