Translated from: “Die gesellschaftlichen Grundlagen der mechanistischen Philosophie und die Manufaktur,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 4(2), Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris, 1935, pp. 161–231. (A reprint of the issues published from 1931 to 1941, in 9 volumes, was published by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1980.) Translated by Shalit, Gabriella, edited by Freudenthal, Gideon. Published here by kind permission of the Fondazione Max Horkheimer, Lugano.Google Scholar

English sources quoted by Grossmann in German translation are quoted here according to the English original; German sources are quoted, where possible, according toexisting English translations.Grossmann's notes are numbered according to the original, editor's notes are indicated by daggers and stars. Editor's additions to thetext are given in square brackets. The pagination of the original publication is given here in the margin. Changes in typeface are preserved from the original.Google Scholar

The English summary of the original publication (pp. 230–31) appears here as “The Argument”;the French summary (pp. 229–30) has been omitted.Google Scholar

Reification refers here to a Marxist concept (Versachlichung, Verdinglichung) in its interpretation by G.Lukacs. Marx uses the term explicitly in Capital, Vol.3, Chap.48, to denote the transformation of social relations into relations of man–produced things. Cf.Capilal, Vol.1, Chap.1, Sect.4.The concept became prominent in the discussion of G. Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness (1922). The fourth chapter bears the title “Reification(Verdinglichung), and the consciousness of the proletariat.”Google Scholar

For a discussion of the term, see our introduction, p. 107.Google Scholar

The German term Technik means “technology”as well as “techniques.” The difference is of import–ance for Grossmann's critique of Borkenau. The terms “technology”or “techniques”have been used according to our understanding of the argument.

The German Arbeitdenotes“work”and “labor”as well as the physical concept “work”: W = F−s Cf. pp. 170ff. (original pagination) of this paper.

¹ de Vinci, Lëonard, Problëms de gëomëtrie et d'hydraulique. Machines hydrauliques. Application du principe de la vis d'Archimëde. Pompes, machines d'ëpuisement et de dragage, Paris 1901, Vols. I–III.Google Scholar

² Duhem, P., Les origines de la statique, Paris 1905/1906, Vols. I/II; Ëtudes sur Lëonard de Vinci, Paris 1906, Vols. I/II.Google Scholar

³ de Vinci, Lëonard, l'artiste et le savant, Paris 1906.Google Scholar

⁴ Histoire des sciences mathëmatiques en Italie, Paris, 1840, Vol. III, p. 46Google Scholar. Leonardo writes: “Qu'il ne me lisepas celui qui n'est pas mathëmaticien, car je le suis toujours dans mes principes.” (Peladan, Lëonard de Vinci, Textes choisis, Paris 1907, p. 34)Google Scholar, and “La mechanica e il paradiso delle science matematiche perche con quella si viene al frutto matematico” (Duhem, Les origines de la statique, Vol. I, p. 15).

¹ Leonardo writes: “When dealing with scientific problems I first make some experiments, because I intend to pose the question according to experience, and then to prove why the bodies are compelled to act in the manner demonstrated. This is the method according to which one should proceed in all explorations of the phenomena of nature.” (Cf. Heller, August, Geschichte der Physik von Aristoteles bis auf die Neueste Zeit, Stuttgart 1882, Vol. I, p. 237Google Scholar. Lasswitz, Kurt, Geschichte der Atomistik, Hamburg 1890, Vol. II, p. 12.Google Scholar) “This clear insight,” adds Lasswitz, “into the essence of the experimental-mathematical method of natural sciences determines da Vinci's procedure and success.”

² “Cent ans avant Galilée,”Google Scholar says Séailles, G. (loc. cit. p. 220), “Léonard a posé les vrais principes de la mécanique; cent cinquante ans avant Descartes il a pressenti en elle l'idéal de la science. II semble qu'il lui ait dû l'idée même de sa méthode. Observerles phénomènes, les reproduire artificiellement, découvrir leurs rapports, appliquer à ces rapports la mesure, enfermer ainsi la loi dans une formule mathématique qui lui donne la certitude déductive d'un principe que confirment ses conséquences, c'est la méthode même de Léonard et celle de la mécanique.”Google Scholar

³ Mach, E., Populär-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen, Leipzig 1903, p. 169Google Scholar. [Cf. Mach, E., Popular Scientific Lectures, transl. by McCormack, Th. J., La Salle: The Open Court, 1943, p. 140f.Google Scholar]

⁴ Duhem, P., Les origines de la statique. Vol. I, p. 19.Google Scholar

⁵ Loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 32. Cf. Vol. II. pp. 347f.Google Scholar

⁶ Loc. cit, Vol. II, p. 111.Google Scholar

⁷ Leipzig, 1899, Vol. II, pp. 302, 570Google Scholar. Séailles, says: “Commandin (1565) et Maurolycus (1685) se disputaient jusqu'ici l'honneur de ces découvertes” (Loc. cit., p. 225)Google Scholar. The calculations of Maurolycus, though executed in 1548, were only published in 1685. (Cf. Libri, Histoire des sciences mathématiques, Vol. III, p. 115.)

¹ Séailles, op. cit., p. 229. Similarly Eug. Dühring, , Kritische Geschichte der Principien der allgemeinen Mechanik, Leipzig 1887, [3rd edition] pp. 12–17.Google Scholar

² Leonardo da Vinci als Ingenieur und Philosoph, Berlin 1874, p. 21; cf. p. 92. Similarly M. Herzfeld, Leonardo da Vinci, Leipzig 1904, CXIII. The influence of Italian science is demonstrable in other areas of Stevin's work as well: he introduced into Holland the Italian bookkeeping system whose beginnings in Florence go back to the book by Luca Paccioli (1494), Leonardo's friendGoogle Scholar. (Cf. Jäger, E. L., Luca Paccioli und Simon Stevin, Stuttgart, 1876.)Google Scholar

³ Herzfeld, M.. op. cit., CXXII, CXV.Google Scholar

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⁵ Op. cit., pp. 232–34. Leonardo writes: “Le superficie di tutti i liquidi immobili, li quali infra loro sieno congiunti, sempre sieno d'equale altezza,” independent of the width and shape of the vessels, and he shows that the (height) of the columns of liquid is inversely proportional to their weight (density). (Cf Heller, A., Geschichte der Physik, Vol. I, p. 242.)Google Scholar

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⁴ Grothe, H., Leonardo da Vincials Ingenieur, op. cit., p. 77. Cf. furthermore August Heller, op. cit.Google Scholar

⁵ Grothe, H., op. cit., p. 82Google Scholar. Leonardo calculates, e.g., the force (work) required for hammering in nails and bolts, regarding them as wedges. Heller, A., op. cit., p. 242.Google Scholar

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³ Op. cit., Vol., pp. 35, 147 Études sur Léonardo da Vinci, Vol. I, pp. 108, 127Google Scholar. Olschki (Galilei und seine Zeit, Halle 1928) however says that pre-Galilean mechanics had quite a different character (he did not show wherein this difference lies) and that, therefore, the predating of the origins of scientific mechanics is due to the “malice” of Galileo's “detractors.” But this is not a matter of “detracting” from Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, or Stevin, but of understanding an historical epoch as a whole.

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¹ “In the Occident the early capitalist putting-out system did not always, and not even usually, develop from within craftsmanship, but it originated very often beside the artisans …” (M. Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Munich 1923, p. 145)Google Scholar. [Cf. Weber, Max, General Economic History, transl. by Knight, Frank H., Illinois: Free Press, 1950 (1927), p. 158Google Scholar.] “To sum up, one should always be aware that the factory did not originate from the workshop nor at its expense, but initially emerged alongside it (Weber identifies the factory with manufacture and criticizes the distinction made between these two concepts by the “early science, also Marx, Karl,” loc. cit., p. 149.–H.G. [op. cit., p. 162f.]). Above all, it seized upon new forms of production and new products, e.g. cotton, chinaware, gold brocade or surrogates – none of which were manufactured by the craftsmen organized in guilds” (op. cit., p. 157 [op. cit., p. 173]).Google Scholar

² On the entire development of manufacture and of commerce protected by the state from Louis XI to Louis XIII, we now obtain very comprehensive information from Boissonade, P., Le socialisme d'état, Paris 1927Google Scholar. It is theoretically insufficient and inadequate for the history of the relations of production, yet it is exemplary in its treatment of the material for the history of the productive forces. Since its recent publication, and despite the imperfections, all other works on the genesis of French capitalism have become obsolete (p. 173).

¹ Levasseur, E., Histoire des classes ouvrières …, loc. cit., Vol. II, p. 239.Google Scholar

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¹ d'Ajano, Broglio, Die Venetianische Seidenindustrie, pp. 21/23Google Scholar. In the Florentine cloth industry at the beginning of the fifteenth century, one distinguished between the following processes: sorting, washing, beating, combing, scraping and carding of wool, weaving, dyeing, shearing, weaving, degreasing, fulling, roughing, stretching, smoothing, pressing, rolling, etc. of cloth – altogether up to thirty different partial processes: Doren, Studien, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 43.

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¹ Thus he already contradicts himself on the following page, where he says that the seventeenth century was a century of water, while the nineteenth was a century of fire. But it could become a ‘century of water” only through the natural force of water applied as the driving power for machines which replaced artisan's labor.Google Scholar

¹ The technical revolution in mining brought about a thorough social upheaval. With the extension of mining, the need for more capital to finance the building of shafts, ventilation, ore-lifting, and water storage systems caused a thorough change in ownership and concentration of capital: on German soil and in adjacent regions, in the middle of the fifteenth century the small medieval (communal) enterprises became dependent on a few financially powerful putting-out capitalists, usually wholesale ore dealers (as e.g. the Fuggers in Augsburg), who granted them advances, took possession of their shareholdings (Kuxe), while the original members of the miners' union, deprived of their ownership, were reduced to wage laborers. In this manner industrial capitalism in the German, Tyrolean, and Hungarian mining industry became a major power long before the Reformation. The financial support of the Fuggers was not only instrumental in 1519 in the election of Charles V as emperor; this big power, as we know from Ranke, was even capable of thwarting the strengthening of the central government within the empire, so as to safeguard the interests of its own price monopoly and unrestricted profits.Google Scholar

¹ Since the middle of the fifteenth century a technical literature emerges. The oldest printed publication on technical matters, with numerous descriptions of machines, is the book of Valturio Roberto of Rimini, written about 1460 and printed at Verona in 1472. Vanuccio Biringuccio of Siena, the originator of modern metallurgy, mathematician, engineer, and practical director of mines and iron works, describes in his Pirotechnia (1540) the mechanical system for the better exploitation of water power, which he invented and introduced in northern Italian iron works: a large bucket-wheel, which set in motion a number of bellows and could serve four fires at the same time, for which otherwise four water wheels had been needed. – Georg Agricola shows in book VIII of his work De re metallica, written around 1550 (Basel 1556), the construction of the crushing machines which were already used in Germany in the fifteenth century for the crushing of iron ore. The water wheel moves at first one, and later three or four crushing stamps, which entailed a considerable rationalization of the work and a saving in manpower. (Cf. Beck, Ludwig, Geschichte des Eisens, Braunschweig 1893, Vol. II, p. 87.Google Scholar)

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¹ Everyone familiar with Alberti's and Leonardo da Vinci's achievements, knows that Galileo's rejection of the traditional academic science and his reference to practice is not “innovative.” One hundred and fifty years before Galileo, Alberti, this “truly universal Titan”–as Burckhardt calls him–studied all possible sciences and arts; “he went into physics and mathematics and simultaneously learned all the skills of the world, asking artists, scholars, and craftsmen of all sorts, including shoemakers, about their secrets and experiences” (Burckhardt, Jakob, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, op. cit., vol. I, p. 150).Google Scholar

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² Cardano, G., in his book De subtilitate (1550) stresses the most important advantages of the use of machines: (1) the savings in manpower, (2) the possibility of employing unskilled, and therefore cheaper, workers, (3) less waste of material, thereby making production even cheaper, (4) general advantages of hygiene, thus saving cleaning expenses.Google Scholar

³ Hardy, E., Les Français en Italie de 1494 à 1559, Paris 1880, p. 37.Google Scholar

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¹ This practical function of Descartes's philosophy is so evident that J. H. von Kirchmann could write sixty years ago: “Here the same tendency is evident in Descartes as in Bacon. Both were so enthusiastic about the new discoveries that they emphasized above all the need for inventions of methods and machines that were to prove beneficial in practical life” (R. Descartes' philosophische Werke, Berlin 1870, part I, p. 70). Ten years after the “Discours,” at the end of his preface to the “Principes,” Descartes stresses the importance of science for improving the quality of practical life and shows “combien il est important de continuer en la recherche de ces vérités et jusques … à quelle perfection de vie, à quelle félicité elles peuvent conduire” (Oeuvres, , Vol. IX, p. 20).Google Scholar

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² In the Jesuit college at La Flèche, Descartes received an education which included, among other subjects, instruction in “l'art des fortifications et l'emploi des machines”; this education was “orientée vers la pratique militaire et orientée à former… un officier d'artillerie ou du génie” (Mouy, P., Le Développement de la physique cartésienne, Paris 1934, p. 2).Google Scholar

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³ “Ce que j'ai éclairci dans ces responses par la comparaison d'une machine fort artificielle, dont I'idée se rencontre dans l'esprit de quelque ouvrier; car, comme l'artifice objectif de cette idée doit avoir quelque cause, à savoir la science de l'ouvrier … de même il est impossible que l'idée de Dieu qui est en nous, n'ait pas Dieu même pour sa cause” (Abrégé de la troisième Méditation, Oeuvres, , op. cit., Vol. IX, p. 11. Cf. pp. 83–84).Google Scholar

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⁷ Finally it should be mentioned that Descartes's disciples had the same conception of mechanics as their teacher. In the “Traité de la Mécanique,” published by N. Poisson in 1668, mechanics is first a theory of machines, whose principles are subsequently extended to physics and the whole universe. “De même aussi on peut considérer le corps humain comme un automate ou machine” (Mouy, P., “Le DéVeloppement de la Physique Cartésienne,” op. cit., p. 63).Google Scholar

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² “La troisième utilité des machines est très grande, parce que l'on évite les grands frais et le coût en usant d'une force inanimée, ou sans raison, qui fait les mesmes choses que la force des hommnes animés … comme il arrive lorsque l'on fait moudre les moulins avec l'eau des estangs, ou des fleuves, ou un cheval, qui suplée la force de 5 ou 6 hommes … par le moyen des roues et des Machines qui sont ébranlées par la force du cheval, et qui remplissent et transportent le vaisseau d'un lieu à l'autre, et qui le vident suivant le dessin de l'ingénieur” (op. cit., p. 5).Google Scholar

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² Numerous texts by Leonardo, which illuminate his problematic show how theoretical mechanics tried to derive its concepts from the flight of projectiles. Just one example: “Si une bombarde avec 4 livres de poudre jette 4 livres de boulet à sa plus grande puissance, à 2 milles, de combien faut-il augmenter la charge de poudre pour qu'elle tire à 4 milles? La puissance du boulet dépend-ellc de sa vitesse initiate?” (Séailles, G., op. cit., p. 353).Google Scholar

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⁴ Also Tartag1ia's other work, Quesiti et Inventione diverse (1546), the first volume of which is devoted to the study of the motion of cannonballs; and this, according to the testimony of P. Duhem, had a strong influence on the development of mechanics in the sixteenth century. It was, therefore, of basic significance for the history of dynamics (Duhem, P., Les origines de la statique, Vol. I, p. 197).Google Scholar

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¹ Here I would briefly mention two of the most prominent planetaria of the sixteenth century: the one built in Paris in 1546–1553 by the mathematician and astronomer D'Oronce Finé, and the famous astronomical clock in the cathedral of Strasbourg, built in 1571–1574 by Conrad Dasypodius, professor of mathematics at Strasbourg University. Conradi Dasypodii, Horologii astronomici Argentorati descriptio, Argentorati 1580. Cf. P. Dubois, Horlogerie, Paris 1858, pp. 44–4

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¹ Libri, G., op. cit., Vol. II, p. 233.Google Scholar This Bolognese machine for spinning silk and cotton thread, with its several thousands of components, cogwheels, axles, etc., was famous and was still repeatedly described in the seventeenth century, e.g. by A. Alidosi, Instruttione delle cose notabili di Bologna (1621) and by J. J. Becher, Närrische Weisheit (1686).

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² On the developments in Germany, Ranke, says: “The new churches were founded under the protection, the immediate influence, of the reigning powers. It is only natural that thus their shaping was also determined.” (Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, 5th ed., Leipzig 1873, Vol. II, p. 308).Google Scholar

¹ Normand, Charles, La Bourgeoisie française au XVllème siècle, Paris 1908, p. 30.Google Scholar

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³ Loc. cit., p. 17.Google Scholar

⁴ D'Avenel, G., Découvertes d'histoire sociale 1200–1910, Paris 1910, p. 26.Google Scholar

⁵ Normand, , op. cit., p. 41.Google Scholar

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² Sée, H., La France économique el sociale au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1933, p. 95.Google Scholar

³ Thus Diderot passes judgment on the parliaments: ‘Intolérant, bigot, stupide, conservant ses usages gothiques et vandales …, ardent à se mêler de tout, de religion, de gouvernement, de police, de finance, d'art et de sciences, et toujours brouillant tout daaprès son ignorance, son intérêt et ses préjugés’. And even more damning is Voltaire's (1774) judgment: “II était digne de notre nation de singes de regarder nos assassins comme nos protecteurs; nous sommes des mouches qui prenons le parti des araignées.” (Sée, , op. cit.)Google Scholar

¹ Sée, H., op. cit., p. 96.Google Scholar

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