Chapter XIII.—Co-operation
Capitalist production only then really begins, as we have already seen, when each individual capital employs simultaneously a compar-
" "These speculators, who are so economical of the labour of workers they would have to pay" (J. N. Bidaut, Du Monopole gui s'établit dans les arts industriels et le commerce, Paris, 1828, p. 13). "The employer will be always on the stretch to economise time and labour" (Dugald Stewart, Works, ed. by Sir W. Hamilton, Edinburgh, 1855, v. viii. Lectures on Polit. Econ., p. 318). "Their" (the capitalists') "interest is that the productive powers of the labourers they employ should be the greatest possible. On promoting that power their attention is fixed and almost exclusively fixed" (R.Jones, I.e., Lecture III, [p. 39]).
atively large number of labourers; when consequently the labour process is carried on on an extensive scale and yields, relatively, large quantities of products. A greater number of labourers working together, at the same time, in one place (or, if you will, in the same field of labour), in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logi-cally, the starting point of capitalist production. With regard to the mode of production itself, manufacture, in its strict meaning, is hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages, from the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the mediaeval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged.
At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative. We have shown that the surplus value produced by a given capital is equal to the surplus value produced by each workman multiplied by the number of workmen simultaneously employed. The number of workmen in itself does not affect, either the rate of surplus value, or the degree of exploitation of labour power.(1) If a working day of 12 hours be embodied in six shillings, 1,200 such days will be embodied in 1,200 times 6 shillings. In one case 12 x 1,200 working hours, and in the other 12 such hours are incorporated in the product. In the production of value a number of workmen rank merely as so many individual workmen; and it therefore makes no difference in the value produced whether the 1,200 men work separately, or united under the control of one capitalist.
Nevertheless, within certain limits, a modification takes place. The labour realised in value, is labour of an average social quality; is consequently the expenditure of average labour power. Any average magnitude, however, is merely the average of a number of separate magnitudes all of one kind, but differing as to quantity. In every industry, each individual labourer, be he Peter or Paul, differs from the average labourer. These individual differences, or "errors" as they are called in mathematics, compensate one another, and vanish, whenever a certain minimum number of workmen are employed together. The celebrated sophist and sycophant, Edmund Burke, goes so far as to make the following assertion, based on his practical observations as a farmer; viz., that "in so small a platoon" as that of five farm labourers, all individual differences in the labour vanish, and that consequently any given five adult farm labourers taken together, will in the same time do as much work as any other five.[1]' But, however that may be, it is clear, that the collective working day of a large number of workmen simultaneously employed, divided by the number of these workmen, gives one day of average social labour. For example, let the working day of each individual be 12 hours. Then the collective working day of 12 men simultaneously employed, consists of 144 hours; and although the labour of each of the dozen men may de-viate more or less from average social labour, each of them requiring a different time for the same operation, yet since the working day of each is one twelfth of the collective working day of 144 hours, it possesses the qualities of an average social working day. From the point of view, however, of the capitalist who employs these 12 men, the working day is that of the whole dozen. Each individual man's day is an aliquot part of the collective working day, no matter whether the 12 men assist one another in their work, or whether the connexion between their operations consists merely in the fact, that the men are all working for the same capitalist. But if the 12 men are employed in six pairs, by as many different small masters, it will be quite a matter of chance, whether each of these masters produces the same value and consequently whether he realises the general rate of surplus value. Deviations would occur in individual cases. If one workman required considerably more time for the production of a commodity than is socially necessary, the duration of the necessary labour time would, in his case, sensibly deviate from the labour time socially necessary on an average; and consequently his labour would not count as average labour, nor his labour power as average labour power. It would either be not saleable at all, or only at something below the average
') "Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labour and that of another from strength, dexterity, and honest application. But I am quite sure, from my best observation, that any given five men will, in their total, afford a proportion of labour equal to any other five within the periods of life I have stated; that is, that among such five men there will be one possessing all the qualifica-tions of a good workman, one bad, and the other three middling, and approximating to the first, and the last. So that in so small a platoon as that of even five, you will find the full complement of all that five men can earn" (E.Burke, I.e., pp. 15, 16). Compare Quételet on the average individual.[266] value of labour power. A fixed minimum of efficiency in all labour is therefore assumed, and we shall see, later on, that capitalist production provides the means of fixing this minimum. Nevertheless, this minimum deviates from the average, although on the other hand the capitalist has to pay the average value of labour power. Of the six small masters, one would therefore squeeze out more than the average rate of surplus value, another less. The inequalities would be compensated for the society at large, but not for the individual masters. Thus the laws of the production of value are only fully realised for the individual producer, when he produces as a capitalist, and employs a number of workmen together, whose labour, by its collective nature, is at once stamped as average social labour."
Even without an alteration in the system of working, the simultaneous employment of a large number of labourers effects a revolution in the material conditions of the labour process. The buildings in which they work, the store-houses for the raw material, the implements and utensils used simultaneously or in turns by the workmen; in short, a portion of the means of production, are now consumed in common. On the one hand, the exchange value of these means of production is not increased; for the exchange value of a commodity is not raised by its use value being consumed more thoroughly and to greater advantage. On the other hand, they are used in common, and therefore on a larger scale than before. A room where twenty weavers work at twenty looms must be larger than the room of a single weaver with two assistants. But it costs less labour to build one workshop for twenty persons than to build ten to accommodate two weavers each; thus the value of the means of production that are concentrated for use in common on a large scale does not increase in direct proportion to the expansion and to the increased useful effect of those means. When consumed in common, they give up a smaller part of their value to each single product; partly because the total value they part with is spread over a greater quantity of products, and partly because their value, though absolutely greater, is, having regard to their sphere of action in the process, relatively less than the value of isolat-
" Professor Roscher claims to have discovered that one needlewoman employed by Mrs. Roscher during two days, does more work than two needlewomen employed together during one day. [2 6]' The learned professor should not study the capitalist process of production in the nursery, nor under circumstances where the principal personage, the capitalist, is wanting.
ed means of production. Owing to this, the value of a part of the constant capital falls, and in proportion to the magnitude of the fall, the total value of the commodity also falls. The effect is the same as if the means of production had cost less. The economy in their application is entirely owing to their being consumed in common by a large number of workmen. Moreover, this character of being necessary conditions of social labour, a character that distinguishes them from the dispersed and relatively more costly means of production of isolated, independent labourers, or small masters, is acquired even when the numerous workmen assembled together do not assist one another, but merely work side by side. A portion of the instruments of labour acquires this social character before the labour process itself does so.
Economy in the use of the means of production has to be considered under two aspects. First, as cheapening commodities, and thereby bringing about a fall in the value of labour power. Secondly, as altering the ratio of the surplus value to the total capital advanced, i. e., to the sum of the values of the constant and variable capital. The latter aspect will not be considered until we come to the third book,[268] to which, with the object of treating them in their proper connexion, we also relegate many other points that relate to the present question. The march of our analysis compels this splitting up of the subject-matter, a splitting up that is quite in keeping with the spirit of capitalist production. For since, in this mode of production, the workman finds the instruments of labour existing independently of him as another man's property, economy in their use appears, with regard to him, to be a distinct operation, one that does not concern him, and which, therefore, has no connexion with the methods by which his own personal productiveness is increased.
When numerous labourers work together side by side," whether in one and the same process, or in different but connected processes, they are said to co-operate, or to work in co-operation.[1]'
Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defen-sive power of a regiment of infantry, is essentially different from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is
" "Concours des forces" (Destutt de Tracy, I.e., p. 80).
The German editions have "side by side in accordance with a plan".
developed, when many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same undivided operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch, or removing an obstacle.[1]' In such cases the effect of the combined labour could either not be produced at all by isolated individual labour, or it could only be produced by a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the collective power of masses.[2]'
Apart from the new power that arises from the fusion of many forces into one single force, mere social contact begets in most industries an emulation and a stimulation of the animal spirits that heighten the efficiency of each individual workman. Hence it is that a dozen persons working together will, in their collective working day of 144 hours, produce far more than twelve isolated men each working 12 hours, or than one man who works twelve days in succession.[3]' The reason of this is that man a is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political,[4]' at all events a social animal.
Although a number of men may be occupied together at the same time on the same, or the same kind of work, yet the labour of each, as
" "There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as not to admit a division into parts, which cannot be performed without the co-operation of many pairs of hands. I would instance the lifting of a large tree on to a wain ... everything, in short, which cannot be done unless a great many pairs of hands help each other in the same undivided employment and at the same time" (E.G. Wakefield, A View of the Art of Colonisation, London, 1849, p. 168).
[21] "As one man cannot, and ten men must strain to lift a ton of weight, yet 100 men can do it only by the strength of a finger of each of them" (John Bellers, Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry, London, 1696, p. 21).
.ii "Xhere is also" (when the same number of men are employed by one farmer on 300 acres, instead of by ten farmers with 30 acres a piece) "an advantage in the proportion of servants, which will not so easily be understood but by practical men; for it is natural to say, as 1 is to 4, so are 3 to 12; but this will not hold good in practice; for in harvest time and many other operations which require that kind of despatch by the throwing many hands together, the work is better and more expeditiously done: f. i. in harvest, 2 drivers, 2 loaders, 2 pitchers, 2 rakers, and the rest at the rick, or in the barn, will despatch double the work that the same number of hands would do if divided into different gangs on different farms" ([J. Arbuthnot,] An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Price of Provisions, and the Size of Farms. By a Farmer, London, 1773, pp. 7, 8).
[41] Strictly, Aristotle's definition is that man is by nature a town-citizen.[269] This is quite as characteristic of ancient classical society as Franklin's definition of man, as a tool-making animal, ' [5] ' is characteristic of Yankeedom.
The German editions have here "der Mensch von Natur".
a part of the collective labour, may correspond to a distinct phase of the labour process, through all whose phases, in consequence of co-operation, the subject of their labour passes with greater speed. For instance, if a dozen masons place themselves in a row, so as to pass stones from the foot of a ladder to its summit, each of them does the same thing; nevertheless, their separate acts form connected parts of one total operation; they are particular phases, which must be gone through by each stone; and the stones are thus carried up quicker by the 24 hands of the row of men than they could be if each man went separately up and down the ladder with his burden.[1]' The object is carried over the same distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour occurs whenever a building, for instance, is taken in hand on different sides simultaneously; although here also the co-operating masons are doing the same, or the same kind of work. The 12 masons, in their collective working day of 144 hours, make much more progress with the building than one mason could make working for 12 days, or 144 hours. The reason is, that a body of men working in concert has hands and eyes both before and behind, and is, to a certain degree, omnipresent. The various parts of the work progress simultaneously.
In the above instances we have laid stress upon the point that the men do the same, or the same kind of work, because this, the most simple form of labour in common, plays a great part in co-operation, even in its most fully developed stage. If the work be complicated, then the mere number of the men who co-operate allows of the various operations being apportioned to different hands, and, consequently, of being carried on simultaneously. The time necessary for the completion of the whole work is thereby shortened.[2]'
[11] "It should be noted further that this partial division of labour can occur even when the workers are engaged in the same task. Masons, for example, engaged in passing bricks from hand to hand to a higher stage of the building, are all performing the same task, and yet there does exist amongst them a sort of division of labour. This consists in the fact that each of them passes the brick through a given space, and, taken together, they make it arrive much more quickly at the required spot than they would do if each of them carried his brick separately to the upper storey" (F. Skarbek, Théorie des richesses sociales, Paris, 1839, t. I, pp. 97, 98).
2; "Is it a question of undertaking a complex piece of labour? Many things must be done simultaneously. One person does one thing, while another does something else, and they all contribute to an effect that a single man would be unable to produce. One rows while the other holds the rudder, and a third casts the net or harpoons the fish; in this way fishing enjoys a success that would be impossible without this co-operation" (Destutt de Tracy, I.e. [p. 78]).
In many industries, there are critical periods, determined by the nature of the process, during which certain definite results must be obtained. For instance, if a flock of sheep has to be shorn, or a field of wheat to be cut and harvested, the quantity and quality of the product depends on the work being begun and ended within a certain time. In these cases, the time that ought to be taken by the process is prescribed, just as it is in herring fishing. A single person cannot carve a working day of more than, say 12 hours, out of the natural day, but 100 men co-operating extend the working day to 1,200 hours. The shortness of the time allowed for the work is compensated for by the large mass of labour thrown upon the field of production at the decisive moment. The completion of the task within the proper time depends on the simultaneous application of numerous combined working days; the amount of useful effect depends on the number of labourers; this number, however, is always smaller than the number of isolated labourers required to do the same amount of work in the same period.'' It is owing to the absence of this kind of co-operation that, in the western part of the United States, quantities of corn, and in those parts of East India where English rule has destroyed the old communities, quantities of cotton, are yearly wasted.[2]'
On the one hand, co-operation allows of the work being carried on over an extended space; it is consequently imperatively called for in certain undertakings, such as draining, constructing dykes, irrigation works, and the making of canals, roads and railways. On the other hand, while extending the scale of production, it renders possible a relative contraction of the arena. This contraction of arena simultaneous with, and arising from, extension of scale, whereby a number of useless expenses are cut down, is owing to the conglomeration of la-
' "The doing of it" (agricultural work) "at the critical juncture is of so much the greater consequence" (Q. Arbuthnot,] An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Price, &c, p. 7). "In agriculture, there is no more important factor than that of time"
(Liebig, Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der Landwirtschaft, 1856, p. 23).
[21] "The next evil is one which one would scarcely expect to find in a country which exports more labour than any other in the world, with the exception, perhaps, of China and England — the impossibility of procuring a sufficient number of hands to clean the cotton. The consequence of this is that large quantities of the crop are left unpicked, while another portion is gathered from the ground where it has fallen, and is of course discoloured and partially rotted, so that for want of labour at the proper season the cul-tivator is actually forced to submit to the loss of a large part ofthat crop for which England is so anxiously looking" (Bengal Hurkaru. Bi-Monthly Overland Summary of News, 22nd July, 1861).
bourers, to the aggregation of various processes, and to the concentration of the means of production.[1]*
The combined working day produces, relatively to an equal sum of isolated working days, a greater quantity of use values, and, consequently, diminishes the labour time necessary for the production of a given useful effect. Whether the combined working day, in a given case, acquires this increased productive power, because it heightens the mechanical force of labour, or extends its sphere of action over a greater space, or contracts the field of production relatively to the scale of production, or at the critical moment sets large masses of labour to work, or excites emulation between individuals and raises their animal spirits, or impresses on the similar operations carried on by a number of men the stamp of continuity and many-sidedness, or performs simultaneously different operations, or economises the means of production by use in common, or lends to individual labour the character of average social labour — whichever of these be the cause of the increase, the special productive power of the combined working day is, under all circumstances, the social productive power of labour, or the productive power of social labour. This power is due to co-operation itself. When the labourer co-operates systematically(2) with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.[21]
As a general rule, labourers cannot co-operate without being brought together: their assemblage in one place is a necessary condition of their co-operation. Hence wage labourers cannot co-operate, unless they are employed simultaneously by the same capital, the same capitalist, and unless therefore their labour powers are bought simultaneously by him. The total value of these labour powers, or the
" In the progress of culture "all, and perhaps more than all, the capital and labour which once loosely occupied 500 acres, are now concentrated for the more complete tillage of 100". Although "relatively to the amount of capital and labour employed, space is concentrated, it is an enlarged sphere of production, as compared to the sphere of production formerly occupied or worked upon by one single independent agent of production" [27]° (R.Jones, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, part I. On Rent. London, 1831, p. 191).
[21] "The strength of each man is very small, but the union of a number of very small forces produces a collective force which is greater than the sum of these partial forces, so that merely by being joined together these forces can reduce the time required, and extend their field of action" (G. R. Carli, Note to P. Verri, I.e., t. XV, p. 196).
amount of the wages of these labourers for a day, or a week, as the case may be, must be ready in the pocket of the capitalist, before the workmen are assembled for the process of production. The payment of 300 workmen at once, though only for one day, requires a greater outlay of capital, than does the payment of a smaller number of men, week by week, during a whole year. Hence the number of the labourers that co-operate, or the scale of co-operation, depends, in the first instance, on the amount of capital that the individual capitalist can spare for the purchase of labour power; in other words, on the extent to which a single capitalist has command over the means of subsistence of a number of labourers.
And as with the variable, so it is with the constant capital. For example, the outlay on raw material is 30 times as great, for the capitalist who employs 300 men, as it is for each of the 30 capitalists who employ 10 men. The value and quantity of the instruments of labour used in common do not, it is true, increase at the same rate as the number of workmen, but they do increase very considerably. Hence, concentration of large masses of the means of production in the hands of individual capitalists, is a material condition for the co-operation of .wage labourers, and the extent of the co-operation or the scale of production, depends on the extent of this concentration.
We saw in a former chapter, that a certain minimum amount of capital was necessary, in order that the number of labourers simultaneously employed, and, consequently, the amount of surplus value produced, might suffice to liberate the employer himself from manual labour, to convert him from a small master into a capitalist, and thus formally to establish capitalist production. We now see that a certain minimum amount is a necessary condition for the conversion of numerous isolated and independent processes into one combined social process.
We also saw that at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal result of the fact, that the labourer, instead of working for himself, works for and consequently under the capitalist. By the co-operation of numerous wage labourers, the sway of capital develops into a requisite for carrying on the labour process itself, into a real requisite of production. That a capitalist should command on the field of production, is now as indispensable as that a general should command on the field of battle.
All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one. The work of directing, superintending, and adjusting, becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under the control of capital, becomes co-operative. Once a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics.
The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value,[1]' and consequently to exploit labour power to the greatest possible extent. As the number of the co-operating labourers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome this resistance by counterpressure. The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour process, and peculiar to that process, but it is, at the same time a function of the exploitation of a social labour process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits.
Again, in proportion to the increasing mass of the means of production, now no longer the property of the labourer, but of the capitalist, the necessity increases for some effective control over the proper application of those means.[2]' Moreover, the co-operation of wage labourers is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them. Their union into one single productive body and the establishment of a connexion between their individual functions, are matters foreign and external to them, are not their own act, but the act of the capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence the connexion existing be-
" "Profits ... is the sole end of trade" (J. Vanderlint, I.e., p. 11). [21] That Philistine paper, the Spectator, [May 26, 1866,] states that after the introduction of a sort of partnership between capitalist and workmen in the "Wirework Company of Manchester", "the first result was a sudden decrease in waste, the men not seeing why they should waste their own property any more than any other master's, and waste is, perhaps, next to bad debts, the greatest source of manufacturing loss". The same paper finds that the main defect in the Rochdale co-operative experiments [2 5 4] is this: "They showed that associations of workmen could manage shops, mills, and almost all forms of industry with success, and they immediately improved the condition of the men; but then they did not leave a clear place for masters." Quelle horreur!
tween their various labours appears to them, ideally, in the shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist, and practically in the shape of the authority of the same capitalist, in the shape of the powerful will of another, who subjects their activity to his aims. If, then, the control of the capitalist is in substance twofold by reason of the twofold nature of the process of production itself,— which, on the one hand, is a social process for producing use values, on the other, a process for creating surplus value(3) in form that control is despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour so soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage labourer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function. When comparing the mode of production of isolated peasants and artisans with production by slave labour, the political economist counts this labour of superintendence among the faux frais of production.[1]' But, when considering the capitalist mode of production, he, on the contrary, treats the work of control made necessary by the co-operative character of the labour process as identical with the different work of control, necessitated by the capitalist character of that process and the antagonism of interests between capitalist and labourer.[2]' It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, just
[11] Professor Cairnes, after stating that the superintendence of labour is a leading feature of production by slaves in the Southern States of North America, continues: "The peasant proprietor" (of the North), "appropriating the whole produce of his toil, needs no other stimulus to exertion. Superintendence is here completely dispensed with" (Cairnes, I.e., pp. 48, 49).
[21] Sir James Steuart, a writer altogether remarkable for his quick eye for the characteristic social distinctions between different modes of production, says: "Why do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry, but by coming nearer to the simplicity of slaves?" (Prin. of Pol. Econ., London, 1767, v. I, pp. 167, 168).
as in feudal times the functions of general and judge, were attributes of landed property.[1]'
The labourer is the owner of his labour power until he has done bargaining for its sale with the capitalist; and he can sell no more than what he has — i.e., his individual, isolated labour power. This state of things is in no way altered by the fact that the capitalist, instead of buying the labour power of one man, buys that of 100, and enters into separate contracts" with 100 unconnected men instead of with one. He is at liberty to set the 100 men to work, without letting them co-operate. He pays them the value of 100 independent labour powers, but he does not pay for the combined labour power of the hundred. Being independent of each other, the labourers are isolated persons, who enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with one another. This co-operation begins only with the labour process, but they have then ceased to belong to themselves. On entering that process, they become incorporated with capital. As co-operators, as members of a working organism, they are but special modes of existence of capital. Hence, the productive power developed by the labourer when working in co-operation, is the productive power of capital. This power is developed gratuitously, whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is capital that places them under such conditions. Because this power costs capital nothing, and because, on the other hand, the labourer himself does not develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power with which capital is endowed by Nature — a productive power that is immanent in capital.
The colossal effects of simple co-operation are to be seen in the gigantic structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians, Etruscans, &c.
"It has happened in times past that these Oriental States, after supplying the expenses of their civil and military establishments, have found themselves in possession of a surplus which they could apply to works of magnificence or utility and in the construction of these their command over the hands and arms of almost the entire non-agricultural population has produced stupendous monuments which still indicate their power. The teeming valley of the Nile ... produced food for a swarming non-agricultural population, and this food, belonging to the monarch and the priesthood, afforded the means of erecting the mighty monuments which filled the land.... In moving the colossal statues and vast masses of which the transport creates wonder, human labour almost alone, was prodigally used.... The number of the labourers and the concentration of their efforts sufficed. We see mighty coral reefs rising from the depths of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak, and con-temptible. The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to bring to the task, but their number is their strength, and the power of directing these masses gave rise to the palaces and temples, the pyramids, and the armies of gigantic statues of which the remains astonish and perplex us. It is that confinement of the revenues which feed them, to one or a few hands, which makes such undertakings possible."'[1]
This power of Asiatic and Egyptian kings, Etruscan theocrats, &c, has in modern society been transferred to the capitalist, whether he be an isolated, or as in joint-stock companies, a collective capitalist.
Co-operation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development, among races who live by the chase,[2]' or, say, in the agriculture of Indian communities,[53] is based, on the one hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, and on the other hand, on the fact, that in those cases, each individual has no more torn himself off from the navel-string of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself from connexion with the hive. Such co-operation is distinguished from capitalistic co-operation by both of the above characteristics. The sporadic application of co-operation on a large scale in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, and in modern colonies, reposes on relations of dominion and servitude, principally on slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, pre-supposes from first to last, the free wage labourer, who sells his labour power to capital. Historically, however, this form is developed in opposition to peasant agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts whether in guilds or not.[31] From the standpoint of these, capitalistic co-operation does not manifest itself as a particular historical form of co-operation, but
l: R.Jones, Textbook of Lectures, &c, pp. 77, 78. The ancient Assyrian, Egyptian, and other collections in London, and in other European capitals, make us eye-witnesses of the modes of carrying on that co-operative labour.
[2] Linguet is probably right, when in his Théorie des Lois Civiles [t. 1, pp. 226, 227; t. 2, p. 497], he declares hunting to be the first form of co-operation, and man-hunting (war) one of the earliest forms of hunting.
co-operation itself appears to be a historical form peculiar to, and specifically distinguishing, the capitalist process of production.
Just as the social productive power of labour that is developed by co-operation, appears to be the productive power of capital, so co-operation itself, contrasted with the process of production carried on by isolated independent labourers, or even by small employers, appears to be a specific form of the capitalist process of production. It is the first change experienced by the actual labour process, when subjected to capital. This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage labourers, in one and the same process, which is a necessary condition of this change, also forms the starting-point of capitalist production. This point coincides with the birth of capital itself. If then, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of production presents itself to us historically, as a necessary condition to the transformation of the labour process into a social process, so, on the other hand, this social form of the labour process presents itself, as a method employed by capital for the more profitable exploitation of labour, by increasing that labour's productiveness.
In the elementary form, under which we have hitherto viewed it, co-operation is a necessary concomitant of all production on a large scale, but it does not, in itself, represent a fixed form characteristic of a particular epoch in the development of the capitalist mode of production. At the most it appears to do so, and that only approximately, in the handicraft-like beginnings of manufacture,[1]' and in that kind of agriculture on a large scale, which corresponds to the epoch of manufacture, and is distinguished from peasant agriculture, mainly by the number of the labourers simultaneously employed, and by the mass of the means of production concentrated for their use. Simple . co-operation is always the prevailing form, in those branches of production in which capital operates on a large scale, and division of labour and machinery play but a subordinate part.
Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of production, nevertheless the elementary form of co-operation continues to subsist as a particular form of capitalist production side by side with the more developed forms of that mode of production.
Endnotes
[266] According to the Belgian statistician [L.] A. [J.] Quételet, an "average man" is the true type of human individual, while real people are only a deviation from this true type, its distortion. (See A. Quételet, Sur l'homme et le développement de ses fac-ultés, ou Essai de physique social, Paris, 1835. T. I-II, the English translation of which — A Treatise on Man..., Edinburgh, 1842 — was used by Marx. Cf. also his letter to Kugelmann, dated March 3, 1869, present edition, Vol. 43, p. 232). — 328
[26] B.[H.] n[oKpoBCKiö]. [The Review of] Kanumaia. Msà. HM. TlonnKosa, 1872. In: C.-LJemepoypscKia BnboMocmu, No. 97, April 8(20), 1872.—17
[268] See Capital, Vol. III, Ch. 2, The Rate of Profit (present edition, Vol. 37).—330
[3] A reference to Lassalle's work Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch der ökonomische Julian, oder: Capital und Arbeit, Berlin, 1864, Drittes Kapitel: "III. Tausch, Werth und freie Concurrenz", especially p. 149.— 8
[4] Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur! (It is of you that the story is told) — Horace, Satires, Bk. I, Satire 1.— 8, 272
[41] Engels wrote his work In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx specially for the purpose of defending Marx against repeated accusations of deliberately falsifying a quotation from Gladstone's speech of 16 April 1863 (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 95-176).—38
[269] Aristotle called a man "zoon politicon", that is, a "state being", or "polis being". (Polis — an ancient Greek city-state.) — 331
[5] Le mort saisit le vif, son hoir le plus proche et habile à lui succéder (The dead holds the living in his grasp...) — a formula of the French common law.— 9
[27] A reference to the journal La philosophie positive. Revue, which came out in 1867-83 in Paris. In its third issue for November-December 1868, pp. 508-09, there was a short review of Volume I of Capital, written by the Russian philosopher and sociologist Eugène De Roberty, a follower of the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte.— 17
[254] In 1844, workers in the town of Rochdale (Manchester industrial region) who had been influenced by Owen's ideas took the initiative in organising a consumers' co-operative, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers' Society, which became the prototype for workers' cooperatives in England and other countries.— 304, 336, 505
[53] Marx writes about the Indian community for the first time in his. article "The British Rule in India" (present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 125-33), and also in his letter to Engels of 14 June 1853 (present edition, Vol. 39, pp. 346-48). In the '50s Marx made numerous extracts from various books on the history of India.— 52, 98, 339
[31] See K. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law (present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 3-129).—19
[1] Capital—Marx's major work to which he devoted four decades (from the early 1840s till the end of his life). Marx started studying political economy at the end of 1843 in Paris. His aim was to write a treatise containing a critical analysis of political economy. As a result of his research in this field appeared such works as the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, Wage Labour and Capital, Manifesto of the Communist Party and others. After an interval caused by the 1848-49 revolution, Marx continued his economic studies in London, where he lived as a refugee from August 1849. Here he studied the works of different economists, the history of economic development and the economics of his time in various countries, especially in England which was then a classic example of a capitalist country. He investigated theories of money, credit and the causes of economic crises, the history of landownership and the theory of ground rent, the socio-economic condition of the working class and questions of population, the history of technology and other problems. -By 1857 he had completed his enormous preparatory work and then proceeded to the final stage — the systématisation and generalisation of the collected material. From January 1857 to June 1858, Marx wrote a manuscript containing 50 signatures, which was, in fact, the first rough draft of Capital. In the present edition it was published in vols 28 and 29. At first Marx intended to publish his work in separate instalments, and the first instalment, as he wrote, "should form a relative whole" (see present edition, Vol. 40, p. 287), which embraces only the first section of Book I — the section consisting of 3 chapters: 1) The Commodity; 2) Money or Simple Circulation and 3) Capital. However, the final variant of the first instalment — A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy — does not contain the third chapter. Marx wrote the chapter on commodity especially. He wrote the chapter on money for "the first instalment" on the basis of the manuscript of 1857-58. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One was published in 1859 (present edition, Vol. 29). It was to be followed by "the second instalment", i. e. by the chapter on capital. However, soon afterwards, Marx had to postpone this work for a year and a half as he was occupied in writing the pamphlet Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17) and in other urgent matters. Only in August 1861, did he begin work on "the second instalment". By the middle of 1863, he had written a new rough draft which was considerably longer than the manuscript of 1857-58 — 23 notebooks, having a total volume of about 200 signatures. The complete manuscript of 1861-63, which is considered to be the second rough draft of Capital, is reproduced in vols 30-34 of the present edition. Later on Marx decided to divide the theoretical part of the work on capital into 3 parts. The historico-critical section was to be the fourth and concluding part, and was to be based on the part of the 1861-63 manuscript entitled "Theories of Surplus Value". In his letter to Kugelmann dated October 13, 1866, Marx writes, "The whole work is thus divided into the following parts: Book I. The Process of Production of Capital. Book II. The Process of Circulation of Capital. Book III. Structure of the Process as a Whole. Book IV. On the History of the Theory" (see present edition, Vol. 42, p. 328). Marx also gave up his plan to publish the work in separate instalments and decided first to complete the whole work and then to publish it. Marx continued his work, concentrating mainly on those parts that were not sufficiently elaborated in the 1861-63 manuscript. He studied an enormous quantity of economic and technical literature, including books on agriculture, on credit and money and turnover. He also studied statistical material, various parliamentary documents, official reports on child labour in industry, on housing conditions of the British working class, etc. Marx then wrote a new manuscript (from August 1863 to the end of 1865), which constituted a more detailed variant of the three theoretical volumes of Capital. Only after the whole work was completed (January 1866), did Marx begin preparing it for the press, having decided, on Engels' advice, not to prepare the whole work but only Volume I of Capital. The final touches were made by Marx with great thoroughness and, in fact, became yet another recasting of Volume I of Capital as a whole. To ensure the integrity, completeness and clarity of the exposition, Marx thought it necessary to reproduce in a comparatively short form the major problems dealt with in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (published in 1859) at the beginning of Volume I of Capital—they now constitute the whole of the first part "Commodities and Money" (in the first edition which was not yet subdivided into parts the first chapter bore this title). After the publication of Volume I of Capital (September 1867), Marx continued work on it in preparation for publication in German and translation into foreign lan-guages. For the second edition (1872) he made more subdivisions and also a lot of changes in the text (see this volume, pp. 12-13), gave important instructions for the Russian edition, published in Petersburg in 1872 and the first foreign translation of Capital, once more changed the book's structure and thoroughly edited the French edition (1872-75). Marx intended to take into consideration most of the changes made in the French edition when preparing the third German edition of Volume I. At the same time, after the publication of Volume I of Capital Marx continued his work on the subsequent volumes, intending to finish the whole edition as soon as possible. However, he was unable to do so. A lot of time was taken up by his activities in the General Council of the First International, and his work was increasingly hampered by poor health. After Marx's death, Engels finished preparing the third (1883) German edition of Volume I of Capital for press, which was taken as the basis for the translation into English made by Samuel Moore and Eduard Aveling and edited by Engels (1887).— 1,311
[2] Marx is referring to the sections "Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities" and "Theories of the Medium of Circulation and of Money" in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 292-302, 389-417), which he later abandoned as he intended to prepare a special historico-critical concluding volume of Capital (see Note 1).— 7, 532
[21] The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright. Defending the interests of manufacturers, the League secured the repeal of the Corn Laws which provided for the limitation and prohibition of grain imports, which served the interests of the landed aristocracy. The Corn Law adopted in 1815 prohibited the import of corn while the price of bread in England itself remained less than 80 sh. per quarter. In 1822 this law was slightly altered, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced, according to which there was a rise in import duties on corn when its price fell on the home market and vice versa. Trying to achieve the repeal of corn laws and to establish trade in corn, the League aimed at reducing domestic prices for corn and thus at reducing wages for wage-workers.The slogan of free trade was widely used by the League in its advocacy of the unity of interests of workers and manufacturers. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846.'— 15, 296, 458, 462, 667, 703
[11] 1 ' The plan outlined here was not realised by Marx. The work referred to here as Book II, was published by Engels as Volume II of Capital (1885) after Marx's death, and Book III as Volume III of Capital (1894). Book IV was not published in Marx's or Engels' lifetime. See also Note 2.— 11, 565