Marx's Ideas on Work Organization: Reinvestigating the Conceptions of Cooperation, the Division of Labor, and Machinery.

The article reinvestigates Karl Marx's conceptions of work organization under capitalism, focusing on cooperation, the division of labor, and machinery as presented in Chapters 13 to 15 of Capital Vol. 1. It identifies a dual system of work organization: a concentrated type, where workers are physically assembled, and a dispersed type, exemplified by the putting-out system, where workers are geographically separated but connected through capitalist control. The concentrated type further divides into two models: an automation-oriented system characterized by mechanized processes relying on unskilled labor, and a craft-oriented system involving mechanized work that requires various skilled labors organized hierarchically. The article argues that contemporary information and communication technology (ICT)-based work organization resembles a modernized dispersed system, controlled online yet lacking traditional workplace concentration, challenging traditional Marxian assumptions about capitalist labor organization and its implications for class struggle and capitalist accumulation.