Chapter XV.- Machinery and Modern Industry
John Stuart Mill says in his Principles of Political Economy:
"It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." "
That is, however, by no means the aim of the capitalistic application of machinery. Like every other increase in the productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and, by shortening that portion of the working day, in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen the other portion that he gives, without an equivalent, to the capitalist. In short, it is a means for producing surplus value.
In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production begins with the labour power, in modern industry it begins with the instruments of labour. Our first inquiry then is, how the instruments of labour are converted from tools into machines, or what is the difference between a machine and the implements of a handicraft? We are only concerned here with striking and general characteristics; for epochs in the history of society are no more separated from each other by hard and fast lines of demarcation, than are geological epochs.
Mathematicians and mechanicians, and in this they are followed by a few English economists, call a tool a simple machine, and a machine a complex tool. They see no essential difference between them, and even give the name of machine to the simple mechanical powers, the lever, the inclined plane, the screw, the wedge, &c.2) As a matter of fact, every machine is a combination of those simple powers, no matter how they may be disguised. From the economic standpoint this explanation is worth nothing, because the historical element is wanting. Another explanation of the difference between tool and machine is that in the case of a tool, man is the motive power, while the motive power of a machine is something different from man, as, for instance, an animal, water, wind, and so on.[1]' According to this, a plough drawn by oxen, which is a contrivance common to the most different epochs, would be a machine, while Claussen's circular loom, which, worked by a single labourer, weaves 96,000 picks per minute, would be a mere tool. Nay, this very loom, though a tool when worked by hand, would, if worked by steam, be a machine. And since the application of animal power is one of man's earliest inventions, production by machinery would have preceded production by handicrafts. When in 1733, John Wyatt brought out his spinning machine, and began the industrial revolution of the 18th century, not a word did he say about an ass driving it instead of a man, and yet this part fell to the ass. He described it as a machine "to spin without fingers".[2]»[300]
[11] "From this point of view we may draw a sharp line of distinction between a tool and a machine: spades, hammers, chisels, &c, combinations of levers and of screws, in all of which, no matter how complicated they may be in other respects, man is the motive power, ... all this falls under the idea of a tool; but the plough, which is drawn by animal power, and wind-mills, &c, must be classed among machines" (Wilhelm Schulz, Die Bewegung der Produktion, Zürich, 1843, p. 38). In many respects a book to be recommended.
[21] Before his time, spinning machines, although very imperfect ones, had already been used, and Italy was probably the country of their first appearance. A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th century are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature's Technology, i. e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? [301] Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which, he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them. Every history of religion, even, that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical. It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations. The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one. The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that ex-
All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor mechanism is that which puts the whole in motion. It either generates its own motive power, like the steam-engine, the caloric engine, the electromagnetic machine, &c, or it receives its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel from a head of water, the wind-mill from wind, &c. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly-wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing of the most varied kinds, regulates the motion, changes its form where necessary, as for instance, from linear to circular, and divides and distributes it among the working machines. These two first parts of the whole mechanism are there, solely for putting the working machines in motion, by means of which motion the subject of labour is seized upon and modified as desired. The tool or working machine is that part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of the 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves as such a starting-point, whenever a handicraft, or a manufacture, is turned into an industry carried on by machinery.
On a closer examination of the working machine proper, we find in it, as a general rule, though often, no doubt, under very altered forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicraftsman or manufacturing workman; with this difference, that instead of being human implements, they are the implements of a mechanism, or mechanical implements. Either the entire machine is only a more or less altered mechanical edition of the old handicraft tool, as, for instance, the power-loom,[11] or the working parts fitted in the frame of the machine are old acquaintances, as spindles are in a mule, needles in a stocking-loom, saws in a sawing-machine, and knives in a chopping machine. The distinction between these tools and the body proper of the machine, exists from their very birth; for they continue for the most part to be produced by handicraft, or by manufacture, and are afterwards fitted into the body of the machine, which is the product of machinery.2)
eludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality.
'' Especially in the original form of the power-loom, we recognise, at the first glance, the ancient loom. In its modern form, the power-loom has undergone essential alterations.[302]
2! It is only during the last 15 years (i.e., since about 1850), that a constantly in-
The machine proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool proper is taken from man, and fitted into a mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere implement. The difference strikes one at once, even in those cases where man himself continues to be the prime mover. The number of implements that he himself can use simultaneously, is limited by the number of his own natural instruments of production, by the number of his bodily organs. In Germany, they tried at first to make one spinner work two spinning-wheels, that is, to work simultaneously with both hands and both feet. This was too difficult.[304]
Later, a treddle spinning-wheel with two spindles was invented, but adepts in spinning, who could spin two threads at once, were almost as scarce as two-headed men. The Jenny,[305] on the other hand, even at its very birth, spun with 12-18 spindles, and the stocking-loom knits with many thousand needles at once. The number of tools that a machine can bring into play simultaneously, is from the very first emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the tools of a handicraftsman.
In many manual implements the distinction between man as mere motive power, and man as the workman or operator properly so called, is brought into striking contrast. For instance, the foot is merely the prime mover of the spinning-wheel, while the hand, working with the spindle, and drawing and twisting, performs the real operation of spinning. It is this last part of the handicraftsman's implement that is first seized upon by the industrial revolution, leaving to the workman, in addition to his new labour of watching the machine with his eyes and correcting its mistakes with his hands, the merely mechanical part of being the moving power. On the other hand, implements, in regard to which man has always acted as a simple motive power, as, for instance, by turning the crank of a mill," by pumping, by mov-creasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery, and that not by the same manufacturers who make the machines. Instances of machines for the fabrication of these mechanical tools are, the automatic bobbin-making engine, the card-setting engine, shuttle-making machines, and machines for forging mule and throstle spindles.[303]
1! Moses says: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn." [306] The Christian philanthropists of Germany, on the contrary, fastened a wooden board round the ing up and down the arm of a bellows, by pounding with a mortar, &c, such implements soon call for the application of animals, water, and wind ]) as motive powers. Here and there, long before the period of manufacture, and also, to some extent, during that period, these implements pass over into machines, but without creating any revolution in the mode of production. It becomes evident, in the period of modern industry, that these implements, even under their form of manual tools, are already machines. For instance, the pumps with which the Dutch, in 1836-7, emptied the Lake of Harlem, were constructed on the principle of ordinary pumps; the only difference being, that their pistons were driven by cyclopean steam-engines, instead of by men.[310] The common and very imperfect bellows of the blacksmith is, in England, occasionally converted into a blowing-engine, by connecting its arm with a steam-engine. The steam-engine itself, such as it was at its invention, during the manufacturing period at the close of the 17 th century, and such as it continued to be down to 1780,2) did not give rise to any industrial revolution. It was, on the contrary, the invention of machines that made a revolution in the form of steam-engines necessary. As soon as man, instead of working with an implement on the subject of his labour, becomes merely the motive power of an implement-machine, it is a mere accident that motive power takes the disguise of human muscle; and it may equally well take the form of wind, water or steam. Of course, this does not prevent such a change of form from producing great technical alterations in the mechanism that was originally constructed to be driven by man alone. Nowadays, all machines that have their way to make, such as sewing-machines, bread-making machines, &c, are, unless
necks of the serfs, whom they used as a motive power for grinding, in order to prevent them from putting flour into their mouths with their hands.[307]
[11] It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them, and partly their bat-tles with superabundance of water in other respects, that compelled the Dutch to resort to wind as a motive power. The wind-mill itself they got from Germany, where its invention was the origin of a pretty squabble between the nobles, the priests, and the emperor, as to which of those three the wind "belonged".[308] The air makes bondage, was the cry in Germany,[309] at the same time that the wind was making Holland free. What it reduced to bondage in this case, was not the Dutchman, but the land for the Dutch-man. In 1836, 12,000 wind-mills of 60,000 horse power were still employed in Holland, to prevent two-thirds of the land from being reconverted into morasses.
[21] It was, indeed, very much improved by Watt's first so-called single acting engine; but, in this form, it continued to be a machine for raising water, and the liquor from salt mines.[311] from their very nature their use on a small scale is excluded, constructed to be driven both by human and by purely mechanical motive power.
The machine, which is the starting-point of the industrial revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool, by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the £5rm of that power may be.[1]' Here we have the machine, but only as an elementary factor of production by machinery.
Increase in the size of the machine, and in the number of its working tools, calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it; and this mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resistance, a mightier moving power than that of man, apart from the fact that man is a very imperfect instrument for producing uniform continued motion. But assuming that he is acting simply as a motor, that a machine has taken the place of his tool, it is evident that he can be replaced by natural forces. Of all the great motors handed down from the manufacturing period, horse power is the worst, partly because a horse has a head of his own, partly because he is costly, and the extent to which he is applicable in factories is very restricted.[2]' Nevertheless the horse was extensively used during the infancy of modern industry. This is proved, as well by the complaints of contemporary agriculturists, as
[11] "The union of all these simple instruments, set in motion by a single motor, constitutes a machine" (Babbage, 1. c , [p. 136]).
2; In December, 1859, John C. Morton read before the Society of Arts a paper on "The forces employed in agriculture". He there states: "Every improvement that fur-thers the uniformity of the land makes the steam-engine more and more applicable to the production of pure mechanical force.... Horse power is requisite wherever crooked fences and other obstructions prevent uniform action. These obstructions are vanishing day by day. For operations that demand more exercise of will than actual force, the only power applicable is that controlled every instant by the human mind — in other words, man power." Mr. Morton then reduces steam power, horse power, and man power, to the unit in general use for steam-engines, namely, the force required to raise 33,000 lbs one foot in one minute, and reckons the cost of one horse power from a steam-engine to be 3d., and from a horse to be 5 — d. per hour. Further, if a horse must fully maintain its health, it can work no more than 8 hours a day. Three at the least out of every seven horses used on tillage land during the year can be dispensed with by using steam power, at an expense not greater than that which, the horses dispensed with, would cost during the 3 or 4 months in which alone they can be used effectively. Lastly, steam power, in those agricultural operations in which it can be employed, improves, in comparison with horse power, the quality of the work. To do the work of a steam-engine would require 66 men, at a total cost of 15s. an hour, and to do the work of a horse, 32 men, at a total cost of 8s. an hour.[312] by the term "horse power", which has survived to this day as an expression for mechanical force.
Wind was too inconstant and uncontrollable, and besides, in England, the birthplace of modern industry, the use of water power pre-ponderated even during the manufacturing period. In the 17th century attempts had already been made to turn two pairs of millstones with a single water-wheel. But the increased size of the gearing was too much for the water power, which had now become insufficient, and this was one of the circumstances that led to a more accurate investigation of the laws of friction. In the same way the irregularity caused by the motive power in mills that were put in motion by push-ing and pulling a lever, led to the theory, and the application, of the fly-wheel, which afterwards plays so important a part in modern industry.'[1] In this way, during the manufacturing period, were developed the first scientific and technical elements of modern mechanical industry. Arkwright's throstle spinning mill was from the very first turned by water. But for all that, the use of water, as the predominant motive power, was beset with difficulties. It could not be increased at will, it failed at certain seasons of the year, and, above all, it was essentially local.[2]' Not till the invention of Watt's second and so-called double-acting steam-engine, was a prime mover found, that begot its own force by the consumption of coal and water, whose power was entirely under man's control, that was mobile and a means of loco-motion, that was urban and not, like the water-wheel, rural, that permitted production to be concentrated in towns instead of, like the water-wheels, being scattered up and down the country,[3]' that was of universal technical application, and, relatively speaking, little affected in its choice of residence by local circumstances. The greatness of
[1] Faulhaber, 1625; De Cous, 1688.[313]
[21] The modern turbine frees the industrial exploitation of water power from many of its former fetters.[314]
" "In the early days of textile manufactures, the locality of the factory depended upon the existence of a stream having a sufficient fall to turn a water-wheel; and, although the establishment of the water-mills was the commencement of the breaking up of the domestic system of manufacture, yet the mills necessarily situated upon streams, and frequently at considerable distances the one from the other, formed part of a rural, rather than an urban system; and it was not until the introduction of the steam power as a substitute for the stream that factories were congregated in towns, and localities where the coal and water required for the production of steam were found in sufficient quantities. The steam-engine is the parent of manufacturing towns" (A. Redgrave in Reports of the Insp. of Fact., 30th April, 1860, p. 36).
Watt's genius showed itself in the specification of the patent that he took out in April, 1784. In that specification his steam-engine is described, not as an invention for a specific purpose, but as an agent universally applicable in mechanical industry. In it he points out applications, many of which, as for instance, the steam-hammer, were not introduced till half a century later. Nevertheless he doubted the use of steam-engines in navigation.[315] His successors, Boulton and Watt, sent to the exhibition of 1851 steam-engines of colossal size for ocean steamers.
As soon as tools had been converted from being manual implements of man into implements of a mechanical apparatus, of a machine, the motive mechanism also acquired an independent form, entirely emancipated from the restraints of human strength. Thereupon the individual machine, that we have hitherto been considering, sinks into a mere factor in production by machinery. One motive mechanism was now able to drive many machines at once. The motive mechanism grows with the number of the machines that are turned simultaneously, and the transmitting mechanism becomes a wide-spreading apparatus.
We now proceed to distinguish the co-operation of a number of machines of one kind from a complex system of machinery.
In the one case, the product is entirely made by a single machine, which performs all the various operations previously done by one handicraftsman with his tool; as, for instance, by a weaver with his loom; or by several handicraftsmen successively, either separately or as members of a system of manufacture.[1]' For example, in the manufacture of envelopes, one man folded the paper with the folder, another laid on the gum, a third turned the flap over, on which the device is impressed, a fourth embossed the device, and so on; and for each of these operations the envelope had to change hands. One single envelope machine now performs all these operations at once, and makes more than 3,000 envelopes in an hour.[3] ' [6] In the London exhi-
[11] From the standpoint of division of labour in manufacture, weaving was not simple, but, on the contrary, complicated manual labour; and consequently the power-loom is a machine that does very complicated work. It is altogether erroneous to suppose that modern machinery originally appropriated those operations alone, which division of labour had simplified. Spinning and weaving were, during the manufacturing period, split up into new species, and the implements were modified and improved; but the labour itself was in no way divided, and it retained its handicraft character. It is not the labour, but the instrument of labour, that serves as the starting-point of the machine.
bition of 1862, there was an American machine for making paper cor-nets. It cut the paper, pasted, folded, and finished 300 in a minute.[3] ' [7]
Here, the whole process, which, when carried on as manufacture, was split up into, and carried out by, a series of operations, is completed by a single machine, working a combination of various tools. Now, whether such a machine be merely a reproduction of a complicated manual implement, or a combination of various simple implements specialised by manufacture, in either case, in the factory, i. e., in the workshop in which machinery alone is used, we meet again with simple co-operation; and, leaving the workman out of consideration for the moment, this co-operation presents itself to us, in the first instance, as the conglomeration in one place of similar and simultaneously acting machines. Thus, a weaving factory is constituted of a number of power-looms, working side by side, and a sewing factory of a number of sewing-machines all in the same building. But there is here a technical oneness in the whole system, owing to all the machines receiving their impulse simultaneously, and in an equal degree, from the pulsations of the common prime mover, by the inter-mediary of the transmitting mechanism; and this mechanism, to a certain extent, is also common to them all, since only particular ramifications of it branch off to each machine. Just as a number of tools, then, form the organs of a machine, so a number of machines of one kind constitute the organs of the motive mechanism.
A real machinery system, however, does not take the place of these independent machines, until the subject of labour goes through a connected series of detail processes, that are carried out by a chain of machines of various kinds, the one supplementing the other. Here we have again the co-operation by division of labour that characterises manufacture; only now, it is a combination of detail machines. The special tools of the various detail workmen, such as those of the beaters, combers, spinners, &c, in the woollen manufacture, are now transformed into the tools of specialised machines, each machine constituting a special organ, with a special function, in the system. In those branches of industry in which the machinery system is first introduced, manufacture itself furnishes, in a general way, the natural basis for the division, and consequent organisation, of the process of production.[1]' Nevertheless an essential difference at once manifests it-
'' Before the epoch of Mechanical Industry, the wool manufacture was the pre-dominating manufacture in England. Hence it was in this industry that, in the first half of the 18th century, the most experiments were made. Cotton, which required less self. In manufacture it is the workmen who, with their manual implements, must, either singly or in groups, carry on each particular detail process. If, on the one hand, the workman becomes adapted to the process, o'n the other, the process was previously made suitable to the workman. This subjective principle of the division of labour no longer exists in production by machinery. Here, the process as a whole is examined objectively, in itself, that is to say, without regard to the question of its execution by human hands, it is analysed into its constituent phases; and the problem, how to execute each detail process, and bind them all into a whole, is solved by the aid of machines, chemistry, &c.'' But, of course, in this case also, theory must be perfected by accumulated experience on a large scale. Each detail machine supplies raw material to the machine next in order; and since they are all working at the same time, the product is always going through the various stages of its fabrication, and is also constantly in a state of transition, from one phase to another. Just as in manufacture, the direct co-operation of the detail labourers establishes a numerical proportion between the special groups, so in an organised system of machinery, where one detail machine is constantly kept employed by another, a fixed relation is established between their numbers, their size, and their speed. The collective machine, now an organised system of various kinds of single machines, and of groups of single machines, becomes more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one, i. e., the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its
careful preparation for its treatment by machinery, derived the benefit of the experience gained on wool, just as afterwards the manipulation of wool by machinery was developed on the lines of cotton-spinning and weaving by machinery. It was only during the 10 years immediately preceding 1866, that isolated details of the wool manufacture, such as wool-combing, were incorporated in the factory system. "The application of power to the process of combing wool... extensively in operation since the introduction of the combing-machine, especially Lister's ... undoubtedly had the effect of throwing a very large number of men out of work. Wool was formerly combed by hand, most frequently in the cottage of the comber. It is now very generally combed in the factory, and hand labour is superseded, except in some particular kinds of work, in which hand-combed wool is still preferred. Many of the hand-combers found employment in the factories, but the produce of the hand-combers bears so small a proportion to that of the machine, that the employment of a very large number of combers has passed away" {Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct., 1856, p. 16).
'' "The principle of the factory system, then, is to substitute ... the partition of a process into its essential constituents, for the division or gradation of labour among artisans" (Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures, Lond., 1835, p. 20).
last; in other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is effected, not by the hand of man, but by the machinery itself. In manufacture the isolation of each detail process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labour, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is, on the contrary, imperative.
A system of machinery, whether it reposes on the mere co-operation of similar machines, as in weaving, or on a combination of different machines, as in spinning, constitutes in itself a huge automaton, whenever it is driven by a self-acting prime mover. But although the factory as a whole be driven by its steam-engine, yet either some of the individual machines may require the aid of the workman for some of their movements (such aid was necessary for the running in of the mule carriage, before the invention of the self-acting mule, and is still necessary in fine-spinning mills); or, to enable a machine to do its work, certain parts of it may require to be handled by the workman like a manual tool; this was the case in machine-makers' workshops, before the conversion of the slide rest into a self-actor. As soon as a machine executes, without man's help, all thé movements requisite to elaborate the raw material, needing only attendance from him, we have an automatic system of machinery, and one that is susceptible of constant improvement in its details. Such improvements as the apparatus that stops a drawing frame, whenever a sliver breaks, and the self-acting stop, that stops the power-loom so soon as the shuttle bob-bin is emptied of weft, are quite modern inventions. As an example, both of continuity of production, and of the carrying out of the automatic principle, we may take a modern paper mill. In the paper industry generally, we may advantageously study in detail not only the distinctions between modes of production based on different means of production, but also the connexion of the social conditions of production with those modes: for the old German paper-making furnishes us with a sample of handicraft production; that of Holland in the 17th and of France in the 18th century with a sample of manufacturing in the strict sense [318]; and that of modern England with a sample of automatic fabrication of this article. Besides these, there still exist, in India and China, two distinct antique Asiatic forms of the same industry.
An organised system of machines, to which motion is communi-cated by the transmitting mechanism from a central automaton, is the most developed form of production by machinery. Here we have, in the place of the isolated machine, a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose demon power, at first veiled under the slow and measured motions of his giant limbs, at length breaks out into the fast and furious whirl of his countless working organs.
There were mules and steam-engines before there were any labourers, whose exclusive occupation it was to make mules and steam-engines; just as men wore clothes before there were such people as tailors. The inventions of Vaucanson, Arkwright, Watt, and others, were, however, practicable, only because those inventors found, ready to hand, a considerable number of skilled mechanical workmen, placed at their disposal by the manufacturing period. Some of these workmen were independent handicraftsmen of various trades, others were grouped together in manufactures, in which, as before mentioned, division of labour was strictly carried out. As inventions increased in number, and the demand for the newly discovered machines grew larger, the machine-making industry split up, more and more, into numerous independent branches, and division of labour in these manufactures was more and more developed. Here, then, we see in manufacture the immediate technical foundation of modern industry. Manufacture produced the machinery, by means of which modern industry abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems in those spheres of production that it first seized upon. The factory system was therefore raised, in the natural course of things, on an inadequate foundation. When the system attained to a certain degree of development, it had to root up this ready-made foundation, which in the meantime had been elaborated on the old lines, and to build up for itself a basis that should correspond to its methods of production. Just as the individual machine retains a dwarfish character, so long as it is worked by the power of man alone, and just as no system of machinery could be properly developed before the steam-engine took the place of the earlier motive powers, animals, wind, and even water; so, too, modern industry was crippled in its complete development, so long as its characteristic instrument of production, the machine, owed its existence to personal strength and personal skill, and depended on the muscular development, the keenness of sight, and the cunning of hand, with which the detail workmen in manufactures, and the manual labourers in handicrafts, wielded their dwarfish implements. Thus, apart from the dearness of the machines made in this way, a circumstance that is ever present to the mind of the capitalist, the expansion of industries carried on by means of machinery, and the invasion by machinery of fresh branches of production, were dependent on the growth of a class of workmen, who, owing to the almost artistic nature of their employment, could increase their numbers only gradually, and not by leaps and bounds. But besides this, at a certain stage of its development, modern industry became technolog-ically incompatible with the basis furnished for it by handicraft and manufacture. The increasing size of the prime movers, of the transmitting mechanism, and of the machines proper, the greater compli-cation, multiformity and regularity of the details of these machines, as they more and more departed from the model of those originally made by manual labour, and acquired a form, untrammelled except by the conditions under which they worked,'' the perfecting of the automatic system, and the use, every day more unavoidable, of a more refractory material, such as iron instead of wood — the solution of all these problems, which sprang up by the force of circumstances, everywhere met with a stumbling-block in the personal restrictions, which even the collective labourer of manufacture could not break through, except to a limited extent. Such machines as the modern hydraulic press, the modern power-loom, and the modern carding engine, could never have been furnished by manufacture.
A radical change in the mode of production in one sphere of industry involves a similar change in other spheres. This happens at first in such branches of industry as are connected together by being separate phases of a process, and yet are isolated by the social division of labour, in such a way, that each of them produces an independent commodity. Thus spinning by machinery made weaving by machinery a necessity, and both together made the mechanical and chemical revolution that took place in bleaching, printing, and dyeing, imper-ative. So too, on the other hand, the revolution in cotton-spinning
" The power-loom was at first made chiefly of wood; in its improved modern form it is made of iron. To what an extent the old forms of the instruments of production influenced their new forms at first starting, is shown by, amongst other things, the most superficial comparison of the present power-loom with the old one, of the modern blowing apparatus of a blast-furnace with the first inefficient mechanical reproduction of the ordinary bellows, and perhaps more strikingly than in any other way, by the attempts before the invention of the present locomotive, to construct a locomotive that actually had two feet, which after the fashion of a horse, it raised alternately from the ground. It is only after considerable development of the science of mechanics, and accumulated practical experience, that the form of a machine becomes settled entirely in accordance with mechanical principles, and emancipated from the traditional form of the tool that gave rise to it.
called forth the invention of the gin, for separating the seeds from the cotton fibre; it was only by means of this invention, that the production of cotton became possible on the enormous scale at present required.[1]' But more especially, the revolution in the modes of production of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of the social process of production, i. e., in the means of communication and of transport. In a society whose pivot, to use an expression of Fourier,[319] was agriculture on a small scale, with its subsidiary domestic industries, and the urban handicrafts, the means of communication and transport were so utterly inadequate to the productive requirements of the manufacturing period, with its extended division of social labour, its concentration of the instruments of labour, and of the workmen, and its colonial markets, that they became in fact revolutionised. In the same way the means of communication and transport handed down from the manufacturing period soon became unbearable trammels on modern industry, with its feverish haste of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of capital and labour from one sphere of production into another, and its newly-created connexions with the markets of the whole world. Hence, apart from the radical changes introduced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of communication and transport became gradually adapted to- the modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and telegraphs. But the huge masses of iron that had now to be forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped, demanded, on their part, cyclopean machines, for the construction of which the methods of the manufacturing period were utterly inadequate.
Modern industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this, that it built up for itself a fitting technical foundation, and stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously with the increasing use of it, in the first decades of this century, appropriated, by degrees, the fabrication of machines proper. But it was only during the decade preceding 1866, that the construction of railways and ocean steamers on a stupendous scale
" Eli Whitney's cotton gin had until very recent times undergone less essential changes than any other machine of the 18th century. It is only during the last decade (i.e., since 1856) that another American, Mr. Emery, of Albany, New York, has rendered Whitney's gin antiquated by an improvement as simple as it is effective.
called into existence the cyclopean machines now employed in the construction of prime movers.
The most essential condition to the production of machines by machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any amount of force, and yet under perfect control. Such a condition was already supplied by the steam-engine. But at the same time it was necessary to produce the geometrically accurate straight lines, planes, circles, cylinders, cones, and spheres, required in the detail parts of the machines. This problem Henry Maudslay solved in the first decade of this century by the invention of the slide rest, a tool that was soon made automatic, and in a modified form was applied to other constructive machines besides the lathe, for which it was originally intended. This mechanical appliance replaces, not some particular tool, but the hand itself, which produces a given form by holding and guiding the cutting tool along the iron or other material operated upon. Thus it became possible to produce the forms of the individual parts of machinery
"with a degree of ease, accuracy, and speed, that no accumulated experience of the hand of the most skilled workman could give."[11]
If we now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery employed in the construction of machines, which constitutes the operating tool, we find the manual implements reappearing, but on a cyclopean scale. The operating part of the boring machine is an immense drill driven by a steam-engine; without this machine, on the other hand, the cylinders of large steam-engines and of hydraulic presses could not be made. The mechanical lathe is only a cyclopean reproduction of the ordinary foot-lathe; the planing machine, an iron carpenter, that works on iron with the same tools that the human carpenter employs on wood; the instrument that, on the London wharves, cuts the veneers, is a gigantic razor; the tool of the shearing machine, which shears iron as easily as a tailor's scissors cut cloth, is a monster pair of scissors; and the steam-hammer works with an ordinary hammer head, but of such a weight that not Thor himself could
[1] The Industry of Nations, Lond., 1855, Part II, [p]p. [238-] 239. This work also remarks: "Simple and outwardly unimportant as this appendage to lathes may appear, it is not, we believe, averring too much to state, that its influence in improving and extending the use of machinery has been as great as that produced by Watt's improvements of the steam-engine itself. Its introduction went at once to perfect all machinery, to cheapen it, and to stimulate invention and improvement."
wield it.[1]' These steam-hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there is one that weighs over 6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7 feet, on an anvil weighing 36 tons. It is mere child's-play for it to crush a block of granite into powder, yet it is no less capable of driving, with a succession of light taps, a nail into a piece of soft wood.[2]' The implements of labour, in the form of machinery, necessitate the substitution of natural forces for human force, and the conscious application of science, instead of rule of thumb. In manufacture, the organisation of the social labour process is purely subjective; it is a combination of detail labourers; in its machinery system, modern industry has a productive organism that is purely objective, in which the labourer becomes a mere appendage to an already existing material condition of production. In simple co-operation, and even in that founded on division of labour, the suppression of the isolated, by the collective, workman still appears to be more or less accidental. Machinery, with a few exceptions to be mentioned later, operates only by means of associated labour, or labour in common. Hence the co-operative character of the labour process is, in the latter case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument of labour itself.
Endnotes
[300] See J. D. Tuckett, A History of the Past and Present State of the Labouring Population..., Vol. I, London, 1846, p. 208.—375
[301] See [G.] Vico, La science nouvelle, Paris, 1844, p. 79.— 375
[302] See The Industry of Nations, Part II, London, 1855, pp. 155-56 and also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 420.—376
[304] See J. H. M. Poppe, Geschichte der Technologie..., Bd. 1, S. 271 and also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 408.—377
[305] The Jenny was a spinning machine invented by James Hargreaves between the years 1764 and 1767. He named it after his daughter, Jane.— 377
[303] See The Industry of Nations, Part II, pp. 221-50 and also present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 449-55.-377
[306] Deuteronomy, 2 5 : 4 . - 3 7 7
[310] See The Industry of Nations, Part II, pp. 252-53 and also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 455.-378
[307] See J . H . M . Poppe, Geschichte der Technologie..., Bd. 1, S. 105 and also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 400.—378
[308] See J . H . M . Poppe, Geschichte der Technologie..., Bd. 1, S. 131-34 and also present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 396, 400.—378
[309] This would seem to be a reference to the expression "Stadtluft macht frei" which reflected a tenet of medieval law in Germany, according to which a runaway serf became a free man if he lived in a city a year and one day.— 378
[311] 31 ' See A. Ure, Technisches Wörterbuch..., Bd. 1, Prag, 1843, S. 424-30 and also present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 445-47.-378
[312] See "Agricultural Progress and Wages". In: The Economist, No. 856, January 21, 1860, p. 64. This article, from which Marx took excerpts, contained quotations from Morton's report "On the Forces Used in Agriculture", read on December 7, 1859 and published in The Journal of the Society of Arts..., No. 368, December 9, 1859. See also present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 443-44.-379
[313] The reference is to J. Faulhaber, Mechanische Verbesserung einer Alten Roszmühlen..., Ulm, 1625; S. de Cous, mentioned here, was the author of an appendix to the book: Heron Alexandrinus, Buch von Lufft- und Wasser-Kuenslen..., Franckfurt, 1688. — 380
[314] See J . H . M . Poppe, Geschichte der Technologie..., Bd. 1, S. 173-74 and also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 399.—380
[315] See The Industry of Nations, Part II, p. 227 and also present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 450-51.—381
[6] The American War of Independence (1775-1783) — a revolutionary war fought by 13 British colonies in North America. As a result of their victory an independent state was formed, the United States of America. This war had a great impact on the development of the European revolutionary-democratic movement, in particular on the French revolution of the end of the 18th century.—9, 748
[7] The Civil War in America broke out in April 1861 and ended in April 1865. It was a war of the North against the Confederacy of the Southern States. The decisive role in the victory of the North in April 1865 was played by the workers and farmers. The international democratic public and the international working-class movement sympathised with and gave all possible support to the position of the Northern States.—9, 207, 262, 398, 540, 720, 760
[318] See J. H. M. Poppe, Geschichte der Technologie..., Bd. 2, pp. 218-22 and also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 404.—384
[319] See Ch. Fourier, Théorie de l'unité universelle, Vol. 2. In: Oeuvres complètes de Ch. Fourier, 2 éd., t. 3, Paris, 1841, pp. 140, 171, 304.—387
[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
[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
[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
[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