{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","uuid":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","normalized_title":"laborandmonopolycapitalthedegradationofworkinthetwentiethcentury","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","isbns":["0853459401"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Labor%20and%20Monopoly%20Capital%20The%20Degradation%20of%20Work%20in%20the%20Twentieth%20Century","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/search"},"page":{"printed_page":"56 / 57","pdf_page":41,"physical_index":41,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d7d061d578f31be6267918aeb0b1f10f50730142789608ef6b3d18d278c69e47"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"parts. To clarify this point, Babbage gives us an example drawn, like Smith's,   \nfrom pin manufacture. He presents a table for the labor employed, by type (that   \nis, by age and sex) and by pay, in the English manufacture of those pins known 14   \nin his day as “Elevens.\n\nIt is clear from this tabulation, as Babbage points out, that if the minimum pay for a craftsman capable of performing all operations is no more than the highest pay in the above listing, and if such craftsmen are employed exclusively, then the labor costs of manufacture would be more than doubled, even if the very same division of labor were employed and even if the craftsmen produced pins at the very same speed as the detail workers.\\*\n\nLet us add another and later example, taken from the first assembly line in American industry, the meatpacking conveyor (actually a disassembly line). J. R. Commons has realistically included in this description, along with the usual details, the rates of pay of the workers:\n\nIt would be difficult to find another industry where division of labor has been so ingeniously and microscopically worked out. The animal has been surveyed and laid off like a map; and the men have been classified in over thirty specialties and twenty rates of pay, from 16 cents to 50 cents an hour. The 50-cent man is restricted to using the knife on the most delicate parts of the hide (floorman) or to using the ax in splitting the backbone (splitter); and wherever a less-skilled man can be slipped in at 18 cents, 18½ cents, 20 cents, 21 cents, 22½ cents, 24 cents, 25 cents, and so on, a place is made for him, and an occupation mapped out. In working on the hide alone there are nine positions, at eight different rates of pay. A 20-cent man pulls off the tail, a\n\n22/-cent man pounds off another part where good leather is not found, and the knife of the 40-cent man cuts a different texture and has a different “feel” from that of the 50-cent man.16\n\nBabbage's principle is fundamental to the evolution of the division oflabor in capitalist society. It gives expression not to a technical aspect of the division of labor, but to its social aspect. Insofar as the labor process may be dissociated, it may be separated into elements some of which are simpler than others and each of which is simpler than the whole. Translated into market terms, this means that the labor power capable of performing the process may be purchased more cheaply as dissociated elements than as a capacity integrated in a single worker. Applied first to the handicrafts and then to the mechanical crafts, Babbage's principle eventually becomes the underlying force governing all forms of work in capitalist society, no matter in what setting or at what hierarchical level.\n\nIn the mythology of capitalism, the Babbage principle is presented as an effort to “preserve scarce skills\" by putting qualified workers to tasks which “only they can perform,\" and not wasting “social resources.\"It is presented as a response to “shortages\" of skilled workers or technically trained people, whose time is best used “efficiently\" for the advantage of “society.\" But however much this principle may manifest itself at times in the form of a response to the scarcity of skilled labor—for example, during wars or other periods of rapid expansion of production—this apology is on the whole false, The capitalist mode of production systematically destroys all-around skills where they exist, and brings into being skills and occupations that correspond to its needs, Technical capacities are henceforth distributed on a strict “need to know\" basis. The generalized distribution of knowledge of the productive process among all its participants becomes, from this point on, not merely “unnecessary,\" but a positive barrier to the functioning of the capitalist mode of production.\n\nLabor power has become a commodity. Its uses are no longer organized according to the needs and desires of those who sell it, but rather according to the needs of its purchasers, who are, primarily, employers seeking to expand the value of their capital. And it is the special and permanent interest of these purchasers to cheapen this commodity. The most common mode of cheapening labor power is exemplified by the Babbage principle: break it up into its simplest elements. And, as the capitalist mode of production creates a working population suitable to its needs, the Babbage principle is, by the very shape of this “labor market,\" enforced upon the capitalists themselves.\n\nEvery step in the labor process is divorced, so far as possible, from special knowledge and training and reduced to simple labor. Meanwhile, the relatively few persons for whom special knowledge and training are reserved are freed so far as possible from the obligations of simple labor. In this way, a structure\n\n56\n\nLabor and Monopoly Capital\n\nThe Division of Labor\n\n57\n\n\\* Not all economists have missed this point. Alfred Marshall called it “Babbage's great principle of economical production.\"1s But Marshall, after all, wrote at a time when economists were still interested in the way things worked in the real world.","previous_page":40,"next_page":42}