The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
April 2003
Nathan Rosenberg *
Karl Marx on the
Economic Role of Science
The Journal of Political Economy
Volume 82, Issue 4
July-Aug. 1974
713-728.
It is not the articles made, but how they are made,
and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economical
epochs. [Marx 1906, p. 200]
Index
II – Science and Impersonal Machinery
IV – Supply-Side Considerations
HHC: titles and index added
This paper
examines Marx’s treatment of rising resource productivity and technological
change under capitalism. Little
attention has been given to Marx’s view of the role which science plays in
these processes. It is obvious that Marx
(and Engels) attach the greatest importance to the
development of modern science, but the way in which scientific progress meshes
with the rest of the Marxian system has not been fully understood. The paper analyzes Marx’s treatment of the
factors which account for the growth of scientific knowledge as well as
capitalist society’s changing capacity to incorporate this knowledge into the
productive process.
The purpose of this paper is to examine certain aspects of Marx’s treatment
of rising resource productivity and technological change under capitalism. Many of the most interesting aspects of Marx’s
treatment of technological change have been ignored, perhaps because of the
strong polemical orientation which readers from all shades of the political
spectrum seem to bring to their reading of Marx. As a result, much has been written about the
impact of the machine upon the worker and his family, the phenomenon of
alienation, the relationship between technological change, real wages,
employment, etc. At the same time, a
great deal of what Marx had to say concerning some 300 years of European
capitalist development has received relatively little attention. This applies to his views dealing with the
complex interrelations between science, technology, and economic development.
It is a well-known feature of the Marxian analysis of capitalism that
Marx views the system as bringing about unprecedented increases in
* University of Wisconsin
The author is
grateful to Professors Stanley Engerman and Eugene Smolensky for critical comments on an earlier draft.
713
human productivity and in man’s mastery over nature. Marx and Engels told
their readers, in The Communist Manifesto, that “the bourgeoisie, during
its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more
colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man,
machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture,
steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents
for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole
populations conjured out of the ground - what earlier century had even a
presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?” (Marx and Engels
1951, 1: 37). No single question,
therefore, would seem to be more important to the whole Marxian analysis of
capitalist development than the question: Why is capitalism such an immensely
productive system by comparison with all earlier forms of economic
organization? The question, obviously,
has been put before, and certain portions of Marx’s answer are in fact
abundantly plain. In particular, the
social and economic structure of capitalism is one which creates enormous
incentives for the generation of technological change. Marx and Engels
insist that the bourgeoisie is unique as a ruling class because, unlike all
earlier ruling classes whose economic interests were indissolubly linked to the
maintenance of the status quo, the very essence of bourgeois rule is
technological dynamism. Capitalism
generates unique incentives for the introduction of new, cost-reducing
technologies.
The question which I am particularly interested in examining is the
role which is played, within the Marxian framework, by science and scientific
progress in the dynamic growth of capitalism. For surely the growth in resource productivity
can never have been solely a function of the development of capitalist
institutions. It is easy to see the
existence of such institutions as a necessary condition but hardly as a
sufficient condition for such growth. Surely
the technological vitality of an emergent capitalism was closely linked up with
the state of scientific knowledge and with industry’s capacity to exploit such
knowledge.
Marx’s (and Engels’) position, briefly
stated, is to affirm that science is, indeed, a fundamental factor accounting
for the growth in resource productivity and man’s enlarged capacity to
manipulate his natural environment for the attainment of human purposes. However, the statement requires two immediate
and highly significant qualifications, which will constitute our major concern
in this paper: (1) science does not, according to Marx, function in history as
an independent variable; and (2) science has come to play a critical role as a
systematic contributor to increasing productivity only at a very recent (from
Marx’s perspective)
1. “The
bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and
with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in
unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all
earlier industrial classes” (Marx and Engels 1951,
1:36).
714
point in history. The
ability of science to perform this role had necessarily to await the
fulfillment of certain objective conditions.
What these conditions were has not been understood adequately.
Marx’s treatment of scientific progress is consistent with his broader
historical materialism. Just as the
economic sphere and the requirements of the productive process shape man’s
political and social institutions, so do they also shape his scientific
activity at all stages of history. Science
does not grow or develop in response to forces internal to science or the scientific
community. It is not an autonomous sphere
of human activity. Rather, science needs
to be understood as a social activity which is responsive to economic forces. It is man’s changing needs as they become
articulated in the sphere of production which determine
the direction of scientific progress. Indeed,
this is generally true of all human problem-solving activity, of which science
is a part. As Marx states in the
introduction to his Critique of Political Economy: “Mankind always takes
up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more
closely, we will always find the problem itself arises only when the material
conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the
process of formulation” (Marx 1904, pp. 12-13).
Marx views specific scientific disciplines as developing in response to
problems arising in the sphere of production. The materialistic conception of history and
society involves the rejection of the notion that man’s intellectual pursuits
can be accorded a status independent of material concerns. It emphasizes the necessity of systematically
relating the realm of thinking and ideas to man’s material concerns. Thus, the scientific enterprise itself needs
to be examined in that perspective. “Feuerbach speaks in particular of the perception of natural
science; he mentions secrets which are disclosed only to the eye of the
physicist and chemist: but where would natural science be without industry and
commerce? Even this ‘pure’ natural science is provided with an aim, as with its
material, only through trade and industry, through the sensuous activity of
men” (Marx and Engels 1947, p. 36). Egyptian astronomy had developed out of the
compelling need to predict the rise and fall of the Nile, upon which Egyptian
agriculture was so vitally dependent (Marx 1906, p. 564, n. 1). The increasing (if still “sporadic”) resort
to machinery in the seventeenth century was, says Marx, “of the greatest
importance, because it supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a
practical basis and stimulant to the creation of the science of mechanics.” [2] The difficulties
encountered with
2. Marx 1906,
pp. 382-83. Engels
states: “Like all other sciences, mathematics arose out of the needs of
men; from the measurement of land and of the content of vessels; from the
computation of time and mechanics” (Engels 1939, p.
46; emphasis Engels’s. Cf. Marx 1906, p. 564).
715
gearing as waterpower was being harnessed to larger
millstones was “one of the circumstances that led to a more accurate
investigation of the laws of friction.” [3]
These themes are repeated by Engels, who
asserts that “from the very beginning the origin and development of the
sciences has been determined by production.” [4] In accounting for the rise
of science during the Renaissance, his first explanation again drew upon the
requirements of industry.
If, after the dark night of the Middle Ages was over,
the sciences suddenly arose anew with undreamt-of force, developing at a
miraculous rate, once again we owe this miracle to production. In the first place, following the crusades,
industry developed enormously and brought to light a quantity of new mechanical
(weaving, clock-making, milling), chemical (dyeing, metallurgy, alcohol), and
physical (spectacles) facts, and this not only gave enormous material for
observation, but also itself provided quite other means for experimenting than
previously existed, and allowed the construction of new instruments; it
can be said that really systematic experimental science now became possible for
the first time. [5]
Moreover, in a letter written in 1895, Engels
stated: “If, as you say, technique largely depends on the state of science,
science depends far more still on the state and the requirements of
technique. If society has a technical
need, that helps science forward more than ten universities. The whole of hydrostatics (Torricelli, etc.)
was called forth by the necessity for regulating the mountain streams of Italy
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We have only known about electricity since its
technical applicability was discovered” (Marx and Engels
1951, 2: 457, Letter from Engels to H. Starkenburg, January 25, 1895; emphasis Engels’s).
3. Marx 1906,
p. 411. He adds: “In the same way the
irregularity caused by the motive power in mills that were put in motion by
pushing and pulling a lever, led to the theory, and the application, of the
flywheel, which afterwards plays so important a part in Modern Industry. In this way, during the manufacturing period,
were developed the first scientific and technical elements of Modern Mechanical
Industry.”
4. Engels 1954, p. 247. Earlier in the paragraph, he had stated: “The
successive development of the separate branches of natural science should be
studied. First of all, astronomy, which, if only on account of the seasons, was absolutely
indispensable for pastoral and agricultural peoples. Astronomy can only develop with the aid of
mathematics. Hence this also had to be
tackled. Further, at a certain stage of
agriculture and in certain regions (raising of water
for irrigation in Egypt), and especially with the origin of towns, big building
structures and the development of handicrafts, mechanics also arose. This was soon needed also for navigation and war.
Moreover, it requires the aid of
mathematics and so promoted the latter’s development.”
5. Ibid., p.
248. The editor of
Engels’
unfinished manuscript points out that Engels had
written in the margin of the manuscript opposite this paragraph: “Hitherto,
what has been boasted of is what production owes to science, but science owes
infinitely more to production.”
716
This statement is probably the most explicit and direct assertion in
the writings of Marx and Engels that factors
affecting the demand for science are overwhelmingly more important than factors
affecting its supply. Scientific
knowledge is acquired when a social need for that knowledge has been
established. Science is, however, not an
initiating force in the dynamics of social change. Developments in this sphere are a response to
forces originating elsewhere. Thus, Marx
and Engels appear to be presenting a purely
demand-determined explanation of the social role of science. Scientific enterprise supplies that which
industry demands, and therefore the changing direction of the thrust of science
needs to be understood in terms of the changing requirements of industry.
II – Science and Impersonal Machinery
In this section I will argue that, while the demand-oriented component
of the argument just presented is indeed a major part of the Marxian view,
there are also vital but less conspicuous elements in Marx’s argument which
have been ignored. Without these
additional and more neglected elements one cannot explain a central thesis
which emerges out of Marx’s view: namely, that it is only at a particular time
in human history that science is enlisted in a crucial way in the productive
process. It is only at a very recent
point in history, Marx argues, that the marriage of science and industry occurs.
Moreover, this marriage does not coincide
with the historical emergence of capitalism. In fact, Marx is quite explicit that the union
of science and industry comes only centuries after the arrival of modern
capitalism and the emergence of sophisticated bodies of theoretical science. If arguments based upon the existence of
capitalist incentives and demand forces generally were a sufficient
explanation, the full-scale industrial exploitation of science would have come
at a much earlier stage in Western history. But it did not. Why?
Stripped to its essentials, Marx’s answer is that the handicraft and
manufacturing stages of production lacked the technological basis which would permit
the application of scientific knowledge to the solution of problems of
industrial production. [6] This
essential technological basis
6. Since the
subsequent discussion turns directly upon the Marxian periodization
scheme, it is important to remind the reader of the meaning which Marx attaches
to the terms “handicraft,” “manufacture,” and “modern industry.” Engels expressed Marx’s
meanings succinctly as follows: “We divide the history of industrial production
since the Middle Ages into three periods: (1) handicraft, small master
craftsmen with a few journeymen and apprentices, where each laborer produces
the complete article; (2) manufacture, where greater numbers of workmen,
grouped in one large establishment, produce the complete article on the
principle of division of labor, each workman performing only one partial
operation, so that the product is complete only after having passed
successively through the hands of all; (3) modern industry, where the product
is produced by machinery driven by power, and where the work of the laborer is
limited to superintending and correcting the performances of the mechanical
agent” (Engels 1910, pp. 12-13).
717
emerged only with modern industry. The immense and growing productivity of
nineteenth century British industry was really, in Marx’s view, the resultant
of three converging sets of forces: (1) the unique incentive system and
capacity for accumulation provided by capitalist institutions, (2) the
availability of bodies of scientific knowledge [7]
which were directly relevant for problem-solving activities in industry, and
(3) a technology possessing certain special characteristics. It is this last category which is least
understood and to which we therefore now turn.
Historically, capitalist relationships were introduced in an
unobtrusive way, by the mere quantitative expansion in the number of
wage-laborers employed by an individual owner of capital (Marx 1906, p. 367). The independent handicraftsman, operating with
a few journeymen and apprentices, gradually shifted into the role of a
capitalist as his relationship with these men assumed the form of a permanent
system of wage payments and as the number of such laborers increased. [8] The system of manufacture,
therefore, while introducing social relationships drastically different from
the handicraft system of the medieval guilds which preceded it, [9] initially employed the same technology. [10]
From Marx’s mid-nineteenth-century vantage point, the system of
manufacture had actually been the dominant one throughout most of the history
of capitalism - from “roughly speaking... the middle of the 16th to the last
third of the 18th century” (Marx 1906, p. 369; see also p. 787).
7. Actually,
Marx’s use of the term “science” was sufficiently broad that it included bodies
of systematized knowledge far beyond what we ordinarily mean when we speak
today of pure or even applied science - e.g., engineering and machine building.
It was not a term which he attempted to
use with precision. In Theories of Surplus
Value, for instance, he refers to science simply as “the product of mental labour” (Marx 1963, Pt. 1, p. 353).
8. With
regard to the mode of production itself, manufacture, in its strict meaning, is
hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages, from the handicraft trades
of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater number of workmen simultaneously
employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the medieval master
handicraftsman is simply enlarged” (Marx 1906, p. 353. Cf. Marx and Engels 1947, pp. 12-l3).
9. “With
manufacture was given simultaneously a changed relationship between worker and
employer. In the guilds the patriarchal
relationship between journeyman and master maintained itself; in manufacture
its place was taken by the monetary relation between worker and capitalist - a
relationship which in the countryside and in small towns retained a patriarchal
tinge, but in the larger, the real manufacturing towns, quite early lost almost
all patriarchal complexion” (Marx and Engels 1947, p.
52).
10. Machinery
had sometimes been employed in earlier periods, but Marx clearly regarded these
instances as exceptional. “Early in the
manufacturing period the principle of lessening the necessary labour-time in the production of commodities,
was accepted and formulated: and the use of machines, especially for certain
simple first processes that have to be conducted on a very large scale, and
with the application of great force, sprang up here and there. Thus, at an early period in paper manufacture,
the tearing up of the rags was done by paper mills; and in metal works, the
pounding of the ores was effected by stamping mills. The Roman Empire had handed
down the elementary form of all machinery in the water-wheel” (Marx 1906, P.
382). In a footnote Marx makes
the extremely interesting observation that “the whole history of the
development of machinery can be traced in the history of the corn mill” (ibid.,
p. 382, n. 3).
718
Manufacture
involved a significant regrouping of workers and a redefinition of the
responsibilities of each. Whereas a
medieval handicraftsman would himself perform a succession of operations upon a
product, the manufacturing system divided up the operation into a succession of
steps, each one of which was allocated to a separate workman. [11]
The essence of the manufacturing system, therefore, is a growing
specialization on the part of the individual worker. While this in turn has psychological and
social consequences of the greatest importance for the worker with which Marx
was very much concerned, [12] it continued
to share with the earlier handicraft system an essential feature. That is to say, although the product now
passed through a succession of hands, and although this reorganization raised
the productivity of labor, it nevertheless perpetuated the industrial system’s
reliance upon human skills and capacities. [13] Whereas the critical
skill was formerly that of the guild craftsman, it is now the unremitting
repetition of a narrowly defined activity on the part of the detail laborer. More precisely, the productive process now pressed against the constraints imposed by the limited
strength, speed, precision, and, indeed, the limited number of limbs, of
the human animal.
So long as the worker continues to occupy strategic places in the
productive process, that process is limited by all of his human frailties. And, of course, the individual capitalist is,
in many ways, continually pressing the worker against those limits. But the point which Marx is making here is of
much broader significance: The application of science to the productive
11. “The needlemaker
of the Nuremberg Guild was the cornerstone on which the English needle
manufacture was raised. But while in
Nuremberg that single artificer performed a series of perhaps 20 operations one
after another, in England it was not long before there were 20 needlemakers side by side, each performing one alone of
those 20 operations; and in consequence of further experience, each of those 20
operations was again split up, isolated, and made the exclusive function of a
separate workman” (ibid., pp. 370-71).
12. “While
simple co-operation leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most
part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises
it, and seizes labour-power by its very roots. It converts the labourer
into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of
a world of productive capabilities and instincts; just as in the States of La
Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow” (ibid.,
p. 396).
13. “For a
proper understanding of the division of labour in
manufacture, it is essential that the following points be firmly grasped. First, the decomposition of a process of
production into its various successive steps coincides, here, strictly with the
resolution of a handicraft into its successive manual operations. Whether complex or simple, each operation has
to be done by hand, retains the character of a handicraft, and is therefore
dependent on the strength, skill, quickness, and sureness, of the individual
workman in handling his tools. The
handicraft continues to be the basis. This
narrow technical basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any definite
process of industrial production, since it is still a condition that each
detail process gone through by the product must be capable of being done by
hand and of forming, in its way, a separate handicraft. It is just because handicraft skill continues,
in this way, to be the foundation of the process of production that each workman
becomes exclusively assigned to a partial function, and that for the rest of
his life, his labour-power is turned into the organ
of this detail function” (ibid., pp. 371-72).
719
process involves dealing with impersonal laws of nature and
freeing itself from all dependence upon the organic. It involves calculations concerning the
behavior of natural phenomena. It
involves the exploitation of reliable physical relationships which have been
established by scientific disciplines. It
involves a degree of predictability of a purely objective sort, from which the
uncertainties and subjectivities of human behavior have been systematically
excluded. Science, in short, can only
incorporate its findings in impersonal machinery. It cannot be incorporated in human beings with
their individual volitions, idiosyncracies, and
refractory temperaments. The
manufacturing period shared with the earlier handicraft system the essential
feature that it was a tool-using economy where the tools were subject to human
manipulation and guidance. It is this
element of human control, the continued reliance upon the limited range of
activities of the human hand, and not the nature of the power source, Marx
insists, which is decisive in distinguishing a machine from a tool.
The machine proper is… 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. The number of implements that he himself can
use simultaneously, is limited by the number of his
own natural instruments of production, by the number of his bodily organs...
The number of tools that a machine can bring into play simultaneously,
is from the very first emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the
tools of a handicraftsman. [14]
What, then, is the distinctive technological feature of modern
industry? It is that, for the first
time, the design of the productive process is carried out on a basis where the
characteristics of the worker and his physical
14. Ibid., p.
408; see also p. 410. In his early work,
The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx had stated: “The machine is a
unification of the instruments of labour, and by no
means a combination of different operations for the worker himself. ‘When, by the division of labour,
each particular operation has been simplified to the use of a single
instrument, the linking-up of all these instruments, set in motion by a single
engine, constitutes - a machine.’ (Babbage, Traite’ sur l’Economie des Machines, etc., Paris 1833). Simple tools; accumulation of tools; composite
tools; setting in motion of a composite tool by a single hand engine, by men;
setting in motion of these instruments by natural forces, machines; system of
machines having one motor; system of machines having one automatic motor - this
is the progress of machinery” (Marx, n.d., pp. 132-33.
This book was first published in 1847).
720
endowment are no longer central to the organization and
arrangement of capital. Rather, capital
is being designed in accordance with a completely different logic, a logic
which explicitly incorporates principles of science and engineering. [15] The subjectivity of a technology
adapted, out of necessity, to the capacities (or, better, the debilities) of
the worker is rejected in favor of the objectivity of machinery which has been
designed in accordance with its own laws and the laws of science.
In Manufacture it is the workmen who, with their
manual implements, must, either singly or in groups, carry on each particular
detail process. If, on the one hand, the
workman becomes adapted to the process, on the other, the process was
previously made suitable to the workman.
This subjective principle of the division of labour
no longer exists in production by machinery. Here, the process as a whole is examined
objectively, in itself, that is to say, without regard to the question of its
execution by human hands, it is analysed into its
constituent phases; and the problem, how to execute each detail process, and
bind them all into a whole, is solved by the aid of machines, chemistry, etc. [16]
The shift from the hand-operated to the machine-operated process is a
momentous one, for the simple reason that machine processes are susceptible to
continuous and indefinite improvement, whereas hand processes are not. [17] The factory system makes
possible the virtual routinization of productivity
improvement. [18] By
breaking down the productive process
15. There is
an important learning experience at the technological level before this can be
done well. “It is only after
considerable development of the science of mechanics, and accumulated practical
experience, that the form of a machine becomes settled entirely in accordance
with mechanical principles, and emancipated from the traditional form of the
tool that gave rise to it” (Marx 1906, p. 418, n. 1). A typical aspect of the innovation process,
therefore, is that machines go through a substantial process of modification
after their first introduction (see ibid., p. 442).
16. Ibid., pp.
414-15. Later, Marx adds: “The
implements of labour, in the form of machinery,
necessitate the substitution of natural forces for human force, and the
conscious application of science, instead of rule of thumb. In Manufacture, the organization of the social
labour-process is purely subjective; it is a
combination of detail labourers; in its machinery
system, Modern Industry has a productive organism that is purely objective, in
which the labourer becomes a mere appendage to an
already existing material condition of production” (p. 421).
17. “As soon
as a machine executes, without man’s help, all the movements requisite to elaborate
the raw material, needing only attendance from him, we have an automatic system
of machinery, and one that is susceptible of constant improvement in its
details” (ibid., p. 416).
18. In a
valuable article, “Karl Marx and the Industrial Revolution,” Paul Sweezy argues that many of the important differences between
Marx and his classical predecessors reduced to the fact that the classical
economists “took as their model an economy based on manufacture, which is an
essentially conservative and change-resistant economic order; while Marx,
recognizing and making full allowance for the profound transformation effected
by the industrial revolution, took as his model an economy based on modern
machine industry” (Sweezy 1968, p. 115).
721
into objectively identifiable component parts, it creates a
structure of activities which is readily amenable to rigorous analysis. “The principle,
carried out in the factory system, of analysing the
process of production into its constituent phases, and of solving the problems
thus proposed by the application of mechanics, of chemistry, and of the whole
range of the natural sciences, becomes the determining principle everywhere.” [19] Thus, historical
development has brought technology to a point where it has become, for the
first time, an object of scientific analysis and improvement.
A characteristic feature is, that, even down into the
eighteenth century, the different trades were called “mysteries” (mystères); into their secrets none but those duly initiated
could penetrate. Modern Industry rent
the veil that concealed from men their own social process of production, and
that turned the various spontaneously divided branches of production into so
many riddles, not only to outsiders, but even to the initiated. The principle which it pursued, of resolving
each process into its constituent movements, without regard to their possible
execution by the hand of man, created the new modern science of technology. The varied, apparently unconnected, and petrified
forms of the industrial processes now resolved themselves into so many conscious
and systematic applications of natural science to the attainment of given
useful effects. Technology also
discovered the few main fundamental forms of motion, which, despite the
diversity of the instruments used, are necessarily taken by every productive
action of the human body; just as the science of mechanics sees in the most
complicated machinery nothing but the continual repetition of the simple
mechanical powers.
Modern Industry never looks upon and
treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is
therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of production were essentially
conservative. [20]
In its most advanced form, therefore, “modern industry... makes science
a productive force distinct from labour and presses
it into the service of capital” (Marx 1906, p. 397).
Before capitalism could reach this stage of self-sustaining
technological
19. Marx
1906, p. 504. The manufacturing stage
needs to be seen as an essential step in the introduction of science into the
productive process. The application of
science required that productive activity be broken down into a series of
separately analyzable steps. The manufacturing
system, even though it continued to rely upon human skills, accomplished
precisely this when it replaced the handicraftsman with a number of detail
laborers. In this important sense it
“set the stage” for the advent of modern industry.
20. Ibid., p.
532. Marx (1959) examines the vast
possibilities for capital-saving innovations and improvements in an advanced
capitalist economy in Capital, vol. 3, chaps. 4 and 5.
722
dynamism, however, another critical condition needed to be
fulfilled. Machinery cannot fully
liberate the economy from the output ceiling imposed by dependence upon human
skills and capacities so long as these things continue to be essential in the production
of the machines themselves. In the early
stages of modern industry, machines were, inevitably, produced by direct
reliance upon human skills and capacities.
The manufacturing system responded to the demand for the new inventions
by creating new worker specializations. [21]
While this sufficed in the early stages
of the development of modern industry, improvements in machine design and
performance and increasing size eventually came up increasingly against the
limitations of the human machine maker.
Modern Industry was crippled in its complete
development, so long as its characteristic instrument of production, the
machine, owed its existence to personal strength and personal skill, and
depended on the muscular development, the keenness of sight, and the cunning of
hand, with which the detail workmen in manufactures and the manual labourers in handicrafts, wielded their dwarfish
implements. Thus, apart from the
dearness of the machines made in this way, a circumstance that is ever present
to the mind of the capitalist, the expansion of industries carried on by means
of machinery, and the invasion by machinery of fresh branches of production,
were dependent on the growth of a class of workmen, who, owing to the almost
artistic nature of their employment, could increase their numbers only
gradually, and not by leaps and bounds. But besides this, at a certain stage of its
development, Modern Industry became technologically incompatible with the basis
furnished for it by handicraft and Manufacture. The increasing size of the prime movers, of
the transmitting mechanism, and of the machines proper, the greater
complication, multiformity and regularity of the
details of these machines, as they more and more departed from the model of
those originally made by manual labour, and acquired
a form, untrammelled except by the conditions under
which they worked, the perfecting of the automatic system, and the use, every
day more unavoidable, of a more refractory material, such as iron instead of
wood - the solution of all these problems, which sprang up by the force of
circumstances, everywhere met
21. “As
inventions increased in number, and the demand for the newly discovered
machines grew larger, the machine-making industry split up, more and more, into
numerous independent branches, and division of labour
in these manufactures was more and more developed. Here, then, we see in Manufacture the
immediate technical foundation of Modern Industry. Manufacture produced the machinery, by means
of which Modern Industry abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems in
those spheres of production that it first seized upon” (Marx 1906, p. 417).
723
with a stumbling-block in the personal restrictions which
even the collective labourer of Manufacture could not
break through, except to a limited extent. Such machines as the modern hydraulic press,
the modern powerloom, and the modern carding engine,
could never have been furnished by Manufacture. [22]
The vital step, therefore, is the establishment of the technological
conditions which would make it possible to use machinery in the construction of
machines, thus bypassing the central constraint of the old manufacturing
system. “Modern Industry had therefore
itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of
production, and to construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this, that it built up
for itself a fitting technical foundation, and stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously with the increasing
use of it, in the first decades of this century, appropriated, by degrees, the
fabrication of machines proper.” [23] Marx singles out, not only the new power
sources which offered gigantic quantities of energy subject to careful human
regulation, but also that indispensable addition to the equipment at the
disposal of the machine maker, the slide rest. This simple but ingenious device of Henry Maudsley replaces, as Marx perceptively notes, not any
particular tool, “but the hand itself” (Marx 1906, p. 408). In this sense it is a strategic technological
breakthrough, fully comparable in importance to the steam engine.
The improvements in the machinery-producing sector constitute a quantum
leap in the technological arsenal at man’s disposal. They make it possible to escape the physical
limitations of a tool-using culture. They
do this, ironically as Marx points out, by providing machines which reproduce
the actions of a hand-operated tool, but do so on a “cyclopean
scale.” [24]
22. Ibid., pp. 417-18. Marx saw the improvements in the means of
communication and transportation as particularly significant in pushing the
productive process beyond the limitations inherent in the manufacturing system.
“The means of communication and
transport became gradually adapted to the modes of production of mechanical
industry, by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean
steamers, and telegraphs. But the huge
masses of iron that had now to be forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored,
and to be shaped, demanded, on their part, cyclopean machines, for the
construction of which the methods of the manufacturing period were utterly
inadequate” (pp. 419-20).
23. Ibid., P.
420. Marx saw this process as culminating during his own time. “It is only during the last 15 years (i.e.,
since about 1850), that a constantly increasing portion of these machine tools
have been made in England by machinery, and that not by the same manufacturers
who make the machines” (p. 408).
24. “If we
now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery employed in the
construction of machines, which constitutes the operating tool, we find the
manual implements reappearing, but on a cyclopean scale. The operating part of the boring machine is an
immense drill driven by a steam-engine; without this machine, on the other
hand, the cylinders of large steam-engines and of hydraulic presses could not
be made. The mechanical lathe is only a
cyclopean reproduction of the ordinary footlathe; the
planing machine, an iron carpenter, that works on
iron with the same tools that the human carpenter employs on wood; the
instrument that, on the London wharves, cuts [the
veneers, is a gigantic razor; the tool of the shearing machine, which shears
iron as easily as a tailor’s scissors cut cloth, is a monster pair of scissors;
and the steam hammer works with an ordinary hammer head, but of such a weight
that not Thor himself could wield it. These
steam hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there
is one that weighs over 6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7 feet, on
an anvil weighing 36 tons. It is mere
child’s play for it to crush a block of granite into powder, yet it is not less
capable of driving, with a succession of light taps, a nail into a piece of
soft wood” (ibid., p. 421; see also pp. 492-93).]
HHC:
[bracketed] displayed on page 725 of original.
724
IV – Supply-Side Considerations
Thus, I would interpret the Marxian position to be that it is the
changing requirements of industry and the altering perception of economic needs
which provide the stimulus to the pursuit of specific forms of
scientific knowledge. But I would also
conclude that the Marxian position cannot be adequately described as a
demand-induced approach without doing a severe injustice to the subtlety of
Marx’s historical analysis. [25] For the ability to apply
science to the productive sphere turns upon industry’s changing capacity to
utilize such knowledge, a capacity which Marx explicitly recognizes has been
subjected to great changes over the course of recent history. Indeed, Marx himself, as I have tried to
establish, devoted considerable effort to the elucidation of the factors which
have shaped society’s altering capacity to absorb the fruits of scientific
knowledge. [26]
Nor did Marx argue that the historical sequence in which scientific
disciplines actually developed was also directly determined by economic needs. For example, in discussing the relative pace
of development in industry and agriculture, he states that productivity growth
in agriculture had, historically, to await the development of certain
scientific disciplines, and therefore came later, whereas industry progressed
more rapidly than agriculture at least in large part because the scientific
knowledge upon
25. At one
point Marx presents what one might be tempted to call a Toynbeean
“challenge-response” mechanism to account for the emergence of high
productivity societies. It is not true,
he says, “that the most fruitful soil is the most
fitted for the growth of the capitalist mode of production. This mode is based on the dominion of man over
nature. Where nature is too lavish, she
‘keeps him in hand, like a child in leading-strings.’ She does not impose upon him any necessity to
develop himself. It is not the tropics
with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate zone, that is the mother
country of capital. It is not the mere
fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its
natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for
the social division of labour, and which, by changes
in the natural surroundings, spur man on to the multiplication of his wants,
his capabilities, his means and modes of labor. It is the necessity of bringing a natural
force under the control of society, of economising,
of appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the work of man’s hand,
that first plays the decisive part in the history of industry” (ibid., pp. 563-64).
26. In this
light, there is no necessary conflict between Marx’s materialist conception of
history and his treatment of science as a productive force under advanced
capitalism. I therefore disagree with
the following statement of Bober: “Marx intends to
offer a materialistic conception of history. Yet he frequently stresses the power of
science as a component of modern technique and production. The incorporation of science
in the foundation of his theory is no more defensible than the inclusion of all
other nonmaterial phenomena” (Bober 1965, p. 21).
725
which industry relied had developed earlier. “Mechanics, the really scientific basis of
large-scale industry, had reached a certain degree of perfection during the
eighteenth century. The development of
chemistry, geology and physiology, the sciences that directly form the
specific basis of agriculture rather than of industry, does not take place till
the nineteenth century and especially the later decades.” [27]
This strongly suggests at least some degree of independence and autonomy
on the part of science in shaping the sequence of industrial change, in spite
of the fact that, as we saw earlier, Marx and Engels
usually emphasize the cause-effect relationships which run from industry to
science. If the growth in agricultural
productivity is dependent upon progress in specific subdisciplines
of science, and if the existence of profitable commercial opportunities in
agriculture cannot “induce” the production of the requisite knowledge, then
factors internal to the realm of science must be conceded to play a role
independent of economic needs.
Moreover, it is especially curious to find that Engels
is content to state, as quoted earlier, that “from the very beginning the
origin and development of the sciences has been determined by production” (Engels 1954, p. 247). For Engels himself,
in the Dialectics of Nature, had also presented a classification scheme
for the sciences which emphasized a hierarchy of increasing complexity based
upon the forms of motion of the matter being analyzed. Increasing complexity is identified with the
movement from the inorganic to the organic, from mechanics to physics to
chemistry to biology. [28] Engels even goes so far as to speak of
an
27. Marx
1968, pt. 2, p. 110. In The German
Ideology Marx and Engels stated that “the science
of mechanics perfected by Newton was altogether the most popular science in
France and England in the eighteenth century” (Marx and Engels
1947, p. 56).
28. “Hegel’s
division (the original one) into mechanics, chemics,
and organics, fully adequate for the time. Mechanics: the movement of masses. Chemics: molecular (for physics is also included in this
and, indeed, both- - physics as well as chemistry - belong to the same order)
motion and atomic motion. Organics: the
motion of bodies in which the two are inseparable. For the organism is
certainly the higher unity which within itself unites mechanics, physics,
and chemistry into a whole where the trinity can no longer be separated.
In the organism, mechanical motion is
effected directly by physical and chemical change, in the form of nutrition,
respiration, secretion, etc., just as much as pure muscular movement” (Engels 1954, pp. 33 1-32; emphasis Engels’s).
For Engels’s
entire treatment of the subject, see ibid., pp. 322-408.
In his book, Herr Eugen
Duhring’s Revolution in Science, Engels draws a sharp distinction between the sciences
concerned with inanimate nature and those concerned with living organisms. The former group of sciences (mathematics,
astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry) are
susceptible to mathematical treatment “to a greater or less degree.” No such precision is possible in the sciences
concerned with living organisms. “In
this field there is such a multitude of reciprocal relations and causalities
that not only does the solution of each question give rise to a host of other
questions, but each separate problem can usually only be solved piecemeal,
through a series of investigations which often requires centuries to complete;
and even then the need for a systematic presentation of the interrelations
makes it necessary again and again to surround the final and ultimate truths with
a luxuriant growth of hypotheses” (Engels 1939, pp.
97-99).
726
“inherent sequence,” [29]
which he clearly believes has structured the historical sequence in
which nature’s secrets have been progressively uncovered. But, if one accepts this intuitively plausible
view, then surely there is much more to “the origin and development of the
sciences” than can be accounted for by the specific demands being generated in
the productive sphere. Surely the
historical fact that the biological sciences came to the assistance of
agriculture long after the mechanical sciences were being utilized by industry
is a sequence originating, not in economic needs, but in the differing degrees
of complexity of these scientific disciplines. Engels’ formulations
particularly seem to overemphasize the importance of demand-induced incentives
to the neglect of supply side considerations, even though he is obviously
sensitive to these supply variables in other contexts.
In Engels’ defense one must recall, of
course, the unfinished, indeed often merely fragmentary condition of his Dialectics
of Nature. [30] It
is entirely possible that, had he the opportunity, he would have resolved these
apparent inconsistencies. But it is
expecting far too much to look to either Marx or Engels
for the resolution of these deep and thorny problems. We are still, today, a long way from being
able to incorporate the history of science in an orderly manner into our
understanding of the economic development of the Western world. [31]
There are several possible meanings which can be attached to the statement
that “the origin and development of the sciences has been determined by
production.”
1.
Science depends upon industry for financial support.
2.
The expectation of high financial returns is what motivates individuals (and
society) to pursue a particular scientific problem.
3.
The needs of industry serve as a powerful agent in calling attention to certain
problems (Pasteur’s studies of fermentation and silkworm epidemics).
29.
“Classification of the sciences, each of which analyzes a single form of
motion, or a series of forms of motion that belong together and pass into one
another, is therefore the classification, the arrangement, of these forms of
motion themselves according to their inherent sequence, and herein lies its
importance” (Engels 1954, p. 330; see also Zvorikine 1963, pp. 59-74).
30. See Engels 1954, “Preface.”
31. The most ambitious attempt to fill this void is the
fascinating but seriously flawed four-volume work by the late J. D. Bernal, Science
in History (1971). His Science
and Industry in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1953) is more restricted in
scope and far more consistently persuasive. Nevertheless, Science in History displays
an immense erudition, and all but the most remarkably well-informed readers
will learn much from, and be greatly stimulated by, its contents.
727
4.
The normal pursuit of productive activities throws up physical evidence of
great importance to certain disciplines (metallurgy and chemistry, canal
building and geology). As a result,
industrial activities have, as a byproduct of their operation, provided the
flow of raw observations upon which sciences have built and generalized.
5.
The history of individual sciences, including an account of their varying rates
of progress at different periods in history, can be adequately provided by an
understanding of the changing economic needs of society.
I believe that Marx and Engels subscribed to
propositions l-4 without qualification. I
believe they often sounded as if they subscribed to the fifth
proposition. However, I think the
preceding discussion has established that they subscribed to the fifth
proposition only subject to certain qualifications - qualifications which
strike me as being, collectively, more interesting than the original
proposition.
Bernal, J. D. Science and Industry in the Nineteenth
Century. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953.
________ . Science in History.
4 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971.
Bober, M. M. Karl Marx’s Interpretation
of History. New York: Norton, 1965.
Engels, Frederick. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Chicago:
Kerr, 1910.
_____________ . Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in
Science. New York:
International, 1939.
_____________ . The Dialectics of
Nature. Moscow: Foreign
Languages, 1954.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Kerr, 1904.
________ . Capital. Vol. 1.
Chicago: Kerr, 1906.
________ . Capital. Vol. 3.
Moscow: Foreign Languages, 1959.
________ . Theories of Surplus Value.
3 pts. Moscow: Progress, 1963.
________ . The Poverty of Philosophy.
Moscow: Foreign Languages, n.d.
Marx, Karl, and Engels,
Frederick. The
German Ideology. New York: International, 1947.
__________________________ . Selected
Works. 2 vols. Moscow: Foreign
Languages, 1951.
Sweezy, Paul. “Karl Marx and the Industrial
Revolution.” Events, Ideology and Economic Theory, edited
by Robert Eagly. Detroit: Wayne State Univ.
Press, 1968.
Zvorikine, A. “Technology and the Laws of its Development.” The Technological Order, edited by Carl F. Stover.
Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1963.
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The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
April 2003