Preliminaries: Industrial Organization

B. Preliminaries: Industrial Organization

We must throughout have in mind the contrast elaborated in the Economic Manuscripts between Adam Smith’s “simple manufacture” and the “mechanical

workshop.” 5 The latter mode of production in its most advanced form – Marx draws here on the Grundrisse (MECW 29: 82–5) – comprises an automatic factory entailing a “connected system of machinery,” or a (vertical) series of mechanical processes, dependent on a mechanically driven “prime motor . . . with the drive provided by natural forces . . .”; moreover, the automatic workshop “is the more perfect, the more it forms a complete mechanical system, and the less individual

5 The distinction will be found in Capital 1 in the chapter “Machinery and Modern Industry.”

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processes still require (as do mechanical spinning mills not employing self actors) to be mediated through human labour” (MECW 33: 481–2). 6

Not all mechanical workshops display the characteristics of a full-fledged “system of machinery,” Marx explained; for “we do not understand by this system merely the link between motive power, transmitting machinery, and working machinery. This link can be found in all mechanical factories without distinction” (483). In the less advanced form of mechanical workshop, “simple cooperation” – most opera- tives engaged in an identical function – is the essential feature, unlike the pervasive division-of-labor proper attributed to manufacturing which turns on “the principle of multiples, i.e. the principle that the different operations are not only distributed between different workers but according to certain numerical proportions, in which

a definite number of workers, organised in groups, is assigned to, subsumed under, each individual operation.”(MECW 30:320); 7 “[i]n the mechanical workshop . . . it is essential that many should do the same thing. Indeed, this is its main principle” (321; also 33: 484–6). The mechanical workshop based on “a system of machinery” – entailing a phase sequence of operations – shared several characteristics with the mechanical workshop as such, with the major difference that now “division of labour naturally takes place,” based on “the differences between specialised machines which perform specific phases of the production process, and for the service of which there are therefore allotted parties of workers trained and assigned exclusively to that purpose” (MECW 33: 486). This is what Marx intended by “a new division of labour” emerging within the system of machinery.

The traditional form of specialization reemerges even in advanced “systems of machinery” in the guise of labor – usually juvenile labor – utilized in transfer of material between machines at various stages (486–7). However, apart from this menial category, specialization by ability and strength – already to be found, one might note incidentally, in Tucker (1931 [1757]: 242–3) though not in the Wealth of Nations – was inconsequential, for the sequence of specialized machinery was decisive and operatives could transfer between stages with little retraining (MECW

33: 487–8). “Discipline and subordination arise here not merely from cooperation but from subordination to the system of machinery as a whole” (489). Andrew Ure – though “the shameless apologist of the factory system” – figures large in the account. There is his “correct” view of the Smithian perspective on man- ufacturing based on division of labor as outmoded in the new circumstances (Ure

6 On the contrast between prime motor and working machinery, see a letter to Engels dated 28 January 1863 (MECW 41: 450). At this time Marx was troubled by the “self-actors” men-

tioned in the passage: “I’m in considerable doubt about the section in my book that deals with machinery. I have never quite been able to see in what way self-actors changed spinning, or rather, since steam power was already in use before then, how it was that the spinner, despite steam power, had to intervene with his motive power. I’d be grateful if you could explain this” (to Engels, 24 January 1863; 446). 7 For Babbage’s formulation of the principle of “multiples,” see Marx’s citations, MECW 30: 288.

B. Preliminaries: Industrial Organization 413 1836 1: Chapter 1; cited MECW 30: 300; also 33: 489). And he is cited favorably on

machine construction itself, initially in the workshop based on division of labor – the manufacturing form – and subsequently in the mechanical workshop: “In the infancy of mechanical engineering, a machine-factory displayed the division of labour in manifold gradations – the file, the drill, the lathe, having each its differ- ent workmen in the order of skill; but the dexterous hands of the filer and driller are now superseded by the planing, the key-groove cutting, and the drilling machines; and those of the iron and brass turners, by the self-acting slide-lathe” (30: 321, cit- ing Ure 1836 1: 30–1). A “system” of machinery is in fact implied by the sequence of stages described. And this seems to be the case in an important summary statement regarding the term “automaton” used by Ure to describe such a system. Thus the “factory or mechanical workshop” designates “the combined operation of many orders of work-people . . . in tending with assiduous skill a system of productive machines continuously impelled by a central power . . .,” excluding factories “in which the mech- anisms do not form a connected series, nor are dependent on one prime mover . . .”;

a factory, “in its strictest sense, involves the idea of a vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a common object, all of them being subordinated to a self-regulated moving force” (MECW 33: 496–7, citing Ure 1836 1: 19–20). 8

We should particularly note for later reference that the production system based on machinery “presupposes the conglomeration of workers at one point, their spatial concentration under the direction of a single capitalist. Concentration of this kind is its condition,” Marx citing Ravenstone 1824: 45 (MECW 33: 381; see also MECW 28: 325). Elsewhere Marx cites Rossi to similar effect (Rossi 1843: 334; MECW 30: 324). Investment by the firm is therefore typically heavy; for ex- ample: “ . . . a first rate cotton-spinning factory cannot be built, filled with machin- ery, and fitted with the steam engines and gasworks, under £100,000. A steam- engine of 100 horse power will turn 50,000 spindles, which will produce 62,500 miles of fine cotton thread per day. In such a factory 1,000 persons will spin as much thread as 250,000 persons could without machinery” (Laing 1844: 75; cited MECW 30: 328).

Also to be noted is the related point that the “productive power of social labour” is based on concentration, that is on “the communal cooperation of a conglomeration of workers,” allowing a wide range of scale economies: “all this relative cheapening

8 Marx also drew extensively for illustration from the anonymous Industry of Nations (1855), now known to be by C.W. Dilke. (But see MECW 33: 522n 212.) This is true of the

transition from manufacture based on division of labor to systems of machinery based on the automatic or machine factory as in paper making, envelope manufacture, type- casting, and weaving; it is true of the contrast between “prime mover” – and the cor- responding directing or transmission mechanism – and working machine, the former extending to steam engines, air engines, and electromagnetic engines (MECW 33: 410–22).

See Marx to Engels, 28 January 1863 on the controversy as to what distinguishes a tool from a machine (MECW 41: 449).

Is There a Marxian “Entrepreneur”?

of constant capital, while its absolute value increases and its ratio to variable capital grows . . . – which raises the profit when the surplus value is given . . . – is itself only an objective expression of the productive power of social labour, and follows from the social combination of labour alone” (MECW 34: 125–6; also 30: 168–9). But Marx adds to this source of economy “the cheapening of the elements of constant capital which are supplied to [the direct production process] from outside; an economising which is therefore not a result of the organisation of the labour process into which these commodities enter as elements. But these commodities are the result of another labour process in another sphere of production” (MECW 34: 126).