116 Labor and Monopoly Capital
Chapter 8
The Scientific-Technical Revolution and the Worker
“In manufacture," wrote Marx, reférring to the hand workshops that preceded the Industrial Revolution, “the revolution in the mode of production begins with the labour-power, in modern industry it begins with the instruments of labour." In other words, in the first stage of capitalism the traditional work of the craftsman is subdivided into its constituent tasks and performed in series by a chain of detail workers, so that the process is little changed; what has changed is the organization of labor. But in the next stage, machinofacture, the instrument of labor is removed from the worker's hand and placed in the grip of a mechanism and the forces of nature are enlisted to supply power which, transmitted to the tool, acts upon the materials to yield the desired result; thus the change in the mode of production in this case comes from a change in the instruments of labor.
To the next question—how is the labor process transformed by the scientific-technical revolution?no such unitary answer may be given. This is because the scientific and managerial attack upon the labor process over the past century embraces all its aspects: labor power, the instruments oflabor, the materials of labor, and the products of labor. We have seen how labor is reorganized and subdivided according to rigorous principles which were only anticipated a century ago. The materials used in production are now so freely synthesized, adapted, and substituted according to need that an increasing number of industries practice substantially altered manufacturing processes as a result of this fact alone. The instruments used in production, including those used in transport and communications, have been revolutionized not only in respect to the power, speed, and accuracy with which they accomplish their tasks, but often act to gain the desired result by way of entirely different physical principles from those traditionally employed. And the products of production have themselves been freely transformed and invented in accordance with marketing and manufacturing needs. Taking nothing for granted and nothing as permanent, modern production constantly overhauls all aspects of its performance, and in some industries has completely reconstituted itself more than once in the space of a hundred years. Thus modern electronic circuitry, to cite only a single example, would be completely incomprehensible in its mode of operation, in the manner of its production, and even in the very materials used, to those who, only a couple of generations ago, designed and made the first examples of this genre.
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