Marx, Machines, And Skill

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Marx, Machines, and Skill

Author(s): Paul S. AdlerReviewed work(s):Source: Technology and Culture, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 780-812Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Presson behalf of the Society for the History of TechnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3105907.

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Marx, Machines,and SkillPAUL S. ADLER

Recent decades have seen renewed interest in the historical effectsof technology on skill requirements.1 Marx's name figures promi-nently in this research as a theorist and prophet of the dehumaniza-tion and deskilling of work under capitalism. Indeed, it is nowconsidered almost obvious that Marx, rightly or wrongly, saw capitalistdevelopment and use of machinery as tending to-and at least tosome extent designed to-reduce skill requirements.2 This articleargues that distinguishing more carefully between theory and polemicin Marx's writing and between short-term processes and long-termtrends in Marx's theory reveals the possibility of a quite differentreading. Apart from its exegetical merits, this new reading offers atheoretically provocative and surprisingly optimistic perspective onthe longer-term trend in skill requirements under capitalist condi-tions.In part, my argument was prefigured by Daniel Bell, who, inreviewing previous analyses of the growth of white-collar employ-ment, identified two schemata in Marx: first, a class polarization thesisbased inter alia on deskilling, and second, a more complex picture

PROF.ADLERteaches in the Department of Industrial Engineering and EngineeringManagement at Stanford University. His current research focuses on the managementof technology, the effect of automation on work, and the relations between design andmanufacturing engineering. This article has benefited from the comments of HorstBrand, Michael Howard, Nathan Rosenberg, and the Technology nd Culturereferees.'See, e.g., W. H. Lazonick, Industrial Relations and Technical Change: The Case ofthe Self-acting Mule, CambridgeJournalof Economics3 (1979): 231-62; H. Braverman,Laborand MonopolyCapital: The Degradationof Work n the TwentiethCentury(New York,1974); D. F. Noble, Forcesof Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation(NewYork, 1984); W. Form, Resolving Ideological Issues on the Division of Labor, n H. M.Blalock, Jr., ed., SociologicalTheoryand Research:A CriticalAppraisal (New York, 1980),pp. 140-55; M. R. Smith, HarpersFerryArmoryand theNew Technology:The Challenge ofChange (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977); L. F. Gross, Wool Carding: A Study of Skills andTechnology, Technology nd Culture28 (October 1987): 804-27; and the special issue ofTechnologyand Culture 29 (October 1988) on Labor History and the History ofTechnology, edited by Philip Scranton.2See D. MacKenzie, Marx and the Machine, Technology nd Culture 25 (July 1984):473-502; R. S. Rosenbloom, Men and Machines: Some 19th-Century Analyses ofMechanization, Technology nd Culture5 (Fall 1964): 489-511.

1990 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.0040-165X/90/3104-0001$01.00780


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 781based on capitalism's substitution of a new middle class of profession-als, managers, and white-collar workers of various kinds for the tra-ditional middle class of independent small businesses.3 My contentionis that the first, deskilling schema might be a polemical extrapolationof some short-term trends into the longer term. I shall analyze the skillcomponent of these two schemata, attempting to draw some generallessons both for the interpretation of Marx and for some currentissues in research on automation and work.

The Problem and theArgumentin OutlineMy starting point is the influential work of Harry Braverman, who

contributed significantly to establishing the deskilling reading.4 Braver-man has been the object of so many critiques5 that it hardly seemsappropriate to attack him yet again. My critique, however, is moreradical than previous ones. Others have accepted at least the broadcontours of Braverman's reading of Marx but have contested thattheory's adequacy. Either they have shown how various countervailingforces (such as the condition of local product or factor markets,specific ideological conditions, and the local balance of power) canblunt the underlying deskilling trend supposedly hypothesized byMarx, or they have argued that there is no single underlying skilltrend because capitalists face several options in designing jobs. Bycontrast, I argue that Braverman's reading of Marx may be wrong:while agreeing with Braverman that Marx seems to have believed thatcapitalist development does embody a distinctive underlying skilltrend, I argue that in Marx's theory this trend may not have beendeskilling but quite the opposite-upgrading.Let us begin with one of the most frequently cited passages in Marxand its treatment by Braverman:

One of Marx's comments on this score has so often been subjectedto a flat misreading in recent years that it is necessary to commenton it. The passage: . . . Modern Industry . . . imposes the ne-cessity of recognizing as a fundamental law of production, vari-ation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer for variedwork, consequently the greatest possible development of his var-ied aptitudes. It becomes a question of life and death for societyto adapt the mode of production to the normal functioning3D. Bell, The Comingof Post-IndustrialSociety New York, 1976).4Braverman (n. 1 above).5See, e.g., S. Wood, ed., The Degradation of Work? (London, 1982); D. Knights,H. Willmott, and D. Collinson, eds., Job Redesign:CriticalPerspectives n the LaborProcess(Hampshire, 1985), and their bibliographies.


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782 Paul S. Adlerof this law. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, underpenalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today, crippledby life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, andthus reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fullydeveloped individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to faceany change of production, and to whom the different socialfunctions he performs, are but so many modes of giving freescope to his own natural and acquired powers (Capital[Moscow,n.d.] 1:458). This, extracted from its context, has been under-stood to mean that Marx was predicting that with the furtherdevelopment of capitalism an educated and technical work-ing class would be created by modern industry. In fact, that wasnot his thought at all, as a reading of the section in questionmakes clear. He saw capitalism as being in direct contradiction tothe tendency of modern industry to call into being a new type ofworker, a fully developed individual, and what he is saying hereis that society itself is threatened with extinction unless it ridsitself of the capitalist system which, the more modern scientificindustry makes it obsolete, the more tenaciously it holds on toand even deepens an outmoded division of labor.... Every lineMarx wrote on this subject makes it clear that he did not expectfrom capitalism or from science and machinery as used bycapitalism, no matter how complex they become, any generalincrease in the technical scope, scientific knowledge, or broaden-ing of the competence of the worker, and that in fact he expectedthe opposite.6

When Marx writes that it becomes a question of life and death forsociety to adapt the mode of production, does he mean, as Braver-man and most of his neo-Marxist followers claim, that society mustreplace this capitalist mode of production by a socialist one? Or doeshe see the possibility of an evolution within capitalism toward a morefully developed individual?7 In this article, I shall argue the followingpropositions:

(a) The evolution reading of Marx is possible, and perhapsmore plausible than Braverman's neo-Marxist replacementreading. It is consistent with an interesting version of Marx'smodel of social change, a model in which occasional manifesta-tions of deskilling in the short term and on the local level are6Braverman (n. 1 above), pp. 231-32.7The new translation of Capital by Ben Fowkes (New York, 1977) differs in thewording, but not much in the sense. Instead of mode of production, Fowkes has lawof social production : This possibility of varying labour must become a general law ofsocial production, and the existing relations must be adapted to permit its realization inpractice (p. 618). See Appendix for the Fowkes translation of the full passage.


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 783symptomatic of the power asymmetries and unplanned nature ofcapitalist economies, but are nevertheless eddies in the broadercurrent of a long-term skill-upgrading trend.

(b) The possibility of this evolutionary upgrading reading hasbeen obscured by the polemical tone of much of Marx's publicwriting, including Capital.(c) This reading of Marx's analysis of skill trends in capitalism'slarge-scale industry period is consistent with an upgradingreading of Marx's analysis of the transitions from handicraft tomanufacture and from manufacture to industry.(d) Such a reading suggests a distinction between deskilling anda broader, more fundamental historical process-the separationof the worker from the means of production. I suggest thatdeskilling bears the same relation to separation as, in a morephilosophical domain, alienation bears to objectification: in bothpairs, both terms refer to real processes. I thus uncover animportant sense in which Marx saw the destruction of craft skillsas having an emancipatory significance.(e) The critical edge of the deskilling reading has often beensecured by association with the younger Marx's vision of a utopiain which work is self-realization; by contrast, the coexistence ofhigh training requirements and job boredom in many automatedjobs may point the way to an antiwork utopia more congruentwith the older Marx's celebration of free time.(f) The data available on skill trends, automation's effect onwork, and work's influence on personality provide at leastenough prima facie empirical plausibility for the theory I amimputing to Marx to make further discussion worthwhile.(g) This exegesis could help contemporary research by forcingus to clarify our notions of skill and our understanding of theunderlying logic of machine design.

The premise of this article is that Marx is too important and rich atheorist to leave his interpretation to the neo-Marxists. A detailedexamination of the passage Braverman discussed will show that it canbe read as anticipating a skill-upgrading trend under capitalism. Ishall then show how this trend fits into a plausible version of Marx'soverall model of social change. After discussing a second passagefrom Capital that provides further support for my reconstruction ofMarx's theory, I shall highlight the tension in this version of Marx'stheory between short-term and long-term pressures on skill.First Exegesis

The first step in my exegesis is to resituate the passage Bravermancites in its context (see the Appendix). The need for a fully developed


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784 Paul S. Adlerindividual is, in the logic of Marx's exposition, the positive aspect ofan absolute contradiction between, on the one hand, the revolution-ary technical basis of large-scale industry-that is, the fact that

modern industry never views or treats the existing form of theproduction process as the definitive one -and, on the other hand,the form taken by this constant revolution in technology in capitalistsociety-that is, how, in its capitalist form, it reproduces the olddivision of labour with its ossified particularities. 8 In the Hegelianmodel Marx is using here, a substance and its form can be incontradiction, since both substance and form are construed as havingtheir own materiality.9The old division of labour that Marx refers tohere is the specific form of the division of labor associated with themanufacturing period: Thus although, from a technical point ofview, the old system of division of labour is thrown overboard bymachinery, it hangs on in the factory as a tradition handed down frommanufacture, and is then systematically reproduced and fixed in amore hideous form by capital as a means of exploiting labour-power.In particular, the lifelong specialty of handling the same tool [undermanufacture] becomes the lifelong specialty of serving the samemachine under large-scale industry.'?If the need for a fully developed individual-the substance ofindustry's requirements for flexible labor-is the positive side of thiscontradiction, the negative side is the fact that the form in whichcapitalism responds to industry's flexibility requirements is to increasenot so much the flexibility of each worker but rather the flexibility ofthe work force as a whole: This absolute contradiction does awaywith all repose, all fixity and all security as far as the worker'slife-situation is concerned; ... it constantly threatens, by taking awaythe instruments of labour, to snatch from his hands the means ofsubsistence, and, by suppressing his specialized function, to make himsuperfluous. We have then a contradiction between the revolution-ary nature of a technical basis and the ossified nature of its socialform. This contradiction has a positive side: the substance of indus-try's need for flexibility, which tends naturally toward the fullydeveloped individual. It also has a negative side: the distorted form inwhich capitalism expresses industry's substantive need-namely,worker insecurity and technological unemployment. The question to

8Ibid., p. 617.9SeeG. W. F Hegel, Hegel'sLogic(Oxford, 1975), p. 189, cited by I. I. Rubin, AbstractLabour and Value, Capital and Class 5 (1978): 134.'Marx (n. 7 above), p. 547.Ibid., p. 618.


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 785be resolved is: What does it take for the positive side, a historicalneed, to materialize in a form more congenial to workers' well-being? Braverman, like many commentators, argues that it would takethe replacement of capitalism by socialism. I want to suggest thatMarx's answer might plausibly have been quite different.Note first, however, that Braverman's reading has a certain primafacie validity. Indeed, Marx's general argument does seem to be that,while capitalism is an effective social form (mode of production) forbringing society into the stage of large-scale industry, the full flow-ering of industry's potential will require a change of type of society:capitalism's difficulty in abandoning the division of labor character-istic of the manufacturing stage is construed by Marx as evidence thatthe capitalist form of social organization has outlived its usefulnessand has become a barrier to the development of society's productivity.But what future does Marx see for workers and their skills in theabsence of social revolution? Did Marx believe that without a changeof mode of production work would become progressively deskilled? Ifwe grant that according to Marx increasing the flexibility of theindividual worker is not the primary means by which capitalismincreases production flexibility, does this imply that in his view theaverage worker will tend to become less flexible in the course ofcapitalism's development?The answer to these questions lies perhaps in the next paragraph:One aspect of this process of transformation, which has developedspontaneously from the foundation provided by large-scale industry,is the establishment of technical and agricultural schools. Another isthe foundation of 'ecoles d'enseignement professionel' [vocationalschools]. '2 Even under capitalism, industry needs some more skilledworkers, and this need encourages investment in worker education.Until we can calibrate the quantitative importance of this one aspect,it is difficult to judge how strong a counterweight to deskillingtendencies this development provides. Indeed, Marx goes on to arguethat these educational initiatives are not sufficient to bring about achange in the mode of production or fully satisfy the needs oflarge-scale industry: Though the Factory Act, that first and meagreconcession wrung from capital, is limited to combining elementaryeducation with work in the factory, there can be no doubt that, withthe inevitable conquest of political power by the working class,technological education, both theoretical and practical, will take itsplace in the schools of the workers. '3 The development of worker

2Ibid.Ibid.


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786 Paul S. Adlereducation under capitalism is thus, in Marx's view, insufficient-although one is tempted to ask how he would have interpreted thetremendous expansion of the education system since his death.Moreover, this development of worker education is not spontaneouslygenerated by industry; it is a concession wrung from capital -although Marx goes on to explain the role of bourgeois enlightenedself-interest in supporting such initiatives.Notwithstanding these important reservations, the punch line of hisargument suggests that Marx saw capitalist large-scale industry asstimulating real, albeit limited, movement in the direction of the fullydeveloped individual, and moreover, that such an upgrading ten-dency was a critical factor in social transformation: There is also nodoubt that those revolutionary ferments [educational initiatives, Fac-tory Act], whose goal is the abolition of the old division of labour, standin diametrical contradiction to the capitalist form of production, andthe economic situation which corresponds to that form. However, thedevelopment of the contradictions of a given historical form ofproduction is the only historical way in which it can be dissolved andthen reconstructed on a new basis. '4 In other words, while theferment of vocational education and the Factory Act is not sufficientin itself to recast the mode of production, it is a necessaryondition forfundamental change. Phrased in philosophical shorthand, we mightsay that both the substance (revolutionizing technology and theattendant development of a more fully developed worker) and itsform (reproduction of an ossified division of labor) are real. Thelatter does not subsume the former; both have their real effects; thecontradiction between them is real, historically efficacious, and notmerely philosophical. This interpretation can be contrasted with thatoffered by neo-Marxists such as David Noble, for whom the most basiccontradiction is not between two real forces but between what is andwhat ought to be. '5

A TentativeModelIn this passage Marx is not explicit on how broader educationcontributes to basic social change. But it is perhaps not difficult toreconstruct the linkage. Industry's positive effect on skill require-ments plays the capabilities-enhancing role discussed in the Commu-nist Manifesto: It draws workers into larger plants, gives them theexperience of disciplined collective action, and draws them out ofthe old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency into an'4Ibid., p. 619.'Noble (n. 1 above).


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 787awareness of universal interdependence. '6 In most exegeses-asoften, but not always, in Marx's writings themselves-the motivationfor social change is in the experience of work that has become somiserable that workers have nothing to lose but their chains. Buthere we see another side, where the upgrading of workers' jobs andthe broadening of their education contribute to workers'capabilities-as distinct from their motivation-for concerted action.For Marx, the proposition that socialist revolution was not justdesirable but also inevitable reflects the conjunction of both theincreased misery of the surplus population (the unemployed orunderemployed minority) and the increased capabilities of theworking class as a whole.17Marx's model of social transformation seems to be based on the ideathat industrial development transforms workers' experience of workand encourages the growth of their capabilities. These capabilitiesplay two key roles. Workers' capabilities represent, first, a resource forpolitical action. Industrial development drives an increase in skillrequirements, which in turn leads to an expansion of the educationalsystem and of the intellectual horizons of workers. Furthermore, theexperience of large-scale production enhances workers' capacity fororganized activity. The conjunction of this capacity and their broaderhorizons gives workers growing political potential. This potentialbecomes actual political mobilization only if there is a sufficientmaturation of political organizations and ideological forms, and only ifa propitious political conjuncture presents itself. The role of econom-ics and work experience in triggering workers' political action liesnot in any widespread deskilling trend but in the obviousness of thefact that every worker risks unemployment-in the cyclical large-scale unemployment generated by capitalism's recurring economiccrises and in the continual smaller-scale unemployment generatedby capitalism's inability to plan for the labor-force consequences ofeconomic and technological change.Deskilling does sometimes occur. Indeed, deskilling is of funda-mental theoretical significance, since it is symptomatic of the powerasymmetry of capitalist organizations and of the potential for myopic

'6K.Marx and F.Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, n L. S. Feuer, ed., BasicWritingson Politics and Philosophy:Karl Marx and FriedrichEngels (New York, 1959).7 Alongwith the constant decrease in the number of capitalist magnates [through thecentralization of capital] who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this processof transformation, the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploita-tion grows; but with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a classconstantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the verymechanism of the capitalist process of production (Marx [n. 7 above], p. 929).


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788 Paul S. Adlermanagement in market economics. Moreover, deskilling is of somepractical significance, since, even if only a minority of workers everexperience deskilling, other workers' sense of solidarity with thesevictims might help trigger action. But in the dynamics of capitalistdevelopment and supersession, these effects are secondary: at atheoretical level, workers share with managers an interest in theincreased productivity usually associated with a higher-skilled workforce, and at a practical level, in Marx's hypothesized movementtoward the supersession of capitalism, other factors are far moresignificant motivators of worker mobilization.Workers' capabilities represent not only a political potential, butalso a productive resource. Indeed, a prima facie case against Braver-man's deskilling reading can be made by pointing out the difficulty ofreconciling this reading with Marx's repeated assertions that capital-ism builds the infrastructure of productive forces for the socialistmode of production that will supersede it. The deskilling thesisimplies on the contrary that a socialist society would inherit a workingpopulation composed predominantly of unskilled workers unaccus-tomed to the exercise of any collective autonomy.If, therefore, the contradiction between the need of modernindustry for well-rounded workers and the maintenance of capitalistmanufacture's division of labor is an absolute contradiction, abso-lute may not mean permitting of no resolution, not even partial, somuch as requiring a constantly expanding set of partial resolutionsthat tend to undermine the starting point. This interpretation sug-gests that Marx's argument is not that capitalism witnesses no evolu-tion toward the more fully developed individual; it is rather that, byits tendency to create such individuals, industry accelerates thechange from the old to a new form of society. This vision of capitalistdynamics explains perhaps why Marx leaves his formulation-change in the mode of production -so indeterminate: he is in factreferring to changes within the mode of production which over thelonger term might spell a change from one mode to another.This reconstruction of Marx's theory of historical development iscongruent with Gerald A. Cohen's: the contradiction between thedevelopment of the forces of production and the maintenance of thecurrent form of society-a contradiction expressed in class conflict-deepens over time, since over the long run, as a result of thedevelopment of the productive forces, the capabilities of the emer-gent class develop, and this class's potential for political action grows.'8

G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theoryof History:A Defense (Princeton, N.J., 1978).


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 789It becomes increasingly likely that sooner or later this class willmobilize itself and its allies against the prevailing class structure. Inthis basic form, the argument has an undeniable element of techno-logical determinism. Given the widespread suspicion of technologicaldeterminism as an explanatory principle in historical and sociologicalresearch, and given the powerful arguments against interpretingMarx as a technological determinist presented by scholars such asRosenberg,'9 I need to explain why my model does not constitute aproof reductio ad absurdum that Marx did not adhere to a skill-upgrading thesis.In defense of this reading, I submit that much of the discussion ofthe role of technological determinism in Marx's theory has missed atleast three complicating features of his model-factors that make itmore sophisticated and more robust than simpler technologicaldeterminisms would be. First, technology (or forces of produc-tion ) should be construed broadly, to include, besides equipment, theproductive aspects of work organization20and perhaps even workers'skills.21Second, the determination by technology (even broadly con-strued) is not complete: other economic, political, and ideologicalforces clearly have a role to play in Marx's theory, and determinismis a way of conceptually ordering the relative roles of these forces, notof denying them any causal weight. Finally, the relative causal weightof technology appears to differ with the time horizon of Marx'sanalysis: Marx gives technology a predominant role in the broadestsweep of history,22but he seems to be more of an economic (relationsof production) determinist or even a political determinist in hisanalysis of narrower time frames.My reconstruction of Marx's theory suggests that, within the timeframe of the historical development of capitalism, Marx saw techno-logical change both as a dependent variable and as a powerful causalfactor in its own right. As a dependent variable, technology is releasedfrom the shackles of the natural economy and from the technological

'9N. Rosenberg, Karl Marx on the Economic Role of Science, in Journal of PoliticalEconomy 1974): 713-28; see also Rosenberg's Marx as a Student Technology, in InsidetheBlack Box: Technology nd Economics(Cambridge, 1982).20Cohen(n. 18 above).2'MacKenzie (n. 2 above).22Cohen (n. 18 above). Wright initially argued against Cohen on this point, inA. Levine and E. O. Wright, Rationality and Class Struggle, New Left Review 123(1980): 47-68. But he has more recently come to support the proposition from a moregame-theoretic premise: rarely does any social class have an interest in lowering socialproductivity. See E. O. Wright, Gidden's Critique of Marxism, New Left Review 138(1983): 11-36.


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790 Paul S. Adlerconservatism of the guilds by the diffusion of capitalist marketrelations and is now powerfully stimulated by capitalist competition.But as an independent variable, it plays a crucial role in shaping andreshaping skill requirements, work organization, and the resultantclass capabilities.

SecondExegesisThere is a second passage in Capitalthat merits exegetical attention.It encapsulates, perhaps better than any other, the elements of Marx'sanalysis, even though it focuses not on the factory worker but on thewhite-collar, commercial worker:

The commercial worker, in the strict sense of the term, belongs tothe better-paid class of wage workers: to these whose labour isclassed as skilled and stands above average labour. Yet the wagetends to fall, even in relation to average labour, with the advanceof the capitalist mode of production. This is due partly to thedivision of labour in the office, implying a one-sided develop-ment of the labour capacity, the cost of which does not fallentirely on the capitalist, since the labourer's skill develops byitself through the exercise of his function, and all the morerapidly as division of labour makes it more one-sided. Secondly,because the necessary training, knowledge of commercial prac-tices, languages, etc., is more and more rapidly, easily, universallyand cheaply reproduced with the progress of science and publiceducation the more the capitalist mode of productions directsteaching methods, etc., towards practical purposes. The univer-sality of public education enables capitalists to recruit suchlabourers from classes that formerly had no access to such tradesand were accustomed to a lower standard of living. Moreover,this increases supply, and hence competition. With few excep-tions, the labour-power of these people is therefore devaluatedwith the progress of capitalist production.23

This passage identifies several forces that reduce commercialworkers' wages; but closer examination reveals that, while one ofthese factors might lead to some sort of deskilling, the others leadeither to upgrading or else to lower wages without deskilling. Let usanalyze this passage more closely.First, skill requirements are lower than they would otherwise bebecause of the effects of the division of labor. This is clearly adeskilling factor, at least in the sense of reducing skills compared tothe hypothetical requirements of the job in the absence of any division

2K. Marx, Capital (London, 1974), 3:300.


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 791of labor. Second, the socially necessary labor time required to trainworkers to a given skill level is reduced by greater instructionalefficiency. This is less clearly a deskilling factor: it does not imply anyreduction in real capabilities, but only a change in the marketeconomy's yardstick for measuring them, since shorter instructiontimes would reduce the human capital claim for higher wage rates.Third, the same skill levels can be paid at lower rates if workersaccustomed to lower living standards are recruited. This factor doesnot affect skills; it only creates a possible source of disjunctionbetween the underlying value of those skills (as measured by trainingtime) and their current price (as measured by the prevailing wagerates). Fourth, workers' competition in this labor market increases asmore workers receive general education. But this factor too identifiesa value/price disparity rather than a skill shift.Of all these factors, therefore, only the division of labor implies thatcapabilities are in any sense reduced. But this reduction is onlyrelative to skill requirements in the hypothetical absence of anydivision of labor; it does not imply a continual decline over time inactual skill requirements. Indeed, such a continual decline seemsextremely unlikely, since there is a limit to the subdivision of any giventask and since economic development is constantly creating new tasks.Against this single, somewhat limited deskilling factor, Marx'sanalysis poses a major upgrading force: the spread of education. Theoverall effect is clear, as the passage concludes: Their wages fall,while their ability increases. 24 Marx's somber diagnosis of laborpower's depreciation is thus crucially modified by the conclusion thatthis depreciation is only in money terms, while real capabilities tend toincrease. The upgrading conclusion would be further reinforced ifMarx had discussed the emergence of new white-collar tasks requir-ing greater skills. And even his prognosis of lower wages would bemitigated or reversed if, as seems plausible, capitalism's demand forwhite-collar skills led rather than lagged the access to education ofnew population categories.

Short-TermProcessesversusLong-TermTrendsThe argument of my exegesis of two key passages in Capital hasthus been that it is possible to interpret Marx, Braverman notwith-standing, as predicting a general skill-upgrading trend under capital-

ism. A critical feature of this reading of Marx's argument-a featurethat Braverman and others have overlooked-is that such an upgrad-ing prognosis would not necessarily contradict Marx's critique of the24Ibid.


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792 Paul S. Adlershort-term dynamics by which capitalism muddles through alongthis long-term upgrading path.Marx's own exposition highlights two key features of these short-term dynamics. First, capitalists, because of the cost pressures theyexperience in competition and the corporate and class interests thatoften put them at loggerheads with workers, frequently attempt toreduce skill levels, often myopically ignorant of the loss of operationsefficiency and future profitability that usually ensues. In other words,the short-term dynamics of skill are profoundly marked by the socialform of capitalism: decision-making power is asymmetrically distrib-uted, class interests often diverge, decisions are based on profitsrather than social welfare, and decentralized decision making allowsfor myopia.Second, the market mode of economic coordination characteristicof capitalism leads firms to underinvest in worker training. The fearthat workers might leave discourages firms from funding workertraining at the socially optimal level. But this does not mean that firmsrefuse to make any investment in training. Moreover, the politicaleconomy of capitalism includes a key causal chain leading from thismarket failure to increased pressure on government, both fromworkers and from enlightened capitalists, to fill the training gap. It ischaracteristic of capitalism as a social form that this causal chainpasses along the uncertain pathways of a relatively autonomouspolitical process.The long-term upgrading trend that I have argued Marx predictsis thus achieved only ex post, as the result of myriad incoherent localeconomic decisions and uncertain political processes. That the out-come should sometimes leave workers dispossessed of their skills is,for Marx, a scandal, and for Marx it remains a scandal even if thedeskilling outcomes are only a small proportion of all the outcomesand the overall trend is upgrading. The question arises, however: IfMarx did foresee such a positive long-term trend, why did he notdiscuss it more explicitly? In the following section, I will suggest thatMarx may have avoided discussing such possibilities for polemicalreasons.

The Role of Polemic in MarxAn excellent example of polemic at work in Marx's writing isfound in his discussion of workers' living standards. In earlier writ-ings, in particular in the Manifesto(written 1847-49), it appears thatMarx did in fact believe that workers' living standards would tend tofall under capitalism. By the time he wrote Wages,Price and Profit,


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 793however, he had clearly recognized that, while the relative share oftotal wealth going to workers might decline as capitalism developed,it was perfectly possible for the average absolutestandard of living ofworkers to improve.25 In Capital, Marx focused on relative share butdid little to clarify the distinction because relative impoverishment is amuch less powerful rhetorical position than absolute impoverishment.26In many ways, Marx's discussion of skill trends parallels hisdiscussion of wage trends-the standard deskilling proposition cor-responds to a kind of absolute impoverishment of the worker's role inthe labor process.27 The corresponding relative skill impoverish-ment thesis could take several possible forms: (a) industry needs evenmore skill upgrading than capitalism will permit, (b) workers' educa-tional levels and skills are rising but they are underutilized, and/or (c)while the working class as a whole experiences a gradual skillupgrading, a segment of the working population-perhaps a growingsegment-is confined to the lowest-skill positions and experiences noupgrading. Any or all of these forms of relative skill impoverishmentare empirically plausible and theoretically interesting propositions,but they make less effective revolutionary rhetoric than the argumentof absolute general decline.Marx's hopes, indeed his expectations, that fundamental socialchange was imminent also color his discourse. If the forces that mightencourage the upgrading and broadening of workers' skills operateprimarily over longer periods, and if Marx expected basic socialchange before these trends had much effect, it is understandable thathe did not spend much time developing an argument about thisupgrading future. The role of polemic is heightened by the fact thatMarx saw himself as an active participant in the political and ideolog-ical struggle for change, and highlighting the injustices of the presentwas one of his ways of playing a political role. Showing that over therecent period and into the immediate future things are bad and mayeven be getting worse is a powerful rhetorical device for crystallizingopposition. But this call for revolt does not fit easily with long-termtheoretical argument for the inevitability of revolution based on the

25Written 1865, available in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works n Three Volumes(Moscow, 1969). On the evolution of Marx's thinking on wages, see B. Rowthorn,Capitalism,Conflictand Inflation (London, 1980), chap. 7.26Marx(n. 23 above), pp. 765 ff. The passages on p. 798 are quite explicit thatgrowing pauperization is not the lot of the working class as a whole, but of its reservearmy ; p. 799, however, leaves much greater ambiguity.27Braverman (n. 1 above), p. 129, writes of a secular trend toward the incessantlowering of the working class as a whole below its previous conditions of skill and labor.


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794 Paul S. Adlerinescapable laws of evolution. (Recall Marx's proposed dedication ofCapital to Charles Darwin.) These three levels of analysis-revolt,revolution, and evolution-can be combined, but only at the cost of aconstant differentiation of short term and the long term, and suchattention to theoretical nuance is a common victim of polemic. It isimportant, too, to recall that Marx expended much effort in trying toformulate Capital'sargument in accessible terms.28 His success on thisscore is hardly obvious, but his intention might help explain the roleof polemic in it.

Marx on Skill beforeLarge-ScaleIndustryIf we distinguish between short and long term and between theoryand polemic, other parts of Marx's analysis appear in a different light.In particular, if Marx did leave room in his model for a globallypositive influence of capitalist industry on skill requirements, it isimportant to look backward and ask whether such an upgradingtrend would constitute a reversal or a continuation of previoushistorical trends. The conventional reading is that Marx saw both thetransition from handicraft to manufacture and that of manufacture to

large-scale industry as attacks on craft and thus as attacks on workers'skill requirements. I submit that the attack on craft may in Marx'smodel be associated with an increase in skill requirements.Take first the passage from handicraft to manufacture. At firstreading, the deskilling interpretation appears self-evident, since Marxemphasizes that apprenticeships are reduced or eliminated.29 But healso mentions the emergence of new and comprehensive functionsand offers neither empirical evidence nor theoretical rationale forassuming that these exceptions will not counterbalance or evenoutweigh the effects of work simplification.30

28Writing o Maurice La Chatre in the preface to the French edition: Dear Citizen,I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of Capitalas a serial. In this form thebook will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to meoutweighs everything else (Marx [n. 7 above], p. 104).29 Hencein every craft it seizes, manufacture creates a class of so-called unskilledlabourers, a class strictly excluded by the nature of handicraft industry. If it develops aone-sided specialty to perfection at the expense of the whole of a man's workingcapacity, it also begins to make a specialty of the absence of all development. Alongsidethe gradations of the hierarchy, there appears the simple separation of the workers intoskilled and unskilled. For the latter, the cost of apprenticeship vanishes; for the former,it diminishes, compared with that required of the craftsman, owing to the simplificationof the functions (ibid., p. 470).30 An xception to this law occurs whenever the decomposition of the labour processgives rise to new and comprehensive functions, which either did not appear at all inhandicrafts or not to the same extent (ibid.).


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 795If we take now Marx's analysis of the passage from manufacture tolarge-scale industry, we find the same ambiguity. At first reading,capitalist industry appears a deskilling force, reducing manufacture'sspecialized workers to the role of machine minders.3' But two factorscomplicate the issue and leave considerable doubt about the overallskill direction. First, the tendency to reduce all kinds of work to anidentical level is at least in part counterbalanced by the creation of anew hierarchy in industry, distinguishing machine operators, machinefeeders, and a numerically unimportant group whose occupation it isto look after the whole of the machinery and repair it from time totime. 32Again, Marx offers no prognosis for the subsequent evolutionof the relative sizes of these groups. Second, and more critically, weneed to understand how the skill requirements of each of the threegroups in this new hierarchy of jobs compare with those of themanufacture period, and on this subject, Marx has little to say.That Marx does not assess these aggregate effects probably resultsfrom his desire to insist on the proposition that under capitalistconditions all this deskilling and upgrading-whatever the resultanttrend in average skill level or in skill distribution-happens at theexpense of the individual workers' economic security. Marx appearsto be arguing that, even if the global statistical effect is an upgradingone, society should be able to achieve the same effect without hurtingso many in the process. This critique of the anarchy of capitalistdevelopment is, however, quite different from one based on adiagnosis of aggregate deskilling. What is clear is that the new skills inmanufacture are not craft skills. But as we shall see, Marx does notconflate skill and craft-craft is only one form of skill.The Underlyingand AmbivalentProcess:Separating Workersfrom theConditionsof ProductionI have argued that the impression of many readers that Marx sawcapitalist industry as entailing a deskilling derives from (a) Marx'sfocus on the peculiar manner in which capitalism muddles throughon what may have been in Marx's view an upgrading trend, (b) Marx'spolemical style, and (c) the confusion of wage levels and skill levels.My discussion of the handicraft-manufacture-industry sequence al-lows us to identify a final, more deep-seated source of confusion in the

31 Alongwith the tool, the skill of the worker in handling it passes over to themachine. ... Hence, in place of the hierarchy of specialized workers that characterizesmanufacture, there appears in the automatic factory a tendency to equalize and reduceto an identical level every kind work that has to be done by the minders of themachines (ibid., p. 545).32Ibid.


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796 Paul S. Adlerambivalence Marx attaches to the long-run process of social andtechnological development.In his general analysis of the succession of modes of production,Marx argued that capitalist development was based on and furthereda millennial process of separating the worker from the conditions ofproduction-the natural, human, and man-made means of produc-tion and consumption.33 Clearly, there is something tragic in thedisruption of earlier societies' organic unity. But in Marx's view, thismultifaceted dissolution/separation also has a fundamentally emanci-patory significance, since it brings with it a universality and compre-hensiveness of relations and capacities. 34Thus, under capitalist

33 . .. the relation of labour to capital, or to the objective conditions of labour ascapital, presupposes a process of history which dissolves the various forms in which theworker is a proprietor, or in which the proprietor works. Thus above all (1) Dissolutionof the relation to the earth-land and soil-as natural condition of production-towhich he relates as to his own inorganic being, the workshop of his forces, and thedomain of his will. All forms in which this property appears presuppose a community,whose members, although there may be formal distinctions between them, are, asmembers of it, proprietors. .. (2) Dissolution of the relations in which he appears asproprietor f the instrument. ust as the above form of landed property presupposes a realcommunity,so does this property of the worker in the instrument presuppose aparticular form of the development of manufactures, namely craft, artisanwork;boundup with it, the guild-corporation system etc. . . . Here labour itself still half artistic, halfend-in-itself etc. Mastery. Capitalist himself still master-journeyman. Attainment ofparticular skill in the work also secures possession of instrument etc. etc. Inheritabilitythen to a certain extent of the mode of work together with the organization of work andthe instrument of work. Medieval cities. Labour still as his own; definite self-sufficientdevelopment of one-sided abilities etc. (3) Included in both is the fact that he has themeans of consumption in his possession before production, which are necessary forhim to live as producer-i.e. during production, before ts completion.. . . (4) Dissolutionlikewise at the same time of the relations in which the workers hemselves,he living labourcapacities hemselves, still belong directly mongtheobjective onditionsof production,and areappropriated as such-i.e. are slaves or serfs. For capital,

the worker is not a conditionof production, only work is. If it can make machines do it, or even water, air, so muchthe better. And it does not appropriate the worker, but his labour-not directly, butmediated through exchange. These are, now, on one side, historic presuppositionsneeded before the worker can be found as a free worker, as objectless, purely subjectivelabour capacity confronting the objective conditions of production as his not-property,salienproperty, s value for-itself, as capital. K. Marx, Grundrisse Harmondsworth, 1973),pp. 495-96.34 Universallydeveloped individuals, whose social relations, as their own communal[gemeinschaftlich]elations, are hence also subordinated to their own communal control,are no product of nature, but of history. The degree and the universality of thedevelopment of wealth where this individuality becomes possible supposes productionon the basis of exchange values as a prior condition, whose universality produces notonly the alienation of the individual from himself and from others, but also theuniversality and the comprehensiveness of his relations and capacities. In earlier stages


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 797conditions the process of separation appears in two contradictory lights:on the one hand, in its capitalist form, it is employment insecurity andthe fragmentation and deskilling of craft work; on the other, in itssubstance, it is the premise of what Marx presents as a new degree ofsocialization of the forces of production.35I believe we can establish a parallel between the relationship ofseparation to deskilling and a more philosophical couple whoserelationship has been more extensively discussed, namely, the rela-tionship of objectification to alienation. In Marx's analysis, mechani-zation is a form of objectification of human capabilities, and the formtaken by this objectification in capitalist contexts is alienation. Thehuman capabilities objectified in technology confront the worker asan alien force since they have become the property of the capitalist.Some commentators conflate objectification and alienation: theywould no doubt also conflate separation and deskilling. This clearlymisses an interesting aspect of Marx's analysis. Other commentatorswould want to maintain the conceptual difference between objectifi-cation and alienation and between separation and deskilling but arguethat under capitalism the first term in each pair manifests itself onlyin the form of the second. This approach misses, I believe, the thrustof Marx's argument as we saw it earlier-that the development of thecontradictions of a given historical form of production is the onlyhistorical [as opposed to philosophical] way in which it can bedissolved and then reconstructed on a new basis. 36 t is because thepositive effects of separation are real, as opposed to only virtual,potential, or philosophical, that they can shape the historical process.The negative side of the separation of the worker from theconditions of production is not primarily the loss of craft immediacy;the key negative aspects lie rather outside the labor process, inseparation of workers and owners and in the separation of productiveof development the single individual seems to be developed more fully, because he hasnot yet worked out his relationships in their fullness, or erected them as independentsocial powers and relations opposite himself. It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return tothat original fullness as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history hascome to a standstill (ibid., p. 162).33 This process of separation starts in simple cooperation, where the capitalistrepresents to the individual workers the unity and will of the whole body of sociallabour. It is developed in manufacture, which mutilates the worker, turning him into afragment of himself. It is completed in large-scale industry, which makes science apotentiality for production which is distinct from labour and presses it into the serviceof capital (Marx [n. 7 above], p. 482).36Ibid.,p. 619.


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798 Paul S. Adlerunits into independent firms competing on the market. This doubleseparation creates the fundamental economic insecurity of the worker,whose employment, and therefore whose access to the means ofconsumption, is dependent on the intrinsically uncertain marketfortunes of his or her employer.On the positive side, Marx saw the separation of workers from theconditions of production as the driving force behind two key forms ofreal socialization. In identifying these forms of socialization, we shallsee that where many commentators have found in Marx a deskillingdiagnosis and prognosis, we may more fruitfully see a thesis high-lighting fundamentally progressive effects: the form poses real prob-lems, but the progressive import of the substance is no less real.Indeed, the substance progressively imposes itself on the form.At the macro (interfirm) level, socialization appears in Marx'sanalysis in the form of the growing interdependence of branches ofindustry. One of the key dimensions of this interdependence is theincreasingly differentiated relationship between the production ofmeans of production (Department I) and the production of consump-tion goods (Department II). More generally, new branches of industryare continually emerging, and the international interindustry input-output table becomes progressively more complex and dense. Thisprocess of specialization-interdependency-socialization is key to capi-talism's ability to sustain a historically unprecedented rate of produc-tivity growth.At the micro (intrafirm) level, socialization appears as cooperativelabor.37It is true, argues Marx, that under capitalist conditions thiscollectivity is merely objective since it is controlled by the capitalist.But it nevertheless provides workers with an important experience ofdisciplined coordinated activity, thus providing a necessary if notsufficient condition for this objectively collective laborer to becomea subjective political reality of a united class-for-itself. Where authorslike Braverman see destruction of the craftsman's individual auton-omy, Marx would thus in many instances presumably see a progres-sive tendency toward technical interdependence within a collectivelaborer. Moreover, it is also true that this interdependence is based ona task specialization that destroys the craftsman's breadth of expertise,and that specialization will ceteris paribus reduce skill requirements.

37Machinery,with a few exceptions, operates only by means of associated labour, orlabour in common. Hence the cooperative character of the labour process is in this casea technical necessity dictated by the very nature of the instrument of labour (ibid.,p. 508).


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Marx, Machines,and SkillThis is the essence of the Babbage principle.38 But if specializationoccurs in a context of ongoing mechanization/automation, then suchspecialization will often require greater depth of expertise-and thisgreater depth can, and often does, outweigh the deskilling effects ofthe narrowing of breadth. The Grundrisse'sanalysis of automation isparticularly revealing of Marx's image of the resulting trends in work.Here Marx argues that the craft form is replaced by a collectivelaborer composed of (a) general scientific labour, 39hat is, technicians,engineers, and scientists required for the development of new tech-nology, and (b) machine supervision-a form of labor in which theworker's experience-based art has been replaced by an education-based understanding of nature. 40These macro- and micro-level transformations are labeled social-ization because they draw workers out of the isolation of self-contained jobs and industries. This is the essence of Marx's critique ofrural idiocy in the CommunistManifesto.As Hal Draper has pointedout, the German Idiotismusdoes not mean idiocy but refers to theGreek idiotes:a private person, withdrawn from public or communalconcerns.41 This etymology clarifies Marx's critique of craft idiocyand Proudhon.42 Marx would agree that the separation process attacksthe status of craft-a concern, however, proper to that small minorityof the working population which may have ever claimed the status of

38 The master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be performed into differentprocesses each requiring different degrees of skill and force, can purchase exactly thatprecise quantity necessary for each process; whereas, if the entire work is executed byone workman, that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult,and sufficient strength to carry out the most labourious of the operations into which theart divided. C. Babbage, On the Economicsof Machineryand Manufactures (London,1832), pp. 137-38.39Marx n. 33 above), p. 700.4?Theoperator of the automatic system steps to the side of the production processinstead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct humanlabour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather theappropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature andhis mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body-it is, in a word, thedevelopment of the social individual which appears as the great foundation stone ofproduction and wealth (ibid., p. 705).4H. Draper, The AnnotatedCommunistManifesto (Berkeley, Calif., Center for SocialHistory, 1984). I am grateful to Michael Howard for drawing my attention to this point.42 What haracterizes the division of labour in the automatic workshop is that labourhas there completely lost its specialized character. But the moment every specialdevelopment stops, the need for universality, the tendency towards an integraldevelopment of the individual begins to be felt. The automatic workshop wipes outspecialists and craft-idiocy. K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy Moscow, 1963), p. 138.

799


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800 Paul S. Adlercraftsman.43 Moreover, Marx would agree that in its capitalist formthe skill-upgrading effect experienced by the majority is too oftenmerely statistical. But in his less polemic moments, Marx was, Isubmit, arguing that this separation is a fundamentally progressiveprocess: not only is it the only way that socialization of production andgrowth of social productivity can proceed,44 but even its directinfluence on the experience of work is positive-certainly for thelarge number of previously totally unskilled laborers whose positionsare upgraded to semiskilled, and quite plausibly even for the elite ofcraft workers whose role progressively shifts toward that of techni-cians, with a corresponding broadening of their intellectual and socialhorizons.45

Two Utopias in MarxThere is one final hurdle to surmount if we are to accept anupgrading reading as tenable and if we are to fully appreciate theprovocative nature of Marx's views on machines and skill: thequestion of the significance of work per se. On the one hand, we havethe conventional reading based on the Marx of the 1844 Manuscripts:work should be a self-actualizing activity.46From this point of view, thefact that the task of machine supervision-which is all that remains forthe shop-floor production worker-seems doomed to boredom undercapitalist conditions is interpreted as a scathing critique of capitalism.47Emptied of all tangible content and significance, the work of themachine supervisor has been reduced to a mere abstraction. 48Whilethere may be opportunities for more satisfying work for engineersand technicians, the operator's lot seems hopeless.

43Form n. 1 above).44Rosenberg, both works (n. 19 above).43p. Zarifian, Crise de la production et tendances du mouvement historique, LaPensee (October 1979): 3-18; L. Hirschhorn, BeyondMechanization(Cambridge, Mass.,1984), pp. 97-98.46K.Marx, Economicand PhilosophicalManuscriptsof 1844 (Moscow, 1964).47 Factorywork exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost; at the same time, itdoes away with the many-sided play of the muscles and confiscates every atom offreedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity. Even the lightening of the labourbecomes an instrument of torture, since the machine does not free the worker from thework, but rather deprives the work itself of all content (Marx [n. 7 above], p. 548).48 This economic relation-the character which capitalist and worker have as the

extremes of a single relation of production-therefore develops more purely andadequately in proportion as labour loses all the characteristics of art; as its particularskill becomes something more and more abstract and irrelevant, and as it becomesmore and more a purely abstractactivity,a purely mechanical activity, hence indifferentto its particular form (Marx [n. 33 above], p. 297).


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 801On the other hand, in his critique of Proudhon and craft idiocy,Marx seems to reject out of hand the idea of restoring some moretangible content to the worker's job. He caricatures the pinmakingcraftsman as reduced to the consciousness of the pin. 49Why is Marxso scornful of the value of the pinmaker's craft? The underlying logicof Marx's position has, I submit, three elements. First, as alreadymentioned, Marx saw no turning back. He saw the economic pres-sures flowing from the superiority of the new technology as sufficientto ensure the obsolescence of the craft form. Second, as discussed

earlier, the craft form itself was, in Marx's view, too narrow andprivatizing. There is, however, a third element to Marx's position:Marx seems to have believed that under any social conditions mostwork would have a fundamentally mundane objective and as suchcould not be anything other than basically boring. Clearly changes insocial relations in the workplace and in the property regime andchanges that give workers some control in the design of the laborprocess and in the determination of production objectives couldmitigate the trend toward abstraction and the boredom of machinesupervision. But when the production of material necessities iscontrasted with the free exercise of human creativity, it becomesobvious that the former necessarily lacks the spiritual value of thelatter. In a different mode of production, labor might be moreconsciously directed to social needs, and such a transformation couldrestore to work some of its higher, altruistic meaning. But even achange of the mode of production cannot restore to work the centralrole that it played in the formation of worker self-identity under thecraft regime, when the worker was absorbed by his or her task andwhen social identity was based on, and largely circumscribed by, workroles. Automation, therefore, plays a profoundly progressive role byhighlighting this contrast-not by deskilling work, but by stripping itof its romance. The worker is no longer absorbed in the complexitiesof producing widgets: the worker simply controls the operation of anautomatic widget plant. Even if work becomes more skilled, it maylose its intrinsic meaning.Such appears to be the logic of Marx's second utopia, expressed inCapital, in which freedom and self-actualization lie beyond the realmof necessity, in the realm of creative activity proper to truly free time.50

49 Theautomatic workshop wipes out specialists and craft idiocy. Mr. Proudhon, nothaving understood even this one revolutionary side of the automatic workshop, takes astep backward and proposes to the worker that he make not only the twelfth part of apin, but successively all twelve parts of it. The worker would thus arrive at theknowledge and the consciousness of the pin (Marx [n. 44 above], p. 138).5?Marx (n. 23 above), p. 820.


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802 Paul S. AdlerIn this utopia, work time is reduced to a minimum by virtue ofautomation and a transformation of social priorities. To the extentthat the romance of labor is eliminated by capitalist automation,capitalism is, Marx seems to suggest, confronting humanity with ourhigher spiritual needs. Marx seems to be saying: if the postmodernworkers at the control panel of a chemical plant find their workboring despite its high training and responsibility requirements, ifthey have a merely instrumental attitude toward their work, somuch the better; such is the fruit of civilization-that wcrkers can findtheir free time more important to their self-identity than work, evenskilled work. This utopia's vision of quantitative reduction competeswith the earlier vision of qualitative enhancement for preeminence inMarx's vision of the ideal future.

Is This Upgrading ThesisEmpiricallyTenable?It is not the task of this article to assess the validity of the theory Ihave attributed to Marx. But the reader is entitled to some indicationas to whether this theory has any prima facie empirical support. Sinceothers have already collected the available data, it would seem exces-sively niggardly not to summarize what is known about skill trends,automation's effect on work, and the effect of work on attitudes.Spenner reviews the available larger-scale and longer-term statisticalstudies of skill trends.51He concludes (a) that the skill content of the jobsin each occupation has, on average, slightly increased or remained stable,and (b) that the skill profile of the labor force as a whole has beensubstantially upgraded by compositional shifts. It is noteworthy thatnone of these studies shows deskilling in either job content or occupa-tional composition. Only one of the studies, that of Dubnoff, addressesthe secular time frame that has been the object of this essay.52Dubnoffanalyzes the U.S. occupational structure from 1900 to 1970, andSpenner summarizes the study as showing little net change. 53Spen-ner's presentation is, however, based on his own reanalysis of the data,which highlight the lack of upgrading in each specific cell in a matrixdistinguishing male from female workers and blue-collar from white-collar employees.54But it is precisely through the elimination of domestichelp positions and of laborer positions in farms and factories and

5'K. Spenner, Deciphering Prometheus: Temporal Changes in the Skill Levels ofWork, AmericanSociologicalReview 48 (1983): 824-37.52S.Dubnoff, Interoccupational Shifts and Changes on the Quality of Work in theAmerican Economy, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for theStudy of Social Problems, San Francisco, 1978.55Spenner (n. 51 above), p. 832.54K.Spenner, Temporal Changes in the Skill Level of Work: Issues of Concept,


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 803through the growth of professional and technical positions that much ofthe compositional upgrading has operated (see table 1).We can use the U.S. Employment Service's Dictionary of Occupa-tional Titles to estimate the average skill level of the 1900 and 1970work forces. Using the 1950 scores of general skill requirements torate occupational categories in both 1900 and 1970, we find that theindex of average skill level increases from the equivalent of 10.3 yearsof schooling required in 1900 to 11.2 in 1970.55Thus, the effect of thechanging occupational structure-as distinct from the effect ofchanges in the component individual jobs-is probably an upgradingone. Under these conditions, the plausibility of the deskilling hypoth-esis can be sustained only if we believe that skill requirements forindividual jobs within each occupation have undergone a systematicdowngrading sufficient to more than compensate for this composi-tional upgrading effect. Again, Spenner's review found not one studyshowing a long-run deskilling trend of individual occupations; in fact,most show a small but clear net upgrading of the average occupation,and all show a considerable upgrading of the labor force as a whole.In contrast to this statistical approach, Flynn analyzes 197 case stud-ies published between 1940 and 1985 and finds that some support andothers contradict Braverman's thesis.56The distinction drawn earlierbetween short-term, localized effects and longer-term, aggregate ef-fects might help reconcile apparently contradictory findings of thestatistical and the case-study research: the vast majority of Flynn'sstudies do not focus on the longer-term evolution of skills and high-light instead the prevalence of management's deskilling intentions.If we look for skill-trend data going back further than 1900,perhaps the strongest case has been argued by Form.57His compila-tion of twelve historical studies reaching back into the 18th and 19thcenturies concludes that, while skill levels may have diminished inspecific instances, the historical record is unambiguous in contradict-ing the aggregate deskilling thesis. Craftsmen have never been morethan a small minority of the work force.These skill-trend studies do not, however, address the more spe-cific question of the role of automation in changing work. The only

Method and Comparison, paper presented at the Tenth World Congress of Sociology,Mexico City, 1982.55Ihave calculated these results from the data in R. Rumberger, The Changing SkillRequirements of Jobs in the U.S. Economy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review 34(1981): 578-95.56p.Flynn, Facilitating TechnologicalChange (Cambridge, 1988).57Form n. 1 above).


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804 Paul S. AdlerTABLE 1

OCCUPATIONAL STRUCTURE

Employed Population over Sixteen Years Old (%) 1900 1970

White-collar workers:Professional, technical .................................. 4.3 14.5Managers, officials, proprietors .......................... 5.8 8.1Clerical ............................................... 3.0 17.8Sales .................................................. 4.5 7.1Manual and service workers:Craftsmen, foremen .................................... 10.6 13.9Operatives ............................................. 12.8 18.0Laborers (excluding farms, mines) ....................... 12.5 4.7Private household workers .............................. 5.4 1.5Other service workers .................................. 3.6 11.3Farm workers:Farmers, farm managers ................................ 19.9 1.8Farm laborers, foremen ................................. 17.7 1.3

SOURCE.-Historical tatisticsof the United States U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1975), SeriesD182-232.

systematic job content data that give some sense of the influence ofautomation are presented by Mueller.58On the basis of a representativesample (N 2,662) of men and women in the 1967 U.S. labor force,Mueller and her colleagues found that of those workers who had beenin the same job for the previous five years and had experienced amachine change during that time, 53 percent felt their job now re-quired more skill, 36 percent felt it required about the same degree ofskill, and only 7 percent felt it required less skill.59 See table 2.)Finally, what about the thesis that the experience of skilled workbuilds workers' capabilities for political action? Here the researchprogram of Kohn and his associates has provided powerful empiricalsupport for the proposition that self-directed work leads to ide-ational flexibility and to a self-directed orientation to self and society;oppressive working conditions lead to distress. 60

58E.Mueller, TechnologyAdvance in an Expanding Economy(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1969).59These data may suffer from respondent bias. They probably further overstate theupgrading effect because, if ajob is deskilled, the incumbents are likely to be replaced,while if it is upgraded, incumbents are more likely to be retrained or stretched. I amgrateful to Sam Cohn for pointing this out to me.60M.L. Kohn and C. Schooler, Job Conditions and Personality: A LongitudinalAssessment of Their Reciprocal Effects, AmericanJournal of Sociology87 (1982):1257.See also Kohn and Schooler, Workand Personality:An Inquiry into the Impact of SocialStratification Norwood, N.J., 1983).


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 805Naturally, these brief notes do not prove that the theory I haveattributed to Marx is correct. But they do demonstrate that such a

theory may hold some interest beyond the archaeology of ideas.Implicationsor Research:What Is Skill?

Marx observed on numerous occasions that artificial skill distinc-tions are often maintained by active worker resistance in specificmarket conditions. One might imagine pushing this line of reflectionfurther, to ask whether there can be any significance at all to thecomparison of such extremely different skill sets as those required bya craftsman in one century and by an engineer in the next century, letalone by an agricultural laborer in the previous century. Indeed, onemight wonder whether skill had any real significance beyondserving as an ideological label for codifying relative prestige andstatus. Marx's approach offers one way to clarify a complex theoret-ical issue.Let us begin with the technical-economic determinations of skill. InMarx's economic theory, skill refers to the value of a given quality oflabor power relative to the baseline quality of simple labor.61In aTABLE 2

IMPACT OF MACHINE CHANGE ON WORK FORTHOSE IN THE SAME JOB FOR THE PAST

FIVE YEARS AND HAVING EXPERIENCED MACHINE CHANGE(N = 170, in percentages)

Automation and Work Requirements More Same Less Not Ascertained

Speed required .............................. 48 44 5 3Physical effort required ....................... 15 34 47 4Interest ..................................... 60 31 5 4Skill required ................................ 53 36 74

Opportunity to learn ......................... 49 42 3 6Planning, judgment, initiative required ......... 49 42 3 6Own influence on work ....................... 48 43 5 4Seriousness of errors ......................... 31 53 11 5Influence on quality (production workers only) ... 29 37 10 24Pleasantness of physical surrounding ........... 20 66 10 4Danger of personal injury .................... 15 56 25 4Chance to talk ............................... 20 64 12 4SOURCE.-E.Mueller, TechnologyAdvancein an Economy Ann Arbor, Mich., 1969), pp. 120-21.

6 Skills therefore not a dichotomous category, but one permitting graduations. Theappearance of such a continuous category is relatively recent. Marx describes (n. 32above) how the early factory fairly unambiguously trichotomized workers as skilled,worker apprentices, and common laborers.


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806 Paul S. Adlermarket system in which labor power is treated as a commodity, thedetermination of the relative values of different qualities of laborpower works the same way as the determination of the relative valuesof other commodities: by the scarce resources required for the(re-)production of that labor power's specific qualities (and for Marx,the only truly scarce resource is labor time). In Marx's economicmodel, prices fluctuate around values: the wage differential betweenskilled and unskilled workers would thus fluctuate around the valuedetermined by this socially necessary training time. From a technical(use value) point of view, skill is a set of capabilities whose magnitudecan in principle be measured by the required training time (formaland informal, but socially recognized), and deskilling is brought aboutby simplifying previously more complex (i.e., training-intensive)labor. If training technology improves, workers' capabilities-skillviewed technically-do not change, but their economic (exchangevalue) yardstick does. If general education raises the capabilities ofsimple labor, again the capabilities of the more skilled worker areunchanged, but their relative economic value is reduced. Both theseeconomic effects can be mitigated or even outweighed if workersmaintain their share of total value added, since the total pie willexpand with the resulting (technical) productivity increase. Marx'sanalysis of the commercial workers shows this approach at work.There are, of course, good reasons to think that labor power is noteasily treated as a commodity,62 and that there are many otherdeterminants of both education and wages: the social recognition oftraining time is an extremely tenuous procedure; diplomas give rise torents; and market fluctuations and the market power of differentcategories of workers intervene. Apart from these factors, it isimportant to note that the value determination of wages is itself afragile process (but then labor power is certainly not the onlycommodity for which this is true): in the case of labor power, the lagbetween the production and sale of skills is particularly long, andtherefore the disjunction of individual (expected) value and social(realized) value is more frequent. But none of this vitiates thetheoretical usefulness of the economic model: it merely reminds usthat it does not exhaust the analysis.At least one crucial dimension is missing from this analysis. Overtime, not only does this quantitative value determination change, but

6S. Bowles and H. Gintis, in Structure and Practice in the Labor Theory of Value,Review of Radical Political Economy 12 (1981): 1-26, argue that labor power is not acommodity in any sense because it is not the product of a capitalist production process.But this ignores petty commodity production as a possible model of training in whichworkers are like individual producers, developing their own skills for sale.


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 807also the qualities for which the worker is trained-in other words, thequalitative determinations of labor. It is these qualities that authorslike Braverman attempt to encapsulate in the notions of autonomyand control. But we have already seen that the craft model ofautonomy and control is inadequate because increasingly obsolete.In another article, I have proposed an alternative approach inwhich a dimensionalization of these qualitative factors is groundedin three key conditions of existence of the market form of society:the split between the private ownership of productive units andsocial nature of demand, the distinction between concrete forms oflabor and abstract, commensurable labor time, and the contrastbetween the collective nature of most productive activity and theindividual form of the wage. These can be related to threedimensions of work, respectively: whether the worker is responsibleonly for providing a fair day's work for a fair day's pay or isexpected to take some personal responsibility for the integrity ofthe operation and the product; the manual or mental nature ofexpertise and the concrete or less tangible nature of goals; and thedegree of independence versus interdependence of workers, workgroups, and functions.63Further, one might see a superstructure of skill concepts built onthis quantitative and qualitative technical-economic base. Beyond itstechnical-economic determinations, skill, as a socially significant cate-gory, usually has political determinations, reflecting the power ofdifferent actors (workers, managers, specific categories of workers ormanagers, state agencies) to influence skill assessments and the wagelevels attached to skill levels. It also has ideological determinations,reflecting the influence of inherited biases such as those that privilegemental over manual work, men's work over women's, and so forth.These other levels of determination merit close attention. Researchmight be advanced, however, if the efficacy of the underlyingtechnical-economic determinations, especially over the longer term,were kept in view.

Implicationsor Research:Technology s Cause and as EffectThis article has focused on mechanization's effect on skill. Other

writers, however, have argued that the more useful approach may beto reverse the question and ask whether machine design is itselfdetermined by capitalists' drive to deskill and control workers-asdistinct from an objective of increasing profits and reducing overall63P.S. Adler, Technology, Skill and the Future of Capitalism, BerkeleyJournal of

Sociology33 (1988): 1-36.


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808 Paul S. Adlerunit costs.64In part, this reversal of the research question is motivatedby concerns stemming from the assumption that mechanization hasbeen accompanied by deskilling. If, despite the data cited earlier,there is a deskilling trend, then it is natural to ask whether thisdeskilling is due to the nature of the equipment being used or to theway in which it is used; and, if deskilling is due to equipment design,it is natural to ask whether this reflects inescapable technical require-ments or capitalist influence on machine design/selection. Researcherswho believe the deskilling thesis thus understandably find the subjectof capitalist influences on machine design particularly important, be-cause the alternative is a nihilism of the kind Marcuse expressed when hedescribed automation as acatastrophe of the human essence. 65The research into capitalist influence on machine design works witha handicap, however. It is very easy to show somecapitalist influence.But demonstrating the strong version of the thesis means showingthat deskilling and control intentions are the dominant factor-andthat is exceedingly difficult. Even Noble's analysis of the well-circumscribed case of the transition from conventional to numericallycontrolled machine tools fails to show that performance characteris-tics did not weigh more than the deskilling intentions he manages todocument.66 Building the evidence for a general argument alongentire technological trajectories, let alone for a broad sample of suchtrajectories, would be even more difficult.One source of confusion in this literature lies in a commonmisconception about machine design, namely, that machines in somesense embody workers' skills, that mechanization consists essentiallyof the expropriation by capitalists of workers' skills and the transferof these skills from worker to machine. But Marx makes a tellingcriticism of precisely this premise when he writes that it is not labour,but the instrument of labour, that serves as the starting point of themachine. 67The vector of mechanization is less determined by desiresto remodel work requirements than by opportunities and constraintscreated by the accumulation of scientific and technological know-how.Indeed, this generalization becomes progressively more valid astechnology develops and frees itself from the limiting base of artisanal

64MacKenzie (n. 2 above); D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman, The Social Shaping ofTechnologyMilton Keynes, 1985).65H.Marcuse, Neue Quellen zur Grundlegung des Historischen Materialismus, inPhilosophieund Revolution:Aufsatzevon HerbertMarcuse(Berlin, 1967), cited by Braver-man (n. 1 above), p. 182.66Noble (n. 1 above).67Marx n. 7 above), p. 500.


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 809know-how.8 A corollary of the embodiment thesis is widely held too:many observers still believe that job simplification is the normalprecondition for automation. This is even less true today than it waswhen Marx wrote, since, once the productive forces reach a certainlevel, technology can resolve [the production process] into its con-stituent elements without looking first at the ability of the humanhand to perform the new processes. 69 Despite some rhetoricalflourishes,70 Marx seemed therefore to believe that while capitalisteconomic pressures accelerated the rate of technological change, theoverall direction of mechanization was primarily shaped by technicaland scientific factors rather than the sociopolitical forces that Nobleargues lead capitalists to deskill work.This technological-determinist view of the evolution of mechaniza-tion also suggests two potentially fruitful lines of research into adifficult question: granting that capitalists have no systematic need todeskill, why should productivity growth require workers who have, onaverage, higher levels of skill? Why cannot productivity growth besustained by ever-more-powerful machines designed by a smallnumber of increasingly skilled engineers but operated by a muchlarger number of workers with stable or declining skill levels? First,even a constant rate of technological growth implies that the absoluteamount or frequency of change faced by the worker over (say) a year'swork will increase from year to year. Absorbing such an accelerationof change might plausibly require a deeper and broader knowledgebase. Cognitive science research into the learning process might beuseful in exploring this issue.7' Second, the intrinsic technical diffi-culty of machine design might help explain the upgrading bias ofmechanization. We would expect that engineers designing automa-tion would first tackle the simpler problems-transformation andmaterial-handling functions in particular-leaving the worker withthe functions such as control that are more technically difficult toautomate.72 It seems, therefore, reasonable to hypothesize that there

68Rosenberg (n. 19 above).69Marx n. 7 above), p. 616.70 Itwould be possible to write a whole history of the inventions made since 1830 forthe sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working-class revolt. Marx,Capital (Harmondsworth, 1976), 1:563, as quoted by MacKenzie (n. 2 above). Note thequalifiers characteristic of the polemical rhetoric-Marx promises only a whole history,and not the whole history, and he doesn't propose to go back very far.71L.Resnick, Education and Learning to Think (Washington, D.C., 1987).72R.M. Bell, Changing Technology nd ManpowerRequirementsn theEngineeringIndustry(Brighton, 1972). See also R. B. Gordon, Who Turned the Mechanical Ideal into


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810 Paul S. Adleris an approximate but felicitous correlation between technical diffi-culty (for the automation engineer) and human complexity (for themachine operator). This correlation is only approximate: handlingnonrigid materials and visual pattern recognition are two counterex-amples of functions that are relatively simple for humans but verydifficult to automate. Such counterexamples help explain the persis-tence of low-skill jobs such as machine feeding and data entry that areoften left at the interstices of automated systems. But the correlationremains remarkably strong: the intellectual, social, and creativefunctions that account for the complexity of highly skilled work are asyet well beyond the reach of even the most advanced technologies.73The upgrading effect of automation might thus be rooted intechnological opportunities and constraints, even though this concep-tual strategy requires that we restore to technology some of the causalweight that many neo-Marxist and other social constructionists haveworked so hard to eliminate.

ConclusionThis article has been largely an exercise in exegesis. Its question hasbeen what did Marx think? The answer I have suggested restsprimarily on distinguishing Marx's critique of the short-term skill-change process-which Marx denounced as proceeding in typicallycapitalist manner, that is, too often at the expense of the individualworker-from the longer-term skill trends. I have suggested a read-ing according to which Marx saw this latter trend as an upgradingone. The underlying motive of this discussion has been to identifysome new research directions by clarifying the substance of Marx'stheory and distinguishing it from its polemical form. The field ofresearch on automation and work was given a powerful impetus byBraverman. Ensuing debates have been lively; but the intellectualvigor of the underlying research has not kept pace. A clearerunderstanding of Marx's theory, whether or not one agrees with thistheory, might help renew and reinvigorate the field.

AppendixExcerptrom K. Marx, Capital (New York,1977), 1:617-19

Modern industry never views or treats the existing form of aproduction process as the definitive one. Its technical basis is there-Mechanical Reality? Technology nd Culture 29 (October 1988): 744-78, on the criticaland increasing role of workers' skills in 19th-century firearms manufacturing.73SeeH. Dreyfus and S. Dreyfus, Mind over Machine (New York, 1986).


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Marx, Machines,and Skill 811fore revolutionary, whereas all earlier modes of production wereessentially conservative. By means of machinery, chemical processesand other methods, it is continually transforming not only thetechnical basis of production but also the functions of the

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