Das Kapital Philosophical Viewpoints: Communism Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #10

The same bourgeois consciousness which celebrates the division of labour in the workshop, the lifelong annexation of the worker to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as an organization of labour that increases its productive power, denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to control and regulate the process of production socially, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and the self-determining 'genius' of the individual capitalist. It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organization of labour in society than that it would turn the whole of society into a factory. (14.4.7)

Marx thinks it's hypocritical for capitalists to advocate planning in production for the insides of workshops but to oppose it when the government does it. As he explains in the Communist Manifesto, he wanted a revolutionary vanguard (temporary) government to take power and programmatically transition the economy to communism (where workers own the means of production in common). Then, production under communism would also require social planning. This is opposed to the lack of planning he saw in capitalism, where businesses compete with each other instead of cooperating.