Chapter 1  
Marx raises the issue

Let us first clarify how we interpret Marx's major work, namely Capital. We are clearly referring to the book Capital, and not the Communist Manifesto, which we consider of lesser interest.

The early chapters of Capital clearly and rigorously present the concept of surplus value. Marx explains that this surplus value is divided between the worker and the capitalist, and that in large industry, the share going to the worker tends to diminish to the bare minimum needed for the working class to 'reproduce' itself. This is the minimal income necessary for simple survival, once contributions made by the work of women and children are taken into account. Like Jean-François Revel, we believe that the impression of rigor derived from Marx's elaborate formalism is an illusion, as is often the case in economics. Indeed, in earlier modes of production, surplus value already existed and was divided between, on the one hand, the producer—peasant or craftsman—and, on the other hand, the privileged classes, such as the clergy, nobility, or bourgeoisie. The privileged share corresponded to taxes and levies and could just as easily lead to the misery of the producers. This is evidenced by the frequent peasant uprisings. Therefore, it is not in formalism that we find Marx's most relevant contribution.

Structural flaws of capitalism

Indeed, where Marx brilliantly addresses the concerns of his era is when he explains that, contrary to the intuitive idea that progress should primarily be beneficial, industrialization within a capitalist context generates four major and structural social disruptions.

First social disruption: the transformation of the organization of labor is imposed suddenly on all. In fact, by increasing productivity not by a few percentage points but by a factor that can be as high as 100, industrialization causes a collapse in prices, and thus those who persist in producing in an artisanal manner are simply ruined.

Second social disruption: industrialization disrupts the fragile balance between the worker and the employer, to the detriment of the former. In the less productive economy of the pre-industrial era, during periods of economic prosperity, it was the production capacity that limited growth, so the craftsman, being the central element of production, had some leverage to negotiate with their employer. In an industrialized economy, four factors weaken the position of the worker. First, the growth-limiting factor shifts from production capacity to the ability to sell the output. Second, the central element of production tends to become the machine, thus capital rather than labor. Third, the machine tends to render human labor elementary and repetitive, making the worker easily replaceable. Fourth, every major technological advancement in industry suddenly displaces a large number of artisans replaced by a few machines, who, like refugees, are no longer in a position to defend their interests.  
As a result, Marx concludes that the worker’s fate can only be improved through legislation or class struggle.

Third social disruption: we have seen that industrialization shifts growth from being limited by production capacity to being limited by the ability to sell. This creates greater instability. Indeed, one or more new entrants can now displace the existing ones in a very short time, ruin them and cause them to disappear, with cascade effects on subcontractors. In the end, this leads to repeated crises.

Fourth social disruption: the massive increase in production capacity resulting from industrialization mechanistically increases the need for raw materials upstream and the need for markets downstream to absorb finished goods. This increase is so massive that national capacities are quickly saturated, creating a strong incentive to intensify colonial policies in order to access new sources of raw materials and to create captive markets to offload finished products.

What is striking—and what probably justifies Marx’s prominent place in the history of social thought—is that these four structural flaws remain perfectly valid at the beginning of the 21st century. Let’s take a closer look.

Regarding the first social disruption caused by the change in organization imposed on all, Marx cites the example of Indian weavers who were ruined in mass by the arrival of industrially produced goods from England: 'The bones of the weavers whiten the plains of India.'  
We can see the same kind of phenomenon today with Indian farmers. Industrial fertilizer suppliers arrive, production increases, and prices eventually drop significantly. Those who refuse to use the fertilizer are ruined. But the story doesn't end there. A few bad harvests later, those who accepted the fertilizer—and are thus in debt—are dispossessed in turn.  
Even though the process is slower and somewhat cushioned by periodic state intervention—much like in the England of Marx’s time—the same scenario is playing out with small French farming for decades, with only slight variations: instead of fertilizer, we can substitute machines and fertilizers, and instead of bad harvests, we can substitute bad harvests and price fluctuations.  
What we can take from this first point is that as soon as the small independent producer needs to make substantial investments in order to produce, rather than simply labor, they become dependent either on the state or on finance. In the second case, it is simple: they disappear. In the first case, this is what Marx wished for.  
Let us briefly return to the case of French agriculture. The persistent tensions reflect a system in which independent small farmers have become dependent due to mechanization and the use of fertilizers, but the state does not want to bear all the consequences and only supports them minimally in practice, to avoid contradicting liberal dogma while avoiding large-scale catastrophes as in India. As a result, the state acts a bit like a general practitioner who only treats a patient when their temperature exceeds 40°C. In other words, we are not trying to solve the problem, but just to contain its effects. While this may be a pragmatic approach in the short term, it becomes a dangerous game in the long run, as it contributes to the gradual erosion of trust, which fuels populism. Indeed, this is the same attitude, only slightly more determined, as that of the British government of Marx's time: 'What strikes us in the English legislation of 1867 is, on the one hand, the necessity imposed on the ruling classes' parliament to adopt, in principle, measures so extraordinary and on such a large scale against the excesses of capitalist exploitation, and, on the other hand, the hesitation, reluctance, and bad faith with which it did so in practice.' (1)

Regarding the second social disruption, namely the imbalance of negotiation power in favor of the capitalist, Marx’s observation remains current.  
What we need to understand is that the period we call 'the thirty glorious years,' which we tend to consider as a golden age that we would like to return to, was not the result of any progress in the management of state affairs, but simply a temporary and indirect benefit of war. Therefore, the end of this benefit was inevitable. In other words, as Thomas Piketty clearly shows in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the two world wars of the twentieth century caused only a temporary interruption in the natural course of capitalism. Starting from the 1980s, we gradually return to something quite similar to what we experienced during the Belle Époque, namely, an imbalance in the distribution of wealth in favor of capital, accompanied by great worker insecurity.  
Let us take two examples.  
First example: the evolution of the standard mode of development for enterprise management software. In many companies, the IT director is a collaborator that the general director avoids confronting. Indeed, being a 'digital illiterate,' the latter is not actually capable of effectively managing their company's organization, especially when it depends on software that they do not understand. So in this case, we have a counter-example to what Marx describes, since the balance in the relationship is for once favorable to the worker. However, we have observed a massive trend toward outsourcing of IT development to external IT services firms (2), even outsourced offshore. This model is not effective because management software is at the heart of the company’s organization and culture, so outsourcing tends to amplify the gap between actual activities and what is being developed. However, it brings power back to capital, as programmers employed by subcontractors are more easily pressured. IBM, the mythical company of the second half of the 20th century, has gradually shifted from being an American firm marketing infrastructure and structuring its market, to an Indian IT services firm now managed by the stock market.  
Second example: the concept of 'Industry 4.0' (3). Once the generalities and futurology elements are removed, what remains? Practically nothing, apart from the glorification of precariousness, with examples of 'free and independent' workers who are always adaptable. In this respect, Industry 4.0 is only one of the avatars of the general political discourse that no longer aims to solve issues of precariousness but rather to make precariousness acceptable to the population. This is achieved through a carefully chosen vocabulary, where, for instance, 'precariousness' is replaced by 'flexibility,' and this primary intention is hidden among numerous other concepts, with the benefit of no longer needing to even concede measures to limit its negative effects, unlike more direct discourses such as flex-security, for example.

This naturally brings us back to the third social disruption denounced by Marx. Indeed, a major source of the problem of precariousness is the instability of capitalist economies. Once changes become rapid, it becomes illusory to believe, or try to make people believe, that the most vulnerable will not be left behind.  
Have things changed on this front? Of course, after the 1929 crisis, we understood the importance of saving the situation through state intervention when the liberal economy falls into crisis. However, the 2008 Lehman Brothers crisis taught us that capitalism is irresponsible by nature, and that when the state saves the economy, it saves it globally, but it does not save the marginalized, quite the opposite: it accelerates inequalities because the cleverest and the least scrupulous take advantage of the temporary disruption. We can also mention the Japanese experience of Lean manufacturing, as described in the book The Machine That Changed the World, which shows how a different organization of production temporarily stabilized the Japanese economy, with life-long employment as a result. However, the Olympus affair (4) proves that, without a deeper transformation of the production system, the alternative model could not last. It will be the purpose of this book to propose a more comprehensive model.

Let us conclude by examining what the fourth social disruption denounced by Marx, namely the increased pressure for colonization to ensure access to raw materials and markets for manufactured goods, has become today. On this point, we clearly see a shift in the colonization model from a British or French system where the colony is governed from the metropole to an American system where one simply manipulates behind the scenes to ensure a favorable government. A perfect illustration is Françafrique. Does this make any difference for the local population? Is the 'resource curse' over? Nothing seems less certain.  
At this level, only the China of Deng Xiaoping seems to mark a discontinuity compared to what Marx described. However, this is a discontinuity that illustrates and confirms Marx's argument rather than contradicting it. Indeed, it is precisely because China has implemented a hybrid system with strong state control over the market economy that China has, for now, succeeded in no longer being just a victim of the appetite for new markets by already industrialized countries.

The first conclusion is that the four structural flaws of the system denounced by Marx are still relevant today. Let us take this opportunity to define what the 'system' is. The 'system' is in fact the combination of two elements: on the one hand, the predominant power held by the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, as opposed to the aristocratic power of the Ancien Régime or the political power of communist systems; on the other hand, the industrial revolution, which causes a literal explosion in productivity in certain areas.  
Let us now note that these two aspects have been massively united again since the end of the 20th century. Indeed, on the one hand, the ultra-liberalism resulting from Friedman's economic theories conquered the United States then Europe via England. In France, we have thus moved from an economy with a State driving the creation of champions (Nuclear, Aeronautics, TGV) and arbiter of social dialogue under De Gaulle and Pompidou to an economy conforming to the European model where the State is content with role of market policeman, and precariousness, renamed flexibility, is once again becoming the social model considered the most effective. On the other hand, we witnessed the second industrial revolution, that of computing and robotics, with the same sudden and massive gains in productivity, activity by activity.

Usually, what we call the 'second industrial revolution' corresponds to the advent of electricity, oil and the automobile, that is to say the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In this work, we considered that this is the continuation of the first industrial revolution, which is that of the engine which makes it possible to advantageously replace the physical capacities of humans in a good number of tasks. Conversely, what we have chosen to call here second industrial revolution corresponds to the advent of computing which makes it possible to advantageously replace the mental capacities of humans in a number of tasks. In both cases, the replacement results in a productivity gain such that humans cannot fight against machines.

The philosophical question emanating from progress

Let us now come to the central philosophical question posed by Marx: why does the abundance resulting from the explosion of productivity translate into an explosion of inequality, resulting in a worsening of workers' living conditions?

Let's start by understanding why this question suddenly became relevant, specifically in Marx's time, and is becoming relevant again today. To do this, let's go back briefly to the period from Antiquity to the 16th century. What then characterizes production is low productivity. This severely restricts the number of viable models of social organization. One would consist of having only farmers and artisans, with no hierarchical structure above them. The problem with a community adopting such an organization is that as long as it is located in a somewhat favorable area in terms of natural conditions, it will quickly be invaded by a neighboring group with military capabilities. So the minimum is either a community bringing together all individuals, both peasants and soldiers, or artisans and soldiers, which poses a problem that is probably insurmountable with the means of the time in terms of training, equipment, and defining the limits of the 'all united' zone, i.e. a community made up mainly of individuals employed in agriculture and crafts, to which is added a military caste. But the quality that prevails at the military level is rather brutality, which does not prepare well for managing internal problems, hence the addition of a third aristocratic or religious state, often both. This is what we find in areas where living conditions are favorable, from Antiquity to the 16th century. Once society is organized in this way, the only two great evils it encounters are on the one hand natural disasters, famines and epidemics, and on the other hand invasion by an external empire. And in fact, no one questions the validity of the system in its main principles, including that of more or less strict slavery. What individuals hope for is just to be able to rise to the aristocratic category, so all the system needs to put in place is what we today call a credible 'social elevator', e.g. the freeing of slaves among the Romans, or ennoblement for acts of bravery, or otherwise, in medieval society.

Everything changed in Marx's time, with industrialization, which made other organizations possible due to the simple fact that covering the basic needs of the population no longer necessarily occupied almost all of the available workers. From that moment on, the traditional model of society was no longer self-evident. For example, we can interpret the Civil War in the United States in this way: the north, which had started its industrialization, is ready to change its social model, the south which remained in agricultural production is not. In other words, a social organization involving slavery is not shocking as long as it corresponds with a few nuances to an economic necessity, but becomes morally problematic for a certain number of individuals, therefore causing significant social conflicts, as soon as it is no longer justified by natural constraints, and that it is not masked by distance. The same goes for extreme precariousness.
It is therefore not surprising that the second industrial revolution, that of computing and robotics, following the new surplus of productivity that it allows, brings to the forefront the questioning concerning the relevance of our social model , as in the time of Marx.

To clarify the current relevance of the question posed by Marx, let us start by asking ourselves: is the crisis of confidence in the system, which results in the rise of populism? The result of the fact that everyone asks the same question of the relevance of the system as Marx, without necessarily doing so explicitly? A symptom of distrust of elites as a social class? The result of an anemic functioning of the social elevator which serves as a stabilizer for any unequal society?
Several elements lead us to believe that we are witnessing, above all, a crisis of confidence in the relevance of the system in allowing everyone to benefit from progress, and that the poor image of the elites as well as the weakness of the functioning of the social elevator are only aggravating factors. First of all, the emergence of ecological sensitivity which combats the incapacity of the current system to preserve the future. Then, the observation that tolerance towards the four structural defects of capitalism noted by Marx has considerably decreased, particularly in terms of factory closures which are one of the consequences of capitalist instability. Finally, the observation that Europe, the ideal of brotherhood of peoples based on a model of capitalist social organization, no longer makes us dream. Furthermore, the criticism commonly made of Europe, rightly or wrongly, for being technocratic and champion of liberalism, and not corrupt, also tends to show distrust in the system more than in the political class.
In summary, it seems to us that it is indeed the model of capitalist society, whose undesirable effects were noted by Marx, which is no longer morally acceptable following the new technological capabilities resulting from the second industrial revolution, which have the effect of raising the level of requirements vis-à-vis the social system.

The absence of a supported solution

We have just seen that Marx is the thinker who poses the great philosophical question linked to the qualitative insufficiency of the social system, following technological progress, and that this question has become burning again today, due to the second industrial revolution. , that of computing and robotics.
Very generally, resolving a problem, here the qualitative insufficiency of capitalist social organization, involves four steps: recognizing the problem, conducting a correct analysis, developing a relevant solution, and finally implementing it.
Let us first note that the majority of works are content, like Zola, even today, to limit themselves to the first stage, namely to observe and denounce. What makes Marx's work unique is that he covers the second stage by carrying out a detailed analysis, the broad outlines of which we have just given. Let us now see what Marx proposes at the level of the third and fourth stages, namely the development of a solution and its implementation. For this, it is necessary to differentiate two Marxs. That of Communist Party Manifesto on the one hand, that of Capital on the other.

At the level of Communist Party Manifesto, Marx and Engels simply recommend class struggle, which must result in the abolition of bourgeois property, that is to say in modern terms, a nationalized economy. This is the solution that was implemented in the USSR in the 20th century. However, the accounts of witnesses to the Russian revolution clearly show that a dominant trait is unpreparedness, improvisation. All attention had been focused on the seizure of power, not on the theorizing of its subsequent exercise. In fact, once power was won, due to lack of preparation, we decided on new structures for the exercise of power, but presupposing their relevance. However, the naivety of the solution, and the absence of reflection concerning its implementation, can be traced back to Marx, and more precisely to Communist Party Manifesto. Indeed, if Marx does not seek to detail an operational system, it is probably because he presupposes that the shift of the main power from capital to politics is sufficient to make progress profitable for all. We will return to this in more detail in Chapter 7.

If at the level of Communist Party Manifesto, Marx and Engels correspond well to the image that we associate with them via the word 'Marxist', with regard toCapital, the solution developed by Marx corresponds more to what we today call social democracy. In fact, it is about the regulation of work and the market by the State, by means of the law. It is important to note that almost all current systems, from communist China to the United States via Europe, correspond to the more or less determined application of the recommendations formulated by Marx in Capital, namely the regulation of market savagery through laws aimed at promoting education, and strengthening the rights of workers compared to what they could obtain in a pure market economy. Indeed, in Capital, Marx does not deal with the political system, democracy or autocracy. It simply deals with the relationship between free enterprise and the state. In the end, regarding the solution proposed in Capital, Marx leaves us with a mixed impression. On the one hand, its solution has become almost universal, but on the other it remains at a level of generality which makes it almost ineffective since it boils down to a simple sentence: the State must regulate the market by law. In other words, here again, Marx is satisfied with a simple concept as a solution, as opposed to the development of an alternative system. We will return to this point also in Chapter 7.

It remains to be clarified why in this chapter we have remained focused on the work of Marx, to the exclusion of the many other thinkers who theorized social organization in the 18th and 19th centuries. When tackling a delicate problem, the interest of the proposed solution is not only due to the rigor and breadth of the reasoning, but also, and often much more, to the way in which the problem was posed, formulated, and to the way chosen to approach it. However, it is precisely at this level that Marx innovates and differentiates himself from others. He starts from field observations, seeks the causes, then establishes a theory, where others stick to observations like realistic novelists, or remain in the world of ideas like enlightenment philosophers.

In summary, Marx distinguishes himself from other thinkers by the fact that he does not simply denounce, but that he carries out a relevant analysis of the functioning of capitalist society, and that what he observes remains news. On the other hand, in terms of developing a solution, and even more so its implementation, it remains very insufficient. Let us point out in his defense that Marx did not have at his disposal the sociological tools to guide him in developing a solution. These are the tools that we will discuss in the following chapters of this first part.

(1)
This sentence corresponds to Roy's translation, and revised by Marx himself, page 213.
In the version edited by Lefebvre published by Quadrige / PUF in 1993, we find, page 555: “What is therefore striking in this English legislation of 1867 is, on the one hand, the need for this Parliament of dominant classes to admit the principle of such extraordinary measures of such magnitude against the excesses of capitalist exploitation; and on the other hand the insufficiency, bad will and bad faith with which he went about carrying out these measures. »

(2)
Computer Engineering Services Company

(3)
The term 'Industry 4.0' designates a new way of imagining the means of production of the future, and the associated social organization. It appears to have first appeared in 2011, at the World Industry Forum in Hannover. The 4 refers to a 4th industrial revolution.

(4)
The Olympus affair is a financial scandal which broke out following this company's attempt to hide losses linked to speculative investments made in the 1990s. What is revealing here is the difference in perception of this affair. in the West and Japan. For the West, what predominates is the financial scandal, and therefore the incomprehension of the attitude of the Japanese leaders who seem both eager to get out of it, and incapable of accepting the facts, this which is probably wrongly interpreted as a form of corporatism. On the other hand, for the Japanese, what is most serious is the breakdown of the social contract that this scandal reveals. Indeed, the Lean social contract presupposes a search for stability, to be able to guarantee jobs for life. So what is most serious in this affair from the Japanese point of view is not so much the loss, but the simple fact of having participated in the crazy financial speculation of the 1990s.