2. The Social Relations of Production

As we saw, machine technique in the period of capitalism changes the form of co-operation in two ways. In the first place, the technical division of labour loses its “specialised” character, which narrows and limits the psychology of the workers, and reduces itself to “simple co-operation,” in which the workers carry out similar work, and in which the “specialisation” is transferred from the worker to the machine. Secondly, the framework of this co-operation is extended to enormous proportions; there arise enterprises which embrace tens of thousands of workers in a single organisation.

We must suppose that both these tendencies will proceed considerably further under the new system than under machine capitalism. The differences in the specialisation in various industries will be reduced to such insignificant proportions that the psychological disunity created by the diversity of employments will finally disappear; the bonds of mutual understanding and the community of interest will unrestrainedly expand on the basis of the community of vital interests.

At the same time organised labour unity will grow accordingly, grouping hundreds of thousands and even millions of people around a common task.

The continuation of the development of the two previous tendencies will give rise to two new features of the post-capitalist system. On the one hand, the last and most stubborn form of specialisation, viz., the division between the organisational and executive functions, will be transformed and lose its significance. On the other hand, all labour groupings will become more and more mobile and fluid.

Although in the epoch of machine capitalism executive labour at the machines approaches in character to that of organisational labour, nevertheless a difference between them remains, and for that reason the individualisation of the functions of the executor and the organiser remains stable. The most experienced worker in machine production is very different from his manager, and cannot replace him. But the further increase in the complexity and precision of machinery and at the same time the increase in the general intelligence of the workers must eventually remove this difference. With the transition to the automatic regulators, the work of a simple worker approaches nearer and nearer to that of the engineer, and acquires the character of watching the proper working of the various parts of the machine. If automatic regulators are attached to machines there is no need for the mechanic continually to watch his gauges and indicators to see whether the required amount of steam pressure or electrical current is maintained. All he then has to do is from time to time to see whether the regulators are in working order, to alter them as occasion requires, and to see to their speedy repair when necessary, &c. At the same time the knowledge, understanding, ingenuity, and general mental development required of the worker increase. It is not only practical common sense that is required, but exact scientific knowledge of the mechanism, such as only the organising intellectual possesses to-day. Consequently the difference between the “executor” and the manager will be reduced to a purely quantitative difference in scientific training; the worker will then carry out the instructions of a better informed and more experienced comrade rather than blindly subordinate himself to a power based upon knowledge inaccessible to him. The possibility will thus be created of replacing an organiser by any worker and vice versa. The labour inequality of these two types will disappear and they will merge into one.

With the abolition of the last survivals of mental “specialisation” the necessity and the sense of binding certain persons to certain particular work will also disappear. On the other hand the new form of labour will require mental flexibility and diversity of experience, for the maintenance of which it will be necessary that the worker from time to time change his work, going from one kind of machine to another, from the function of “organiser” to that of “executor” and vice versa. And the progress of technique, more rapid than in our day, with its continual improvements of machines and contrivances, must make the rapidly-changing grouping of human forces and individual labour systems, or “enterprises” as we call them to-day, to a high degree more mobile.

All this will become possible and realisable owing to the fact that production is consciously and systematically organised by society as a whole. On the basis of scientific experience and labour solidarity there will be created a general all-embracing organisation of labour. The anarchy which in the epoch of capitalism disunites individual enterprises by ruthless competition and whole classes by stern struggle will be abolished. Science indicates the path to such organisation and devises means for carrying it out, and the combined force of the class-conscious workers will realise it.

The scale of the organisation must from the very beginning be world-wide or nearly so, in order that it may not be dependent in its production and consumption upon exchange with other countries which do not enter it. The experience of the world war and the revolutions that followed it shows that such dependence will immediately be converted into a means of destroying the new system.

The type of organisation cannot be other than centralised; not, however, in the sense of the old authoritarian centralism, but in the sense of a scientific centralism. Its centre should be a gigantic statistical bureau based on exact calculation for the purpose of distributing labour power and instruments of labour.

The motive force of the organisation at first, i.e., as long as the whole of society has not yet been trained in the spirit of collective labour, will be comradely discipline, including an element of compulsion, from which society will step by step emancipate itself.

In this system of production each worker will be actually on an equality with the rest as conscious elements of one sensible whole; each one will be given all the possibilities for completely and universally developing his labour power, and the possibilities of applying it to the advantage of all.

Thus the characteristic features of the socialist society are the homogeneous organisation of the whole productive system, with the greatest mobility of its elements and groupings, and a highly developed mental equality of the workers as universally developed conscious producers.