How Marxism Understands “Collaboration”

Collaboration is an important category in Marxist theory. Marx pointed out: "Collaboration is the form of labor in which many people work together in a planned manner in the same production process, or in different but interconnected production processes." Collaboration will produce a synergistic effect that is higher than that of individual labor. So, how does Marxism understand "collaboration"?

Marx discussed the role of collaboration in different stages of historical development, pointing out that technological progress has promoted the transformation of collaboration from simple to complex, forming a specific form of collaboration. Collaboration has appeared widely in various production links in different historical development periods, and different industries and organizations have combined to improve production efficiency. In ancient society, the construction of the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian pyramids was inseparable from collaboration and organizational division of labor. During the period of workshop handicrafts, Marx found that integrated collaboration had emerged between some industries in Britain, which was specifically reflected in "the workshop handicrafts that manufacture means of production and the workshop handicrafts that manufacture products have been combined." In the period of large-scale machine industry, the inherent division of labor was constantly broken. Engels pointed out in "The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science" that "factories that require hundreds of thousands of people to collaborate have replaced small workshops." Production has changed from "individual action" to "social action," and new forms of collaboration have emerged. "Modern industry, through machines, chemical processes and other methods, constantly changes the functions of workers and the social combination of the labor process in line with the technical basis of production." Such technological changes have led to "a revolution in the division of labor within society," the emergence of factor mobility, "large amounts of capital and large numbers of workers from one production sector to another," and cooperation has promoted the role of "socialization" and "common labor." 

In Capital, Marx pointed out that cooperation is "the basic form of the capitalist mode of production" and a specific way of producing relative surplus value. "From the beginning, it is based on the premise that free hired workers sell their labor to capital." However, this mode of production is "the first negation of personal private ownership based on one's own labor." Human society is constantly progressing and developing, and "modern industry never regards the existing form of a production process as or as the final form." In the transition to communism, "we must adopt cooperative production on a large scale as an intermediate link" to achieve "negation of negation" through cooperation under socialist conditions. "Re-establish personal ownership on the basis of cooperation and common possession of land and means of production produced by labor itself."

In Capital, Marx gave a vivid example, pointing out that collaboration improves social labor productivity: "The offensive power of a cavalry company or the resistance of an infantry regiment is essentially different from the sum of the offensive power of each cavalryman or the resistance of each infantryman." The reason is that collaboration not only "improves individual productivity", but also creates a kind of productivity, "which itself must be collective power." Collaboration creates productivity and creates productivity that cannot be achieved by individual labor, that is, the overall function is greater than the sum of the local functions, and it achieves the goal of concentrating forces to accomplish great things. So, why can collaboration improve efficiency? Marx pointed out the reasons why collaboration improves productivity in the labor process.

First, collaboration has identity. Collaboration conforms to the simultaneity of action, allowing workers to gather in the "same space" and implement "the same operation" for "the same result, the same product, and the same use value" to achieve "coordinated action". On the one hand, collaboration shortens the necessary labor time. "Compared with the sum of the same number of individual working days working alone, combined working days can produce more use value, thereby reducing the labor time required to produce a certain utility." On the other hand, collaboration improves the efficiency of communication between workers, "making the same type of work of many people continuous and multi-faceted." It is much faster for bricklayers to pass bricks from hand to hand to the scaffolding than for each person to move bricks to the scaffolding individually. Especially in a limited short time, collaboration can complete urgent work.

Second, collaboration is systematic. Collaboration is a system formed by the interconnection and combination of individual workers. The sum of individual labor is essentially different from collective labor. In the Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1863, Marx pointed out that "this form is the basis of all social combinations aimed at improving the productivity of social labor." On the one hand, collaboration can expand the labor space, and the labor under collaboration "can process the labor object in many aspects in space", such as digging canals, building roads, laying railways, etc. On the other hand, collaboration reduces the production site in space and concentrates the labor and means of production in a smaller area. Due to "the gathering of workers, the convergence of different labor processes and the accumulation of means of production", collaboration saves non-production costs, and "commonly used means of production" produce economies of scale.

Third, collaboration is social. Production activities are social. Marx pointed out that it is "inconceivable for an isolated person to produce outside of society". Humans are "naturally social animals", and the socialized production process is inevitably accompanied by connections between people. "When workers cooperate with others in a planned way, they break their personal limitations and exert the abilities of their species". Engels pointed out in "The Role of Labor in the Transformation from Ape to Man" that the development of labor has prompted members of society to be closely united because "everyone is clearly aware of the benefits of this common collaboration". There is an objective competitive relationship in the collaborative process, which stimulates the subjective initiative of workers, prompting them to not be left behind and concentrate on improving work efficiency. Collaboration can stimulate "individual competitiveness" and "invigorate energy". In addition, workers play a complementary role. When more workers gather together, individual differences offset each other, which is manifested as socially average labor. Complex labor processes can also "distribute different operations to different people", for example, one person rows the boat, one person steers the rudder, and one person casts the net during fishing.

Marx pointed out that large-scale socialized production requires command and coordination of individual activities to carry out the overall production movement. "A single violinist conducts himself, and an orchestra needs a conductor." The conductor plays the "management, supervision and regulation functions" to "coordinate individual activities and carry out the overall production movement" to ensure that social production proceeds in an orderly manner, "just as the general's orders are indispensable on the battlefield." In "On Authority", Engels pointed out with the example of railways that "the cooperation of countless people is also absolutely necessary." In order to ensure the safety of train operation, passengers must obey the will of the railway employees who play a dominant role. In capitalist society, management has a dual nature. On the one hand, management plays the role of directing social labor, and the production process of management is "the social labor process of manufacturing products." When large-scale cooperation appears, capitalists look for special hired workers to exercise management functions, and "supervision work is fixed as their full-time job." On the other hand, management is "the process of capital value multiplication." Capitalism is a cooperative production directed by capital, and the capitalists' command in production is to "multiply themselves as much as possible." Therefore, Marx pointed out that "capitalist management is autocratic in its form." The capitalist pays for the value of independent labor, not the value of collaborative labor, so the productivity generated by collaboration, which exceeds the sum of individual labor, costs the capitalist nothing. Today, the relative surplus value created by collaboration is much greater than in Marx's time, and the fact that capitalists "spend nothing" to obtain the productivity generated by collaboration means that the degree of exploitation has deepened.

As socialized mass production deepens, collaboration becomes more and more important. We must make good use of Marxist collaboration theory to improve the level of departmental collaboration, organizational collaboration, and international collaboration. Especially for the development of new quality productivity, we must promote the deep integration of industries, the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, and the deep integration of industry, academia, and research to achieve high-quality development. We must strengthen systematicity, integrity, and coordination, and further deepen reform in an all-round way. We must expand the space for international cooperation, increase the scope and depth of cooperation, and create greater value. We must grasp the historical development trends and laws of collaboration, and under the overall leadership of the Party and the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, give full play to the collective power of collaboration and achieve the goal of concentrating our efforts on major tasks.