Das Kapital

CO-OPERATION

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Thirteen
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Thirteen: Co-operation
Capitalist production only then really begins, as
we have already seen, when each individual capital employs simultaneously
a comparatively 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 logically, 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 medieval 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
nor affect, either the rate of surplus-value, or the degree of exploitation
of labour-power. 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 × 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. 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 deviate 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 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 isolated
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, 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.
Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive
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 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.
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.
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. The reason of this is that man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political, 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
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.
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.

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.
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 labourers, to the aggregation
of various processes, and to the concentration of the means of production.

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 with
others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the
capabilities of his species.
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 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, 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. 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 between 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 two-fold
by reason of the two-fold 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 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. 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. 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 as in feudal times the functions of general
and judge, were attributes of landed property.
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 contemptible.
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.”

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, or, say, in
the agriculture of Indian communities, 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. From the standpoint of these, capitalistic co-operation does not manifest itself as a particular
historical form of co-operation, but 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, 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.
Footnotes
1. “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 qualifications 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, 1. c., pp. 15, 16.) Compare Quételet
on the average individual.
2. 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. 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.
3. “Concours de forces.” (Destutt de Tracy, l.c., p. 80.)
4. “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.)
5. “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 Betters: “Proposals for Raising a Colledge
of Industry.” London, 1696, p. 21.)
6. “There 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.” (“An Inquiry into the Connexion between the
Present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms.” By a Farmer. London,
1773, pp. 7, 8.)
7. Strictly, Aristotle’s definition is that man is by nature a town-citizen. This is quite as characteristic of
ancient classical society as Franklin’s definition of man, as a tool-making
animal, is characteristic of Yankeedom.
8. “On doit encore remarquer que cette division partielle de travail peut se faire quand même les ouvriers
sont occupés d’une même besogne. Des maçons par exemple, occupés
à faire passer de mains en mains des briques à un échafaudage
supérieur, font tous la même besogne, et pourtant il existe
parmi eux une espèce de division de travail, qui consiste en ce
que chacun d’eux fait passer la brique par un espace donné, et que
tous ensemble la font parvenir beaucoup plus promptement à l’endroit
marqué qu’ils ne le feraient si chacun d’eux portait sa brique séparément
jusqu’à l’échafaudage supérieur.” [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.)
9. “Est-il question d’exécuter un travail compliqué, plusieurs choses doivent être faites simultanément. L’un en fait une pendant que l’autre en fait une autre, et tous contribuent à l’effet qu’un seul homme n’aurait pu produire. L’un rame pendant que l’autre tient le gouvernail, et qu’un troisième jette le filet on harponne le poisson, et la pêche a un succès impossible sans ce concours.” [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 cooperation] (Destutt de Tracy, l.c.)
10. “The doing of it (agricultural work) at the critical juncture is of so much the greater consequence.” (“An Inquiry into the Connexion between the Present Price,” &c., p. 9.) “In agriculture, there is no more important factor than that of time.” (Liebig: “Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der Landwirtschaft.” 1856, p. 23.)
11. “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 when it
has fallen, and is of course discoloured and partially rotted, so that
for want of labour at the proper season the cultivator is actually forced
to submit to the loss of a large part of that crop for which England is
so anxiously looking.” (“Bengal Hurkaru.” Bi-Monthly Overland Summary of News, 22nd July, 1861.)
12. 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.” (R. Jones: “An Essay on the Distribution
of Wealth,” part I. On Rent. London, 1831. p. 191.)
13. “La forza di ciascuno uomo è minima, ma la riunione delle minime forze forma una forza totale maggiore
anche della somma delle forze medesime fino a che le forze per essere riunite
possono diminuere il tempo ed accrescere lo spazio della loro azione.”
(G. R. Carli, Note to P. Verri, l.c., t. xv., p. 196.)
14. “Profits ... is the sole end of trade.” (J. Vanderlint, l.c., p. 11.)
15. That Philistine paper, the Spectator, 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
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!
16. 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, l.c., pp. 48, 49.)
17. 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.)
18. Auguste Comte and his school might therefore have shown that feudal lords are an eternal necessity in the
same way that they have done in the case of the lords of capital.
19. 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.
20. Linguet is improbably right, when in his “Théorie des Lois Civiles,” he declares hunting to be the
first form of co-operation, and man-hunting (war) one of the earliest forms
of hunting.
21. Peasant agriculture on a small scale, and the carrying on of independent handicrafts, which together form the
basis of the feudal mode of production, and after the dissolution of that
system, continue side by side with the capitalist mode, also form the economic
foundation of the classical communities at their best, after the primitive
form of ownership of land in common had disappeared, and before slavery
had seized on production in earnest.
22. “Whether the united skill, industry, and emulation of many together on the same work be not the way to advance
it? And whether it had been otherwise possible for England, to have carried
on her Woollen Manufacture to so great a perfection?” (Berkeley. “The Querist.” London, 1751, p. 56, par. 521.)
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Next: Chapter Fourteen: Division of Labour and Manufacture
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