sartesian quoted Marx:
"The analysis of capital, within the bourgeois horizon is essentially
the work of the Physiocrats. It is this service that makes them the
true fathers of the modern political economy.....It is not a
reproach to
the Physiocrats that, like all their succesors, they thought of these
material forms of existence--such as tools, raw materials, etc.--as
capital, in isolation from the social conditions in which they
appear in
capitalist production; in a word, in the form in which they are
elements
of the labour process in general, independently of its social
form-- and
thereby made of the capitalist form of production an eternal, natural
form of production. For them the bourgeois forms of production
necessarily appeared as natural forms. It was their great merit that
they conceived these forms as physiological forms of society: as forms
arising from the natural necessity of production itself, forms that
are
independent of anyone's will or of politics etc. They are material
laws, the error is only that the material law of a definite historical
social stage is conceived as an abstract law governing equally all
forms
of society."
The general claims made here about "material forms of existence" as
"elements of the labour process in general, independently of its
social form," "as physiological forms of society: as forms arising
from the natural necessity of production itself, forms that are
independent of anyone's will or of politics etc.," and as "material
laws" are, as Marx points out, a sublation of "idealism." Understood
in this way, "instruments of production" are expressions of the
"cunning of reason" and their development is an expression of the
development of "reason," i.e. of the "human mind."
"We presuppose labour in a form in which it is an exclusively human
characteristic. A spider conducts operations which resemble those of
the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by
the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the
worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds
the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of
every labour process, a result emerges which had already been
conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed
ideally. Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of
nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials. And
this is a purpose he is conscious of, it determines the mode of his
activity with the rigidity of a law, and he must subordinate his will
to it." Capital, vol. 1 [Penguin ed.), pp. 283-4
He then provides an elaboration of "instruments of labour" as
"physiological forms of society" and as expressions of the "the
degree of development to which human labour has attained" (i.e. given
the above definition of "human labour," as expressions of the degree
of development of the human mind as expressed by the "cunning of
reason") and of the different "economic forms of society" which, in
Marx's "historical materialism," are understood to generate this
development.
"An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which
the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his
labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes
use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some
substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims.
[2] Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of subsistence
as fruits, in gathering which a man’s own limbs serve as the
instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer
possesses himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument.
Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he
annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite
of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his
original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for
throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an
instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a
whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high
development of labour. [3] No sooner does labour undergo the least
development, than it requires specially prepared instruments. Thus in
the oldest caves we find stone implements and weapons. In the
earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e., animals
which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone
modifications by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments
of labour along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and
shells. [4] The use and fabrication of instruments of labour,
although existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is
specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and Franklin
therefore defines man as a tool-making animal. Relics of bygone
instruments of labour possess the same importance for the
investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil
bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not
the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments,
that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. [5]
Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of
development to which human labour has attained, but they are also
indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is
carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical
nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of
production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch
of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars,
&c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class,
we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production. The
latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical
industries."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Note [2] explicitly connects this idea of an "instrument of labour"
to Hegel's idea of the "cunning of reason."
[2] “Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning
consists principally in her mediating activity, which, by causing
objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance with their own
nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process,
carries out reason’s intentions.” (Hegel: “Enzyklopädie, Erster
Theil, Die Logik,” Berlin, 1840, p. 382.)
Hegel's account of the master/slave relation in the Phenomenology
makes this "relation of production" developmental of the "cunning of
reason," in this sense, in slaves.
Forces and relations of production are objectifications of "mind," of
"ideas," and so express "the development of the human mind." Like
"religious sentiment" and the "passions," their different historical
forms "are no more than different stages" in this development. So
the essence of Marx's "materialism" is "idealist" in this sense, as
he himself points out in Theories of Surplus Value.
"According to Hodgskin, circulating capital is nothing but the
juxtaposition of the different kinds of social labour (coexisting
labour) and accumulation is nothing but the amassing of the
productive powers of social labour, so that the accumulation of the
skill and knowledge (scientific power) of the workers themselves is
the chief form of accumulation, and infinitely more important than
the accumulation—which goes hand in hand with it and merely
represents it—of the existing objective conditions of this
accumulated activity. These objective conditions are only nominally
accumulated and must be constantly produced anew and consumed anew.
'… productive capital and skilled labour are […] one.' 'Capital and a
labouring population are precisely synonymous' ( [Hodgskin, Labour
Defended against the Claims of Capital, London, 1825,] p. 33).
These are simply further elaborations of Galiani’s thesis:
“… The real wealth … is man” (Della Moneta, Custodi. Parte Moderna,
t. III, p. 229).
The whole objective world, the 'world of commodities', vanishes here
as a mere aspect, as the merely passing activity, constantly
performed anew, of socially producing men. Compare this 'idealism'
with the crude, material fetishism into which the Ricardian theory
develops in the writings 'of this incredible cobbler', McCulloch,
where not only the difference between man and animal disappears but
even the difference between a living organism and an inanimate
object. And then let them say that as against the lofty idealism of
bourgeois political economy, the proletarian opposition has been
preaching a crude materialism directed exclusively towards the
satisfaction of coarse appetites."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-
value/ch21.htm
Ted
