As of today my essay Technical Expertise and Communist Production can be read in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of The Brooklyn Rail here.
I deploy the manufacturing concepts of “high mix low volume production” vs “low mix high volume production” to trace out an understanding of technical expertise’s character in capitalist industrial production. This is utilized as a way to theorize the relationship between proletarian technical expertise and communism as both a movement and (potential) state of productive affairs.
Excerpts:
For a communist revolution to be successful, it will immediately have to pose a fundamental challenge to the very logic of capital accumulation. Arresting capitalist production alone is not enough, as a revolution incapable of posing an alternative mode of producing and distributing goods will quickly die off as people cannot satisfy their basic needs, let alone live a better life than they experienced under capitalism. The backbone of worker power is the knowledge and expertise required to keep the productive gears of society moving. To seize the means of production requires that the seizing be done by those who understand and use these means. It is critical not to simply halt capitalist production, but to use the productive knowledge to build a communist society. The criticality of the productive knowledge is not that communist production will be the same as capitalist production but with red flags, but rather that the creative restructuring of capitalist means of production can only be performed by those who currently work with such means. The transition from capitalism to communism is not one of simply replacing political control of production, but fundamentally reorienting production for human ends. This will require the transformation of the production process for many items ranging from food to energy, vehicles, electronics, clothes, medicine, buildings, infrastructure and so many more into new processes that are healthier (socially, environmentally, etc.), more equitable, and participatory than they ever could be under a society ruled by the profit motive.
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In manufacturing terminology, high mix low volume refers to the fabrication or processing of relatively low volumes of a large diversity of different outputs. This is in contrast to low mix high volume operations that output high volumes of a small variety of outputs. Operations such as quick-turn machine shops, 3D printer farms, electromechanical assembly houses, and engineering test facilities are examples of a high mix low volume operation as they frequently produce or process many qualitatively different goods in relatively low magnitudes, and are configured specifically for that diversity. Much of the time they are contract manufacturers who will take on jobs to manufacture goods for another company; however, plenty of larger companies with their own product lines may have a low mix high volume production facility for prototyping or even for full production if the required volumes are low enough.
Low mix high volume operations, by contrast, are specialized for producing large quantities of very specific outputs and cannot pivot to producing or processing something else without re-tooling.5 Picture an assembly line configured to produce huge quantities6 of a specific microchip, disposable medical component, ball bearing, screw, textile, packaged food item, metal ingot, formed plastic component, or any other item yielded from a production process that significantly benefits from economies of scale. High mix low volume and low mix high volume are two ends of a spectrum, and examples of both styles of production can sometimes even be found in a single facility. Individual production lines will usually resemble one more than the other however. Both styles are critical to global industrial capacity. Much of the tooling (custom machines, fixtures, dies, facilities, etc.) required to create low mix high volume manufacturing lines are produced in high mix low volume operations. Simultaneously, much of the raw material and equipment required for high mix low volume operations is produced by specialized low mix high volume operations. Any decently sized manufacturing/industrial zone in a given city is likely to have plenty of instances of both.
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