The machine proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool proper is taken from man, and fitted into a mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere implement. The difference strikes one at once, even in those cases where man himself continues to be the prime mover.
This initial step, removing the tool from the hands of the worker and fitting it into a mechanism, is for Marx the starting point of that evolution which begins with simple machinery and continues to the automatic system of machinery. Like all starting points in Marx, it is not fortuitous. Marx selects from among a host of technical characteristics the specific feature which forms the juncture between humanity and the machine: its effect upon the labor process. The technical is never considered purely in its internal relations, but in relation to the worker.\*\*
The analysis of the machine by means of purely technical characteristics, such as its power source, the scientific principles it employs, etc., may yield much information of value to engineers, but this study of the machine “in itself’ has little direct value for a comprehension of its social role. The moment we begin to assess its evolution from the point of view of the labor process, however, its technical characteristics group themselves around this axis and lines of development begin to emerge. Such a “critical history of technology," which Marx noted had not been written in his day, is no more in evidence in ours. But if it existed it would furnish the basis for a taxonomy of machines as they are used in production, as well as a classification according to the technical features that are utilized by capital as the basis for the organization and control of labor.
Some sociologists have attempted to sketch broad “production systems” or “varieties of technology." Joan Woodward has divided production into the making of “integral products" (in single units, small batches, large batches, and by mass production); “dimensional products" (in batches and by continuous flow processes, as in chemical plants); and “combined systems" (in which standardized components are made in large batches and subsequently assembled in a continuous flow process, or, conversely, a flow process is used to prepare a product which is subsequently broken down into smaller units for packaging and sale).ª Robert Blauner divides production technologies into four varieties: craft, machine tending, assembly line, and continuous process.⁵ As distinguished from these scattergun approaches, James R. Bright of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard has taken a much closer look at the characteristics of machines in association with labor.6 He has outlined a “mechanization profile” of seventeen levels (to be described more fully later in this chapter), which he applies to a large number of production processes and to the way they utilize varying levels of mechanization as they take their course from start to finish. The “degrees of mechanical accomplishment in machinery" are judged on the basis of the question: “In what way does a machine supplement man's muscles, mental processes, judgment, and degree of control?"7 Bright comments (in 1966): “To my knowledge, this is still the only theory interlinking machine evolution and worker contribution."8 It is worthy of note that just as Bright has apparently been alone in the academic world in this kind of detailed study of what machines actually do as they become more automatic, and what the worker is called upon to know and to do, so also are his conclusions strikingly different from those who let themselves be guided only by vague impressions.
From this point of view, the key element in the evolution of machinery is not its size, complexity, or speed of operation, but the manner in which its operations are controlled. Between the first typewriter and the electrically driven ball-type machine of the present there lies a whole epoch of mechanical development, but nothing that has been changed affects the manner in which the typewriter is guided through its activities and hence there is little essential difference in the relation between typist and machine. The labor process remains more or less as it was, despite all refinements. The application of power to various hand tools such as drills, saws, grindstones, wrenches, chisels, rivet hammers, staplers, sanders, buffers, etc. has not changed the relation between worker and machine—for all that they belong to a recent branch of machinery because they had to wait upon the development of specialized electrical or pneumatic power systems before they became possible. In all these forms, the guidance of the tool remains entirely in the hands of the worker, whatever other properties or capacities may have been added.
28 Labor and Monopoly Capital
Machinery
129
\* This same definition is often used by management analysis as an overall picture of the workplace, for which they recommend the development of constraint and the elimination of all but the desired motion; and this definition may be, as we have seen, applied to the workers themselves as they are subjected to criteria of mechanical perfection.
\*\* In engineering literature, by contrast, the worker tends to disappear, which accounts for the fact that this literature is written almost entirely in the awkward grammar of the passive voice, in which operations seem to perform themselves, without human agency.
It is also worth noting that Usher, when he wishes to quote from Marx a "definition" of machinery, seizes upon a descriptive passage where Marx, before tackling the analysis of machinery, indicates that “fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the tool or working machine."³ It is typical of the engineering mind that it is drawn by this, the technical description, while that which for the labor process is truly definitive escapes attention.