On Babbage's Influence On Marx's Division Of Labor And Massive Machinery Production Theory

The myth of social revolutions consists in the economic facts.Historical Materialism holds that the economic base decides a superstructure.Among all the economic phenomena,"division of labor" and "the massive machinery production"are undoubtedly the key factors.This research will use these two factors as clue to investigate the relationship between Babbage and Marx in the field of Political Economics and Historical Materialism,which would manifest the Marxist characteristic of this research.The conclusion of this research is that in the pre-history of Marx ' s Political Economics Baggage and his representative book,On the Economy of Machinery and Manufatures,have long been neglected.The basis of the conclusion is a detailed study of in what sense Baggage had contributed to Marx ' s Political Economics and Historical Materialism.Evidently,it is a process of negation of negation,which grows from Marx' s acceptance of Babbage to Marx' s critique Babbage and finally to Marx's improvement of Babbage.The first chapter will focuses on Babbage as a person,especially on his historical background of the transition from workshop handicraft industry to the massive machinery production.Then it turns to Babbage' s thoughts,mainly his theories of division of labor and of machinery.Finally,it attempts to evaluate Babbage historically,not only basing it on particular historical background but also connecting it with the concrete historic development.Eventually,it comes to that Babbage is a thinker who defends the bourgeoisie.Then this dissertation will turn to the thoughts of Marx,and the text resources are Brussels Notes,Employment Capital and Labor and The Poverty of Philosophy,and the main focus is Marx' s acceptance of Baggage including the confusion between division of social labor and the inner division of labor of workshop handicraft industry,the differentiation between tool and machine.But in this period Marx have realized certain drawbacks of Babbage ' s theory,for example that he began to criticize his theory of compensation.On the basis of London Notes and Capital the third chapter will express Marx' s developments from Babbage,which is also the time when Marx' s theory gets its shape.The mian contents are "reinterpretation of the relationship between workshop handicraft industry and the massive machinery production ","a scientific differentiation of tool and machine" and the second critique of the compensation theory.Finally,this dissertation will conclude with the impact of technology(scientific knowledge)on Historical Materialism,which would illustrate how to realize the possibility of labor liberation and class struggle under the condition of capitalist machine production.That is to say,in what sense,critical technology is helpful to the realization of the all-round and free development of human beings and the significance of the understanding of contemporary capitalist production relations.