That was a tragedy, because within the Grundrisse we not only encounter the first analysis of technological evolution under capitalism, but also the opportunities that creates. As Marx so memorably put it in the ‘Fragment’,
Capital employs machinery, rather, only to the extent that it enables the worker to work a larger part of his time for capital, to relate to a larger part of his time as time which does not belong to him, to work longer for another. Through this process, the amount of labour necessary for the production of a given object is indeed reduced to a minimum, but only in order to realise a maximum of labour in the maximum number of such objects. The first aspect is important, because capital here – quite unintentionally – reduces human labour … to a minimum. This will redound to the benefit of emancipated labour, and is the condition of its emancipation.
Marx could not have been any clearer: competition compels capitalists to innovate in production. This leads to permanent experimentation with workflows and technologies, all in the pursuit of ever-greater eficiency. The logic of market demand means capitalists must produce goods and services as cheaply as they can, forcing them to constantly reduce overheads, in turn creating a never-ending cycle of automation, encompassing tasks and even whole jobs – substituting workers with machines. While generating huge amounts of sufering and exploitation under capitalism, under another system this represented a momentous opportunity.
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chaos under heaven