(1.) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control of a single capitalist, of labourers belonging to various inde- pendent handicrafts, but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion. A carriage, for example, was formerly the product of the labour of a great number of inde- pendent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers, tailors, locksmiths,upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers,glaziers, painters, polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of carriages, how- ever, all these different artificers are assembled in one build- ing, where they work into one another's hands. It is true that a carriage cannot be gilt before it has been made. But if a number of carriages are being made simultaneously, some may be in the hands of the gilders while others are going through an earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain of simple co-operation, which finds its materials ready to hand in the shape of men and things. But very soon an important change takes place. The tailor, the locksmith, and the other artificers, being now exclusively occupied in carriage-making, each gradu- ally loses, through want of practice, the 'ability to carry on, to its full extent, his old handicraft. But, on the other hand, his activity now confined in one groove, assumes the form best adapted to the narrowed sphere of action. At first, carriage manufacture is a combination of various independent handi- crafts. By degrees, it becomes the splitting up of carriage 328 Capitalist Production.
making into its various detail processes, each of which crystallizes into the exclusive function of a particular work- man, the manufacture, as a whole, being carried on by the men in conjunction. In the same way, cloth manufacture, as also a whole series of other manufactures, arose by combining different handicrafts together under the control of a single capitalist.^ (2.) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this — namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number of artificers, who all do the same, or the same kind of work, such as making paper, type, or needles. This is co-operation in its most elementary form. Each of these artificers (with the help, perhaps, of one or two appren- tices), makes the entire commodity, and he consequently performs in succession all the operations necessary for its production. He still works in his old handicraft-like way. But very soon external circumstances cause a different use to be made of the concentration of the workmen on one spot, and of the simultaneousness of their work. An increased quantity of the article has perhaps to be delivered within a given time. The work is therefore re-distributed. Instead of each man being allowed to perform all the various operations in succes- sion, these operations are changed into disconnected, isolated ones, carried on side by side; each is assigned to a different artificer, and the whole of them together are performed simul- taneously by the co-operating workmen. This accidental repartition gets repeated, developes advantages of its own, and gradually ossifies into a systematic division of labour. The 1 To give a more modern instance: The silk spinning and weaving of Lyons and Nimes " est toute patriarcale; elle emploie beaucoup de femmes et d'enfants, mais sans les epuiser ni les corrompre; elle les laisse dans leur belles vallees de la Dr6me, du Var, de I'lsere, de Vaucluse, pour y elever des vers et divider leurs cocons; jamais elle n'entre dans une veritable fabrique. Pour 6fcreaussibienobserv6...le principe de la division du travail s'y rev6t d'un caractere special. H y a bien des devideuses, des moulineurs, des teinturiers, des encoUeurs, puis des tisserands; mais ils ne sont pas reunis dans un meme ^tablissement, ne dependent pas d'un m^rae maltre; tons ils sont ind^pendants." (A. Blanqui: " Cours d'Econ. Industrielle, " Recueilli par A. Blaise. Paris, 1838-39, pp. 79). Since Blanqui wrote this, the various independent labourers have, to some extent, been united in factories. [And since Marx wrote the above, the powerloom has invaded these factories, and is now — 1886— rapidly superseding the handloom. Ed.]
Division of Labour and Manufacture. 329 commodity, from being the individual product of an inde- pendent artificer, becomes the social product of a union of artificers, each of whom performs one, and only one, of the constituent partial operations. The same operations which, in the case of a papermaker belonging to a German Guild, merged one into the other as the successive acts of one artificer, became in the Dutch paper manufacture so many partial operations carried on side by side by numerous co-operating labourers. The needlemaker of the Nuremberg Guild was the corner- stone on which the English needle manufacture was raised. But while in Nuremberg that single artificer performed a series of perhaps 20 operations one after another, in England it was not long before there were 20 needlemakers side by side, each performing one alone of those 20 operations; and in conse- quence of further experience, each of those 20 operations was again split up, isolated, and made the exclusive function of a separate workman.
The mode in which manufacture arises, its growth out of handicrafts, is therefore twofold. On the one hand, it arises from the union of various independent handicrafts, which become stripped of their independence and specialised to such an extent as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial processes in the production of one particular commodity. On the other hand, it arises from the co-operation of artificers of one handicraft; it splits up that particular handicraft into its various detail operations, isolating, and making these operations independent of one another up to the point where each becomes the exclusive function of a particular labourer. On the one hand, therefore, manufacture either introduces division of labour into a process of production, or further developes that division; on the other hand, it unites together handicrafts that were formerly separate. But whatever may have been its particular starting point, its 1 final form is invariably the same — a productive mechanism whose parts are human beings.
For a proper understanding of the division of labour in manufacture, it is essential that the following points be firmly grasped. First, the decomposition of a process of production into its various successive steps coincides, here, strictly with 330 Capitalist Production.
the resolution of a handicraft into its successive manual operations. Whether complex or simple, each operation has to be done by hand, retains the character of a handicraft, and is therefore dependent on the strength, skill, quickness, and sureness, of the individual workman in handling his tools. The handicraft continues to be the basis. This narrow technical basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any definite process of industrial production, since it is still a con- dition that each detail process gone through by the product must be capable of being done by hand and of forming, in its way, a separate handicraft. It is just because handicraft skill continues, in this way, to be the foundation of the process of production, that each workman becomes exclusively assigned to a partial function, and that for the rest of his life, his labour- power is turned into the organ of this detail function.
Secondly, this division of labour is a particular sort of co- operation, and many of its disadvantages spring from the general character of co-operation, and not from this particular form of it.
SECTION 2.— THE DETAIL LABOURER AND HIS IMPLEMENTS.
If we now go more into detail, it is, in the first place, clear that a labourer who all his life performs one and the same simple operation, converts his whole body into the automatic, specialised implement of that operation. Consequently, he takes less time in doing it, than the artificer who performs a whole series of operations in succession. But the collective labourer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture, is made up solely of such specialised detail labourers. Hence, in comparison with the independent handicraft, more is pro- duced in a given time, or the productive power of labour is increased.^ Moreover, when once this fractional work is es- tablished as the exclusive function of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The workman's continued 1 "The more any manufacture of much variety shall be distributed and assigned to different artists, the same must needs be better done and with greater expedition, with less loss of time and labour." (" The Advantages of the East India Trade," Division of Labour a7id Manufacture. 331 repetition of the same simple act, and the concentration of his attention on it, teach him by experience how to attain the desired effect with the minimum of exertion. But since there are always several generations of labourers living at one time, and working together at the manufacture of a given article, the technical skill, the tricks of the trade thus acquired, become established, and are accumulated and handed down.^ Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer, by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop, the naturally developed differentiation of trades, which it found ready to hand in society at large. On the other hand, the conversion of fractional work into the life- calling of one man, corresponds to the tendency shown by earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify them into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual a tendency to vary in a manner incom- patible with the nature of castes, to ossify them into guilds. Castes and guilds arise from the action of the same natural law, that regulates the differentiation of plants and animals into species and varieties, except that, when a certain degree of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and the exclusiveness of guilds are ordained as a law of society. " The muslins of Dakka in fineness, the calicoes and other piece goods of Coromandel in brilliant and durable colours, have never been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital, machinery, division of labour, or any of those means which give such facilities to the manufacturing interest of Europe. The weaver is merely a detached individual, working a web 1 "Easy labour is transmitted skill." (Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. p. 125).
2 ** The arts also have...in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection. For it is the only country where artificers may not in any way meddle with the affairs of at other class of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by law is hereditary in tiieir clan In other countries it is found that tradesman divide their attention between too many objects. At one time they try agriculture, at another they take to commerce, at another they busy themselves with two or three occupations at once. In free countries, they mostly frequent the assemblies of the people In Egypt, on the contrary, every artificer is severely punished if he meddles with affairs of State, or carries on several trades at once. Thus there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling...Moreover, since they in- herit from their forefathers numerous rules, they are eager to discover fresh advantages." (Diodorus Siculus: Bibl. Hist. 1. 1. c. 74.)
S3^ Capitalist Production, when ordered of a customer, and with a loom of the rudest construction, consisting sometimes of a few branches or bars of wood, put roughly together. There is even no expedient for rolling up the warp; the loom must therefore be kept stretched to its full length, and becomes so inconveniently large, that it cannot be contained within the hut of the manufacturer, who is therefore compelled to ply his trade in the open air, where it is interrupted by every vicissitude of the weather."^ It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to generation, and transmitted from father to son, that gives to the Hindoo, as it does to the spider, this pro- ficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindoo weaver is very complicated, compared with that of a manufacturing labourer.
An artificer, who performs one after another the various fractional operations in the production of a finished article, must at one time change his place, at another his tools. The transition from one operation to another interrupts the flow of his labour, and creates, so to say, gaps in his working day. These gaps close up so soon as he is tied to one and the same operation all day long; they vanish in proportion as the changes in his work diminish. The resulting increased pro- ductive power is owing either to an increased expenditure of labour-power in a given time — i.e., to increased intensity of labour — or to a decrease in the amount of labour-power un- productively consumed. The extra expenditure of power, demanded by every transition from rest to motion, is made up for by prolonging the duration of the normal velocity when once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.
The productiveness of labour depends not only on the pro- ficiency of the workman, but on the perfection of his tools. Tools of the same kind, such as knives, drills, gimlets, ham- mers, fcc, may be employed in different processes; and the 1 Historical and descriptive account of Brit. India, &c., by Hugh Blurray and James Wilson, &c., Edinburgh 1832. v. IL p. 449. The Indian loom is upright, i.e., the warp is stretched vertically.
Division of Labour and Manufacture, 333 same tool may serve various purposes in a single process. But so soon as the different operations of a labour-process are dis- connected the one from the other, and each fractional operation acquires in the hands of the detail labourer a suitable and peculiar form, alterations become necessary in the implements that previously served more than one purpose. The direction taken by this change is determined by the difficulties ex- perienced in consequence of the unchanged form of the imple- ment. Manufacture is characterized by the differentiation of the instruments of labour — a differentiation whereby imple- ments of a given sort acquire fixed shapes, adapted to each particular application, and by the specialisation of those in- struments, giving to each special implement its full play only in the hands of a specific detail labourer. In Birmingham alone 500 varieties of hammers are produced, and not only is each adapted to one particular process, but several varieties often serve exclusively for the different operations in one and the same process. The manufacturing period simplifies, im- proves, and multiplies the implements of labour, by adapting them to the exclusively special functions of each detail la- bourer.^ It thus creates at the same time one of the material conditions for the existence of machinery, which consists of a combination of simple instruments.
The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest elements of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a whole.
SECTION 3. — THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF MANUFACTURE I HETEROGENEOUS MANUFACTURE, SERIAL MANUFACTURE.
The organisation of manufacture has two fundamental forms, which, in spite of occasional blending, are essentially different 1 Darwin in his epoch-making work on the origin of species, remarks, with reference to the natural organs of plants and animals, " So long as one and the same organ has diflferent kinds of work to perform, a ground for its changeability may possibly be found in this, that natural selection preserves or suppresses each small variation of form less carefully than if that organ were destined for one special purpose alone. Thus, knives that are adapted to cut all sorts of things, may, on the whole, be of one shape; but an implement destined to be used exclusively in one way must have a different shape for every differeixt use."
334 Capitalist Production.
in kind, and, moreover, play very distinct parts in the sub- sequent transformation of manufacture into modern industry carried on by machinery. This double character arises from the nature of the article produced. This article either results from the mere mechanical fitting together of partial products made independently, or owes its completed shape to a series of connected processes and manipulations.
A locomotive, for instance, consists of more than 5000 inde- pendent parts. It cannot, however, serve as an example of the first kind of genuine manufacture, for it is a structure produced by modern mechanical industry. But a watch can; and William Petty used it to illustrate the division of labour in manufacture. Formerly the individual work of a Nurem- berg artificer, the watch has been transformed into the social product of an immense number of detail labourers, such as mainspring makers, dial makers, spiral spring makers, jewelled hole makers, ruby lever makers, hand makers, case makers, screw makers, gilders, with numerous sub-divisions, such as wheel makers (brass and steel separate), pin makers, movement makers, acheveur de pignon (fixes the wheels on the axles, polishes the facets, &;c.), pivot makers, planteur de finissage (puts the wheels and springs in the works), finisseur de barillet (cuts teeth in the wheels, makes the holes of the right size, &;c.), escapement makers, cylinder makers for cylinder escape- ments, escapement wheel makers, balance wheel makers, ra- quette makers (apparatus for regulating the watch), the planteur d'echappement (escapement maker proper); then the repasseur de barillet (finishes the box for the spring, &c.), steel polishers, wheel polishers, screw polishers, figure painters, dial enamellers (melt the enamel on the copper), fabricant de pendants (makes the ring by which the case is hung), finisseur de charniere (puts the brass hinge in the cover, &;c.), faiseur de secret (puts in the springs that open the case), graveur, ciseleur, polisseur de boite, fcc, &;c., and last of all the repasseur, who fits together the whole watch and hands it over in a going state. Only a few parts of the watch pass through several hands; and all these membra disjecta come together for the first time in the hand that binds them into one mechanical Division of Labour and Mamifacture. 335 whole. This external relation between the finished product, and its various and diverse elements makes it, as well in this case as in the case of all similar finished articles, a matter of chance whether the detail labourers are brought together in one workshop or not. The detail operations may further be carried on like so many independent handicrafts, as they are in the Cantons of Vaud and Neu chatel; while in Geneva there exist large watch manufactories where the detail labourers directly co-operate under the control of a single capitalist. And even in the latter case the dial, the springs, and the case, are seldom made in the factory itself. To carry on the trade as a manufacture, with concentration of workmen, is, in the watch trade, profitable only under exceptional conditions, be- cause competition is greater between the labourers who desire to work at home, and because the splitting up of the work into a number of heterogeneous processes, permits but little use of the instruments of labour in common, and the capitalist, by scattering tlie work, saves the outlay on w^orkshops, &c.^ Nevertheless the position of this detail labourer who, though he works at home, does so for a capitalist (manufacturer, ^tablisseur), is very different from that of the independent artificer, who works for his own customers.'* The second kind of nianufacture, its perfected form, pro- duces articles that go through connected phases of develop- 1 In the year 1854 Geneva produced 80,000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the production in the Canton of Neu ch4tel. La Chaux-de-Fond alone, which we may look upon as a huge watch manufactory, produces yearly twice as many as Geneva. From 1850-61 Geneva produced 750,000 watches. See " Report from Geneva on tho Watch Trade" in "Reports by H. M.'s Secretaries of Embassy and Legation on the Manufactures, Commerce, &c., No. 6, 1863." The want of connexion alone, between the processes into which the production of articles that merely consist of parts fitted together is split up, makes it very difficult to convert such a manufacture into a branch of modern industry carried on by machinery; but in the case of a watch there are two other impediments in addition, the minuteness and delicacy of its parts, and its character as an article of luxury. Hence their variety, which is such, that in the best London houses scarcely a dozen watches are made alike in the course of a year. The watch manufactory of Messrs. Vacheron & Constantin, in which machinery has been employed with success, produces at the most three or four different varieties of size and form.
2 In watchmaking, that classical example of heterogeneous manufacture, we may study with great accuracy the above mentioned differentiation and specialisation of the instruments of labour caused by the sub-division of handicrafts.
33^ Capitalist Production.
ment, through a series of processes step by step, like the wire in the manufacture of needles, which passes through the hands of 72 and sometimes even 92 different detail workmen.
In so far as such a manufacture, when first started, com- bines scattered handicrafts, it lessens the space by which the various phases of production are separated from each other. The time taken in passing from one stags to another is shortened, so is the labour that effectuates this passage.^ In comparison with a handicraft, productive power is gained, and this gain is owing to the general co-operative character of manufacture. On the other liand, division of labour, which is the distinguishing principle of manufacture, requires the isola- tion of the various stages of production and their independ- ence of each other. The establishment and mamtenance of a connexion between the isolated functions necessitates the in- cessant transport of the article from one hand to another, and from one process to another. From the standpoint of modern mechanical industry, this necessity stands forth as a character- istic and costly disadvantage, and one that is immanent in the principle of manufacture.^ If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw materials, of I'ags, for instance, in paper manufacture, or of wire in needle manufacture, we perceive that it passes in succession through a series of stages in the hands of the various detail workmen until completion. On the other hand, if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw material in all the stages of its production at the same time. The col- lective labourer, with one set of his many hands armed with one kind of tools, draws the wdre, with another set, armed with different tools, he, at the same time, straightens it, with another, he cuts it, with another, points it, and so on. The difierent detail processes, which were successive in time, have become simultaneous, go on side by side in space. Hence, 1 " In so close a cohabitation of the people, the carriage must needs be less. " ('' The Advantages of the East India Trade," p. 106.)
2 "The isolation of the different stages of manufacture,. consequent upon the em- ployment of manual labour, adds immensely to the cost of production, the loss mainly arising from the mere removals from one process to another." (" The Industry of Nations." Lond., 1855. Part II., p. 200.)
Division of Labour and Manufacture. 337 production of a greater quantum of finished commodities in a given time.^ Tliis simultaneity, it is true, is due to the general co-operative form of the process as a whole; but Alanufacture not only finds the conditions for co-operation ready to hand, it also, to some extent, creates them by the feub-division of handicraft labour. On the other hand, it accomplishes this social organisation of the labour-process only by riveting each labourer to a single fractional detail.