The English translation of Emile Durkheim’s,
the great French sociologist, work La
Division du Travail Social is almost universally rendered as “The Social
Division of Labor”. The obvious mis-translation illustrates brilliantly and
perfectly the gross misconception that gives rise to it: Durkheim was speaking
of the division of social labour –
certainly not of the “social division
of labour”! For there can clearly be
no “labour” as an entity that is abstracted from the ineluctable “sociality” of
human beings. Our living activity,
our very “being” from eating to dreaming to speaking and therefore also working,
is simply unimaginable independently
of our belonging to our species. Just
as Leibniz could enjoin that “a being
must be a being” – that, in other
words, it is impossible to conceive of “being” except as a “unity” – so we may
say that “human beings” (individual
physical human bodies) are really and truly aspects of “being human”. In other words, it is utterly
impossible to conceive human beings as separate atomic individuals whose lives
and activities can be described independently of their “humanity”, of their
“being human”. And this applies a fortiori to our living activity as
living labour.
To
speak of “labour” abstractly is to believe that there is a “quantity”, a
material and spatial and homogeneous entity that can be “measured” according to,
say, time or productivity or definite tasks. But what we know for certain about
human activity is that its potential forms of material ex-pression are
virtually infinite however much they may be “conditioned” by our natural
environment.
It is
absolutely impossible therefore to
describe human living activity in terms of “individual labour” – there is
simply no such “thing”! Living labour
is an activity that cannot be “measured” and that therefore cannot be
“divided”: there can be no such thing as “the division of labour”! What is possible, however, is for
human beings as “being humans” to divide the totality of their social labour
into different but interdependent tasks.
Social labour then is a “totality” that belongs to the human species (leaving
out for a moment its impact on the environment) and that is by that very fact
only divisible in a “political” sense – never
“scientifically” or “mathematically” or “rationally” or “systematically”! Only
“politically”! And the question then becomes what kind of political
decision-making is in place so as “to organize social labour” – again, not “labour” (!), but “social labour”.
Durkheim,
incidentally, distinguished between the “mechanical solidarity” of early social
groups and the “organic solidarity” of advanced human societies. But when Max
Weber considers “modern capitalism” (the phrase is Werner Sombart’s, but Weber
borrows it), he speaks invariably of its “mechanical foundations”, of “the iron
cage” – indicating metaphorically the complex “machinery” of what he calls “the
capitalist organization of labour”. Given his “spiritualist” bent, Weber
considers that capitalist society is less “organic” than earlier human
groupings. Yet here again we must side with Durkheim: what makes advanced
industrial capitalist societies “organic” is the fact that despite the imposing
and ubiquitous “machinery”, the interdependence of human beings has now reached
such a stage that it has become truly “organic”, rather than “mechanical”. Even
in a “metaphorical” sense, heavy industry is becoming a smaller component of
capitalist industry, leaving greater space for services and, above all,
“information”. The “viruses” that we attribute to computer systems are becoming
ever more “organically” real with each passing day!
So
let us now return to Weber and that absolutely remarkable passage from the
“Foreword” to his intended series of studies on “The Sociology of Religions”
which Talcott Parsons (despite the appalling translation in places) wisely
chose to preface to the English edition of Die
Protestantische Ethik. Here it is:
Eine exakte Kalkulation: – die Grundlage
alles andern, – ist eben nur auf dem Boden freier Arbeit möglich. Und wie – und
weil – keine rationale Arbeitsorganisation, so – und deshalb – hat die Welt
außerhalb des modernen Okzidents auch keinen rationalen Sozialismus
gekannt….
Aber ebenso wie – trotzdem es doch überall
einmal städtische Marktprivilegien, Zünfte, Gilden und allerhand rechtliche
Scheidungen zwischen Stadt und Land in der verschiedensten Form gab, – doch der
Begriff des »Bürgers« überall außer im Okzident und der Begriff der
»Bourgeoisie« überall außer im modernen Okzident fehlte, so fehlte auch das
»Proletariat« als Klasse und mußte fehlen, weil eben die rationale
Organisation freier Arbeit als Betrieb fehlte….
Vollends fehlt der moderne Gegensatz:
großindustrieller Unternehmer und freier Lohnarbeiter. Und daher konnte es auch
eine Problematik von der Art, wie sie der moderne Sozialismus kennt, nicht
geben.
Exact
calculation – the basis of all others – is possible only on the ground of free
labour.
And just as, or rather because, the world has known no
rational organization of labour
outside the modern Occident, it has known no rational socialism [precisely
what Lenin is attempting in Russia !]. …
But although there have everywhere been civic market privileges,
companies, guilds, and all sorts of legal differences between town and country,
the concept of the Burger [as opposed
to "citizen" in Parsons’s derelict translation] has not existed outside the Occident, and that of the bourgeoisie outside the modern Occident. Similarly, the proletariat as a class could not exist, because
there was no rational organization
of free labour under regular discipline of the factory [die rationale Organisation freier
Arbeit als Betrieb].
…The modern conflict of the large-scale industrial entrepreneur and free-wage labourers was entirely
lacking. And thus there could be no
Problematik such as that experienced
by modern socialism.
Hidden
in these few lapidary notes are some of the most remarkable political and
sociological insights in the history of capitalist praxis. We should study them
very carefully because they contain “the keynote” (Italians would call it “la
chiave di lettura”), the “key” to the interpretation of capitalist society and
State in the Keynesian era.
The
world has never known “the rational organization of labour”, says Weber –
outside of capitalism, of the bourgeois era, that is. But “the rational organization of labour” means
quintessentially for Weber that “the organization of labour” must occur in
accordance with a “measurable”, “calculable”, hence “quantifiable” method of
organization. And for him it “the only
basis or ground” for this
rational organization of labour to be “exactly calculable” is that this labour
force is “free”. But here the “freedom” of “labour” needs to be defined, and
the definition of “free” will also qualify the definition of “labour”. –
Because the “freedom” of “labour” contains a number of characteristics. The
first is that the labour is “free” from any social bonds that prevent or
interfere with its being subjected to “regular discipline of the factory”. In other words, Weber intends “freedom” for
“labour” only in a negative sense: it
is “freedom from” social bonds or
rights that may prevent “labour” from being subjected to “the regular
discipline of the factory”: and this means that this “labour” must be entirely
“destitute”, “divested” from all social bonds or claims to anything that may
serve for its own reproduction outside of the “factory”! “Labour” must be “free
from” the means of production so that it may “alienate” itself to the
“bourgeois” who will subject it to “the regular discipline of the factory”.
Already,
therefore, Weber’s main contention in the Ethik
that the “calling” of labour under the principle of “time is money” was
responsible for “the spirit of capitalism” is completely confuted! It is not
religious faith, but rather the coercion
of human living labour into factory work as regular discipline that turns
the “time” of human beings into “money”!
Weber
does not explain what it is that is “calculated” when “exact calculation” or
“rationality” is enforced on “organized labour in the factory”: he does not explain “profit”, which is quite
obviously the “monetary difference” between the cost of factory production and
the revenue derived from the sale of the goods produced in that factory. So already
at least we have a definition of “profit” that goes well beyond Weber’s earlier
simplistic notion of “opportunistic exchange” and that comes closer to “the rational
and systematic pursuit of profit” that he intended.
But
this leads us to the second meaning of “free”: this “labour” must be “free”
also in the sense that the living activity of each human being as worker is
easily comparable to that of every other worker: in other words, the work
itself (!), the labour process, has to be easily comparable and measurable as
in the ergonomic principles of Taylorism, and then of Fordism. Thus, the
organization of labour can be “rational” only if it is “exactly calculable”.
And this “exact calculation” is possible only
on the basis of “free labour under regular discipline” – which “discipline”
consists in the physical homologation (so far as is possible) of human living
activity in terms of tasks and time! In other words, it is “regular discipline”
of formally “free labour” that makes possible – and it alone (!) can make
possible – the exact calculation or “rationality” of “the organization of
labour”.
And
all this put together is not “capitalism” but it is also and above all (!!)
“rational socialism”! Only “rational socialism” ensures “the existence of the
proletariat as a class (!)” that is
in “opposition” or “contrast” (Gegensatz – not necessarily “conflict or
struggle” [Kampf] – again, poor Parsons translation) with “the large-scale
entrepreneur”. By this, Weber surely means that “the organization of labour”
can be “rational” only if it is “exactly calculable” by means of “profit” (or
the monetary expression of value) and for this the “labour” must be subjected
to “the regular discipline of the factory” so that it is “free” in the
following senses:
-
“free” from ownership of the means of production
for its own reproduction;
-
“free” in the sense of “performing homogeneous
tasks” that make it comparable to other living
labour in such a way that all living labour becomes one aggregate mass of “divisible
labour” (including “individual labour”);
-
“free” in the sense that once “labour” is “divisible”
its productive power as “social labour” becomes “the property” of “capital”
because it is “capital” in the shape of the means of production that “bring
individual labours together as social labour” within the factory under the
regular discipline of the capitalist;
-
and
finally, this “labour” must be “free” to form an “opposition or contrast as a
class” to the employer or entrepreneur (the Arbeit-geber, the “giver” of “labour”)
in such a way that the “labour” becomes truly “rational” or “exactly calculable”
in terms of its “organization”.
But this final “task” of the political organization
of “labour” as “free labour” upon which the “exact calculability” and therefore
the “profitability” (!) of the “rational organization of labour” is dependent –
this final task of organizing “free labour as a class” is the task of “rational
Socialism”!!
So this
is the Problematik of rational Socialism! How to ensure that the living
labour of workers which is always and always will be ANTAGONISTIC to the
capitalist “rational organization of free labour under the regular discipline
of the factory” - which will always be antagonistic to the wage relation and
the “reduction” of living labour to alienated “free labour” – the Problematik
of rational Socialism is how to ensure that this worker antagonism to the false
exchange of living labour with dead labour (the “goods” the capitalist
produces) is “organized” in a manner that makes possible “the exact calculation”
on which the capitalistic extraction of “value” and “profits” is based!!
Please
NOTE! That Weber does not speak of “rational Socialism” as “the problem” or as “a
problem” for capitalism, for the bourgeoisie. No!! He speaks instead of “the
Problematik” of modern rational Socialism: in other words, the integration of
the workers’ antagonistic push against the capitalist wage relation is as much
of a “problem” for capital as it is for the Sozialismus,
for the Social Democratic or “Labor” parties of Europe whose task it is “to
organize living labour” as a “class” for its exploitation as “labour”, as “organized
free labour” (a “labour” that is homogeneous and calculable and “divisible”) “under
the regular discipline of the factory” commanded
by the capitalist for “profit”!
This
is the tremendous – revolutionary! – realization that President Roosevelt had
first and sought to implement in the American New Deal Settlement following the
Great Crash of 1929 – and a realization that Keynes only later theorized in bourgeois “economic” terms in the ‘General
Theory’!! This development is what we will study next when we return to Keynes.
Appendix:
This useful note by Paul Krugman on “Keynesianism” reveals how he acknowledges
that opposition to Keynesian policies by the bourgeoisie is due to the fact
that they wish to restrain “do-goodism” (remember that we have called Krugman
himself a “do-gooder” on this site – just search). BUT KRUGMAN IS WRONG! What
the bourgeoisie fears in “Keynesianism” is that the rest of society will be
able to unmask Keynesianism for what it is – the bleakest apology for “rational
Socialism” – the very “regular discipline of the factory” that we are exposing
here!! And once we all see Keynesianism for what it is – then the necks of the
bourgeoisie come next!!
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/more-thoughts-on-weaponized-keynesianism/
And this essay by Herbert Marcuse on Weber and the application of "rationality" to industrial capitalism covers some of our points - but not in the same way (thank God! - because I just discovered it!) and without the politico-economic analysis.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/63708218/Herbert-Marcuse-Industrialization-and-Capitalism-in-the-Works-of-Max-Weber
And this essay by Herbert Marcuse on Weber and the application of "rationality" to industrial capitalism covers some of our points - but not in the same way (thank God! - because I just discovered it!) and without the politico-economic analysis.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/63708218/Herbert-Marcuse-Industrialization-and-Capitalism-in-the-Works-of-Max-Weber
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