The Labour Process III
Tony Andréani & Sarah Erden
What the paper says
This chapter examines the forms of organisation/division of labour, which Marx calls “cooperation” and which constitute the second major factor in the productive force of labour (its productivity in the strict sense). It takes up and completes Marx’s numerous indications on the subject. The chapter first analyses the forms of subjective cooperation, that is, the direct relations between workers, which are either purely factual or inter-subjective. These relations reduce the amount of living labour needed to obtain the same number of products. Several historical examples are given. It then analyses the forms of objective cooperation, which are based solely on instruments of labour, a field of labour or an object of labour which have common characteristics, drawing particularly on Marx’s analyses of modern manufacturing and large-scale industry. Productivity gains are based either on savings in dead labour or on reduced wear and tear. Cooperation is a productivity factor that generally plays only a secondary role compared to the means of labour, but it can be decisive when it offers a glimpse of new possibilities, as evidenced by numerous examples throughout history.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.