A group working under a capitalist does as much work as another group of the same amount of people working under the same capitalist. Their skills and shortcomings balance each other out to make groups of the same number equatable. Upon dividing up groups into smaller subgroups, changes can be noticed. Marx states, "Of the six small masters, then, one would squeeze out more than the average rate of surplus-value, another less. The inequalities would cancel out for the society as a whole, but not for the individual masters." (p 441). To simplify, among individual groups, there will be stronger, more productive groups and weaker, less productive groups. However, when reexamining
EX0-101 Exam the subgroups as a whole, the strong balance out the weak and balance is restored. With this information Marx defines co-operation as, "When numerous workers work together side by side in accordance with a plan, whether in the same process, or in different but connected processes." (p 443). This works well for capitalists in that, social contact brings out a natural competitive nature in people which in turn produces more commodities. Co-operation also shortens the time needed to complete a certain task. Marx says, "If the labour process is complicated, then the sheer number of the co-operators permits the apportionment of various operations to different hands, and consequently their simultaneous performance. The time necessary for the completion of the whole work is thereby shortened." (p 445). The only problem for capitalists comes with payment. It is easier for a capitalist to hire fewer people and pay them for a longer period of time than to pay many workers for a short amount of time. In essence, the amount of capital a capitalist has to spare for payment affects how many laborers he can hire at any given time. With co-operation also comes resistance. The larger a group, the more likely they are to resist conditions implemented by the capitalist and so the more the capitalist must overcome
EX0-100 Exam their resistance. Marx also makes the point to say, "It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist." (p 450). Marx concludes by showing an example of co-operation that many are familiar with: the creation of the pyramids. As the food grown in the Nile valley belonged to the king, he was able to commission a large number of people to work in co-operation with one another to create the pyramids in a very short amount of time. In section I, “The Dual Origin of Manufacture” Marx identifies two ways in which manufacture originates. The first method occurs when a series of workers with different trades are brought together to work for one capitalist under the same roof, in such a way that a single product passes from one worker to the next. Under this method tradesmen find themselves making only one type of product: “so that a locksmith working for a carriage company would make locks only for carriages when he used to make
1Y0-259 Exam locks for a variety of different products ”. The second form occurs when a capitalist hires a number of workers, each worker making an entire product himself. Under the external circumstance of requiring a need to speed up production this method changes so that each worker is given a specific task within the making of a product”. Isolated jobs on each commodity can start to be assigned to one worker and a division of labour can be created in this manner. In section 2, “The Specialized Worker and His Tools” Marx argues that a worker who performs only one task throughout his life will perform his job at a faster and more productive rate, forcing Capital to favor the specialized worker to the traditional craftsmen”. In this section Marx also demonstrates that a specialized worker doing only one task can use a more specialized tool, which cannot do many jobs but can do the one job well, in a more efficient manner than a traditional craftsman using a multi-purpose tool on any specific task