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Chapter 1 Labor and Labor Power All forms of life sustain themselves on their natural environment; thus all conduct activities for the purpose of appropriating natural products to their own use. Plants absorb moisture, minerals, and sunlight; animals feed on plant life or prey on other animals. But to seize upon the materials ofnature ready made is not work; work is an activity that alters these materials from their natural state to improve their usefulness. The bird, the beaver, the spider, the bee, and the termite, in building nests, dams, webs, and hives, all may be said to work. Thus the human species shares with others the activity ofacting upon nature in a manner which changes its forms to make them more suitable for its needs. However, what is important about human work is not its similarities with that of other animals, but the crucial differences that mark it as the polar opposite. "We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms oflabour that remind us of the mere animal," wrote Marx in the first volume of Capital. "We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.'" * * Thus labor in its human form was called by Aristotle intelligent action; Aristotle, despite his vain effort to find a single cause underlying all the products of nature, animals, and humans, gave the earliest form to this distinctive principle of human labor: "Art indeed consists in the conception of the result to be produced before its realization in the material.,,2 In recent times, the artistic mind has often grasped this special feature of human activity better than the technical mind; for example, Paul Valery: "Man acts; he exercises his powers on a material foreign to him; he separates his operations from their material infrastructure, and he has a clearly defined awareness of this; hence he can think out his operations and co-ordinate them 31 32 Labor and Monopoly Capital Human work is conscious and purposive, while the work ofother animals is instinctuaL *Instinctive activities are inborn rather than learned, and represent a relatively inflexible pattern for the release ofenergy upon the receipt of specific stimuli. It has been observed, for example, that a caterpillar which has completed half of its cocoon will continue to manufacture the second half without concern even ifthe first halfis taken away. A more striking illustration ofinstinctual labor is seen in the following: The South African weaverbird builds a complicated nest of sticks, with a knotted strand ofhorsehair as foundation. A pair was isolated and bred for five generations under canaries, out ofsight oftheir fellows and without their usual nest-building materials. In the sixth generation, still in captivity but with access to the right materials, they built a nest perfect even to the knot ofhorsehair. 5 In human work, by contrast, the directing mechanism is the power of conceptual thought, originating in an altogether exceptional central nervous system. As anthropologists have pointed out, the physical structure of the anthropoid ape is not entirely unsuited to tool making and tool using. The ape's hand is an adequate, if relatively coarse, instrument, and because the lower limbs as well as the upper are fitted with opposable thumbs, it has been said that the ape has four hands. But it is not, first ofall, in the hands or posture that the human advantage lies. Among the physical differences between humans and apes, it is the relative enlargement of nearly all parts of the brain, and especially the pronounced enlargement of the frontal and parietal parts ofthe cerebral hemispheres, which is most important in accounting for the human with each other before performing them; he can assign to himself the most multifarious tasks and adapt to many different materials, and it is precisely this capacity ofordering his intentions or dividing his proposals into separate operations which he calls intelligence. He does not merge into the materials of his undertaking, but proceeds from this material to his mental picture, from his mind to his model, and at each moment exchanges what he wants against what he can do, and what he can do against what he achieves. ,,3 * Fourier thought he recognized in this the cause of "happiness" among animals and the "anguish of repugnant labor" among humans: "Labour, nevertheless, forms the delight of various creatures, such as beavers, bees, wasps, ants .... God has provided them with a social [he might havc said biological] mechanism which attracts to industry, and causes happiness to be found in industry. Why should he not have accorded us the same favour as these animals? What a difference between their industrial condition and ours!,,4 But to see in the noninstinctual character of human labor the direct cause of the "anguish of repugnant labor," one must skip over all the intervening stage's of social development which separate the carly emergence of human labor out ofpre-human forms, from labor in its modem form. Labor and Labor Power 33 capacity for work well-conceptualized in advance and independent of the guidance ofinstinct. * "Men who made tools ofstandard type," as Oakley says, "must have formed in their minds images ofthe ends to which they laboured. Human culture ... is the outcome ofthis capacity for conceptual thought.,,7 It is true, as experiments in animal behavior have shown, that animals are not entirely devoid ofthe power to learn, or to conceive rudimentary ideas, or to solve simple problems. Thus, a creature with as primitive a nervous system as the angleworm can learn to thread a maze; chimpanzees can be stimulated to "invent" and make tools, such as extensions of sticks, that enable them to reach food, or to stack boxes for the same purpose. As a result, some anthropologists and physiologists have concluded that the difference between the human and the nonhuman animal is not a difference in kind but in degree. But when a difference ofdegree is so enormous as the gap that exists between the learning and conceptual abilities of humans and even the most adaptable of other animals, it may properly be treated, for the purposes of our present discussion, as a difference in kind. And, we may add, whatever learning capacities may be stimulated in animals through ingenious forms of human tutelage, it has not proved possible to stimulate in them an ability to manage symbolic representation, especially in its highest form, articulate speech. Without symbols and speech, conceptual thought must remain rudimentary and, moreover, cannot be freely transmitted throughout the group or to succeeding generations: Culture without continuity of experience is, of course, impossible. But what sort ofcontinuity ofexperience is prerequisite to culture? Itis not the continuity which comes from the communication ofexperience by imitation, for we find this among apes. Clearly, it is continuity on the subjective side rather than on the objective, or overt, that is essential. As we have shown, it is the symbol, particularly in word form, which provides this element of continuity in the tOOl-experience of man. And, fmally, it is this factor of continuity in man's tool-experience that has made accumulation and progress, in short, a material culture, possible.8 *The general increase in brain size is important, but "certain parts ofthe brain have increased in size much more than others. As functional maps of the cortex of the brain show, the human sensory-motor cortex is not just an enlargement of that of an ape. The areas for the hand, especially the thumb, in man are tremendously enlarged, and this is an integral part of the structural base that makes the skillful use of the hand possible .. , . "The same is true for other cortical areas. Much ofthe cortex in a monkey is still engaged in the motor and sensory functions. In man it is the areas adjacent to the primary centers that are most expanded. These areas are concerned with skills, memory, foresight and language; that is, with the mental faculties that make human social life possible.,,6 34 Labor and Monopoly Capital Thus work as purposive action, guided by the intelligence, is the special product ofhumankind. But humankind is itselfthe special product ofthis form of labor. "By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature," wrote Marx.9 Writing in 1876, Frederick Engels had worked out, in terms of the anthropological knowledge of his time, the theory that: "First labour, after it and then with it speech-these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man." "The hand," he maintained, "is not only the organ oflabour, it is also the product oflabour. ,,10 His essay, called "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man," was limited by the state of scientific knowledge ofhis day, and some of its details may be faulty or wrong-as for example his implication that the "undeveloped larynx ofthe ape" is inadequate to produce speech sounds. But his fundamental idea has again found favor in the eyes of anthropologists, particularly in the light of recent discoveries ofstone tools in association with "near-men" or "man-apes." In an article on tools and human evolution, Sherwood L. Washburn says: Prior to these findings the prevailing view held that man evolved nearly to his present structural state and then discovered tools and the new ways oflife that they made possible. Now it appears that man-apes-creatures able to run but not yet walk on two legs, and with brains no larger than those of apes now living-had already learned to make and use tools. It follows that the structure of modem man must be the result ofthe change in the terms ofnatural selection that carne with the tool-using way of life.... Itwas the success of the simplest tools that started the whole trend ofhurnan evolution and led to the civilizations of today."I 1 Labor that transcends mere instinctual activity is thus the force which created humankind and the force by which humankind created the world as we know it. The possibility of all the various social forms which have arisen and which may yet arise depends in the last analysis upon this distinctive characteristic of human labor. Where the division offunction within other animal species has been assigned by nature and stamped upon the genotype in the form of instinct, humanity is capable of an infinite variety offunctions and division offunction on the basis offamily, group, and social assignment. In all other species, the directing force and the resulting activity, instinct and execution, are indivisible. The spider which weaves its web in accordance with a biological urge cannot depute this function to another spider; it carries on this activity because that is its nature. But for men and women, any instinctual patterns of work which they may have possessed at the dawn of their evolution have long since atrophied or been submerged by social forms. *Thus in humans, as distinguished from animals, the *Veblen's "instinct ofworkmanship" can be understood only in a figurative sense, as a desire or proclivity to work well. A British "social psychologist" expresses himself somewhat agnostically on this matter: "Animals work too ... and do so largely through Labor and Labor Power 35 unity between the motive force of labor and the labor itself is not inviolable. The unity ofconception and execution may be dissolved. The conception must still precede and govern execution, but the idea as conceived by one may be executed by another. The driving force oflabor remains human consciousness, but the unity between the two may be broken in the individual and reasserted in the group, the workshop, the community, the society as a whole. Finally, the human capacity to perform work, which Marx called "labor power," must not be confused with the power of any nonhuman agency, whether natural or man made. Human labor, whether directly exercised or stored in such products as tools, machinery, or domesticated animals, represents the sole resource ofhumanity in confronting nature. Thus for humans in society, labor power is a special category, separate and inexchangeable with any other, simply because it is human. Only one who is the master ofthe labor ofothers will confuse labor power with any other agency for performing a task, because to him, steam, horse, water, or human muscle which turns his mill are viewed as equivalents, as "factors ofproduction. " For individuals who allocate their own labor (or a community which does the same), the difference between using labor power as against any other power is a difference upon which the entire "economy" turns. And from the point of view ofthe species as a whole, this difference is also crucial, since every individual is the proprietor of a portion ofthe total labor power ofthe community, the society, and the species; It is this consideration that forms the starting point for the labor theory of value, which bourgeois economists feel they may safely disregard because they are concerned not with social relations but with price relations, not with labor but with production, and not with the human point of view but with the bourgeois point ofview. Freed from the rigid paths dictated in animals by instinct, human labor becomes indeterminate, and its various determinate forms henceforth are the products not ofbiology but ofthe complex interaction between tools and social relations, technology and society. The subject ofour discussion is not labor "in general," but labor in the forms it takes under capitalist relations of production. Capitalist production requires exchange relations, commodities, and money, but its differentia specifica is the purchase and sale oflabor power. For this purpose, three basic conditions become generalized throughout society. First, workers are separated from the means with which production is carried instinctive patterns ofbehaviour, which are the product ofevolutionary processes. It is not clear whether man has innate patterns of work behaviour or not." He adds: "It is possible that man's capacity for learnt, persistent, goal-directed behaviour in groups is such an innate pattem.,,12 But the sum ofthe wisdom in this statement is that the human capacity to work noninstinctually may itself be called an instinct. This seems to be a useless and confusing attempt to force an assimilation of human and animal behavior. 36 Labor and Monopoly Capital on, and can gain access to them only by selling their labor power to others. Second, workers are freed oflegal constraints, such as serfdom or slavery, that prevent them from disposing of their own labor power. Third, the purpose of the employment of the worker becomes the expansion of a unit of capital belonging to the employer, who is thus functioning as a capitalist The labor process therefore begins with a contract or agreement governing the conditions ofthe sale oflabor power by the worker and its purchase by the employer. It is important to take note ofthe historical character ofthis phenomenon. While the purchase and sale of labor power has existed from antiquity, * a substantial class of wage-workers did not begin to form in Europe until the fourteenth century, and did not become numerically significant until the rise of industrial capitalism (that is, the production of commodities on a capitalist basis, as against mercantile capitalism, which merely exchanged the surplus products of prior forms of production) in the eighteenth century. It has been the numerically dominant form for little more than a century, and this in only a few countries. In the United States, perhaps four-fifths ofthe population was self-employed in the early part of the nineteenth century. By 1870 this had declined to about one-third and by 1940 to no more than one-fifth; by 1970 only about one-tenth ofthe population was self-employed. We are thus dealing with a social relation ofextremely recent date. The rapidity with which it has won supremacy in a number ofcountries emphasizes the extraordinary power ofthe tendency ofcapitalist economies to convert all other forms oflabor into hired labor. The worker enters into the employment agreement because social conditions leave him or her no other way to gain a livelihood. The employer, on the other hand, is the possessor of a unit of capital which he is endeavoring to enlarge, and in order to do so he converts part ofit into wages. Thus is set in motion the labor process, which, while it is in general a process for creating useful values, has now also become specifically a process for the expansion of capital, the creation of a profit. ** From this point on, it becomes foolhardy to view the labor process purely from a technical standpoint, as a mere mode of labor. It has become in addition a process of accumulation of capital. And, * Aristotle includes "service for hire----<>f this, one kind is employed in the mechanical arts, the other in unskilled and bodily labor" along with commerce and usury as the three divisions of exchange which form an unnatural mode ofwealth-getting, the natural or "true and proper" modes being through livestock raising and husbandry. He seems, however, to have in mind the sale 0/one slabor power rather than the purchase o/that 0/others as a means to wealth, an attitude the precise opposite of that which is characteristic in the capitalist era.13 ** Thus Marx says of the process ofproduction that "considered ... as the unity of the labour-process and the process of producing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production, or capitalist production ofcommodities.,,14 Labor and Labor Power 37 moreover, it is the latter aspect which dominates in the mind and activities of the capitalist, into whose hands the control over the labor process has passed. In everything that follows, therefore, we shall be considering the manner in which the labor process is dominated and shaped by the accumulation of capital.* Labor, like all life processes and bodily functions, is an inalienable property ofthe human individual. Muscle and brain cannot be separated from persons possessing them; one cannot endow another with one's own capacity for work, no matter at what price, any more than one can eat, sleep, or perform sex acts for another. Thus, in the exchange, the worker does not surrender to the capitalist his or her capacity for work. The worker retains it, and the capitalist can take advantage ofthe bargain only by setting the worker to work. It is ofcourse understood that the useful effects or products oflabor belong to the capitalist. But what the worker sells, and what the capitalist buys, is not an agreed amount oflabor, but thepower to labor over an agreed period oftime. This inability to purchase labor, which is an inalienable bodily and mental function, and the necessity to purchase the power to perform it, is so fraught with consequences for the entire capitalist mode ofproduction that it must be investigated more closely. When a master employs the services ofa beast ofburden in his production process, he can do little more than direct into useful channels such natural abilities as strength and endurance. When he employs bees in the production ofhoney, silkworms in the making ofsilk, bacteria in the fermentation ofwine, or sheep in the growing of wool, he can only turn to his own advantage the instinctual activities or biological functions of these forms of life. Babbage gave a fascinating example: A most extraordinary species of manufacture ... has been contrived by an officer ofengineers residing at Munich. It consists oflace, and veils, with open patterns in them, made entirely by caterpillars. The following is the mode of proceeding adopted:-He makes a paste ofthe leaves ofthe plant, which is the usual food of the species of caterpillar he employs, and spreads it thinly over a stone, or other flat substance. He then, with a camel-hair pencil dipped in olive oil, draws upon the coating of paste the pattem he wishes the insects to * This is not the place for a general discussion ofthe capital-accumulation process, and the economic laws which enforce it on the capitalist regardless of his wishes. The best discussion remains that ofMarx, and occupies much ofthe first volume ofCapital. especially Part VII. A very clear and compressed exposition of the capitalist drive for accumulation, considered both as subjective desire and objective necessity, is to be found in Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory o/Capitalist Development (New York, 1942), pp. 79-83 and 92-95. This should be supplemented with Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, Monopoly Capital, which is devoted to the conditions of accumulation in the monopoly period of capitalism (New York, 1966; see especially pp. 42-44 and 67-71). I J 38 Labor and Monopoly Capital leave open. This stone is then placed in an inclined position, and a number of the caterpillars are placed at the bottom. A peculiar species is chosen, which spins a strong web; and the animals commencing at the bottom. eat and spin their way up to the top, carefully avoiding every part touched by the oil, but devouring all the rest of the paste. The extreme lightness of these veils, combined with some strength, is truly surprising.,,15 Notwithstanding the ingenuity displayed by this officer, it is evident that the entire process is circumscribed by the capacities and predisposition ofthe caterpillar; and so it is with every form of the use of nonhuman labor. It is implied in all such employments that the master must put up with the definite natural limitations ofhis servitors. Thus, in taking the labor power of animals, he at the same time takes their labor, because the two, while distinguishable in theory, are more or less identical in practice, and the most cunning contrivances can from the labor power ofthe animal only minor variations of actual labor. Human labor, on the other hand, because it is informed and directed by an understanding which has been socially and culturally developed, is capable of a vast range of productive activities. The active labor processes which reside in potential in the labor power of humans are so diverse as to type, manner of performance, etc., that for all practical purposes they may be said to be infinite, all the more so as new modes oflabor can easily be invented more rapidly than they can be exploited. The capitalist finds in this infinitely malleable character ofhuman labor the essential resource for the expansion of his capital. It is known that human labor is able to produce more than it consumes, and this capacity for "surplus labor" i~ sometimes treated as a special and mystical endowment of humanity or of its labor. In reality it is nothing of the sort, but is merely a prolongation of working time beyond the point where labor has reproduced itself, or in other words brought into being its own means of subsistence or their equivalent. This time will vary with the intensity and productivity of labor, as well as with the changing requirements of "subsistence," but for any given state of these it is a definite duration. The "peculiar" capacity of labor power to produce for the capitalist after it has reproduced itself is therefore nothing but the extension of work time beyond the point where it could otherwise come to a halt. An ox too will have this capacity, and grind out more com than it will eat if kept to the task by training and compulsion. The distinctive capacity of human labor power is therefore not its ability to produce a surplus, but rather its intelligent and purposive character, which gives it infinite adaptability and which produces the social and cultural conditions for enlarging its own productivity, so that its surplus product may be continuously enlarged. From the point of view of the capitalist, this many-sided potentiality of humans in society is the basis upon which is built the enlargement ofhis capital. He therefore takes up every means ofincreasing Labor and Labor Power 39 the output ofthe labor power he has purchased when he sets it to work as labor. The means he employs may vary from the enforcement upon the worker ofthe longest possible working day in the early period ofcapitalism to the use ofthe most productive instruments of labor and the greatest intensity of labor, but they are always aimed at realizing from the potential inherent in labor power the greatest useful effect oflabor, for it is this that will yield for him the greatest surplus and thus the greatest profit. But if the capitalist builds upon this distinctive quality and potential of human labor power, it is also this quality, by its very indeterminacy, which places before him his greatest challenge and problem. The coin oflabor has its obverse side: in purchasing labor power that can do much, he is at the same time purchasing an undefined quality and quantity. What he buys is infinite in potential, but in its realization it is limited by the subjective state of the workers, by their previous history, by the general social conditions under which they work as well as the particular conditions of the enterprise, and by the technical setting of their labor. The work actually performed will be affected by these and many other factors, including the organization ofthe process and the forms of supervision over it, if any. This is all the more true since the technical features of the labor process are now dominated by the social features which the capitalist has introduced: that is to say, the new relations ofproduction. Having been forced to sell their labor power to another, the workers also surrender their interest in the labor process, which has now been "alienated." The labor process has become the responsibility of the capitalist. In this setting of antagonistic relations of production, the problem of realizing the "full usefulness" of the labor power he has bought becomes exacerbated by the opposing interests of those for whose purposes the labor process is carried on, and those who, on the other si<;le, carry it on. Thus when the capitalist buys buildings, materials, tools, machinery, etc., he can evaluate with precision their place in the labor process. He knows that a certain portion of his outlay will be transferred to each unit of production, and his accounting practices allocate these in the form ofcosts or depreciation. But when he buys labor time, the outcome is far from being either so certain or so definite that it can be reckoned in this way, with precision and in advance. This is merely an expression of the fact that the portion of his capital expended on labor power is the "variable" portion, which undergoes an increase in the process of production; for him, the question is how great that increase will be. lt thus becomes essential for the capitalist that control over the labor process pass from the hands of the worker into his own. This transition presents itself in history as the progressive alienation of the process of J 40 Labor and Monopoly Capital production from the worker; to the capitalist, it presents itself as the problem ofmanagement.