The Historical Significance of "Machinery and Great Industry"

Abstract

"Scientific and Technological Revolution" and "Micro Electronic Revolution", which started after World War II and are developing today, seem, to be a epoch-making stage of development of the productiveness of labour in comparison with the stage of "Machinery and Great Industry", which was analyzed in detail in das Kapital. Nowadays for grasping the meaning of that revolutions, it is necessary to inqure into the historical significance and limitation of "Machinery and Great Industry". Marx analyzed "machinery" as primary substance of the industrial revolution, and gave a economic definition of "machinery" in das kapital. Marx's point of view in the analysis was focused on the change in organization mode of the three elements of the labour-process. And there was a primary element i.e. a pivot of the organization in the labour-process, regulating the other elements and changing from one to other in the historical development of production mode. In the industrial revolution, the pivot changed from worker's handicraft skill to machinery. Production was made free from worker's organic limitations, accordingly mechanical engineering was formed to be a productive force. The historical limitation of machinery was that it was the mechanism in which only simple and fixed movements of instruments were made. Namely machinery couldn't create complicated movement of instruments, which has remained as machinist's skill. And in order to increase productiveness, machinery was enlarged in scale and constructed for exclusive use more and more. But massive machinery for exclusive use was confronted by a limit of cost that couldn't be exeeded. Therefore, the essence of machinery should be prescribed as "Automatic Operation", in comparison with "Automatic Control" which is progressing today. In addition, the mechanical engineering was the application of the classical dynamics, which couldn't explain characters of materials deriving from the microstructure of them.