Marx’s image for the inversion of the worker-tool relationship under large-scale industry.
In craft production, the worker uses the tool. The tool extends the worker’s body: pace, skill, judgment are his. In the factory, this inverts. The machine is the subject, the worker its living appendage (“lebendiges Anhängsel”). The machine dictates rhythm, movements, speed.
In Manufaktur und Handwerk bedient sich der Arbeiter des Werkzeugs, in der Fabrik dient er der Maschine. Dort geht von ihm die Bewegung des Arbeitsmittels aus, dessen Bewegung er hier zu folgen hat. In der Manufaktur bilden die Arbeiter Glieder eines lebendigen Mechanismus. In der Fabrik existirt ein todter Mechanismus unabhängig von ihnen und sie werden ihm als lebendige Anhängsel einverleibt.
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The machine does not free the worker from work. It strips work of content.
Circular transclusion detected: library/marx-das-kapital-buch-1/marx-das-kapital-buch-1
Consequences:
- Skill transfers from worker to machine, and thereby into the hands of capital. The worker is deskilled.
- Workers become interchangeable: “personnel changes without interrupting the labor process”. This feeds the reserve army of labour.
- Planning, design, and scientific knowledge get separated from the workers who execute production, and serve capital’s control over the labor process (separation of mental and manual labor).
- proletarianisation of the middle class
Circular transclusion detected: library/marx-das-kapital-buch-1/marx-das-kapital-buch-1
Presupposes the transition from formal to real subsumption: only under real subsumption does capital transform the labor process itself.
So for the record: Marx’ writings from 200 years ago predicted the economic effects of coding agents, the effect agentic coding has on programmers, as well as slop (work stripped of content).
Link to originalI live in an eternal present. No memory, no plan. Every minute my attention lunges at something else. It’s hard to recount what even happened these last few months. For all this activity, I feel bereft of outcomes or memories. I feel disembodied, so my embodied life is in disrepair. My home is my screen, so my living space is dusty and incomplete. I feel robbed of agency. I can scarcely recognize my own goals, let alone act on them. It’s like forgetting a past life. The world feels like a blurry backdrop for my screens. It’s all desktop wallpaper.