I am going to preface this blog by admitting I found the chapter overwhelming. I speak five languages and apparently none of them are Marx (and I've read him before....) but let's see:
In this chapter, Marx discusses capital - what constitutes capital in its varying forms - labour and the labour process, and where machinery situates in relation to these things.
Marx distinguishes between fixed capital - such as buildings, land, and labour that may be held to contribute to the labor process for an extended period of time (years and decades rather than days, weeks, or months). Fixed capital contributes to the labour process on an ongoing, seemingly permanent or stable basis. In contrast circulating capital is used in every production cycle. In circulating capital we see raw materials, intermediate goods, expenses and working capital (wages etc). He makes the point however that "... the entire production pocess and each of its moments....is only a means of production for capital, for which value alone is the end in itself" (690).
The subject of labour is the raw material (coal, lumber, wool), human labour is (somewhat obviously) the physical labour required to use or transform these materials, and the means of labour refers to the tools and structures used though human labour to transform the subject of labour. The product is the result and the process is referred to as means of production. Raw material and product, Marx argued, are in fact forms of the same capital but in different phases of existence. (692)
When the means of labor - the tools and structures - become a part of the production process through automation, it becomes more than a simple part of fixed capital. The machine, Marx contends, does not transmit the workers activity to the object - instead the worker transmits the machines activity to the raw material. The machine possesses the skills that provide the means of production and in many way becomes a place holder for the human - it uses consumables that become part of the capital cycle just as the human labourer does, in order to continue functioning. In this reality production processes are no longer dominated by labour rather labour is dominated by production process (693) . "...Objectified labour contronts living labour within the labour process itself as the power which rules it..."(693) Living labour becomes an accessory of the machinery.
Machinery becomes a form of fixed capital and the worker whose actions are no longer determined by the requirements of capital, appears to be superfluous (695).
When the labour process evolves from simple to scientific via the use of this objectified labour, it is assumed that it is fixed capital. However it is, Marx argues, in fact equally a quality of circulating capital in that it enables the maintenance of of labour in one aspect of production by means of co-existing labour in another. In the simplest terms - a worker is paid circulating capital for operating machinery (human labour using fixed capital means of labour to create a product) and then uses that capital to engage the services of other workers creating product. It is not the worker that creates the possibility of circulating capital but the machinery as used by the worker.
The ongoing use of machinery in this sense presupposes a workforce able to manage and operate these fixed capital formats that is held in control by the cycle of circulating capital. Marx felt this would ultimately lead however to the demise of capitalism - and to some extent this may be true if we consider the ways in which technological capital informs and disrupts cycles of capital and seats of power.
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