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» Neil Smith: My recollection was that the Asian economic crisis,
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which is called an Asian economic crisis even though Russia
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and Brazil were the largest economies hammered by it,
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that [at] exactly that moment a lot of the discussion
of Marx in those places dried out precisely
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because they would have to start to deal not just with Marx's analytical
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diagnosis of capitalism but his understanding
of crises and the inevitability
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of disequilibrium and crisis.
» Harvey: One of the things that I think you can learn from Marx,
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and I emphasize this more when I teach it now,
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is that he doesn't actually talk about
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the transition to socialism or communism.
He doesn't talk about that very much at all.
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And in fact, he doesn't talk about that since
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he was anti-utopian, so he didn't want to lay out blueprints.
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But what you do get in Capital is a theory of how societies change.
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And a lot of that is located in footnote 10, Chapter 15.
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Which now I spend a lot of time on -
I spend a whole session just on that footnote.
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Which I didn't do when I was teaching
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it back in your time, I didn't recognize quite the significance of that.
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But as a theory of social change it not only tells you how…
» Neil Smith: Which Footnote?
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-It's the footnote where he talks about his relationship
to Darwin and how technology discloses
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the social relations, and the relation to nature and all those kinds of things.
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So I spend a lot of time on this and I say 'Well, actually
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what we're seeing there is an argument about how feudalism transformed
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into Capitalism and if that's how that happened, then
what we should do is use the ideas in that footnote,
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to think about the transition to Socialism,
which allows you to have a critique
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of what went wrong in the Soviet Union,
what went wrong in actually existing Communism
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and why they didn't succeed as much
as they could have done if they had had
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a better idea of what Communist development should be about.
So I emphasize that.
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That footnote is not only about telling us what has happened,
but also we can use it
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as a way of theorizing about how to change the society we're in.
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I probably remarked in the first lecture,
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Marx rarely, if ever, attempts to create a kind of
manual of the procedure that he's following.
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So if you want to know
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what his method is, you have to either watch him do it,
like as you do in Capital,
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or else you have to resort to
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consideration of these occasional, very cryptic, condensed statements
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about how he is going about understanding the world and what it
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means to to try to apply that method to
the understanding of a capitalist mode of production.
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And in this footnote, he actually lays out many basic ideas.
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And the first deals with his relationship with Darwin,
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when he says: "A critical history of technology…",
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Again, an interesting phrase because at this point in time,
probably nobody had ever thought
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of writing a critical history of technology.
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So that in itself was an innovative idea at the time.
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But he said "…would show how little of the inventions of the 18th century
were the work of a single individual as such,
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as yet such a book does not exist.
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Darwin has directed attention to the history of natural technology i.e.
the formation of the organs of plants and animals
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which serves the instruments of production for sustaining their life."
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This is an interesting idea, that evolution is equipping organisms with
instruments of production for sustaining their life.
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And then Marx goes on to say: "Does not the history
of the productive organs of man in society
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-of organs that are the material basis of every particular organization
of society- deserve equal attention?
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And would not such a history be easier to compile since, as Vico says,
human history differs from natural history
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in that we've made the former, but not the latter?"
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Vico's argument was that
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as far as natural law was concerned, we would never be
in a position to understand it. That was God's domain,
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and God works in mysterious ways so we would never
really properly understand it, but that
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we could understand what we ourselves had done
and that therefore human history was
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less mysterious or could be made less mysterious simply because
it was humans who had made it.
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Marx is taking up that idea.
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Now the point of the history of technology has been actually
already advanced and set out
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a couple of times already in the proceeding pages, for instance,
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if you go back to page 286
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there he talks about Franklin,
and defining Man as a tool-making animal.
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And he says that "relics of by-gone instruments of labour
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possess the same important investigation of extinct economic formations
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of society, as do fossil burns for the determination
of extinct species of animals.
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It's not what is made, but how?
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And by what instruments of labour that distinguishes
different economic epochs."
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There's a footnote there, footnote six where he says:
"The writers of history have so far paid very little attention
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to the development of material production which is the basis of
all social life. And therefore of all real history."
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And again, on page 468, he says:
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"The Roman Empire handed down the elementary form of all machinery
in the shape of the waterwheel.
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The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of the compass,
gun powder, type-printing and the automatic clock.
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But on the whole machinery played that subordinate part
which Adam Smith assigns to it in comparison with division of labour."
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So this idea that there has been a human evolutionary process
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in which we can distinguish something about the differences
which have occurred in different societies,
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by the nature of the technologies which we see.
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This idea is very important in Marx.
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And very important in Marxian historiography.
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But we need to think closely about
exactly what that means, and we'll get to that in a minute.
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Of course, Marx here is also seeing himself
as talking about the evolution of human society.
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And seeing that as a continuation of the sorts of
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arguments that Darwin had laid out about the evolution
of the natural order in general.
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So in a way, Marx saw himself as continuing Darwin's work - into human history.
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But with a qualitative shift for the reasons that Vico had laid out.
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But he was greatly admiring of the way in which Darwin had
been prepared to write about
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evolution in the particular way that he had.
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Even though elsewhere you find Marx being critical of
what it is that Darwin actually sees.
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In a commentary he wrote, to Engels I think it was,
and I'm quoting from memory here,
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Marx says something like "It's amusing to see how
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Darwin when he looks at nature sees all those divisions
of labour and specializations of functions, and all of the competitive world,
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and survival of the fittest etc."
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That actually it was characteristic of
British industrial capitalism at the time.
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And there's one interesting reason for that,
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which is that Darwin was married to the Daughter of Sir Josiah Wedgwood
who happened to be one of the great pottery industrialists.
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And so Darwin was very very familiar with
those aspects of British capitalism
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which were about specialization, division of labour,
competition, and all the rest of it.
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Across the history of Evolution,
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the Russian Evolutionists couldn't understand Darwin at all,
and they emphasize things like
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cooperation and collabouration.
One of the famous Naturalists
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from that environment was none other than Kropotkin
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who provided the 'antidote' to social Darwinism by
talking about societies based on mutual aid and understanding.
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But in a way, Darwin's predilection to see British society
in the natural world is given-away in Darwin's actual introduction.
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Because Darwin in his introduction to 'The origin of species'
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says, well he was casting around for a way to think
of the things that he was looking at,
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and he got very impressed when he read Malthus' Principles of Population,
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so it actually was a social analysis that Malthus produced,
which was Darwin's inspiration
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and since by and large Marx could not stand Malthus,
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it would be understandable that Marx would very quickly see
in Darwin's Origin of Species that there was
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a social underpinning, a set of social metaphors
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that were going to be drawn into the actual way in which
Darwin depicted the evolutionary process.
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So the thing we draw from this is that Marx is going to be concerned
with an evolutionary process, with the dynamics.
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He's never going to talk about society as some static entity,
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he's always going to talk about it as something in motion,
constantly evolving from one form to another.
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This of course underlies the language which I've drawn attention to,
several times, which is this language about process.
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Marx is always talking about the fluidity of process, the fluidity of change,
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how things are changing - how this is evolving out of that.
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In this chapter of course, we're going to see how industrial capitalism
emerges out of manufacturing
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and how simpler systems of co-operation and divisions of labour
are put together
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in a radically different way to constitute a distinctively
capitalist mode of production,
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which is different from the manufacturing mode of production,
which he has analyzed in a previous chapter.
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The second part of this quote is even more intriguing
and more important to grapple with.
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what he does in the second part is to set up an argument,
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about relations between what I will call 'moments'.
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He says: "Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature,
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The direct process of production of his life.
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And thereby it also lays bare the process of the production
of the social relations of his life
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and of the mental conceptions that flow from these relations."
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What this is doing in effect, is setting up
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a set of categories through which we start to look at
this evolutionary process.
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The categories look like this:
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We have (1) technology.
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The technology is expressive of (2) the relation to nature.
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Then we talk about (3) the actual process of production.
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And while Marx doesn't break this out for separate consideration,
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it is the process of production whereby life is reproduced.
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So we have another category here which we can
in a shadowy way introduce,
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which is (4) the reproduction of daily life.
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Then we have a set of (5) social relations
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and then we have a set of (6) mental conceptions of the world.
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The interesting thing here is to immediately sit down and
say 'How is Marx understanding
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the relations between these elements?'
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One way in which you could look at this is,
is to say that Marx is a technological determinist.
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If you have had the misfortune to read
Thomas Friedman's 'flat Earth society' piece,
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at some point or other he says 'People are accusing me
of being a technological determinist, [But] that's Marx.'
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And he said 'Well, if that's the case, I'm a Marxist'.
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And a lot of the reviewers went into this thing about
how Marx is a technological determinist and Friedman is following Marx
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which is pretty ridiculous when you think of the politics of it,
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but it's even substantively, I think, incorrect
because Marx does not say 'technology determines'.
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He says 'technology reveals'
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and in the other translation it's 'technology discloses'
the relation to nature.
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So we're going to look at that relationship between technology and nature.
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We can actually, if we wish,
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push this a bit further to talk about the process
of production of nature,
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how human beings are producing nature
through their new technologies.
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Through things like genetic engineering, modification
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of plants, animals, modification of environments.
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There is a process of production of nature going on
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So when Marx is talking about technology he is talking
about a relation between the two
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and of course there is a relationship between
technology and the labour process.
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The process of production is essentially the labour process.
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And as we've seen, labour processes occur under
given technological conditions, and the technological conditions change,
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and the labour processes change.
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But as they change, so of course, does the whole process
of reproduction of daily life.
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What is daily life about? What kinds of commodities
are we getting?
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How is daily life lived by the labourer
in the factory, but also
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in reproduction process?
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And of course technology is caught up, as is our reproduction
of daily life, with social relations,
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and social relations with mental conceptions.
Mental conceptions are embodied in technologies,
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at the same time as technologies
profoundly affect our mental conceptions.
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We started to understand the world
very, very differently when we had things like
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microscopes and telescopes.
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We started to understand the technology that allows us to see,
it's an extension of our seeing capacity.
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We can now see into outer space thanks to
the Hubble telescope and things like that.
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So technologies are altering our mental conceptions
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at the same time as a mental conceptions
are being embodied in the technologies.
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What I think Marx is doing here, is setting up these
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categories in order to draw attention
to those moments, if you like, where
0:18:37.930,0:18:41.650
dynamic change can occur.
0:18:41.650,0:18:47.620
Now, if you reflect on this you will see a
number of different theories of social change.
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If you say technology is the prime force,
and it causes all the others to change,
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then you're in the position of being a technological determinist.
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If you say nature is the prime force,
then you're being an environmental determinist.
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you're being Jared Diamond or Jeffrey Sachs.
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If you said the process of production, the labour-
process is the primary force of change,
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you'd be siding with a lot of the autonomista
worker marxists in Italy,
0:19:28.540,0:19:34.590
somebody like John Holloway who says in 'Changing the world
without taking power':
0:19:34.590,0:19:39.500
'The only place where real change occurs is
through a transformation of labouring.'
0:19:39.500,0:19:45.580
And it is therefore a very workerish kind of
understanding of the dynamics and dialectics of change,
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that this is the point which gives you change.
0:19:49.410,0:19:52.620
What about reproduction of daily life? Well,
0:19:52.620,0:19:58.900
there are many people who say 'look, you've got to change
your lifestyle in order to change the world.
0:19:58.900,0:20:03.710
You want the world to change then
you have to start to change your consumption habits;
0:20:03.710,0:20:06.549
the personal is political.'
0:20:06.549,0:20:12.290
The movements around sexuality, movements around
0:20:12.290,0:20:16.080
the actual reproduction process in the household
all those kinds of things,
0:20:16.080,0:20:20.840
play a very big role in social change.
So you'll find people who'll say:
0:20:20.840,0:20:23.580
'Well, that's where it's really at.
0:20:23.580,0:20:27.390
And then of course: social relations,
0:20:27.390,0:20:31.230
You could say that Marx is not a technological
determinist, that he was
0:20:31.230,0:20:37.760
a class struggle determinist, and that class struggle is
the moving force of history.
0:20:37.760,0:20:45.310
And he says that, at various places, it is a moving force
of historical change.
0:20:45.310,0:20:48.300
What about mental conceptions of the world?
0:20:48.300,0:20:54.650
Well, if you're a hegelian idealist you say
that's what really is critical,
0:20:54.650,0:20:59.630
and you don't have to be a hegelian idealist
to say 'actually it's ideas that change the world'.
0:20:59.630,0:21:05.890
And you'll find people write things and say
'Well, it was a change of ideas that changed everything'.
0:21:05.890,0:21:11.250
In her most recent book for example, Naomi Klein in
'Disaster Capitalism' comes close
0:21:11.250,0:21:16.540
to attributing it all to the ideas of Milton Friedman.
0:21:16.540,0:21:23.390
And it's there's some very interesting, good stuff in there,
but at a certain point,
0:21:23.390,0:21:27.310
it seems like the forcing thing was Milton
Friedman sitting down and rewriting
0:21:27.310,0:21:32.029
a bunch of ideas and everybody suddenly got
them locked in their heads and started behaving
0:21:32.029,0:21:35.460
like mini-Friedmanites.
0:21:37.150,0:21:40.470
It is interesting when you start to look at this to say 'Well,
0:21:40.470,0:21:46.790
how many historical things have you read which
puts one or other of these in the forefront of the thing?
0:21:46.790,0:21:51.830
Now, is Marx during that, is Marx actually
doing that here?
0:21:51.830,0:21:56.960
From what you've read of Capital so far you'd have to say 'No'.
0:21:56.960,0:22:04.240
He doesn't use causal language,
0:21:59.280,0:22:00.760
he doesn't say a change in this causes all of these things to change.
0:22:04.240,0:22:12.080
It's not even a interactive dynamic model in which
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that affects that and then this affects something
else, and then this comes back and it affects the
0:22:15.860,0:22:19.870
technology. I don't think it's even that.
0:22:19.870,0:22:27.760
More problematically, the question is: Is this
the classic hegelian idea of the totality?
0:22:27.760,0:22:33.220
Because Hegel's idea of a totality was elements
0:22:33.220,0:22:39.220
which are locked together as internal relations,
each of each other,
0:22:39.220,0:22:45.860
and it's a kind of organic view of the totality.
0:22:45.860,0:22:50.930
And again I don't think Marx is being hegelian,
0:22:50.930,0:22:55.669
he probably sets it up coming out of the hegelian view,
0:22:55.669,0:23:05.330
that you need to specify the distinctive moments
which are at work, transforming the world.
0:23:05.330,0:23:10.610
In the Hegelian view this organic
0:23:10.610,0:23:15.100
system would have an imminence.
It would be evolving in some kind of way according
0:23:15.100,0:23:23.030
to a very tightly specified dynamic of possibilities.
0:23:23.030,0:23:30.510
Marx, it seems to me, is leaving this much more
open, it's a much more ecological kind of system.
0:23:30.510,0:23:35.300
These are in relation to each other, yes,
0:23:35.300,0:23:39.210
and they're constantly interactive with each other,
0:23:39.210,0:23:45.310
but you cannot actually determine the interaction
within the world of nature for example,
0:23:45.310,0:23:49.290
simply by looking what's happening everywhere
else. There's something autonomous about every one
0:23:49.290,0:23:54.490
of these moments,
0:23:54.490,0:24:03.500
So that there is the possibility of all kinds of
radical transformations occurring.
0:24:05.000,0:24:08.640
This is something we need to look at in this
chapter on machinery,
0:24:08.640,0:24:14.460
if you look at how he sets op the argument
about machinery,
0:24:14.460,0:24:21.420
you will see that he invokes many of these elements throughout.
0:24:21.420,0:24:26.430
He will be talking about mental conceptions,
he'll be talking about science and technology,
0:24:26.430,0:24:30.220
the way in which mental conceptions get
incorporated in the machine, the way in which
0:24:30.220,0:24:38.830
mental conceptions are set up in the design of the machine.
0:24:38.830,0:24:45.309
But he doesn't say: 'therefore it's the inventors who've changed the world'.
0:24:45.309,0:24:50.070
Again, for some of the reasons I've suggested, that is
the technology has as much to do with
0:24:50.070,0:24:53.490
the mental conceptions as the mental conceptions
with the technology.
0:24:53.490,0:24:59.100
there's a powerful connectivity there.
0:24:59.100,0:25:09.880
These technologies are not absent in connectivity to social relations.
0:25:09.880,0:25:14.010
And again you'll see in this chapter when
he's talking about technology he's saying
0:25:14.010,0:25:16.680
'the defining thing about a technology
0:25:16.680,0:25:20.230
is often the positionality of the worker
in the labour process
0:25:20.230,0:25:27.120
and the social relation which comes out in relationship to capital.'
0:25:27.120,0:25:32.270
And when he gets to things like what's going on on the land
0:25:32.270,0:25:37.570
and what happened when James Watt came up with the steam engine,
0:25:37.570,0:25:44.400
we see the relation to nature suddenly getting radically transformed.
0:25:44.400,0:25:50.600
So we have all of these elements which are playing together
0:25:50.600,0:26:00.670
and this I think plays a very important role in asking questions
0:26:00.670,0:26:06.930
about how we understand what's going on in the world.
0:26:06.930,0:26:12.390
I remember, I was invited to South Korea,
0:26:12.390,0:26:15.000
two years ago now,
0:26:15.000,0:26:17.400
to chair a jury
0:26:17.400,0:26:24.400
about the design of a new town, a completely new
city they were gonna build in central Korea.
0:26:25.380,0:26:29.450
And we had all these designs to look at and
I was there with architects
0:26:29.450,0:26:32.150
and urban designers, that sort of thing.
0:26:32.150,0:26:39.200
They were absolutely animate of the strength
of the circle shape and square shape
0:26:39.200,0:26:43.610
and they were actually discussing things in those terms.
and I said 'Look,
0:26:43.610,0:26:49.060
I think when talking about this new city there,
there are a number of questions we need
0:26:49.060,0:26:57.320
to ask, and the questions are: What kind of relation to nature
is going to be constructed in this new city?
0:26:57.320,0:27:00.880
How is it going to be articulated?
0:27:00.880,0:27:05.230
what kind of daily life is going to be lived in the city,
0:27:05.230,0:27:10.279
and would you as architects or designers or
engineers want to live in it?
0:27:10.279,0:27:13.789
What kind of social relations are there going to be?
Because the city was essentially going
0:27:13.789,0:27:17.440
to be an administrative center.
0:27:17.440,0:27:25.390
They were going to decant all of the office spaces
of all of the government ministries to this space.
0:27:25.390,0:27:34.750
And I said that's a recipe for total boring disaster, if you think of it,
it'll be a kind of socio-technocratic misery.
0:27:34.750,0:27:38.780
Are those the kinds of relations you want to live with?
0:27:38.780,0:27:43.549
And what kind of symbolism are we constructing
here? is this going to be a symbol of national identity?
0:27:43.549,0:27:47.380
Is it going to be a cosmopolitan kind of idea?
0:27:47.380,0:27:54.650
What kind of mental conception are you going to
try and project into the world with this? So I went around,
0:27:54.650,0:27:58.970
laying out these these categorizations,
they had never thought of this,
0:27:58.970,0:28:04.340
they thought about and they thought it was great for about
ten minutes and then they went back to circles and squares…
0:28:04.340,0:28:07.160
Afterwards a couple came up to me and said:
0:28:07.160,0:28:10.580
That's such a great way of thinking about it,
I never thought about it before, where did you
0:28:10.580,0:28:15.990
get that from? I said it was in footnote 4
0:28:15.990,0:28:21.710
of Capital, chapter on machinery and industry.
Of course, they said
0:28:21.710,0:28:26.060
'oh god, there you go again, we always knew you were kind
of just like that'.
0:28:26.060,0:28:30.710
But, actually if you were doing an anthropological inquiry,
0:28:30.710,0:28:36.820
into something, wouldn't this be a sensible set of issues
to set up at the outset?
0:28:36.820,0:28:39.400
Let's think about all these things,
0:28:39.400,0:28:43.900
let's think about how they're interacting together,
let's think about the dynamism that is
0:28:43.900,0:28:45.650
working them through.
0:28:45.650,0:28:50.740
This also plays I think a critical role
in thinking about any kind
0:28:50.740,0:28:54.480
of revolutionary process.
0:28:54.480,0:29:01.700
That is, what would the transition
to socialism out of capitalism look like?
0:29:01.700,0:29:05.460
What would it have to engage with?
0:29:05.460,0:29:10.500
My argument would be, it would have to
engage with all of these elements.
0:29:10.500,0:29:18.820
One of the big problems, it seems to me, of
lately lamented actually existing communism
0:29:18.820,0:29:21.190
was that they didn't do that.
0:29:21.190,0:29:29.050
It didn't ask these questions about daily life,
it didn't ask these questions about the relation to nature.
0:29:29.050,0:29:37.660
it didn't imagine a world of dynamic interactions
and dynamic transformations.
0:29:37.660,0:29:41.700
And this would then lay, back a little bit, and explain why,
0:29:41.700,0:29:46.950
although Marx says that class struggle is the motor
of history, he also says
0:29:46.950,0:29:52.270
ideas are a material force in history.
0:29:52.270,0:29:54.210
Because you can have all kinds of
0:29:54.210,0:29:59.200
wishes about transforming your social relations,
but unless you can change ideas,
0:29:59.200,0:30:04.780
the hegemony of ideas and all the rest
of it, unless you can change that
0:30:04.780,0:30:07.980
nothing's gonna happen on the social relations front.
0:30:07.980,0:30:14.380
And we therefore have to think of this as a dynamic interaction.
Now,
0:30:14.380,0:30:20.800
they're are some theorists who it seems to me
have taken up this mode of thinking,
0:30:20.800,0:30:25.000
in recent times. in the marxist tradition
0:30:25.000,0:30:28.150
you have for example Lefebvre,
0:30:28.150,0:30:34.340
Now Lefebvre talks about ensembles of relations,
0:30:34.340,0:30:40.870
and this is not an organic system in the sense
of it being just an organism,
0:30:40.870,0:30:47.120
it's organic in the sense of an ecology
of an ensemble of relations,
0:30:47.120,0:30:48.350
which we're looking at.
0:30:48.350,0:30:52.130
And Lefebvre in a sense is highlighting this idea
0:30:52.130,0:30:57.520
that the ensemble of relations is crucial to look at.
0:30:57.520,0:31:02.700
Another person who comes out of the marxist tradition,
although most Americans
0:31:02.700,0:31:06.880
like they always think Foucault is out of it,
they also think that Deleuze is outside of it,
0:31:06.880,0:31:09.420
Deleuze is very much in it!
0:31:09.420,0:31:13.810
And Deleuze talks about an assemblage,
0:31:13.810,0:31:21.450
and his idea of an assemblage is very much like this.
0:31:21.450,0:31:28.850
So you do have ways of thinking in Marx,
which when you
0:31:28.850,0:31:30.980
think of them dialectically,
0:31:30.980,0:31:38.080
but this is again the point, if you read this passage in abstraction,
0:31:38.080,0:31:44.890
then you're gonna get one way of interpreting it.
My interpretation of it comes out very much
0:31:44.890,0:31:51.960
from seeing how Marx works in Capital and then asking questions like:
How is he talking about
0:31:51.960,0:31:57.050
the labour process? How is he talking about technology?
How is he talking about the relation to nature?
0:31:57.050,0:32:01.100
Are they all implicated at various points
in the argument? And I think as we've seen,
0:32:01.100,0:32:06.210
yes, they're always being implicated, sometimes very softly so,
just an occasional
0:32:06.210,0:32:10.490
'well there's something about the relation to nature
here which is important' or 'yeah, there's something
0:32:10.490,0:32:12.440
about social relations here'
0:32:12.440,0:32:16.450
or 'yeah, there's something about daily life',
But we see all of these elements
0:32:16.450,0:32:19.160
cropping up in this particular chapter.
0:32:19.160,0:32:22.270
The other thing this does,
0:32:22.270,0:32:25.700
by thinking this through theoretically in this kind of way,
0:32:25.700,0:32:31.130
is to give you a way critiquing,
0:32:31.130,0:32:38.899
the way that for instance I've tried to critique what was being
set up around this new town, gives you a mode of critique
0:32:38.899,0:32:41.920
it also gives you a mode of critique of Marx himself.
0:32:41.920,0:32:47.170
To what degree is he making suppositions about, for example,
0:32:47.170,0:32:54.250
the way in which mental conceptions get internalized in
0:32:54.250,0:33:02.260
technologies, and he omits, as it were,
certain other aspects of the problem.
0:33:02.260,0:33:05.210
In my view, in this chapter
0:33:05.210,0:33:10.039
he pays very little attention to the reproduction
of daily life except in
0:33:10.039,0:33:15.830
a few specific places.
0:33:15.830,0:33:20.990
And you could generally critique him for that,
and as I think we'll see as we go through,
0:33:20.990,0:33:26.149
I think there's some very interesting
residual problems which he leaves
0:33:26.149,0:33:33.510
in his account of machinery and modern industry,
which we'll get to in due course.
0:33:33.510,0:33:39.060
So it's a way of saying 'well okay
Carlos, you've set this up
0:33:39.060,0:33:44.120
in this particular way, how well are you really keeping to it?
0:33:44.120,0:33:46.260
And the answer is
0:33:46.260,0:33:50.910
'pretty damn well', but there are many elements
where you could say there's real room for
0:33:50.910,0:33:55.659
significant transformation or improvement
of what he had to say.
0:33:55.659,0:34:00.870
So that you're not locked in, as it were, in
'oh well he's said everything that has to be said
0:34:00.870,0:34:06.700
about the universe'. But I find this way of thinking
about it very compelling,
0:34:06.700,0:34:11.599
provided you don't treat it as a causal structure,
you don't read as a deterministic structure,
0:34:11.599,0:34:13.249
you don't treat it as a sort of
0:34:13.249,0:34:16.149
hegelian totality structure but you treat it
0:34:16.149,0:34:22.550
as a kind of open ensemble or an open assemblage of moments in
0:34:22.550,0:34:28.190
a process. Because he's interested in the evolution of society,
0:34:28.190,0:34:33.049
that's the first part of this quote, 'I'm interested
in how society evolves'.
0:34:33.049,0:34:34.859
Second part of the quote is,
0:34:34.859,0:34:43.069
'it's going to evolve by all of these being involved
in a co-evolution process of some kind'.
0:34:43.069,0:34:46.649
So he's setting up a co-evolutionary model
0:34:46.649,0:34:51.479
of how to understand the dynamics of capitalism
and how to understand the transition
0:34:51.479,0:34:55.589
from feudalism to capitalism.
0:34:55.589,0:35:01.059
I think that the implication is therefore
that we should be thinking
0:35:01.059,0:35:06.290
about this kind of thing and thinking about the transition
from capitalism to socialism,
0:35:06.290,0:35:13.619
or anarchism or whatever -ism you particularly have in mind.
0:35:13.619,0:35:17.189
Now, the last part of the quote
0:35:17.189,0:35:20.729
takes us onto even more
0:35:20.729,0:35:23.590
complicated terrain, particularly when put
in relationship to
0:35:23.590,0:35:27.559
this part of the quote.
0:35:27.559,0:35:34.559
He says this:
0:35:36.429,0:35:39.210
"Even a history of religion that is
0:35:39.210,0:35:44.609
written in abstraction from this material basis is uncritical."
0:35:44.609,0:35:52.719
So -this-, by the way, is the material basis,
this whole set of relations.
0:35:52.719,0:35:56.630
"It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis
0:35:56.630,0:36:00.819
the earthly kernel of the misty creations of
religion than to do the opposite, i.e.
0:36:00.819,0:36:05.360
to develop from the actual, given relations
of life the forms in which these
0:36:05.360,0:36:08.039
have been apotheosized.
0:36:08.039,0:36:16.569
The latter method is the only materialist,
and therefore the only scientific one.
0:36:16.569,0:36:20.060
The weaknesses of the abstract materialism of natural science,
0:36:20.060,0:36:25.300
a materialism which excludes the historical process,
are immediately evident
0:36:25.300,0:36:29.529
from the abstract and ideological
conceptions expressed by its spokesmen
0:36:29.529,0:36:38.199
whenever they venture beyond the
bounds of their own speciality."
0:36:38.199,0:36:41.979
You can have a great time day going off and collecting
evidence of that sort of thing in contemporary society,
0:36:41.979,0:36:46.249
a scientist gets in and starts telling you how
the social world should be organized without
0:36:46.249,0:36:52.199
even understanding that they drew metaphors
from the social world in order to construct the social world.
0:36:52.199,0:36:53.579
This is great…
0:36:53.579,0:37:00.529
Even more important here is this thing about
"this is the only truly scientific method".
0:37:00.529,0:37:09.059
And it brings us back to something he wrote well before, and
0:37:09.059,0:37:15.159
there's some argument as to whether
he's still holding to that when he's writing Capital,
0:37:15.159,0:37:23.779
but if you want any evidence on it
you go back to page 175,
0:37:23.779,0:37:27.249
right at the beginning the text,
0:37:27.249,0:37:31.209
and you go back to footnote 35,
0:37:31.209,0:37:34.549
you go to the bottom of that footnote,
0:37:34.549,0:37:45.469
where he quotes from his 1859 Critique of political economy, the preface.
0:37:45.469,0:37:50.729
Which is a very famous passage which is always
being quoted, and he quotes it here, he says:
0:37:50.729,0:37:55.559
"My view is that each particular mode of production,
0:37:55.559,0:38:03.029
and the relations of production corresponding to it at each given moment,
in short 'the economic structure of society',
0:38:03.029,0:38:13.490
is 'the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure
and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness',
0:38:13.490,0:38:18.880
and that 'the mode of production of material life,
conditions the general process of social, political
0:38:18.880,0:38:23.529
and intellectual life'."
0:38:23.529,0:38:26.109
What he leaves out here, however,
0:38:26.109,0:38:34.529
is the following couple of sentences in which he says,
it is in the superstructure,
0:38:34.529,0:38:44.309
where we become conscious of questions and where we fight
out political struggles.
0:38:44.309,0:38:53.319
Now what is going on here is what is generally
known as the base-superstructure argument.
0:38:53.319,0:39:04.149
There's supposedly an economic base,
upon which there arises of superstructure of thought,
0:39:04.709,0:39:12.099
of politics, of law, and the like.
0:39:12.099,0:39:14.179
Now again,
0:39:14.179,0:39:20.970
you have to ask yourself the question:
Is Marx talking in a deterministic mode here?
0:39:20.970,0:39:28.390
That is, is he saying the economic basis, which is technology,
0:39:28.390,0:39:32.479
process of production, social relations, all the rest of it,
0:39:32.479,0:39:41.489
is he saying the economic basis determines the superstructure?
0:39:41.489,0:39:50.549
The answer I think is 'No, he's not saying 'determines' at all,
he very rarely uses phrases like 'determines',
0:39:50.549,0:39:59.599
and he'll use it in a logical sense but
he won't use it about the social process.
0:39:59.599,0:40:04.049
Think back how this actually worked in
the chapter on the working day,
0:40:04.049,0:40:07.479
how did it work?
0:40:07.479,0:40:13.380
The basis of the whole argument about the working day is this:
0:40:13.380,0:40:16.479
Value is socially necessary labour time,
0:40:16.479,0:40:19.869
time is therefore central.
0:40:19.869,0:40:23.449
"Moments of the elements of profit"
0:40:23.449,0:40:27.269
Capitalists are interested in time, they're interested
in the worker's time.
0:40:27.269,0:40:32.029
They steal the seconds, they steal the minutes,
0:40:32.029,0:40:35.759
they want to lengthen the working day, they're into that.
0:40:35.759,0:40:44.309
Why? Because socially necessary labour time is the measure of value,
0:40:44.309,0:40:49.479
so that is the economic base.
0:40:49.479,0:40:53.640
And that explains when you're looking at
the chapter of the working day, why
0:40:53.640,0:41:01.489
in the history of capitalism, the struggle over the working day
and over temporality has been so central.
0:41:01.489,0:41:05.269
If you don't make that connection you're going to
have a hell of a time explaining why it is
0:41:05.269,0:41:09.790
that capitalists do all the things they do around temporality,
why they fight over minutes and seconds,
0:41:09.790,0:41:12.319
tea breaks and all that kind of stuff.
0:41:12.319,0:41:16.279
It's very hard to explain it unless you've got some kind of real force
0:41:16.279,0:41:21.479
which is explaining it. And Marx gives you a very
simple way of understanding that.
0:41:21.479,0:41:28.409
Then when you look at how the argument
over the length of the working day evolved,
0:41:28.409,0:41:32.049
remember the dialogue between the capitalist
and the labourer at the beginning, the capitalist says:
0:41:32.049,0:41:36.390
I have my rights when I take as much as I can have of your labour time;
0:41:36.390,0:41:42.539
and the worker says 'but excuse me, you're are also
taking a chunk of my life you can't do that.'
0:41:42.539,0:41:47.640
Both, remember, working through the law of exchanges.
0:41:47.640,0:41:52.500
And under those conditions what happens? between equal rights, force decides.
0:41:52.500,0:41:59.339
How did the equality of rights arise,
how is it therefore that force decides?
0:41:59.339,0:42:05.669
Now would you say from reading that chapter
that somehow or other it was all mechanically determined?
0:42:05.669,0:42:09.910
You wouldn't say that at all you, would say
'well there were shifting class alliances,
0:42:09.910,0:42:15.289
there was a dynamic in England at the time around
this, and the dynamic was connected to the dynamics
0:42:15.289,0:42:21.069
going on in France and also what was going on in North America etc.
0:42:21.069,0:42:24.369
It's a very fluid kind of political process.
0:42:24.369,0:42:33.709
And Marx is not saying that that process,
the outcome of that process, is determined in advance.
0:42:33.709,0:42:38.749
As he says at the end of that chapter, it depends
on workers putting their heads together and
0:42:38.749,0:42:46.999
deciding they're going to have a tremendous solidarious campaign
0:42:46.999,0:42:56.579
to make absolutely sure that they have a reasonable length of working day.
0:42:56.579,0:43:03.130
Notice, that does not abolish the problem which is there,
0:43:03.130,0:43:13.459
which is the capitalists need socially necessary labour time
in order to perpetuate themselves.
0:43:13.459,0:43:18.380
Which explains why the struggles over the working
day and over working time and all that kind of thing,
0:43:18.380,0:43:21.359
are never ultimately resolved under capitalism.
0:43:21.359,0:43:27.069
They are perpetual, they're as significant now
as they were in Marx' time;
0:43:27.069,0:43:31.130
they're registered differently, there's a different
legal superstructure, there's different politics
0:43:31.130,0:43:34.339
around it etc.
0:43:34.339,0:43:37.619
But it's the same damn problem.
0:43:37.619,0:43:43.779
and what Marx is saying is, that this problem is something
which exists in the very foundation
0:43:43.779,0:43:47.749
of what the capitalist mode production is necessarily
about, and you're not going to get rid of
0:43:47.749,0:43:50.369
it until you get rid of capitalism.
0:43:50.369,0:43:53.039
End of story!
0:43:53.039,0:44:03.259
Yeah, you could nuance it, you could have a 35 hour week,
you can have all kinds of
0:44:03.259,0:44:06.420
adjustments of that kind. But you can't
0:44:06.420,0:44:11.130
get rid of the problem and the debate will
not go away, the capitalist class will at various points
0:44:11.130,0:44:18.049
come back as it has come back and said
'We want more hours, we want more time'.
0:44:18.049,0:44:22.659
Big protest about the CUNY contract tomorrow, right?
0:44:22.659,0:44:29.109
The last contract extended the working year of CUNY employees by about 4-5 days,
0:44:29.109,0:44:34.249
that's what they wanted, they wanted the extra time.
0:44:34.249,0:44:40.380
So it never goes away it's always there,
everybody's always facing it.
0:44:40.380,0:44:45.789
So what Marx is saying here, is that the only scientific method,
0:44:45.789,0:44:52.319
is you need a concept, which is where the value theory concept
starts to really kick in,
0:44:52.319,0:45:00.670
you need a concept which helps you explain why that phenomena
is always with us and won't go away.
0:45:00.670,0:45:07.709
And that phenomena is, as he would say, in the economic base.
0:45:07.709,0:45:12.499
And that's what the economic base is about.
0:45:12.499,0:45:18.680
So I think what you have to do here, is to say again, this is not
0:45:18.680,0:45:23.059
a deterministic relationship, it's a dialectical relation,
0:45:23.059,0:45:25.509
a dialectical relation between
0:45:25.509,0:45:31.180
the constant search for socially necessary labour time
on the part of the capitalist,
0:45:31.180,0:45:37.919
and the constant forms of resistance from those people,
from whom the surplus labour-time is constantly being taken away,
0:45:37.919,0:45:40.689
that's the working class.
0:45:40.689,0:45:46.869
Which then does indeed put you into the dynamics of class struggle.
0:45:48.869,0:46:00.059
So, here he is not, I think,
getting into a causal, simple mechanical sort of model.
0:46:02.019,0:46:08.339
One of the biggest difficulties, it seems to me,
are the positivist readings of Marx,
0:46:08.339,0:46:10.450
the mechanistic readings of Marx.
0:46:10.450,0:46:18.019
Somebody who comes in and says the only model of science
which is valid is causality, mechanistic understanding,
0:46:18.019,0:46:21.650
would read this in turn this into a mechanistic model.
0:46:21.650,0:46:27.279
Then they would test it and find it's all wrong,
and say 'well so Marx is stupid'.
0:46:27.279,0:46:29.329
And that's what a lot of them do,
0:46:29.329,0:46:33.129
and there are a lot of people within marxism who do that, for example,
0:46:33.129,0:46:40.159
the idea that productive forces are the motor of history,
0:46:40.159,0:46:45.509
is a very long standing one within many communist theorists
0:46:45.509,0:46:51.749
and even outside of communist theories,
if you want one of the best examples
0:46:51.749,0:46:55.679
of a very intellectual defense of the idea,
you'll read G.A. Cohen's
0:46:55.679,0:46:58.709
'Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence',
0:46:58.709,0:47:04.849
which argues that Marx is attributing to the productive forces
0:47:04.849,0:47:15.659
i.e. technologies, a primacy in the historical transformation.
0:47:15.659,0:47:20.989
so there's been a battle within marxism over this question,
0:47:20.989,0:47:26.669
the big battle is between those who say it's class struggle,
and those who say it's technology.
0:47:26.669,0:47:32.359
Now we have the autonomistas saying 'It's the labour process.'
0:47:32.359,0:47:44.969
So even within marxism you will find a very significant battles,
including also over the base-superstructure imagery.
0:47:44.969,0:47:49.779
But this is one of the places where you can
start to sort that out,
0:47:49.779,0:47:52.529
but again you don't sort it out
0:47:52.529,0:47:59.829
theoretically, in the sense of finding odd quotes from Marx
that support the class struggle the or some other view.
0:47:59.829,0:48:06.479
You sort it out, it seems to me, by looking carefully at how
0:48:06.479,0:48:15.569
he situates all of these elements together
in the account that he's giving in Capital.
0:48:15.569,0:48:23.569
That is why this cryptic theoretical statement in the beginning of
'Machinery and Large-Scale Industry' is so important.
0:48:23.569,0:48:27.720
It says something about that, but it also draws
your attention to the fact that he has this
0:48:27.720,0:48:34.959
in mind in writing this chapter. So one of the things you have to do,
is to read this chapter with this in mind!
0:48:34.959,0:48:36.969
Don't treat it as some sort of aside,
0:48:36.969,0:48:43.739
no, you've got to read this chapter
as an example of how this sort of thing works.
0:48:43.739,0:48:46.739
And if you do it that way, I think you'll get a very good idea
0:48:46.739,0:48:51.479
at exactly how Marx actually proceeds, as opposed to
0:48:51.479,0:48:55.939
the myriad accounts you'll have of how
Marx is supposed to have proceeded.
0:48:55.939,0:48:57.749
Many of which are guided by,
0:48:57.749,0:49:06.239
as I said positivist, causal logics and so on,
which Marx doesn't utilize in Capital. You can't find it.
0:49:06.239,0:49:09.809
Okay, I'm going to stop here and get some discussion
from you on this. Are there some things
0:49:09.809,0:49:19.469
that you kind of find problematic or want elucidated?
0:49:19.629,0:49:24.130
» STUDENT: It seems like Marx lays out these elements pretty clearly,
0:49:24.130,0:49:31.029
I'm wondering why he left out some of these elements that he clearly
sees and separates in his own account.
0:49:31.029,0:49:36.229
» HARVEY: In his own account of what? Of Capital? Of machinery?
0:49:36.229,0:49:39.319
» STUDENT: Of Capital and machinery, I mean throughout the book,
0:49:39.319,0:49:45.319
There are a few references to some of these things,
but there's clearly a lot more attention that needs to be spend on them.
0:49:45.319,0:49:46.319
» HARVEY: Yes, agreed.
0:49:46.319,0:49:50.909
» STUDENT: My second part of the question:
0:49:50.909,0:49:56.089
Is Lefebvre then foregrounding these issues
of the reproduction of daily life,
0:49:56.089,0:50:03.249
or if he's actually, if it's more that he's simply filling in
what he saw as something that was underanalyzed by Marx in Capital?
0:50:03.249,0:50:09.200
» HARVEY: Yeah, I think there's no question that Lefebvre
in his 'Critique of Everyday Life' is trying to
0:50:09.200,0:50:17.559
correct what he saw as a lack of attention to this
reproduction of daily life, everyday life type issues.
0:50:17.559,0:50:20.889
So there's no question that Lefebvre thought this was a gap.
0:50:20.889,0:50:26.659
And it was through that, that he started to amount a
critique of stalinism within
0:50:26.659,0:50:31.279
the Communist Party, through that sort of strategy,
0:50:31.279,0:50:36.709
that he pursued that path and began to develop a critique of
0:50:36.709,0:50:43.479
Soviet practices which led him eventually
to be thrown out of the Communist Party.
0:50:43.479,0:50:51.219
There's no question that Lefebvre saw some of these elements undertheorized.
0:50:51.219,0:50:55.019
But here's an interesting question:
Are they really so undertheorized
0:50:55.019,0:51:00.069
and are they not paid enough attention
to in Marx, or is that the marxists
0:51:00.069,0:51:02.449
that didn't pay attention to them?
0:51:02.449,0:51:05.039
My argument would be, many of them, as you correctly said,
0:51:05.039,0:51:09.939
are underplayed in capital but there are always elements of them there.
0:51:09.939,0:51:14.409
Whereas I think the big problem was, when
the marxists came along and said the productive
0:51:14.409,0:51:20.169
forces are the ones that matter, change the productive forces
and everything changes with it.
0:51:20.169,0:51:21.639
Didn't happen.
0:51:21.639,0:51:23.819
Soviet Union got into a big mess.
0:51:23.819,0:51:29.749
The relation to nature doesn't matter,
got into a big environmental mess.
0:51:29.749,0:51:35.149
So I think the problem what the marxists did,
0:51:35.149,0:51:38.479
and like I said, G.A. Cohen,
0:51:38.479,0:51:41.339
an extremely talented analytical philosopher,
0:51:41.339,0:51:50.129
it's the analytical that's the problem, he hates dialectics.
Basically he calls dialectics 'bullshit Marxism'.
0:51:50.129,0:52:00.059
They had a logo where the analytical Marxists
called themselves the non-bullshit Marxists.
0:52:00.059,0:52:04.759
So yeah, there's a lot of problems with
the Marxist tradition in how this is set up.
0:52:04.759,0:52:10.410
But we we will look in this chapter a little bit
about how these elements are integrated.
0:52:10.410,0:52:14.209
Again, it's sometimes in a quiet voice,
'there's something going on here which we should pay attention to,
0:52:14.209,0:52:23.029
I'm not going to do that because I want to get to the end of this book'.
0:52:23.619,0:52:26.329
So it's a bit that, but you will see elements of it.
0:52:26.329,0:52:29.739
You know, John Stuart Mill,
0:52:29.739,0:52:38.749
naively wondered "if all the mechanical inventions yet made
have lightened the day's toil of any human being."
0:52:38.749,0:52:42.759
Marx answers 'Of course not, because machines
are not invented to do that.
0:52:42.759,0:52:46.769
they're invented to produce surplus-value,
0:52:46.769,0:52:54.789
Interestingly, immediately you're going to find a tension,
which Marx is very well aware of,
0:52:54.789,0:52:59.170
between the idea that machines produces a surplus-value,
0:52:59.170,0:53:05.419
when we know that machines are dead labour
and they cannot produce value.
0:53:05.419,0:53:09.209
So you're gonna have a situation where Marx
is going to be talking about machines as
0:53:09.209,0:53:11.269
a source of surplus-value,
0:53:11.269,0:53:14.239
as a source of relative surplus-value,
0:53:14.239,0:53:19.399
when we know that machines are not a source of value.
0:53:19.399,0:53:26.279
And from this by the way, will then follow
the idea that the capitalists get,
0:53:26.279,0:53:28.120
that machines are a source of value.
0:53:28.120,0:53:32.679
They're a source of surplus-value so they must be a source of value.
0:53:32.679,0:53:39.049
Therefore, capitalists start to fetishise the machine,
0:53:39.049,0:53:42.720
and believe that the machine is the answer
to all things and we'll see
0:53:42.720,0:53:46.459
some cases where that comes about.
0:53:46.459,0:53:56.459
Under the very first gesture however is to
set up a distinction between tools and machines.
0:53:56.459,0:54:02.469
Immediately what you find is that Marx
here is talking about,
0:54:02.469,0:54:08.249
not so much the physical notion of the tool and the machine,
0:54:08.249,0:54:12.699
but its social positioning in relationship
to the labour process. So immediately, you got into
0:54:12.699,0:54:22.039
the idea that the technology and the social positioning
and the labour process, are three elements in this discussion.
0:54:22.039,0:54:27.849
And we start to see how those three elements
produce something which he calls on page 493:
0:54:27.849,0:54:33.379
"The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century."
0:54:33.379,0:54:39.329
Marx pioneered pretty much in talking about the notion
of an industrial revolution,
0:54:39.329,0:54:45.720
and he's very interested in talking about
exactly what the nature of that revolution is,
0:54:45.720,0:54:54.239
and this first section is about the dynamics of that process.
0:54:56.859,0:55:07.219
Clearly, the machine begins with the tool.
0:55:07.219,0:55:10.410
But what happens, as he says on page 495:
0:55:10.410,0:55:18.559
There is a moment "that the tool proper is
taken from man and fitted into a mechanism,
0:55:18.559,0:55:24.959
a machine takes the place of a mere implement."
0:55:24.959,0:55:29.159
On page 497, he comes to the conclusion:
0:55:29.159,0:55:34.859
"The machine, which is the starting-point of the industrial revolution,
0:55:34.859,0:55:37.589
replaces the worker, who handles a single tool,
0:55:37.589,0:55:43.879
by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools and set in
motion by a single motive power,
0:55:43.879,0:55:47.029
whatever the form of that power."
0:55:47.029,0:55:53.479
He then talks, at the bottom of the page about horsepower,
then about water power.
0:55:53.479,0:55:56.069
at the top of page 499,
0:55:56.069,0:56:02.809
he introduces a radical shift in the motive power:
0:56:02.809,0:56:07.499
"Not till the invention of Watt's second
and so-called double-acting steam-engine
0:56:07.499,0:56:12.419
was a prime mover found which drew its own motive power from the
consumption of coal and water,
0:56:12.419,0:56:19.980
was entirely under man's control, was mobile and a means of locomotion,
was urban and not - like the water-wheel - rural,
0:56:19.980,0:56:26.299
permitted production to be concentrated in towns instead of
- like the water-wheels- being scattered over the countryside
0:56:26.299,0:56:29.190
and, finally, was of universal technical application,
0:56:29.190,0:56:35.669
and little affected in its choice of residence by local circumstances."
0:56:35.669,0:56:37.909
This means that industrial output,
0:56:37.909,0:56:45.929
is liberated from a certain set of constraints which are given
by the natural circumstances.
0:56:45.929,0:56:50.859
Where are the water-wheels?
Where the water power?
0:56:50.859,0:56:57.029
With coal you can cart is around,
you can concentrate it, bring it into the cities.
0:56:57.029,0:57:01.089
It's a radically different process.
0:57:01.089,0:57:11.879
And this process, by the way, was critical
for the industrial revolution in Britain,
0:57:11.879,0:57:19.379
for the following reason: the industrial development in Britain
in the 18th century,
0:57:19.379,0:57:26.699
was booming along but was running into very serious resource constraints.
0:57:26.699,0:57:32.269
The problem was that your fuel reserves, your fuel resources
0:57:32.269,0:57:37.989
were coming off the land. It was biomass, it was charcoal, it was wood.
0:57:37.989,0:57:42.259
You're cutting down the forests like crazy,
0:57:42.259,0:57:47.559
and at the same time you need land for food production.
0:57:47.559,0:57:53.959
What happens when there's a competition between energy supplies
and food production?
0:57:53.959,0:58:01.920
They were running head to head in Britain to a point where,
probably the relation to nature would have stopped
0:58:01.920,0:58:04.189
any further industrial development.
0:58:04.189,0:58:09.429
British industry was in crisis in the middle of the 18th century
for that very reason.
0:58:09.429,0:58:12.069
The answer was to go underground,
0:58:12.069,0:58:13.999
get the coal from underground,
0:58:13.999,0:58:24.829
there's no competition between land being used for fuel supplies
and land being used for food production.
0:58:24.829,0:58:29.829
There's a connection in all of this because the
price of my bagel went out last week,
0:58:29.829,0:58:33.659
from 80 cents to 95 cents!
0:58:33.659,0:58:42.949
There's an incredible shortage of wheat in the world,
agricultural prices are going through the roof.
0:58:42.949,0:58:46.389
Why? Ethanol production!
0:58:46.389,0:58:52.159
We're heading right back into
a situation where the land
0:58:52.159,0:59:00.059
is going to be competed for, between energy resources and food resources.
0:59:00.059,0:59:02.809
And food prices already shooting up
0:59:02.809,0:59:06.539
very fast because the rate of conversion to ethanol,
0:59:06.539,0:59:12.529
throughout Latin America as well as now in the United States
is very significant.
0:59:12.529,0:59:20.569
And if you take all that land away from food production,
what happens? Well, my bagel goes up by 15 cents!
0:59:20.569,0:59:28.699
Not only that, but actually bread prices around
the world are skyrocketing for all these kinds of reasons.
0:59:32.199,0:59:40.179
So this move, which can sometimes be seen as
a social necessity, a political, economic necessity
0:59:40.179,0:59:48.719
given the tensions which existed in British industrialism
and food supplies at that time,
0:59:48.719,0:59:53.639
This technological move radically transformed the relations to nature.
0:59:53.639,1:00:02.910
And of course, it allowed to be set in train that whole process
which allowed the 19th century essentially to
1:00:02.910,1:00:08.869
mine out all stored fuel reserves of the Carboniferous period
1:00:08.869,1:00:14.779
the last century to mine out all the stored fuel reserves
of the Cretaceous period.
1:00:14.779,1:00:20.549
And leaving us with the question:
What's the next reserve of energy?
1:00:20.549,1:00:27.519
But now we're seeing as that goes back onto
the land, what kinds of problems we might immediately face.
1:00:27.519,1:00:34.009
What Marx is doing here then, is saying
1:00:34.009,1:00:40.139
that we start to reorganize the division of labour,
which is considered the previous chapter,
1:00:40.139,1:00:41.519
and reorganize cooperation.
1:00:41.519,1:00:51.019
So on page 501, about 10 lines down, he says:
"Here we have again the co-operation by division of labour
1:00:51.019,1:00:53.869
which is peculiar to manufacture,
1:00:53.869,1:00:59.129
but now it appears as a combination of machines
with specific functions."
1:00:59.129,1:01:04.099
And he talks about the similarities,
then he says: "an essential difference at once appears.
1:01:04.099,1:01:09.719
In manufacture, it is the workers who, either singly or in groups,
must carry on each particular process
1:01:09.719,1:01:12.749
with their manual implements.
1:01:12.749,1:01:19.899
The worker has been appropriated by the process; but the
process had previously to be adapted to the worker.
1:01:19.899,1:01:22.130
This subjective principle
1:01:22.130,1:01:26.130
of the division of labour no longer exists in production by machinery.
1:01:26.130,1:01:33.459
Here the total process is examined objectively,
viewed in and for itself, and analyzed into its constitutive phases.
1:01:33.459,1:01:40.670
The problem of how to execute each particular process,
and to bind the different partial processes together into a whole,
1:01:40.670,1:01:45.909
is solved by the aid of machines, chemistry, etc."
1:01:45.909,1:01:57.719
Chemistry, science and technology,
mental conceptions, start to become significant.
1:01:57.719,1:02:01.749
Middle of page 502: "The collective working machine,
1:02:01.749,1:02:05.729
which is now an articulated system composed
of various kinds of single machines,
1:02:05.729,1:02:07.439
and of groups of single machines,
1:02:07.439,1:02:12.489
becomes all the more perfect the more the process as a
whole becomes a continuous one,…"
1:02:12.489,1:02:18.219
Again this idea of the continuity of the production process,
1:02:18.219,1:02:20.709
the smooth, continuous flow
1:02:20.709,1:02:26.529
is absolutely vital again to the whole idea of the circulation of capital.
1:02:26.529,1:02:30.660
So the idea of the circulation of capital
is being represented here by
1:02:30.660,1:02:40.329
this reorganization of the process of production,
with the machine technology.
1:02:40.329,1:02:42.629
The outcome of this,
1:02:42.629,1:02:48.299
he says on page 503, towards the bottom:
"An organized system of machines
1:02:48.299,1:02:53.309
to which motion is communicated by the transmitting mechanism
1:02:53.309,1:02:58.349
from an automatic centre is the most developed form
of production by machinery.
1:02:58.349,1:03:02.319
Here we have, in place of the isolated machine, a mechanical monster…"
1:03:02.319,1:03:03.759
-Marx loves monsters-
1:03:03.759,1:03:09.069
"… whose body fills whole factories, and whose demonic power,
at first hidden by the slow and measured motions
1:03:09.069,1:03:17.389
of its gigantic members, finally bursts forth
in the fast and feverish whirl of its countless working organs."
1:03:17.389,1:03:20.859
He then poses a very particular problem:
1:03:20.859,1:03:24.549
Who is it that is making the machines?
1:03:24.549,1:03:35.400
Well it turns out it's the artisans in the manufacturing period,
who through artisan labour are making the machines.
1:03:35.400,1:03:45.359
And this poses a limitation, so he says on page 504,
1:03:45.359,1:03:53.239
'this limitation of skilled labour in making machines
was inhibiting the development of the process.'
1:03:57.239,1:04:03.889
'And what was required here was a total revolution in machine technologies.'
1:04:03.889,1:04:09.829
He talks about this on page 504:
1:04:09.829,1:04:13.689
"… the demand for the newly discovered machines grew larger,
1:04:13.689,1:04:18.509
the machine-making industry increasingly split up
into numerous independent branches,
1:04:18.509,1:04:22.329
and the division of labour within these
manufactures developed accordingly."
1:04:22.329,1:04:25.749
"Manufacture produced the machinery…"
1:04:25.749,1:04:29.819
A bit further down: "When the system had attained
a certain degree of development,
1:04:29.819,1:04:35.799
it had to overthrow this ready-made foundation,
which had meanwhile undergone further development
1:04:35.799,1:04:43.759
in its old form, and create for itself
a new basis appropriate to its own mode of production."
1:04:45.759,1:04:57.759
This new basis involves a transformation of social relations,
you have to transcend the limits of artisanal labour,
1:04:57.759,1:05:03.859
he talks about that at the bottom of page 504,
1:05:03.859,1:05:09.819
The production of machinery was "dependent on
the growth of a class of workers who,
1:05:09.819,1:05:13.649
owing to the semi-artistic nature of their employment,
could increase their numbers
1:05:13.649,1:05:16.509
only gradually, and not by leaps and bounds."
1:05:16.509,1:05:22.169
The technical basis of the handicrafts in manufacture was inadequate.
1:05:22.169,1:05:30.019
What we see on page 505 is the idea:
"The transformation of the mode of production in one sphere of industry
1:05:30.019,1:05:33.289
necessitates a similar transformation in other spheres."
1:05:33.289,1:05:36.989
You get these spillover effects from sphere to another.
1:05:36.989,1:05:42.490
"…machine spinning made machine weaving necessary,
and both together made a mechanical and chemical revolution
1:05:42.490,1:05:46.829
compulsory in bleaching, printing and dyeing."
1:05:46.829,1:05:51.429
Then he goes on to talk about "the revolution in
the modes of production of industry and agriculture made
1:05:51.429,1:05:55.489
necessary a revolution in the general conditions
of the social process of production, i.e.
1:05:55.489,1:06:00.950
in the means of communication and transport."
1:06:00.950,1:06:04.969
Bottom of that paragraph:
"Hence, quite apart from the immense transformation
1:06:04.969,1:06:10.329
which took place in shipbuilding,
the means of communication and transport gradually adapted themselves
1:06:10.329,1:06:14.519
to the mode of production of large-scale
industry by means of a system of river steamers,
1:06:14.519,1:06:18.069
railways, ocean steamers and telegraphs.
1:06:18.069,1:06:25.029
But the huge masses of iron that had now to be forged, welded, cut,
bored and shaped required for their part
1:06:25.029,1:06:27.009
machines of Cyclopean dimensions,
1:06:27.009,1:06:33.819
which the machine-building trades of the period of manufacture
were incapable of constructing. "
1:06:33.819,1:06:41.189
Here comes the crucial paragraph:
"Large-scale industry therefore had to take over the machine itself,
1:06:41.189,1:06:47.839
its own characteristic instrument of production, and
to produce machines by means of machines.
1:06:47.839,1:06:52.240
It was not till it did this that it could create for itself
an adequate technical foundation,
1:06:52.240,1:06:55.139
and stand on its own feet."
1:06:55.139,1:06:59.909
In other words, the rise of
the machine tool industry,
1:06:59.909,1:07:03.569
the production of machines by machines,
1:07:03.569,1:07:09.899
which became, as it were, the center of the technology
1:07:09.899,1:07:13.529
of a capitalist mode of production which was adequate to
1:07:13.529,1:07:19.899
the requirements of a capitalist mode of production.
1:07:19.899,1:07:28.119
So this is the revolutionary movement, a movement from
tools to machines,
1:07:28.119,1:07:32.269
which are produced by artisanal labour,
and they're sporadic and around the place.
1:07:32.269,1:07:37.889
The machines get collected together and become a system
of interconnected machines.
1:07:37.889,1:07:42.649
But then as you try to extend that system,
so you get an expansion
1:07:42.649,1:07:47.039
of demand for more and more machines which
could only be met by setting up an industry
1:07:47.039,1:07:52.519
which produces machines by machines.
1:07:52.519,1:07:57.370
And it is that dynamic which in Marx' view,
1:07:57.370,1:08:04.370
characterizes what the industrial revolution was essentially about.
1:08:09.459,1:08:13.889
This has all kinds of implications,
1:08:13.889,1:08:20.559
he mentions some of them at the end of this section on page 508:
1:08:20.559,1:08:26.310
There is a "replacement of human force by natural forces,
1:08:26.310,1:08:33.310
and the replacement of the rule of thumb
by the conscious application of natural science.
1:08:33.579,1:08:38.029
In manufacture the organization of the social labour process is
purely subjective:
1:08:38.029,1:08:40.829
it is a combination of specialized workers.
1:08:40.829,1:08:44.080
Large-scale industry, on the other hand,
possesses in the machine system
1:08:44.080,1:08:49.059
an entirely objective organization of production,
1:08:49.059,1:08:56.059
which confronts the worker
as a pre-existing material condition of production."
1:08:59.150,1:09:01.709
Look what he's talking about here,
1:09:01.709,1:09:04.259
Look how he's going around these elements.
1:09:04.259,1:09:06.179
Natural science,
1:09:06.179,1:09:08.060
technology is being deployed,
1:09:08.060,1:09:09.680
technologies are being transformed,
1:09:09.680,1:09:11.369
social relations are being changed,
1:09:11.369,1:09:16.849
the process of production is being changed
and so is the relation to nature.
1:09:16.849,1:09:23.100
All of these elements are actually at work in this section,
1:09:23.100,1:09:29.249
nothing about everyday life but all these other elements are in there.
1:09:29.249,1:09:30.190
And it was
1:09:30.190,1:09:34.180
a co-evolution of all of these elements
that produced the industrial revolution.
1:09:34.180,1:09:40.239
You couldn't have had the industrial revolution,
lets put it this way, without
1:09:40.239,1:09:43.329
there being a radical transformation of social relations,
1:09:43.329,1:09:52.239
i.e. the workers move from being an active subject
to being objectively embodied
1:09:52.239,1:09:55.860
in a radically redesigned labour process
1:09:55.860,1:10:02.639
which is using the new technologies and mental conceptions.
1:10:02.639,1:10:06.959
And of course engaging in a completely different relation to nature.
1:10:06.959,1:10:16.199
Through the move to a source of power which is underground.
1:10:17.260,1:10:19.929
In the next section he raises the question of
1:10:19.929,1:10:26.750
the value transformation, transferred by the machinery
to the product. We've come across this a bit before.
1:10:28.750,1:10:35.310
We know that the machine is not a source of value,
1:10:35.310,1:10:41.539
but we also know that the value embodied in the
machine has to be transferred to the product.
1:10:41.539,1:10:47.399
How is it transferred to the product? Well, it's a
fictional process obviously.
1:10:47.399,1:10:52.849
So Marx sets up a simple straight-line depreciation model,
1:10:52.849,1:10:56.689
which is, if the machine lasts 10 years
then one-tenth of the machine disappears into
1:10:56.689,1:11:05.649
the product every year. So at the end of
the 10 years you've got back the value of your machine.
1:11:05.649,1:11:08.999
It has all come out in the product.
1:11:08.999,1:11:16.469
This straight-line thing is fairly simply set up.
1:11:16.469,1:11:25.449
This then actually sets up a very important idea,
at the end of this section, which is this:
1:11:25.449,1:11:33.300
At what point do capitalists stop using machines?
1:11:33.300,1:11:37.959
You can already get a sense that
1:11:37.959,1:11:43.550
capitalist are likely to be fetishisticly attached to machines
because they can produce surplus-value.
1:11:43.550,1:11:47.839
At what point do they stop producing machines?
1:11:47.839,1:11:54.510
Marx lays this out on page 513,
1:11:54.510,1:11:59.460
at the top: "It is evident that whenever it costs as much labour
to produce a machine
1:11:59.460,1:12:09.130
as is saved by the employment of that machine,
all that has taken place is a displacement of labour."
1:12:09.130,1:12:17.690
Then he talks about the difference between
the labour that the machine costs and labour it saves,
1:12:18.749,1:12:25.020
and the idea that "The productivity of the machine is
therefore measured by the human labour-power it replaces."
1:12:25.020,1:12:32.539
He talks about this, on page 515 this leads him to specify a limit:
1:12:34.539,1:12:39.539
"The use of machinery for the exclusive purpose of cheapening the product
1:12:39.539,1:12:44.889
is limited by the requirement that less labour must be
expended in producing the machinery
1:12:44.889,1:12:48.590
than is displaced by the
employment of that machinery.
1:12:48.590,1:12:52.950
For the capitalist, however, there is a further limit on its use.
Instead of paying for the labour,
1:12:52.950,1:12:55.889
he pays only the value of the labour-power employed;
1:12:55.889,1:12:59.570
the limit to his using a machine is therefore fixed
by the difference between the value of
1:12:59.570,1:13:04.439
the machine and the value of the labour-power replaced by it."
1:13:04.439,1:13:13.510
And then he goes on about, if labour has a different value
in the United States to what it has in Britain,
1:13:13.510,1:13:16.760
if the value of labour is much higher in Britain
1:13:16.760,1:13:24.820
then obviously employing a machine is going to save you
more value in the USA than in Britain.
1:13:24.820,1:13:28.639
If labour is dirt cheap in Britain,
1:13:28.639,1:13:34.280
you won't employ the machine, so he puts an argument in,
that actually, there's a differential
1:13:34.280,1:13:38.449
between Britain and the USA in
the employment of machinery, simply because
1:13:38.449,1:13:45.789
the value of labour-power is radically different in
united states than it is in Britain.
1:13:45.789,1:13:50.769
This limitation is a very important part of his argument,
it's going to come up again
1:13:50.769,1:13:56.199
two or three times later. So it's a critical point in the argument.
1:13:56.199,1:14:04.780
It defines as it were, a rational point, in which the rational capitalist,
1:14:04.780,1:14:07.429
armed with the right kind of information,
1:14:07.429,1:14:11.210
would decide 'I'm not going to go for a new machine
1:14:11.210,1:14:22.159
because it will replace so many workers
that that will not compensate me
1:14:22.159,1:14:25.949
for the amount I'm going to have to lay out on the machine.
1:14:25.949,1:14:33.929
This immediately of course,
reminds us of something important about machinery.
1:14:33.929,1:14:38.620
The two forms of relative surplus-value he's looked at so far,
1:14:38.620,1:14:41.909
(1) co-operation and (2) division of labour,
1:14:41.909,1:14:45.980
were essentially free goods to the capitalist,
the capitalist didn't get out into the market and
1:14:45.980,1:14:49.409
buy them as commodities.
1:14:49.409,1:14:52.949
They were available to the capitalist,
1:14:52.949,1:14:56.449
yes it may involve capital investment like
building a factory or something,
1:14:56.449,1:14:58.570
but through a reorganization
1:14:58.570,1:15:03.690
capitalists could benefit from cooperation and division of labour.
1:15:03.690,1:15:09.199
but the machine is a commodity that you buy
in the market, it has a value.
1:15:09.199,1:15:13.959
You don't only have to pay attention to how that
value gets transferred into the product,
1:15:13.959,1:15:17.210
but you also have to configure
1:15:17.210,1:15:22.029
how much of that value which is embodied in
the machine is going to be compensated by
1:15:22.029,1:15:27.520
the labour saving the comes from the employment
of the machine.
1:15:27.520,1:15:30.849
This is, as he says, a key limitation.
1:15:30.849,1:15:37.849
And it's going to play a very important role in
understanding the dynamics of accumulation.
1:15:38.360,1:15:49.939
It poses the question: At what point do capitalists stop
playing this game of perpetual technological innovation?
1:15:49.939,1:15:54.579
Of course, capitalists are not always rational,
there also fetishists.
1:15:54.579,1:15:59.219
So we also see many examples in our society where
capitalists go well beyond the point,
1:15:59.219,1:16:04.209
where rational capitalists would stop replenishing.
1:16:04.209,1:16:07.749
We'll come too some of that later.
1:16:07.749,1:16:09.369
Third Section. (THE MOST IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF MACHINE
PRODUCTION ON THE WORKER )
1:16:09.369,1:16:11.130
Here,
1:16:11.130,1:16:15.919
I would also want to suggest something about
this very long chapter,
1:16:15.919,1:16:19.309
pay careful attention to the section headings.
1:16:19.309,1:16:25.290
They really lead you through the chapter, step-by-step,
1:16:25.290,1:16:30.640
He's talked about the industrial revolution, how it came about,
what the dynamic was.
1:16:30.640,1:16:33.860
He's talked about the transfer of value.
1:16:33.860,1:16:40.530
Now he wants to talk about the implications
for the worker, i.e.
1:16:40.530,1:16:45.339
the social relations side of things.
1:16:45.339,1:16:49.940
And the first thing you see is that
1:16:49.940,1:16:55.530
machines by the very form
in which they're constructed,
1:16:55.530,1:17:03.619
which are easily utilizable by
anybody. Permit the employment
1:17:03.619,1:17:11.099
of women and children in ways
that may not have been so easy before.
1:17:11.099,1:17:12.610
And what this does
1:17:12.610,1:17:16.999
is to allow the capitalist to start to think that
1:17:16.999,1:17:22.260
'I no longer have to think when employing people, about the individual wage,
1:17:22.260,1:17:26.019
all I have to think about is the family wage,
1:17:26.019,1:17:32.980
so I can employ the whole family.'
1:17:32.980,1:17:38.050
This immediately leads into
those systems, a gang system,
1:17:38.050,1:17:43.370
where one person would mobilize
their family, not only their own kids but
1:17:43.370,1:17:45.709
nephews and that kind of thing, into a gang,
1:17:45.709,1:17:50.219
and become actually an organizer of labour.
So there was an almost collective organization
1:17:50.219,1:17:52.820
of labour, a gang system.
1:17:52.820,1:17:58.499
But also what this means is that the capitalist
can start to substitute (…)
1:17:58.499,1:18:06.809
the idea 'All I've got to do is pay a family wage
I can reduce the individual wage.
1:18:06.809,1:18:13.809
There's some fascinating historical
examples where exactly that has happened.
1:18:13.849,1:18:20.849
There was an "economic miracle" in Brazil in the 1960s
under a military dictatorship.
1:18:21.820,1:18:31.979
And the "economic miracle" in Brazil
mainly consisted in a radical reduction of wages
1:18:31.979,1:18:36.429
but it turned out that family wages actually remained stable,
1:18:36.429,1:18:42.010
because all the women and kids went into the labour force.
1:18:42.010,1:18:52.469
and actually if you look at the data in this country since the 1970s,
individual wage has tended to stagnate or go down,
1:18:52.469,1:18:54.400
in real terms.
1:18:54.400,1:18:59.239
The family wage however has gone up a little bit, and down a little bit,
1:18:59.239,1:19:03.189
The family wage is a very different entity.
1:19:03.189,1:19:07.570
And the two graphs of individual wages since
the 1970s and the family wages is again,
1:19:07.570,1:19:09.739
in this country what we've seen
1:19:09.739,1:19:17.159
is a substitution as it were, of the family wage
against the idea of an individual wage.
1:19:17.159,1:19:26.079
Which of course transforms social relations in radical ways.
1:19:26.079,1:19:29.889
And it also starts to transform
1:19:29.889,1:19:33.239
what happens in the domestic sphere. Now this
is not something that Marx pays that much
1:19:33.239,1:19:42.259
attention to, but as you see in the footnote at the bottom of page 518:
1:19:44.679,1:19:48.880
"Since certain family functions, such as nursing and suckling children,
1:19:48.880,1:19:55.420
cannot be entirely suppressed, the mothers who have been
confiscated by capital must try substitutes of some sort.
1:19:55.420,1:19:56.369
Domestic work,
1:19:56.369,1:20:00.610
such as sewing and mending, must be replaced by
the purchase of ready-made articles.
1:20:00.610,1:20:06.660
Hence the diminished expenditure of labour in the house
is accompanied by an increased expenditure of money outside.
1:20:06.660,1:20:13.999
The cost of production of the working-class family therefore increases,
and balances its greater income.
1:20:13.999,1:20:19.979
In addition to this, economy and judgment in the consumption and
preparation of the means of subsistence become impossible."
1:20:19.979,1:20:22.429
Then he refers to the ways in which
1:20:22.429,1:20:29.239
these materials can be studied in the reports of
the inspectors of the factories.
1:20:31.239,1:20:36.199
The transformation of gender relations which is involved here
1:20:36.199,1:20:41.249
and also the generational relations between parents and children,
1:20:41.249,1:20:42.840
because of this gang system,
1:20:42.840,1:20:47.800
there's also transformations occur in the domestic
systems. This is one of those moments where he does indeed
1:20:47.800,1:20:50.989
mention the reproduction of daily life but
it's just a casual mention,
1:20:50.989,1:20:53.279
a little bit too one side.
1:20:53.279,1:21:00.730
It suggests that he is aware of the issue but he's not
going to make it central to his argument.
1:21:00.730,1:21:10.999
He probably should have made it more central than he did
but at least he knows this is an issue.
1:21:10.999,1:21:15.079
This immediately brings him to say:
what are the implications of the importation
1:21:15.079,1:21:19.630
of children into the process of production?
1:21:19.630,1:21:22.570
Then we get into the factory acts again,
1:21:22.570,1:21:25.840
the factory inspectors and the kinds of
things they're reporting
1:21:25.840,1:21:31.770
about what is happening to the kids
in the production process. And he spends a
1:21:31.770,1:21:35.619
little bit of time on that. And of course,
1:21:35.619,1:21:41.349
one things they get into is they want to
have schools and things like that,
1:21:41.349,1:21:47.429
so Marx debunks this idea this is anything like a real education.
1:21:47.429,1:21:54.860
So the main point here is that machinery
when it comes in, allows a different deployment
1:21:54.860,1:21:58.039
of family labour.
1:21:58.039,1:22:06.420
There are moments in here where he starts to sound like
'well okay, women can't do the heavy lifting',
1:22:06.420,1:22:11.449
the fact that you got machines, allows them
to use machine minders, they're easier to use.
1:22:11.449,1:22:14.209
Issues of that kind in this section but,
1:22:14.209,1:22:18.999
the general point he's making, I think is
significant, which is that
1:22:18.999,1:22:24.779
when you get these radical transformations
in technology and machinery in particular,
1:22:24.779,1:22:29.389
you cannot imagine that occurring without a
radical transformation
1:22:29.389,1:22:35.920
of social relations of some kind and the two are
implicated in each other.
1:22:35.920,1:22:41.899
The second is a prolongation of working day.
1:22:41.899,1:22:48.899
Starts on page 526.
1:22:49.510,1:22:59.669
He talks about the way in which
the conditions of labour lead to
1:22:59.669,1:23:03.399
a lot of incentives to increase the length
of working day, they give you
1:23:03.399,1:23:10.399
the power to do it, and the incentives to do it.
1:23:11.619,1:23:15.639
And these conditions,
1:23:15.639,1:23:19.689
are partly this: The machine through its
1:23:19.689,1:23:28.639
objective qualities of the continuity of the
production process, which it allows,
1:23:28.639,1:23:33.789
puts tremendous emphasis on the continuity
of the presence of the labourer.
1:23:33.789,1:23:35.859
The labourer has to be there
1:23:35.859,1:23:38.440
to service the machine all of the time.
1:23:38.440,1:23:48.279
The labourer is not in control of machine, the machine
is more in control of the labourer.
1:23:50.299,1:23:53.079
He says on the bottom of page 426:
1:23:53.079,1:24:00.750
"Because it is capital, the automatic mechanism is endowed,
in the person of the capitalist, with consciousness and a will."
1:24:00.750,1:24:08.360
interesting argument here, he's saying
the mental conceptions actually shift.
1:24:08.360,1:24:14.069
"As capital, therefore, it is animated by the drive to reduce
to a minimum the resistance offered by man,
1:24:14.069,1:24:14.970
that obstinate yet elastic natural barrier.
1:24:17.799,1:24:22.929
This resistance is moreover lessened by the apparently
undemanding nature of work at a machine,
1:24:22.929,1:24:29.939
and the more pliant and docile character
of the women and children employed by preference."
1:24:29.939,1:24:38.559
The historical record shows that women are nowhere near
as docile as Marx is imagining.
1:24:38.559,1:24:46.139
Then he goes on: "The active lifetime of a machine, however, is
clearly dependent on the length of the working day,…"
1:24:46.139,1:24:48.230
Which then leads him
1:24:48.230,1:24:55.230
on page 528, to talk about the case
of moral depreciation, which we've already briefly mentioned.
1:24:56.040,1:24:59.649
'I want to get my money back out of my machine
1:24:59.649,1:25:02.909
it's gonna last ten years physically,
1:25:02.909,1:25:05.659
but if the competition comes in
1:25:05.659,1:25:09.219
and replaces it with a far superior machine,
I have to get rid of it
1:25:09.219,1:25:14.090
in three years and get a new machine, so there's every
incentive for me to try to get my money back
1:25:14.090,1:25:18.129
out of that machine as fast as I can.
1:25:18.129,1:25:24.159
Which means that I want to employ 24 hours a day.'
1:25:24.159,1:25:28.960
So there's a great incentive out of moral depreciation
1:25:28.960,1:25:32.800
to keep machinery working 24 hours a day
which means of course you got to have
1:25:32.800,1:25:39.800
labourers there 24 hours a day.
1:25:41.699,1:25:48.699
He here introduces a very important concept which
is the idea of devaluation.
1:25:49.900,1:25:52.649
He says on page 528:
1:25:52.649,1:25:57.059
"however young and full of life the machine may be,
1:25:57.059,1:26:01.800
its value is no longer determined by the necessary labour-time
actually objectified in it,
1:26:01.800,1:26:06.840
but by the labour-time necessary to reproduce either it or the
better machine.
1:26:06.840,1:26:10.459
It has therefore been devalued…"
1:26:10.459,1:26:17.459
Capitalist don't like to have their machinery devalued,
1:26:23.940,1:26:32.079
of course, capitalists can't do without machinery,
as he says on page 530, at the top:
1:26:32.079,1:26:39.079
"Machinery produces relative surplus-value…"
1:26:42.989,1:26:49.500
and he begins talks about a certain contradiction,
1:26:49.500,1:26:55.079
because by removing labour from the labour process
1:26:55.079,1:27:06.009
you're taking away the source of value production.
1:27:06.009,1:27:10.680
So why would you use a machine which costs you
1:27:10.680,1:27:15.609
something in value in order to remove
1:27:15.609,1:27:25.260
a chunk of the labour force from production
when it is the labour force that's producing your surplus-value?
1:27:25.260,1:27:27.070
Conundrum.
1:27:27.070,1:27:30.729
It's going to be very important for the
analysis in Capital because
1:27:30.729,1:27:32.840
it's a contradiction.
1:27:32.840,1:27:38.839
He says in the middle of page 531:
1:27:38.839,1:27:43.850
"Hence there is an immanent contradiction in the application of
machinery to the production
1:27:43.850,1:27:46.929
of surplus-value, since,
1:27:46.929,1:27:51.649
of the two factors of the surplus-value
created by a given amount of capital, one,
1:27:51.649,1:27:59.409
the rate of surplus-value, cannot be increased except by
diminishing the other, the number of workers."
1:27:59.409,1:28:05.330
"This contradiction comes to light as soon as machinery
has come into general use in a given industry,
1:28:05.330,1:28:09.719
for then the value of the machine-produced commodity
1:28:09.719,1:28:13.939
regulates the social value of all commodities of the same kind;
1:28:13.939,1:28:17.300
which in turn drives the capitalist,
without his being aware of the fact,
1:28:17.300,1:28:24.130
to the most ruthless and excessive prolongation of the working day,…"
1:28:24.130,1:28:28.769
Now, what's going on here is this: You're taking
1:28:28.769,1:28:35.599
the labourers out of production and as you remember,
the capitalist is interested in the mass of surplus-value.
1:28:35.599,1:28:39.749
Which is the rate of surplus-value times
the number of labourers employed.
1:28:39.749,1:28:41.610
Reduce the number of labourers employed,
1:28:41.610,1:28:44.989
you've got to have a huge increase in the rate of surplus-value
1:28:44.989,1:28:47.619
to maintain your surplus-value.
1:28:47.619,1:28:51.159
Does the machine give that to you?
1:28:51.159,1:28:57.559
If it doesn't, aren't you walking straight into serious contradiction?
1:28:57.559,1:29:02.760
In fact, one of Marx' great theses, which he's
going to explore in Volume Three of Capital,
1:29:02.760,1:29:10.669
is that technology has a destabilizing effect
upon this upon a capitalist system.
1:29:10.669,1:29:14.349
In fact it undermines the production of surplus-value.
1:29:14.349,1:29:20.999
But capitalists can't stop
their search for new machines because, remember,
1:29:20.999,1:29:26.030
what they're looking for is that ephemeral
form of surplus-value that comes from that brief
1:29:26.030,1:29:29.780
time when they have a technological advantage over everybody else,
1:29:29.780,1:29:32.440
then they get relative surplus-value,
1:29:32.440,1:29:36.909
but when you aggregate this up and look at the dynamic of the whole system,
1:29:36.909,1:29:46.570
Individual capitalist behaving in their own self-interest
i.e. searching for that marginal bit of
1:29:46.570,1:29:53.789
ephemeral relatives surplus-value, create
a disequilibrium in the whole system,
1:29:53.789,1:29:59.969
which can create a crisis in the whole capitalist mode of production.
1:29:59.969,1:30:07.869
And this occurs without capitalists being aware of the fact.
1:30:07.869,1:30:14.179
Which leads him on page 532 to spell
this out in a different way.
1:30:14.179,1:30:16.219
Well, the bottom of page 531:
1:30:16.219,1:30:19.670
"… machinery produces a surplus working population,…"
1:30:19.670,1:30:23.070
this is something that's going to come back again and again.
1:30:23.070,1:30:26.169
The role of the surplus working population.
1:30:26.169,1:30:32.749
He says: "…which is compelled to submit to the dictates of capital."
You throw people out of work by technological innovation,
1:30:32.749,1:30:36.499
they're sitting out there, unemployed,
1:30:36.499,1:30:42.510
they're extremely vulnerable to being re-employed
at a much lower wage rate.
1:30:42.510,1:30:46.269
So this is advantageous,
1:30:46.269,1:30:52.050
"Hence too the economic paradox that the most powerful instrument
for reducing labour-time
1:30:52.050,1:30:56.070
suffers a dialectical inversion
1:30:56.070,1:30:59.769
and becomes the most unfailing means
for turning the whole lifetime of the worker and
1:30:59.769,1:31:05.739
his family into labour-time at capital's disposal
for its own valorization."
1:31:05.739,1:31:10.140
What he started out with, John Stuart Mill's argument,
is there explained.
1:31:10.140,1:31:14.959
The question of intensification…
1:31:14.959,1:31:19.289
you remember the definition of value,
1:31:19.289,1:31:27.210
which is socially necessary labour time which
is at a given intensity
1:31:27.210,1:31:31.679
and productivity. So he has already introduced the
idea of intensity but he hasn't worked with it very
1:31:31.679,1:31:33.679
much right now.
1:31:33.679,1:31:40.679
But what he's pointing out here is that machinery
allows you to regulate intensity,
1:31:40.939,1:31:50.339
because it is the speed of the machine
which sets the pace and defines the intensity.
1:31:50.339,1:31:54.610
You can start to speed up the machine.
1:31:54.610,1:31:58.889
He points out on page 536, that
1:31:58.889,1:32:06.550
there is something he called the porosity of the working day.
You can reduce the porosity of the working day.
1:32:06.550,1:32:09.690
When you're dealing with manufacturing,
people put down their tools and have
1:32:09.690,1:32:17.780
a chat, well you can't do that on the assembly line,
the assembly lines are coming through and you're stuck.
1:32:17.780,1:32:24.819
And then you can speed it up.
Charlie Chaplin's 'modern times ' kinda way.
1:32:24.819,1:32:31.099
So what we're dealing with here
is the possibility of intensification
1:32:31.099,1:32:34.629
but what capitalists also found
1:32:34.629,1:32:39.090
which is something else that comes up here,
is a tension with the preceding section,
1:32:39.090,1:32:41.510
what the capitalists also found,
1:32:41.510,1:32:49.929
was that a reduced length for the working day
allowed them to increase intensity considerably.
1:32:49.929,1:32:54.099
That if people were working for 12 hours, they
couldn't concentrate 12 hours.
1:32:54.099,1:32:59.449
Whereas if you reduced it to 8 hours,
you could really keep people at it,
1:32:59.449,1:33:02.419
solidly for 8 hours.
1:33:02.419,1:33:11.769
So the whole idea of intensity becomes
crucial in how the capitalists are managing
1:33:11.769,1:33:19.610
the workforce; but also speed-up
becomes entirely possible.
1:33:19.610,1:33:31.419
So this becomes a thesis that he
puts together as a general argument,
1:33:31.419,1:33:36.249
for looking at the impact of what is going on inside the labour process.
1:33:36.249,1:33:40.179
In other words, the technology and the labour
process are linked together
1:33:40.179,1:33:46.480
in such a way as to increase intensity
and also to change the nature of social relations.
1:33:46.480,1:33:51.230
So one of the things that you have to do, is to recognize
that this chapter on machinery is written
1:33:51.230,1:33:53.570
in that context.
1:33:53.570,1:34:01.010
What Marx does is to universalize
what is going on in Manchester at that
1:34:01.010,1:34:02.299
particular period,
1:34:02.299,1:34:11.090
into a general theory about what machinery and
large-scale industry are about.
1:34:11.090,1:34:20.039
Now there's a very serious argument to be made
that if Engels had been located in Birmingham,
1:34:20.039,1:34:23.460
the whole structure of industry in Birmingham
was radically different,
1:34:23.460,1:34:34.269
you didn't have large-scale factories, you
had what we'll call conglomerated small workshops.
1:34:34.269,1:34:38.630
Producing guns and jewelry.
1:34:38.630,1:34:43.849
The guns and jewelry quarter of
Birmingham was a very famous production quarter
1:34:43.849,1:34:53.310
which is very analogous to
some of the
1:34:53.310,1:34:58.769
industrial structures which have arisen in Silicon
Valley and all the rest of it.
1:34:58.769,1:35:02.229
In other words, it was a much more decentered
1:35:02.229,1:35:09.519
system, a lot more sub-contracting, a lot more integrated.
It was a very dynamic industrial form
1:35:09.519,1:35:14.069
which Marx seems to know very little about,
1:35:14.069,1:35:22.849
so he doesn't actually uses the Birmingham experience
to talk about what industrialists do.
1:35:22.849,1:35:27.989
He tends to think that all industrialists
will go the way of Manchester.
1:35:27.989,1:35:34.989
When in fact, a good segment of the industry
even at that time is going the way of Birmingham.
1:35:35.419,1:35:41.030
And if you look analogously today,
you'd say, well if I went to
1:35:41.030,1:35:44.469
South Korea, particularly for 4-5 years ago,
1:35:44.469,1:35:48.729
and I'd look at all the employment and the
Chaebols and all those kinds of things,
1:35:48.729,1:35:52.489
I would come up with the Manchester view of the world.
1:35:52.489,1:35:54.969
If I went to Hong Kong,
1:35:54.969,1:35:58.820
and saw all of the organizations of
sweatshops and all that kind of stuff, in Hong Kong
1:35:58.820,1:36:01.779
I'd end up with a Birmingham view of the world.
1:36:01.779,1:36:05.449
And actually the Manchester vs the Birmingham view of the world
has been
1:36:05.449,1:36:10.219
very important in understanding the dynamics of industry.
1:36:10.219,1:36:16.939
There is I think a serious bias in this chapter
towards the Manchester view of the world,
1:36:20.030,1:36:28.059
I lay that out because that's one of the arguments I want to emphasize
next week, we're going to be talking about the Manchester system.
1:36:28.059,1:36:31.380
And what Marx is doing there is to say that it will become universal,
1:36:31.380,1:36:34.940
and to some degree it has become universal
because the Manchester system
1:36:34.940,1:36:39.989
of the sort he's talking about is indeed
the sort of system you would've found in Pittsburgh
1:36:39.989,1:36:45.879
in Detroit, in South Korea.
1:36:45.879,1:36:50.710
But is not the kind of system you find in
Bavaria or the Third Italy,
1:36:50.710,1:36:56.719
or you'd find in sweatshop complexes of Los Angeles,
1:36:56.719,1:37:04.320
or in Hong Kong where there's small workshop organization.
1:37:04.320,1:37:06.980
So we have to figure that in here.
1:37:06.980,1:37:09.259
It's very important to
1:37:09.259,1:37:15.819
put down a historical marker, and say 'look,
this is what Marx is working from,
1:37:15.819,1:37:20.069
he did a very good job of working on it from
that perspective, but it's not the only perspective
1:37:20.069,1:37:20.909
there is.
1:37:20.909,1:37:25.369
So we've got to bear that in mind
going through the rest of this chapter.
1:37:25.369,1:37:28.789
So I want to go to the end of this chapter,
but I also want, next week, to do the chapter
1:37:28.789,1:37:32.479
on absolute and relative surplus-value.
1:37:32.479,1:37:36.860
Chapter sixteen which is relatively short.
1:37:36.860,1:37:40.459
This chapter on machinery is a long chapter,
1:37:40.459,1:37:43.480
like I say you have to go through it, say 'okay, what's he dealing with?
1:37:43.480,1:37:49.869
Okay, here's the revolution, here's the transfer,
here's the effect on workers,
1:37:49.869,1:37:54.839
here's the factory system, here's what struggles are about etc.'
1:37:54.839,1:37:58.780
So you go through a whole set of ideas you'll see him moving around
some of these elements as he does so.
1:37:58.780,1:38:01.710
But we'll get back to that question he raised, next week. Okay?