Rationalization and the Working Class

I.

Rationalization is not exclusively an invention of the bourgeoisie in search of a way out of the economic crisis that grips one European country after another. Technical progress, the centralization of production, and the division of labor are concomitant phenomena of capitalism from the very first day of its existence. Especially in times of crisis, the bourgeoisie resorts to measures such as reducing production costs and expanding markets to overcome the difficulties arising in this context and to bring production back into balance. In the historical arena, capitalism first appears in the form of the "rationalization" of handicrafts. After succeeding in bringing independent artisans and small-scale entrepreneurs under its influence, capitalism unites a larger number of producers in workshops, each of whom carried out their work independently. In the pursuit of increasing surplus value, capital had to take measures to enhance labor productivity.

Initially, the extension of the workday was limited by purely physical boundaries. Later, this extension met with resistance from the exploited. The bourgeoisie had no choice but to intensify labor or reduce the time necessary for producing the means of subsistence, thereby extending the unpaid portion of the workday to extract greater surplus value from the workers. The surplus value obtained through this latter method is called relative surplus value. Marx distinguishes strictly between two different production methods in relation to relative surplus value: the pressure on living labor power, which, from a class standpoint, finds its expression in the manufactory with its division of labor, and the efforts to change the means of production, which lead to mechanized commodity production and the emergence of large-scale industry. Both methods of rationalization are applied in all phases of the history of capitalism. They intertwine, flow into one another, and condition each other. At present, as European capitalism increasingly implements rationalization, the first form—i.e., the organization and division of labor—undoubtedly predominates. The improvement of the means of production still plays a very significant role but increasingly recedes into the background. Capital scarcity and, perhaps to an even greater extent, the lack of markets, which increases in connection with the difficulties of capital export, make it harder to acquire expensive, modern, high-performance machines. Today's rationalization primarily aims at the technical organization of production, the full utilization of machines, the concentration of production in the most favorable regions, the utmost division of labor, and the intensification of work. This is the characteristic feature of modern European rationalization, distinguishing it from the earlier technical upheavals of the capitalist economy since its inception.

The increase in surplus value, in other words, the reduction of the time necessary for the reproduction of labor power, is both the aim and the consequence of every technical advance and every reorganization of labor within the capitalist system. The reduction in the value of labor power increases the unpaid portion of the workday, thus increasing surplus value. Technical progress, in turn, promotes the extensive and intensive expansion of the workday, the prolongation of working hours, and the intensification of labor, which increases the value of labor power insofar as the heightened consumption of labor energy raises the costs of its reproduction. Both tendencies—the tendency to reduce and the tendency to increase the value of labor power—appear as constant phenomena in the history of capitalism, with the former tendency predominating. Although the quantity of subsistence goods necessary for the reproduction of the constantly increasing consumption of labor energy is continually raised, labor productivity grows even faster, thereby reducing the value of the larger quantity of food, etc., compared to the smaller quantities previously required. Today, the situation is somewhat different. Monopolistic capital prevents price reductions even when labor productivity has increased; in other words, it prevents the increased labor productivity from manifesting in a gradual reduction of the share of necessary labor in favor of surplus labor. Nevertheless, one factor remains in force that consistently works toward reducing the value of labor power. The partial functions of production are more easily grasped by workers than the production process as a whole. The number of workers who require no training increases, as does the number of industries where physical strength plays no role and is replaced by skill and agility. Skilled workers give way to semi-skilled workers, and the latter to unskilled workers. At the same time, men are replaced by women, and adults by youths. Under such circumstances, it is not difficult to see through the hypocrisy of some social democrats who, like Vandervelde in Belgium, advocate for enhanced vocational training as a countermeasure to the crisis of rationalization.

We have already pointed out that European capitalism, in the period of its final decline, is unable to invest substantial resources in fixed capital because this would presuppose capital and market opportunities that are not available today. Its efforts are therefore essentially limited to intensifying exploitation, particularly through the application of certain exploitation methods that affect the profit rate less than others. "There are many moments of labor intensification that involve an increase in constant capital relative to variable capital, thus a fall in the profit rate, such as when a worker has to oversee a larger mass of machinery. Here, as with most processes that serve the production of relative surplus value, the same causes that produce an increase in the rate of surplus value may also entail a fall in the mass of surplus value, given the magnitudes of the total capital employed. But there are other moments of intensification, such as the accelerated speed of machinery (today we would add: the assembly line—Ed.), which, while consuming more raw material in the same amount of time and wearing out the fixed capital, the machinery, more quickly, do not significantly alter the ratio of its value to the price of the labor that sets it in motion. Above all, it is the extension of working hours, this invention of modern industry, that increases the mass of appropriated surplus labor without substantially changing the ratio of the labor power employed to the constant capital it sets in motion, and which, in fact, tends to relatively reduce the latter." (Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Book 1, Chapter XIV.)

Indeed, the offensive against the eight-hour workday is a concomitant phenomenon of rationalization. However, the proletariat's resistance to the extension of the workday is so strong that capital, in its effort to take the path of least resistance, primarily resorts to increasing labor intensity. Work according to the system of the uninterrupted chain on the assembly line, the full exploitation of every tenth of a second of the eight hours that workers spend in the factory—all this is nothing other than the logical consequence of that evolution and those production methods applied on a grand scale, as described by Marx in Capital. Rationalization in its current form is, in the history of capitalism, the most brutal and outrageous elimination of all unproductive moments of the workday. For the worker, rationalization means such a consumption of muscle and nerve strength that any comparison with earlier exploitation pales in contrast. "Yet it is understandable that in a type of work where it is not a matter of temporary paroxysms but of daily, repeated, regular uniformity, a breaking point must arise where the extension of the workday and the intensity of labor exclude each other, so that the prolongation of the workday is compatible only with a weaker degree of intensity, and conversely, a higher degree of intensity only with a shortening of the workday." (Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 13c, "Intensification of Labor.") —

II.

If the 16-, 14-, and 10-hour workdays of the past were incompatible with the consumption of labor energy due to the intensification of labor, today even the eight-hour workday is far too long, quite apart from the fact that the new exploitation methods pose a greater danger to the lives and health of workers. Marx states: "The daily value of the workforce is estimated based on its normal average duration or the normal lifespan of the worker and on the corresponding normal turnover of vital substance into activity appropriate to human nature. Up to a certain point, the greater wear and tear of labor power can be compensated by greater replacement." (All quotations are taken from Vol. III of Marx’s Capital.)

Thus, the extensive or intensive expansion of the workday increases the value of labor power. It has been calculated that an average worker exploited under the Taylor system requires not 50 grams but 339 grams of fat for the reproduction of the expended energy. In a certain sense, the high wages of American workers are merely an expression of the increased value of labor power, which would be destroyed if the worker were not provided with nutrition adequate to sustain their energy under the regime of rationalization. However, the intensification of labor can reach a degree beyond which an increase in wages can no longer compensate for the consumption of human energy. This is one of the greatest dangers threatening the working class. "By selling their labor power... the worker leaves its consumption within certain reasonable limits to the capitalist. He sells his labor power to preserve it, apart from its natural wear and tear, not to destroy it. By selling his labor power at its daily or weekly value, it is implicitly assumed that this labor power is not subjected to two days’ or two weeks’ wear and tear in a single day or week... A machine is not consumed in exact proportion to its use. The worker, on the other hand, deteriorates to a far greater extent than is apparent from the mere numerical accumulation of work." Elsewhere, Marx expresses this idea even more clearly: "Beyond this point, the wear and tear increases in geometric progression, and at the same time, all normal conditions for the reproduction and functioning of labor power are destroyed. The price of labor power and its degree of exploitation cease to be commensurable quantities." —

Technical progress also gives rise to unemployment. The same process that elevates the organizational structure of capital to a higher level, and thus causes the tendency of a constantly falling profit rate, reduces the quantum of surplus value generated by a given capital, as the number of workers that capital can employ decreases simultaneously. Capitalism immediately creates an economic reserve army as a specific concomitant phenomenon in all its historical phases. Just as the quantum of surplus value cannot be maintained at its previous high level or increased without a constant augmentation of the capital producing it, the number of workers cannot remain at the same level or grow without a constant increase in capital, because the number of workers employed by a given capital and the quantum of surplus value that capital is capable of producing are constantly diminishing quantities. The further the accumulation of capital progresses, the more this tendency intensifies. Marx states: "On the one hand, the additional capital formed in the course of accumulation attracts fewer and fewer workers relative to its size. On the other hand, the old capital, periodically reproduced in a new composition, repels more and more of the workers it previously employed."

In the past, every crisis and every consequent rationalization threw enormous masses of wage workers onto the streets, but capitalism itself could create a remedy for this social evil by preparing a new expansion of markets, a new period of prosperity, in which capital not only reabsorbed the displaced workers but also employed an even greater number of new labor forces in production. It was only after the introduction of mechanized production that technical progress condemned certain categories of workers employed in manufactories and handicrafts to permanent unemployment and starvation. There was a time when some apologists of the capitalist system sought to prove that technical progress under a capitalist regime does not cause unemployment. According to these economists, mechanized production should employ as many workers as it displaces through the introduction of machines. Marx countered: 1) a machine is only profitable if the value of the labor power it saves exceeds its own value; 2) the capital invested in machines consists not only of variable capital but also, and perhaps primarily, of constant capital, so that the number of workers employed in machine production must lag fatally behind the number of workers displaced by the use of machines. Nevertheless, certain factors existed that, after the introduction of machines, created an increased demand for labor in other sectors of the economy. The increased production required greater quantities of raw materials and transportation, and the consequent price reduction resulting from mechanized production expanded production in industries where the products of mechanized production were used as raw materials or means of production.

These factors, which once mitigated unemployment and offered opportunities to employ some of the unemployed in other sectors, have lost their validity in connection with modern rationalization methods. We have already emphasized that the organization and division of labor are the characteristic features of current rationalization. Nowadays, rationalization is not so much focused on the introduction of new machines as on the creation of new methods and means that serve the intensified exploitation of labor power. Therefore, one cannot expect the growth of the machine industry to absorb even a small fraction of the unemployed, the victims of rationalization. As long as production is not expanded, the quantity of raw materials to be processed is not increased, and existing monopolies prevent price reductions, the rationalization process will not be able to expand production in the sectors that use the products of "rationalized" enterprises either as raw materials or as means of production. Unemployment grows both intensively and extensively because the reduction in qualifications shortens the training period. Youths who previously remained outside the labor market for several years are now thrown onto it en masse, consequently increasing the number of job seekers. It is irrelevant "whether this overpopulation takes the more conspicuous form of repulsion of already employed workers or the less noticeable but no less effective form of impeded absorption of the surplus worker population into its usual channels" (Marx). The unemployment accompanying current rationalization cannot disappear. It will have the gravest consequences not only for the unemployed themselves but also for the workers who are still employed and exploited.

The enormous mass of the unemployed must sooner or later break through the laws regulating the supply and demand of labor power. Under the capitalist regime, which is based on the principle of free competition, a commodity is sold at its value. Market prices, determined through supply and demand in the course of competition, fluctuate above and below this fixed point depending on the economic situation. The increase in productivity and the relative reduction of variable capital have the tendency to create a constant proportional overpopulation. Even under the healthy and "normal" capitalism of the pre-war era, labor power held a special position among other commodities in that its supply always tended to exceed demand, because the production of labor power could not be arbitrarily restricted or expanded like the production of other goods. Hence the tendency of capitalism to push the price of labor power below its value. As long as the proportional overpopulation did not reach enormous proportions, trade unions could regulate the supply on the labor market. But those times are gone forever.

III.

Prolonged, widespread unemployment, however, paralyzes the resistance of the workers. Under the pressure of capital, which is now better organized than ever and regulates demand in the labor market, the workers retreat. Workers' organizations are no longer able to force the supply into certain limits. The miserable plight of the unemployed leads to a lowering of the living standards of the employed workers, forcing the latter to accept wage cuts, extended working hours, and intolerable working conditions. Absolute pauperization, which bourgeois and social-opportunist critics of Marxism so eagerly deny, becomes a bitter reality that fully confirms the predictions of Karl Marx’s so-called "utopian and detached-from-reality" theory. "The production of a relative overpopulation or the release of workers thus proceeds even more rapidly than the technical transformation of the production process, which is already accelerated by the progress of accumulation, and the corresponding proportional decrease of the variable capital component relative to the constant. As the means of production increase in scope and effectiveness, they become less a means of employing workers; this relationship is itself modified by the fact that, as the productivity of labor grows, capital increases its supply of labor more rapidly than its demand for workers." (Marx, Capital, Chapter 23.)

The pressure exerted by the economic reserve army forces the employed workers to accept a greater consumption of labor energy through the extension of work (the current offensive against the eight-hour workday) or through the intensification of labor (Taylor system, assembly line) or, finally, through a combination of both. Marx states: "With the number of workers it commands remaining the same or even decreasing, variable capital grows if the individual worker delivers more labor and thus his wages increase, even though the price of labor remains the same or falls, only more slowly than the mass of labor increases. The increase in variable capital then becomes an index of more labor, but not of more employed workers. Every capitalist has an absolute interest in extracting a given quantum of labor from a smaller rather than an equally cheap or even cheaper larger number of workers." Unemployment, which enables capitalists to extract greater surplus value from the individual worker, simultaneously allows them to throw new masses of workers onto the streets. "The overwork of the employed portion of the working class swells the ranks of its reserve, while conversely, the increased pressure that the latter exerts on the former through its competition forces the former to overwork and submit to the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working class to forced idleness through the overwork of the other part, and vice versa, becomes a means of enrichment for the individual capitalist." (Capital, p. 653.)

The most significant and unhealthiest factor of the modern crisis, which is becoming a permanent phenomenon, is the fact that the price of labor power is lowered under the pressure of the economic reserve army at the very moment when the value of labor power increases due to intensified exploitation and the extension of the workday. Price and value diverge so greatly that the reproduction of labor power at the reduced wage rates ultimately becomes impossible. Marx cites Dr. Richardson’s conclusions in Capital regarding the results of labor intensification: "He (the blacksmith) can strike so many hammer blows daily, take so many steps, breathe so many times, perform so much work, and live an average of, say, 50 years. He is forced to strike more blows, take more steps, breathe more often in a day, and increase his daily life’s task by a third. He makes the attempt, and the result is that for a limited period he performs more work and dies at 37 instead of 50." The increased consumption of labor energy can be compensated up to a certain limit by raising wages. However, the bourgeoisie currently does not increase wages but reduces them. It can afford this luxury. Labor power is available in abundance. When one worker is worn out, another is always ready to take their place. Capitalist production thus produces, with the extension of the workday (and its intensification), not only the stunting of human labor power, which is deprived of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also the premature exhaustion and destruction of labor power itself. It extends the worker’s production time within a given period by shortening their lifespan." These lines are taken from the first volume of Capital, published in 1867. Sixty years have passed since then, and Marx’s strictly scientific conclusions are confirmed today, literally word for word.

One very important point must be added to what has been said. While on the one hand the price of labor power falls far below its value, which has increased due to intensified exploitation, on the other hand, monopolies raise the average prices of necessities required for the reproduction of labor power. The proletariat finds itself, as it were, in iron clamps: wages lie below the value of labor power, while the prices of all other goods move above their actual value. In earlier crisis periods, all commodity prices fell, so wage cuts were not felt as acutely. Modern rationalization, however, has pushed cartelization to its utmost limit. All major industries are monopolized. Whereas monopoly profits were once primarily achieved by absorbing a portion of the profits of non-cartelized industries, today the expansion of monopolies increasingly occurs at the expense of consumers. Insofar as these are wage workers, such a process means a constant reduction in real wages. The worker, who already receives less than their labor power is worth, is fleeced again in the shops where they buy the products necessary for their existence, not to mention taxes, the burden of which becomes ever more unbearable. Rationalization thus "rationalizes" the entire economic life from top to bottom, from production to consumption. It condemns the worker to certain destruction, calculated with mathematical precision. —

In the matter of modern rationalization, social democrats and trade unions have placed themselves entirely at the disposal of the bourgeoisie. They have taken it upon themselves to reconcile the workers with the suffering and privations associated with the new regime of tenfold exploitation. The workers would have long since risen against all this misery and hunger if it were not for the whippers-in, recruited by the class enemies of the proletariat from within its own ranks. These people still manage, according to old custom, to cloak their reactionary actions behind "Marxist" phrases. They try to convince the workers that technical progress is the necessary starting point and guarantee of the ultimate triumph of socialism, that as the bourgeoisie develops the forces of production, the realization of socialism draws nearer and becomes inevitable, that with the development of capitalism the socialist elements within it also develop, and that any opposition to technical progress is reactionary. Technical progress is therefore worth great sacrifices. It is only thanks to these sacrifices that we now stand on the eve of a socialist society. Consequently, they are necessary. This is roughly the argumentation of the trade unions and social democracy. That they preach self-sacrifice to the proletariat is nothing new.

Perhaps one must come to terms with this all the more since the reformist organizations today no longer demand sacrifices in the name of the fatherland and its defense, as they did during the World War, but in the name of progress and socialism. The proletariat is not the subject but the object of capitalist production. It does not manage production but submits to it. The worker does not rebel against the machines but against the capitalist use of the machines. The proletariat is not opposed to new, technically superior, and more efficient machines; rather, it strives to liberate the development of industry and technology from capitalist fetters. Within the framework of capitalist society, technical progress is a matter for the bourgeoisie, and therefore it is not the task of the workers to assist it in intensifying exploitation. —

IV.

Karl Marx never suggested that the proletariat take on a task that the bourgeoisie is responsible for solving. Naturally, the proletariat should not destroy machines, as the Luddites or machine-breakers did 100 years ago in England. No communist today would advocate their destruction. If the proletariat is to rise, it must do so only against the capitalist exploitation of machines. Marx states in Capital, Chapter 13: "Since machinery, considered in itself, shortens labor time, while when employed capitalistically it lengthens the workday; in itself it lightens labor, while capitalistically employed it increases its intensity; in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of nature, while capitalistically employed it subjugates man through the forces of nature; in itself it increases the wealth of the producer, while capitalistically employed it impoverishes him, etc."

The fundamental error of the trade unions and social democracy lies in their failure to distinguish between the machine as such and the capitalist methods of its exploitation. Incidentally, the trade unions align themselves with bourgeois economists. "The bourgeois economist simply declares that considering machinery in itself proves conclusively that all those palpable contradictions are mere illusions of common reality, but in themselves, and thus in theory, do not exist at all." As if anticipating that sixty years later the trade unions would advance these arguments, Marx added: "Thus he spares himself any further mental effort and, in addition, burdens his opponent with the stupidity of fighting not the capitalist application of machinery but the machine itself. By no means does the bourgeois economist deny that temporary inconveniences arise from this, but where is there a medal without a reverse side! For him, any use of machinery other than the capitalist one is impossible. The exploitation of the worker by the machine is therefore, for him, identical to the exploitation of the machine by the worker."

Insofar as rationalization leads to technical improvement, the introduction of new machines, the closure of unprofitable enterprises, the centralization of production in better-equipped factories and mines, the relocation of production centers to areas technically and economically most suitable, the reorganization of production in every enterprise, and the division of labor across various enterprises—each of which loses its technical independence and becomes increasingly a link in the production system as a whole—we cannot, in itself, oppose this. However, modern rationalization is primarily characterized by the monstrous intensification of human labor. Alongside the aspects of technical progress just listed, there are others, among which the assembly line and the stopwatch—which records time with the relentlessness of the most brutal taskmaster—play the leading role. And it is precisely here that social democrats and trade unions, under the pretext of serving technical progress, force the workers to submit unconditionally to monstrous exploitation, to patiently and silently endure production methods that drain their blood and marrow. They further recommend that workers accept the methods of the Taylor system, with its tormenting, exhausting details of "scientific" exploitation, even though this has nothing more to do with technical progress. The trade unions that assist the bourgeoisie in "rationalizing" industry are thus not defending technical progress but blatant, shameless capitalist exploitation.

One cannot speak of European rationalization without first briefly outlining the situation in which it takes place, i.e., the period of the decline of capitalism. In the decline of European capitalism, monopoly organizations are an important complement to the overall picture. Rosa Luxemburg once said that monopolistic capitalism "inevitably brings about stagnation and decay." Today’s capitalism indeed accumulates within itself more and more elements of stagnation, which, like an abscess, corrode social development. Capital increasingly becomes an obstacle to the course of history. Of course, this assertion must not be interpreted mechanically. One cannot precisely determine the line that marks the watershed between an ascending and descending curve. One cannot say: Up to this moment, capitalism is a progressive phenomenon; from that point, stagnation begins. Every entity carries within itself, from its inception, the elements of its decline—those forces destined to destroy it. Thus, the capitalist monopoly, from the first day of its existence, reveals reactionary tendencies. The further the monopoly developed, the stronger these regressive tendencies became, and today the elements of stagnation and decay significantly outweigh those of progress. Alongside desperate attempts to organize production on a gigantic scale, to centralize and concentrate it to an unprecedented degree—attempts that are undoubtedly beneficial insofar as they create new productive forces and advance production methods—we can observe a whole array of negative factors that transform the monopoly into the most formidable obstacle to the further development of productive forces.

Insofar as cartels and trusts organize production on a national and international scale, they advance the development of productive forces. But more often, monopoly organizations hinder this development. In many countries, they support backward industries that would have long disappeared under free competition. By eliminating competition, they frequently prevent the practical application of the latest inventions. The cartels and trusts that drive up prices, thereby lowering real wages and imposing ever harsher working conditions on workers, eliminate the incentive that motivates capital to adopt new machines and utilize the latest improvements. It is well known that the capitalist attitude toward modern machines often prevents their use in cases where they would be highly profitable under a socialist regime. When wages have fallen extraordinarily low, the use of machinery is hindered and, from the standpoint of capital—whose profit stems not from the labor applied but from the labor paid for—becomes superfluous, often impossible. "The Yankees have invented stone-breaking machines; the English do not use them because the 'wretch' (a technical term in English political economy for the agricultural worker) who does this work receives such a small portion of his labor paid that machinery would increase the cost of production for the capitalist. In England, women are still occasionally used instead of horses to pull canal boats (Marx wrote this in 1867) because the labor required to produce horses and machines is a mathematically determinable quantity, while that required to maintain women of the surplus population falls below all calculation." (Capital, Chapter 13.) The law that states that machines, which could be of the greatest benefit in a socialist society, prove entirely useless in a capitalist society deprives capitalism of its interest in technical progress once wages fall below a certain level. Monopolies amplify the effect of this law by further reducing wages and intensifying the exploitation of the workforce. Rationalization will provide the capitalists with such an enormous number of cheap labor forces that the bourgeoisie can manage without technical progress (except, of course, for the refinement of the assembly line and stopwatch systems, which are necessary to extract the last spark of energy from the worker).

The declaration by trade unions and social democracy about the necessity of supporting technical progress thus appears, in light of Marxist analysis, as an obvious betrayal of the working class. It cannot under any circumstances be the task of the proletariat to assist the bourgeoisie in reorganizing production. However, the working class can still participate in technical progress in its own way—not by collaborating with the exploiters, but by sharpening the class struggle. The working class fulfills its historical mission in the development of productive forces only through relentless struggle against the exploiters. The proletariat cannot wage this struggle through cooperation with its class enemies or by adapting to the framework of bourgeois society; rather, it must use every means to shatter this framework. Modern rationalization means an immense intensification of exploitation. Today, a worker accomplishes in eight hours what they previously did in twelve. The fight for the eight-hour workday or, as the KPD now resurrects its old slogan—"control of production"—does not help the proletariat; on the contrary, it is a tactic to throw sand in the workers’ eyes, to preach something that does not exist. All forces must be mobilized to make it clear to the workers: It is not solely about the eight-hour workday or higher wages; there is only one way to counter capitalist rationalization with its ever-increasing exploitation: the overthrow of bourgeois society! The conquest of political power by the proletariat and the establishment of a communist social order! —