1867:
If we now go more into detail, it is, in the first place, clear that a laborer who all his life performs one and the same simple operation, converts his whole body into the automatic, specialized 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 laborer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture, is made up solely of such specialized detail laborers. Hence, in comparison with the independent handicraft, more is produced in a given time, or the productive power of labor is increased. Moreover, when once this fractional work is established as the exclusive function of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The workman's continued 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 laborers 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 laborer, 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 incompatible 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. [Marx in a note here refers to an ancient description of the Egyptian caste system, where “artificers may not in any way meddle with the affairs of another class of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by law is hereditary in their clan,” allowing the arts there, more so than in other countries, to reach “the requisite degree of perfection.” In the main text he further cites a nineteenth-century account of Indian textile production:]
"The muslins of Dakka in fineness, the calicoes and other piece goods of Coromandel in brilliant and durable colors, have never been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital, machinery, division of labor, 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 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." [Marx’s note: "Historical and descriptive account of Brit. India, &c.," by Hugh Murray and James Wilson, &c., Edinburgh 1832, v. II., p. 449. The Indian loom is upright, i.e., the warp is stretched vertically."] It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to generation, and transmitted from father to son, that gives to the Hindu, as it does to the spider, this proficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindu weaver is very complicated, compared with that of a manufacturing laborer.
Capital, Volume I (1867)
Part IV, Chapter XIV (DIVISION OF LABOUR AND MANUFACTURE.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
கருத்துகள் இல்லை:
கருத்துரையிடுக