Divided labor’s objective subordination becomes historically dissolvable once the subaltern class grasps it

Evidence

An increasingly perfect division of labour objectively reduces the position of the factory worker to increasingly “analytical” movements of detail, so that the complexity of the collective work passes the comprehension of the individual worker; in the latter’s consciousness, his own contribution is devalued to the point where it seems easily replaceable at any moment. At the same time, work that is concerted and well organised gives a better “social” productivity, so that the entire work-force of a factory should see itself as a “collective worker”. These were the premisses of the factory movement, which aimed to render “subjective” that which is given “objectively”. What does objective mean in this instance? For the individual worker, the junction between the requirements of technical development and the interests of the ruling class is “objective”. But this junction, this unity between technical development and the interests of the ruling class is only a historical phase of industrial development, and must be conceived of as transitory. The nexus can be dissolved; technical requirements can be conceived in concrete terms, not merely separately from the interests of the ruling class, but in relation to the interests of the class which is as yet still subaltern. A compelling proof that such a “split” and new synthesis is historically mature is constituted by the very fact that such a process is understood by the subaltern class—which precisely for that reason is no longer subaltern, or at least is demonstrably on the way to emerging from its subordinate position. The “collective worker” understands that this is what he is, not merely in each individual factory but in the broader spheres of the national and international division of labour. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 814

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the factory movement’s central term: rendering ‘subjective’ what is given ‘objectively,’ where objectivity means the historic junction of technical needs and ruling-class interests.
• XREF: The collective worker and the objective/subjective junction give a materialist mechanism underneath later analyses of how racialized/colonized labor appears ‘naturally’ subordinated in Islamophobia-adjacent theory.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that objective subordination is revealed as contingent when the subaltern understands it — understanding itself being the proof of historical maturity — is dense enough to sit with for days.