How Machines Drive Relative Surplus Value in Capitalist Production

Name: Class 11: Capital Chapter 12 & 13: Changes in the Division of Labor, Machinery
Uploaded: 2026-03-26T08:44:53.395265+00:00
Duration: 45 min 51 s
Channel: YaleCourses
Description: Summary and key takeaways on How Machines Drive Relative Surplus Value in Capitalist Production, covering Relative Surplus Value and the Machine Economy

YaleCourses

Mar 26, 2026

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45 min video

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Capitalism seeks to increase relative surplus value by raising productivity rather than merely extending the workday. The drive to narrow the gap between the value of labor (B) and its product (B′) relies on machines that diminish the subjective agency of both workers and capitalists. In a machine economy, everyone serves the machine.

Mechanisms for Increasing Relative Surplus Value

Two technical levers are highlighted: expanding the number of workers (horizontal expansion of the workday) and enhancing the capitalist’s command and control through supervision. As the workforce grows, capital must become larger and concentrate in fewer hands, reducing the number of capitalists. Cooperation among workers lowers the cost of means of production and labor power, while shared and simultaneous use of means of production raises efficiency.

Division of Labor: Societal versus Capitalist

Traditional societies organize labor according to wants and needs, allowing flexible, holistic production where one worker can create an entire product. Capitalist division of labor fragments production: individual workers perform only parts of a product, leading to specialization and a split between manual and intellectual labor. This shift creates a situation where “no one has to know anything about anything or anyone.”

Historical Stages of Production

Artisanal Production – Workers move while the product stays still, possessing multifarious knowledge, freedom of time, and the ability to invent tools. Education is broad, and the apprentice‑master relationship sustains tradition.

Manufacturing System – The product moves and the worker stays still. Labor becomes highly specialized, tasks are isolated, and socially‑necessary average labor time becomes a key metric for value calculation.

Machine/Industrial Production – Machines act as extensions of the production process, embodying “purposiveness without restraint.” The process triumphs over skilled labor, and machines pass on existing capitalized value without creating new value.

Subsumption and the Transformation of Labor

Subsumption is presented as the antidote to capitalist control from labor’s perspective. As work processes grow more complex, supervision increases because knowledge is no longer held by workers. Workers become steps in a process, losing the Aristotelian sense of an image of the work before starting. Knowledge shifts to managers, separating manual and intellectual labor. Greater supervision can reduce efficiency, yet when motivation internalizes the process, supervision diminishes and productivity rises.

The Role of Machines and Technology

Machines are not primarily labor‑saving devices; they are concrete, materialized processes that extend the production process. They cannot generate new value, only transmit existing value, creating a “value trap” for capital. The metaphysical name of a machine is a process, described as “purpose without interest.” Fetishizing technology is cautioned against, as the machine’s purposiveness operates without restraint.

Capitalists and the System

Capitalists function as components of the system, trapped by its logic while benefiting from reinvested returns. Competition forces reinvestment and prepares for industrial shifts. Anger directed at capitalists as greedy individuals misinterprets their systemic role; capitalism does not inherently require greed, and capital can be more widely distributed.

Consumption and Circulation

The focus remains on production; consumption is ancillary. From the capitalist perspective, value is produced only in production, not in circulation or at the point of sale.

Guilds and Capitalization

Guilds, once central to traditional production, were suppressed by capitalization. Their dissolution helped move people off agricultural land and contributed to capital development, while capital’s drive dismantles traditional structures and worker pride.

Takeaways

Capitalism increases relative surplus value by boosting productivity through machines rather than extending the workday.
Machines diminish the subjective agency of both workers and capitalists, creating a system where everyone serves the machine.
The shift from artisanal to industrial production replaces holistic skill with specialized, process‑driven labor.
Subsumption integrates workers into the capital system, separating knowledge from manual work and reducing supervision.
Machines transmit existing value without creating new value, leading to a "value trap" for capital.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does capitalism focus on relative surplus value instead of extending the workday?

Capitalism seeks relative surplus value because increasing productivity narrows the gap between labor's value and its product, allowing more profit without lengthening work hours. This approach relies on expanding the workforce and enhancing capitalist command, which also concentrates capital in fewer hands.

What does "machines are purposiveness without restraint" mean?

The phrase describes a machine as a concrete, materialized process that pursues its objective without self‑interest or limitation. Machines extend the production process, transmit existing value, and operate solely to fulfill capital’s aims, embodying purpose without restraint.

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Full Transcript YouTube

(energetic music)
- What is Marx dealing
with in this section?
The ways in which capital develops
so that it gets more
relative surplus value,
because absolute surplus
value has an absolute limit,
which I won't repeat again.
The way capitalism develops is to develop
the ways of producing
relative surplus value.
That is not by extending the day,
but by increasing productivity
or diminishing the space
between B and B prime.
And one of the ways it does this,
so you can speak in a
personifying way about capital
because it is the subject.
The actors, in the capital system,
are going to progressively
lose their subjective status.
And when machines come in,
it's gonna become radically
unclear, actually,
whether even the capitalist is a subject
or has some subjective agency left,
because they have no choice
but to adopt the machine,
and they have no choice but
to supervise the workers
so that they conform to the machine.
There's a lot of compulsion and servitude.
In a machine economy,
everyone serves the machine.
Okay.
The machine is a direct
outgrowth of cooperative labor.
This, I remember I said.
This is because one of the main ways
to increase the production
of relative surplus value is
to increase the number of laborers.
That doesn't extend the day.
Although, de facto, it extends the day,
it enlarges the day,
it expands the day horizontally, right?
Because you have more people
working at the same time.
So what will happen
when industrial capitalism
hits its stride is
it starts absorbing ever larger
segments of the population
and becoming highly indiscriminate
about which segments of the population,
and which populations, it absorbs.
It just needs more workers.
It needs more workers and it
needs them to be more fungible
so it can throw them out of
work at any particular time
and change the content of
their work at any time.
So what we're dealing with
in the production of
relative surplus value,
these are the technical
levers to increase it, are:
the number of workers
and the command and
control of the capitalist.
Remember, we were saying
that the capitalist becomes
a commander and controller, a supervisor.
And so, as the population that's absorbed,
that's not absorbed, but
moved into the capital system
and produced for the
capital system, increases,
the capital class also decreases in size,
because with the advent
of machines and bigger,
sorry, before we even get to machines,
with the advent of bigger
worker populations,
they have to have larger
amounts of capital.
Capital has to be a larger size.
It has to be concentrated
in fewer capitalists.
Let's say fewer capitalists
have capital of the size
that they can employ enough workers
to increase their relative surplus value.
This is a little bit
about the way classes form
in a very different way
under the capital system
than they did in any
other historical period.
Classes are a projection
of the technology of labor.
Here, the technology, or
the technique, of labor,
the technical side of
labor, is just cooperation.
We haven't gotten to technology
as we understand it: metal people.
I mentioned probably the ways
in which a simple enlargement
of the workforce reduces
the cost of the means of production.
That's another way to say
increases relative surplus value,
decreases the cost of
the means of production,
or decreases the cost of labor power.
Did I say these things?
It improves mechanical capabilities?
I think I did.
Because many people can do
things that few people can't do,
and it has a whole host of effects
including using means of
production in a more efficient way
because more people are
using it at the same time.
So if you get a whole load
of means of production,
of coal or whatever,
it can be used more
efficiently through sharing it
or a tool that can be used
on two different sides
or a work product that can be worked on
on different sides at once.
Okay, I wanna add one term
that also won't be on the exam,
but you should keep in mind
'cause it becomes important later,
and that is subsumption.
I mentioned it.
Subsumption is the antidote
to capitalist control
whereas the name for capitalist control
when viewed from the perspective of labor.
We say the more people,
the more complex the work process becomes,
the more you need supervision
to make sure that the work
process is carried out properly
because the knowledge of
that process is not held
by the workers.
So we're going through a transformation
really from work to process.
The metaphysical name
of machine is a process.
A machine is a concretized,
materialized process.
But you can have a
process without a machine.
In any case, workers who
are part of a process are
no longer workers in
the Aristotelian sense
that they have an image of the work
and everything that needs to be done
before they start the work,
and they make decisions all the way
about how to carry it out.
They become steps in the process.
So because workers are steps in a process,
the knowledge function
becomes independent,
goes into the hands of what
we like to call a manager.
They know what you're supposed to do when.
They know why you're doing it.
They know who you have to pass it on to.
If you don't pass it on to them,
they will come in and say, "You're fired",
or, "Pass it on."
Does that make sense?
So you have here also the
seeds for the separation
of manual and intellectual labor
in the separation of the
knowledge part of labor
from the grunt part, let's say.
The more that supervision
has to intervene in labor,
the less efficient it is,
the less productive it is.
It's much better for (indistinct)
to take that supervision into themselves
and know exactly how much time they have
to do a certain thing,
what exactly are the steps,
when they're overstepping
their own labor parameters.
(Paul coughing)
That would be called the
subsumption of labor into capital.
Marx says, on page 305
if you want to look,
this is the point
in which laborers are
incorporated into capital.
They become parts of a laboring organism.
Having them as parts
of a laboring organism
with nothing sticking out,
with nothing left of their
own native intelligence
or their own planning capacities,
is much better for capital processes.
The more they're incorporated
into those processes,
the less supervision they need,
the more productive they are,
when the motivation to
increase surplus value comes
from within them.
Okay, I'm just pointing that out
as something that comes up
in the cooperation chapter
and is mentioned again later.
These are all the levers
that capitalists can use,
consciously or unconsciously,
to increase the production
of relative surplus value.
And, of course,
what's required for
work becoming a process
is a transformation in
the division of labor.
This is Chapter 12 for those
of you who are looking.
Did we start talking
about Chapter 12 or no?
We did just a little bit.
Someone says no.
If there's confusion, I'll
go over it a little bit.
The division of labor is a
standard feature of societies,
of all societies according to Marx,
and anything human is social.
So for as long as there have been humans,
that we recognize as humans,
there have been societies
and there has been a division of labor.
But only a societal division of labor.
That's, in essence, what
it means to be a society.
That the activity of producing
the subsistence for everyone
is shared and shared out
in a particular division.
(Paul coughing)
For precapitalist and paracapitalist
and maybe postcapitalist societies,
the social division of labor derives
from the wants and needs
of that particular society.
What is wanted and needed,
those different products,
determines the different
kind of labor that's done.
And in the traditional society
that Marx is comparing capital to,
one kind of product is
made by one kind of worker.
An individual worker has
all the skills and knowledge
and the imprimatur
of their teacher,
and the permission from society,
and the connections in getting
the means of production
that they need to do that one thing.
So you have tailors and you
have what are other jobs?
In a traditional society, we forget.
Teachers, what else?
Weavers, oh yeah, weavers
is an important one.
You have all of those things, farmers.
(Paul coughing)
Okay.
The mode of producing subsistence
through a societal division
of labor is very flexible.
Every time you need something new,
you can find someone to learn
that, invent it and make it.
And they become part of
the division of labor.
It can grow.
It's very different than
other kinds of species
who do may have divisions of labor,
but where they don't grow and change.
And this allows human beings,
just to be anthropological for a minute,
to move into all sorts of niches
that other sorts of creatures
couldn't survive in.
Because you can imagine
someone who's gonna chip
the coal out of the rock,
or who's going to make the land arable.
These are just fulfillments
of wants and needs.
Wants and needs arrive,
and someone can arrive to fulfill them.
So the history of a societal
being, like the human being,
is the history of the
changing manners of labor
and divisions of labor.
You farm, you carpenter,
you deal with the gods,
you teach the children,
you keep the foreign enemies away, etc.
Capitalist division of
labor is totally different.
First of all, we learned
already in cooperation
that no single individual has charge
of making a whole product.
A single individual makes
a part of a product now.
And this leads to a set of reverberations
in which one part of the population labors
and another part does not.
That doesn't mean that
capitalists don't exert effort.
They do, they'll tell you
they never stop working.
But it doesn't count as
productive labor in Marxist sense.
Marx will tell you, in Chapter 12,
give you a beautiful
genealogy, somewhat abstract,
somewhat forcing things
into their categories,
of how simple artisanal production moves
to factory production,
becomes what he calls
fully-developed form.
But this is looking backwards,
fully developed from the
perspective of what capital needs.
It's not more highly-developed
than any other form of work.
You can certainly argue that a
tailor who knows how to take,
you know, from the fabric to the fitting
to be much more highly-developed
than someone who can only put
the thread on a bobbin, right?
So we're not talking in moral
terms when we say development.
We're talking retrospectively
on the path leading to capital.
So we start with artisanal production.
And this is 12, right?
It's a really important chapter.
Did I ever say any of
them was not important?
No.
The precursor to large-scale
industry and machine factories
is the manufacturing system,
which was, already in the 18th century,
a transformation of artisanal production.
What we talked about in
the individual worker
in the artisanal period which, let's say,
runs from antiquity to the Middle Ages,
is that you have a worker
personality that is multifarious,
that knows the history of their craft,
that knows the design part,
that knows the timing of it,
that can tell the seasons,
that can know where to find their supplies
when they need to,
that can make all sorts
of human interconnections
between different aspects
of society because,
"I need more coal",
and I need more this,
and I need to know different people
that can reeducate themselves,
that can know the human
destination very well.
What is it that an artisanal worker knows
more than anything else?
What their customer needs.
So they know society from
a particular perspective.
Every artisanal worker is a
sociologist of that society.
You can see where we're going.
All of this is eradicated under capital.
No one has to know anything
about anything or anyone.
What a horror.
Although, we get this book
where we can finally start to know again.
Though, it's slightly depressing at times.
In the artisanal workshop,
the worker moves and
the product stays still.
We're tracking all of these
little moments of freedom
that are taken away under capital.
The worker can move around.
The worker's also free
in terms of their time.
They don't have to be tied
to a certain productivity schedule,
at least not in the crazy way
you would under capital.
The worker knows how to
use many different tools,
can invent tools, can bring new tools in.
The worker is a kind
of genius of the tool.
Time, under artisanal labor,
I'm just summing up what Marx says,
it's pretty interesting.
In a sense, as a student,
you're an artisan.
You're an artisan of your soul.
But I think maybe as a student at Yale,
you're more like a capitalist laborer.
Any case, we can talk about that.
For an artisanal worker,
time is sequential and interrupted.
You do something until you
have to stop and get something,
and then you stop doing
it to go get that thing.
The process is extended and interruptible.
Space is a set of relays.
It's quite local, but places
get connected by the worker.
"I need this from here.
I need to deliver this to there."
Education is also multifarious
and is what we would call in German
(speaking German), forming.
It's about forming the worker
so that they can do the work
in the best way possible.
The product of education
is the educated worker.
Soon, it will not be necessary.
There is a special
relationship in artisanal labor
between the apprentice
and the so-called master
who passes on a tradition.
So history has a particular shape.
It is traditional history
in the sense that a
tradition is carried on.
And that's one of the
jobs that a worker does,
and one of the social functions.
That's a social function
that every artisanal worker carries out:
to continue the tradition.
But this is true of all social labor,
including capitalist labor,
that each actor in the society,
each social being,
has the responsibility to
reproduce that society.
All right, so this is what Marx calls
a social division of labor.
I fought tooth and nail
to have it called societal
'cause the German word
is (speaking German).
Did I say this already?
I'm not gonna throw my
collaborator writer under the bus
'cause he did a great job.
And social division of
labor is the standard way
of talking about it.
But it's a little confusing
because it sounds a bit like
you're going to a party.
The social division of labor.
That would be a good
band name, for example.
But what we're really talking about is
societal division of labor,
meaning that the unit of
concern here is society,
not that it's social
in the sense that people are
getting along with one another.
(Paul coughing)
Here's an interesting
fact about artisanal work.
Needs are societal.
Labor is not.
Needs are social, labor is not.
"I do my work,
but I do it for all of you
because all of you need
the pens that I'm making
or the education that I'm
trying to force on you."
- Yeah, Samuel.
- (indistinct) a little bit
of the oversimplification
saying there were definitely,
I mean, he was just talking
about corvee labor, right?
Sometimes things, in the
Middle Ages and antiquity,
needed to be done that could not be done
by a single person alone,
and in that case, either
you did it to corvee labor
or you brought it together in a stream
like to work together with your neighbor
because maybe, on Monday, we're
gonna harvest John's field
and, on Tuesday, we're gonna
all go harvest Jane's field,
and I feel like this individual,
this is a little bit like labor history,
like it's idealized form-
- Yeah, but the way to think about it.
No, I mean, that's totally right.
The question was, "Isn't
this an idealized version
of labor history or the
history of societies?"
I wouldn't call it idealized.
Marx is very conscious of this problem,
and he will show you where,
at different times in history,
different like say cooperative labor
is obviously going on in Egypt
'cause how can they build
the pyramids, for example?
That's not the kind of skilled,
educated, holistic labor
that an artisanal worker does.
But on the whole, in these societies,
this is the form of labor,
even though other forms
of labor are necessary too
from time to time.
And he's giving you really, again,
what you might think is a
history is really an analysis
of the kind of labor
that happens in capital.
So if you can isolate
what artisanal labor is,
of course, there's artisanal
labor in capital too, right?
It takes on a kind of luxury
like the Arethusa of capitalism.
It takes on a kind of luxury status,
and only certain people can afford it,
and it really can't supply the
needs of the masses, right?
When Arethusa gets into the supermarkets,
it will dispense with its
farm in Litchfield County.
So these are the laws of capital
that don't describe every
single instance of labor,
but it does describe, in
general, these historical periods
and, analytically, exactly
what the difference is
in the capital system.
Now, we're talking about, yeah.
- I have a question
also kind of about this.
Since we were talking about the genealogy,
'cause he's also provided the genealogy
of how the artisanal labor workers
then kind of become industrial, right,
to the kind of manufacturing system.
And he says that there's two kinds,
or two ways in which this might happen.
One is where you have
people kind of working
in the same trade
who start concentrating
in a certain space,
and people who do
different kinds of trade,
but complement each other
and kind of concentrate in the same...
Isn't it the case that, given enough time,
this is all becomes industrial
and is no more artisanal.
Don't they end up taking the same form?
- I mean I think that's what he sees
the trajectory of capital is.
But the need to do, let's say,
to minimize artisanal labor
as much as possible comes
from the way capital is produced
and needs to have its return.
And capitalists have to absorb
all possible other modes
of producing wants and
needs into themselves.
So you'll see there's
whole histories of areas
that have been artisanal
which get taken over.
The great example in Marx's age is
the Silesian weavers, which you can read.
He mentions them many times.
But this is immortalized in German,
if you study German literature,
all you ever read about
are the Silesian weavers
and their uprising.
Heine wrote a poem about it.
Gerhart Hauptmann wrote a play about it.
It's mentioned over and over
because here were these weavers
who were doing a pretty good job,
they were renowned for their weaving,
but someone introduced a weaving machine,
and they were all put out of work on mass.
And they struck against history.
And this is what's interesting for Marx.
They didn't have anyone to strike against,
but they struck against a
technological revolution
that was putting them out of work
or making their artisanal
labor worth infinitely less
than it had been before.
This is part of the
complaint of this book,
that, under capital,
there's really no one to strike against.
If you push, you're pushed out.
So yes, he is showing a tendency
towards a highly-developed capital system
in which the only way to
get more surplus value is
to transform all of the
other modes of production
into capitalist modes of production.
Yeah.
- (indistinct) 'cause Marx
brings up colonialism,
but doesn't like go into detail,
but like the weaving in particular,
there's like a gendered
and a cultural (indistinct)
element to that
like thinking Indigenous
that create products
that are very sought after
that become mechanized,
but then they're also very sought after.
- Yeah, can I respond?
- Yes.
- The question is about
Marx's knowledge of,
or reference to,
colonial practices
and also other sorts of
traditional forms of labor,
Indigenous weaving labor.
Marx didn't know that much
about Indigenous practices,
I think, in the States,
but he certainly knew a
lot about colonization.
And in fact, the last
chapter's on colonization,
and the whole last two
or three chapters is
on the way capital turns
Europe into its own colony
and forces people off their land.
So the first practice
colonization was, you know,
in early Middle Ages, starting
in the early Middle Ages,
in Europe, where all of those
traditional practices had
to be ended by bloody means
and by imposing domination and control.
So that's the happy ending of this book.
(Paul coughing)
And he's getting there.
That wasn't Marx's, let's
say, main focus of attention.
There are good extensions
of Marxist theory
of the need for imperialization
and colonialization
and bringing the world into capital.
And the first big strike there
was Rosa Luxemburg's book
on capital accumulation
in about 1910.
She said, well, Marx mentions this,
but really it's absolutely
essential that capital
and its governmental forces go out
and dominate places in the world,
make them into both places
for means of production,
into supplies of labor and into markets.
So Marx says this,
but she explains why that's
an ongoing necessity.
Okay, now, we wanna talk
about manufacturing.
Roughly going from 1550 to Marx's present.
Although, let's say, 1550 to 1780 or so,
manufacturing is not large-scale industry.
We wouldn't call it industry.
Again, historically, it's not pure,
but, analytically, it's pure.
The manufacturing process
is absolutely distinct
from artisanal craft, practice.
Practice, 'cause we
haven't got to process.
The best description of this is
in Smith's "Wealth of Nations".
The description of the
manufacturer of pins,
which goes from an individual pin maker
who knows how to draw out the wire,
and what metal to use,
and how to sharpen the end,
and how to hammer the top,
and has all the tools for it,
to a factory where one
person stretches it,
I must have mentioned this before.
Here, the product moves
and the worker stays still.
You have a step towards
unfreedom in the labor process.
The worker becomes highly specialized,
although still educated and knowledgeable,
about their special labor.
So no more general labor.
Only special labor.
The worker becomes a function
of something approaching a process.
And they're pegged to that function.
You would never come in the next day
and be sharpening tips
of needles, or pins,
because someone else
already does that better
and more efficiently, right?
And then, of course, you'd
need someone to fill your spot
drawing out the wire.
In the manufacturing system,
labor becomes divided into parts,
and individuals become parts of the labor
rather than parts being
given to the laborer
to put together into a whole.
The whole relationship of
wholes and parts changes.
Once the tasks are
separated, and isolated,
and given to different people,
it becomes much more efficient
because they can be carried out,
instead of sequentially
with interruptions to get more material,
they can be carried out
simultaneously side by side,
with someone else getting the material
who's dedicated to do that.
I can be continually feeding you.
In fact, there's a
function called the feeder.
Someone becomes the lifelong feeder,
but, at least, they
know what they're doing.
They have a name.
In machine, industrial,
large-scale industry,
what people do does not have a name.
It's just called labor.
And so under the manufacturing system,
you have something like
the birth of a system,
where it's not only wants
and needs that are societal,
but labor becomes societal.
You will have a whole group
of pin drawers, wire drawers.
Some other effects of manufacturing is
that the place of labor
becomes concentrated.
They are all in the same place.
The time of labor becomes split
into this simultaneous row
like ticking rather
than a sequential flow,
becomes highly unflow-like
and repetitive in each of the functions.
So repetitive, simultaneous
and unflow-like.
You can see how we already
have a machine going,
where production, in order to continue,
needs to be coordinated and timed.
Because if I'm drawing out the wire,
the sharpener and the head
hammerer can't do their job
until I've drawn out the wire.
Does that make sense?
But I can't do my job too quickly,
nor can I do it too slowly,
for fear that I don't have
enough material to fill up my day
or things pile up, etc.
Someone has to coordinate this.
Again, the organization
of labor becomes crucial,
and the capitalist becomes the
controller of organization.
Labor becomes a process.
Laborers become a collective.
And labor becomes societal
insofar as the end of
one person's labor is
the beginning of someone else's labor.
You can see how different this is
than a tailor and a chicken
farmer coming together
for a drink at the end of the day,
and the one says to the
other, "How'd it go?"
And the other says, "Fine."
And they have nothing more
to do with one another
except when one wants eggs
and one wants a new suit.
In the socialized labor of
the manufacturing system,
the sharpener is waiting
and can't complete their job
unless the wire puller
completes their job.
I think I mentioned this last time,
that this is where
socially-necessary average labor time
becomes particularly important,
because everyone has to work
at the right speed here.
They have to take the right
amount of time, let's say.
And so this gives a huge leap
to being able to calculate value
because the main ingredient
is the right time,
is the right amount of time.
So if I do my wire pulling
in more time than someone,
it might be a whole row of us,
one thing that happens is
the differences in the
pulling times of that wire
average out immediately in the factory.
So the factory can say between
10 minutes and 5 minutes,
we have seven and a half
minutes if you're doing a mean.
And the other is that,
across different factories
that are doing this,
they wanna all come
out with their products
at roughly the same time
to take them to market.
So the averaging
pressures are really high.
Zoe.
- Is it one worker that
moves that process up
or is (indistinct)
- The capitalists would like to decrease
socially-necessary average labor time.
They would like to
decrease the average time
it takes for anyone to do a particular job
because then they get
more value out of it.
They can do many more of
those operations in a day.
So are we seeing where we're heading to?
We're heading to the first
industrial revolution,
which you might think
someone invented a machine
and suddenly we could
do everything faster.
What Marx is saying is that
machines are just there
to carry out the need of the capitalist
under the regime of process.
Where process becomes the main mode
of producing wants and needs,
the machine is inevitable.
There's nothing special about it
except for what it then does
to devastate working populations
and to turn everyone into
an appendage of the machine.
You can think of the machine age
as the triumph of process
over the skilled laborer.
The epitaph has long been written.
The eulogy has been given many, many times
for the skilled laborer.
This is nothing new at this point.
What the machine does to
the manufacturing process is
speeds it up and totalizes it,
and makes a lot of other
changes that were unexpected,
including changes to the
way capitalists can act.
It restricts them highly.
Machinery and large-scale industry.
Marx didn't live to see the
second industrial revolution.
So imagine what Marx
would've said about plastic.
(Paul sighing)
Questions up to this point?
- So I have two questions.
The first has to do is cooperation, right?
I mean, all your cooperation chapter.
I guess I'm making that chapter license
to ship on describing
or, at least, provide a kind
of anthropomorphic description
of capital, right?
So I guess my question is
what is the relation between
capitalism of the system
and the capital via who isn't doing
the bidding of the system,
ought to battle in the system
that is like already programmed
the way he behaves, right?
So it gives you kind of your
causal relationship there.
And then, the second question has to do
with this division of labor,
especially in manufacturing.
I mean, it seems that there
is obviously plus and gains,
right, of the division of
labor, but then there's
a kind of interesting
negative quantitative,
for example, workers who work
one kind of job over time.
Is there a risk of
becoming both (indistinct).
- No, no, he was really clear
that that drudgery is the gift
that keeps on giving in manufacturing.
What it produces for the worker,
instead of the free play
of their capacities,
gee, he talks about at
moments quoting Kant.
There's a number of
different kinds of freedom
that Marx wants.
He wants free time.
He wants freedom of movement.
He wants the free play of your capacities,
where you can develop
them, and discover things,
and you have a sense that
the product of your labor
is coming from you and your own powers.
And what manufacturing already does is
makes you part of a process,
limits your freedom,
and makes your activity
not a feeling of power,
but a feeling of the
draining of your own powers,
and without a return to you.
And that's called drudgery.
And he was clear about that.
He got that picture from
his friend Fred Engels
who sent this great
description of the conditions
of the working class in England in 1845
in a great and harrowing book.
So that's for sure.
Tell me your first question again.
Oh, what happens to the capitalist?
Well, people have thought of,
let's say Marxists, or anti-capitalists,
have been anti-capitalist
in the sense that they
think there are people there
that they can be angry
at or fight against.
And Marx thinks of capitalists
as trapped as laborers,
although getting the better
end of the stick, no question.
There are benefits.
This is maybe a good segue
into the machinery chapter,
because capitalists, these are the people
who are functions of capital
as the ones who get the return.
Workers are functions of capital
as the ones who make the surplus
value that is the return,
but it doesn't go to them, right?
Workers are constantly giving away,
and capitalists are constantly getting.
But that's not because
workers are selfless
and capitalists are greedy.
Obviously, workers are not selfless.
Although, their self is highly reduced.
Capitalists are not greedy
except insofar as they wanna
be the biggest capitalist.
I'm not mentioning any names,
trillionaires, for example.
There's certainly greed,
comparative greed, among capitalists,
but capitalism has
nothing to do with greed.
The fact that the upper echelon
of capitalists have drifted
up towards like astronomic sums
and have monopoly power
in a way that nobody has
had monopoly power before
is possibly predictable.
But you could also have a much
more human and humane capital
in which capital is more spread
out and not so concentrated.
Still, the returns would
go to the capitalists.
Let's just take a
run-of-the-mill capitalist
who has to run their company.
They invest 99% of the return,
even if it's above their outlay,
because they have to
compete with other firms.
They have to prepare
for the whole industry
maybe taking a U-turn
that they didn't expect.
They have to get as much
profit as possible immediately.
So it's a dumb capitalist,
or a capitalist who has
not understood the system,
who does not reinvest
the absolute vast majority of their return
back into the business.
So the reading I favor is
not the kind of social Marxist reading
where you can be angry at capitalists.
You can certainly strike
against capitalists
for higher wages,
but that doesn't change the
capital system one iota,
and being angry at capitalists,
or thinking of them as greedy
for Marxism misunderstanding.
You have to understand them as
functions of the system too,
though, generally happier.
Anthony, did you?
- Yeah, (indistinct) in this chapter
for his analysis of changes
of a point in production.
I guess, is there a way
that he's allowing us
to see a relationship even
(indistinct) production
at any other spheres
of (indistinct), right?
Like a lot of Marxists say about
like the penetration of this
logic into domestic sphere?
- It's true, this volume is about
what he calls the sphere of production.
He's not thinking much about consumption.
It's there as a necessary but
totally ancillary process.
Things have to be consumed,
so there have to be
enough people to buy them.
But, as Marx says, consumption,
unless his productive
consumption, is private.
Whether you actually consume
the hammer or the carrot that
you've bought is irrelevant
so long as you bought it.
So consumption, insofar as it's seen
from the perspective of
the return of capital,
is completed at the point of sale
if that makes sense.
It makes no difference if you're happy.
It might not even make a
difference if you buy it again,
if the whole industry gets revolutionized
and we're no longer making hammers.
You only have to buy it once.
The next volume is about
the circulation system,
which has a just-as-necessary role,
but not as fundamental.
No value is produced in circulation.
So this is why he starts with production.
AJ?
- Yeah, I think I'm kind of curious
in the role that guilds play
in the development of cooperation, right?
Is it the case that the guilds were gilded
in order to allow better cooperation
or that they were suppressed in order...
- The guilds were suppressed.
I thought you said guilt.
- No.
- Okay, yeah.
No, the guilds were totally
against capitalization.
Now, they were a vehicle for moving
towards a more mobile,
merchant-like system.
So the guilds moved certain people,
and as the professions rose,
they moved people off
of agricultural land.
So you can't say that
guilds didn't contribute
to the development of capital.
But capital is anathema to the guild
because it wants to get rid
of that whole traditional structure.
It wants to wipe away
the need for education.
It wants to dominate the workers.
It wants to take away
their pride in their work.
(Paul coughing)
I think, clearly, we're gonna
be talking about machinery
through next week, which is totally fine.
It's very important,
because aside from one book,
this is the best theory
of technology we have
of the need for technology in society.
The other book is
Simondon's technical book
on the technical object.
These are the two best books.
The rest are just trying
to work out details.
You have to understand that
technology is proceeded
by techniques of process
or technical processes.
Processes that are technical in the sense
that all of the internal
parameters have to be controllable.
It's irrelevant whether
a machine does this
or a computer does this.
Beware of the fetishization of technology
when you start to talk about
machines and technology.
These are really just
repeatable techniques
that are controllable to the nth degree
in a process whose steps
go together by necessity
and lead towards an outcome.
A process is supposed to
lead towards that outcome
inevitably, regardless of
what happens along the way.
That is regardless of the lives of workers
and the lives of
capitalists for that matter.
So let me just give you
the metaphysics of a machine briefly.
What's the metaphysics of a machine?
A machine is purposiveness
without restraint.
Or you could say purpose without interest.
This is the beauty of a
machine for this process.
It has no interests.
It doesn't require that anything
come back to it for itself.
It's selfless in that sense,
and everything it does
is towards its purpose.
It's been designed to do that.
Even gods are not
purposive without interest.
Certainly animals are not.
Very little in nature is
purposive without interest.
Purpose and interest go together.
If you exist,
you have purposes which
serve your interests.
A machine is metaphysically all purpose,
and so it can drive capital's aims along
at a much higher speed
without requiring as much.
But there are contradictions in this.
So we need to talk about
what a machine was,
what it did to labor,
and what it did to the capital system.
Because it's not simply
that you introduce machines
and the system stays the same.
It's that the system has to adapt
and develops a whole other
set of internal problems,
including how to make value.
Because a machine can pass on value,
but it can't actually produce new value.
So let's just start
with where Marx starts,
and then, I'm gonna let you go
with the ludicrous idea
that machines are there
to save labor.
Just like the ludicrous idea
that personal computing
was there to save labor.
Regardless of what happens,
without increasing labor exponentially
around these machines that do a lot,
you won't make any new value,
because they are just dead labor
passing on the value that
has already been capitalized.
When humans build a machine,
you pay those humans,
and you sell that machine,
and you get back a huge capitalization.
When I get a machine and
use it to make my product,
I'm only paying off what I invested.
Where is my surplus value gonna come from?
Machines produce for
capital the value trap.
(machine whirring)
(ethereal music)