Marx’s Concept of Cooperation and Its Contemporary Significance

The concept of cooperation is the foothold of Marx’s critique of capitalism. In *Capital* and its manuscripts, Marx defines “cooperation” as follows: “Many workers laboring together in the same production process, or in different but interconnected production processes, in a planned and coordinated manner — this form of labor is called cooperation.” Marx’s concept of cooperation mainly comprises four characteristics: the interconnectedness within cooperation, the planned nature of cooperation itself, the combination of laborers and the products of labor through cooperation, and the productivity-creating capacity inherent in cooperation.

协作概念是马克思批判资本主义的立足点。马克思在《资本论》及其手稿中如此定义“协作”（cooperation）概念：“许多人在同一生产过程中，或在不同的但相互联系的生产过程中，有计划地一起协同劳动，这种劳动形式叫做协作。”马克思的协作概念主要包含四个方面的特征：协作内部的关联性、协作本身的有计划性、协作对劳动者与劳动产品的结合性、协作内含的生产力创生性。

Cooperation and the Critique of Capitalism

协作与资本主义批判

Under capitalist conditions, the social productive forces based on cooperation or cooperation itself are appropriated without compensation. Hence Marx points out that “this social productive power of cooperation appears as the productive power of capital, not as the productive power of labor.” The capitalist pays wages to each individual laborer but does not pay corresponding wages for the cooperation of all laborers. That is to say, in Marx’s view, when discussing the extraction of relative surplus value, it is not only the dimension that the laborer’s working time exceeds the labor time necessary to reproduce his labor power that is highlighted, but also the dimension that labor power, under a certain form of social combination, acquires an entirely new productive force.

在资本主义条件下，基于协作或协作本身的社会生产力被无偿占有了，所以马克思指出“协作这种社会劳动生产力，表现为资本的生产力，而不是表现为劳动的生产力”。资本家为每一个劳动者支付工资，但是并没有为所有劳动者的协作支付相应的工资。也就是说在马克思那里，当谈及相对剩余价值的榨取时，不仅仅凸显劳动者劳动时间超过了再生产他的劳动能力所必需的劳动时间这一维度，同时也凸显了劳动能力在某种社会结合下取得了一种全新生产力这一维度。

Based on the concept of cooperation, Marx also develops the following two lines of critique: First, capitalist management, under a neutral guise, conceals capital’s exploitation within the form of cooperative labor. Because the concept of cooperation itself contains interconnectedness, planning, and combination, this means that the cooperative process necessarily requires a form of management labor. Yet capitalist management is at the same time “the inevitable result of a mode of production based on the antagonism between the direct producers, the laborers, and the owners of the means of production,” but it uses the general need for management in cooperation to cover up the antagonism and exploitation inherent in capitalist production. Second, in cooperative labor under capitalist conditions, the laboring subject is reified. Because the capitalist labor process simultaneously serves as the valorization process of capital, within it the conditions of labor can only use the laborer, not the reverse. Consequently, the laborer’s labor power becomes a one-sided function, and Marx points out that the laborer “himself becomes a simple part.”

基于协作概念，马克思又展开了如下两个方面的批判：一是，资本主义管理以中立的面貌掩盖了资本在劳动协作形式下的剥削活动。因为协作概念本身内含关联性、计划性与结合性，这就意味着协作过程必然要求一种管理劳动，而资本主义管理同时更是“建立在作为直接生产者的劳动者和生产资料所有者之间的对立上的生产方式”的必然结果，但它却借协作对管理的一般性需要掩盖了资本主义生产内部的对立性与剥削性。二是，在资本主义条件下的协作劳动中劳动主体被物化，因为资本主义的劳动过程同时作为资本增殖过程，在其内部只能是劳动条件使用劳动者而不是相反，所以劳动者的劳动能力成了一种片面的职能，进而马克思指出劳动者“本身变成了一个简单的零件”。

It can be seen that it is precisely through the definition and analysis of the concept of cooperation that Marx is able to dissect the historical specificity and non-neutrality of cooperation under capitalist conditions, thereby laying a solid foundation for the conception of cooperation under socialism and even communism.

可以看到，正是基于对协作概念的界定与分析，马克思得以剖析出资本主义条件下协作的历史特殊性与非中立性，进而为社会主义乃至共产主义阶段的协作构想打下坚实的基础。

Cooperative Production and Socialism

协作生产与社会主义

Cooperative production is one of Marx and Engels’ principled stipulations for socialism. As Engels once wrote in a letter to Bebel: “As for the transition to a fully communist economy, we must adopt cooperative production on a large scale as an intermediate link — Marx and I have never doubted this.” Cooperative production was indeed an important proposition throughout most of Marx’s theoretical career. Marx began to focus on this proposition in the 1860s, against two backgrounds, one practical and one theoretical: On the practical level, Marx urgently needed to mount a theoretical counterattack against Lassalleanism [1]1 Lassalleanism: The political line of Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864), a German socialist whose views Marx and Engels criticized for advocating state-aided producer cooperatives within the existing state framework rather than revolutionary proletarian struggle. and also needed to guide the concrete practice of the newly established International Workingmen’s Association. On the theoretical level, after fully absorbing the ideas of socialists such as Owen [2]2 Owen: Robert Owen (1771–1858), British utopian socialist and cooperative movement pioneer. and the Chartist leader Jones [3]3 Jones: Ernest Charles Jones (1819–1869), British Chartist leader and later a collaborator of Marx., as well as excerpts from literature on colonial issues studied in the 1850s, Marx expanded the dimension of “cooperation” within his theoretical horizon. From then on, cooperation occupied a place in his intellectual vision, distinct from the division of labor.

协作生产是马克思恩格斯对社会主义的原则规定之一。诚如恩格斯曾在一封给倍倍尔的信里说道：“至于在向完全的共产主义经济过渡时，我们必须大规模地采用协作生产作为中间环节，这一点马克思和我从来没有怀疑过。”协作生产确实是伴随马克思大半个理论生涯的重要命题，马克思在19世纪60年代开始关注该命题，主要有现实与理论两个方面的背景：在现实层面，马克思亟须对拉萨尔主义展开理论上的反击，同时还需要指导刚成立的“国际工人协会”开展具体的实践；在理论层面，在充分学习了欧文等社会主义者与宪章派领导人琼斯的思想，以及19世纪50年代基于对讨论殖民地问题文献的摘录后，马克思在其理论视域里拓展了“协作”这一维度，自此协作以不同于分工的特征在其思想视域中占有一席之地。

In his era, Marx’s specific form of cooperative production was the cooperative. However, before elaborating on this, it was also necessary to sublate the cooperatives that already existed at the time. Marx and Jones, taking the cooperatives of Rochdale, Padiham, and Bradford as examples, pointed out their limitations: their systems were isolated, built on individual interests and antagonistic interests — that is, confining interests to a portion of people within a limited area. Under this self-imposed limitation, cooperatives could only compete with each other. Hence they were essentially hostile to autonomous associated labor and dealt a fatal blow to the hope of labor’s emancipation. Through an analysis of the cooperatives in Bingley and Bury, Marx and Jones unearthed beneficial institutions. For example, distributing profits to members and society, or granting members the right to a share of profits proportional to their purchases — these were great advances. In summary, the former revealed the hypocritical essence of capitalism, while the latter revealed the reality of communism. It was under this dual revelation that Marx gave high praise to cooperatives, calling them “‘possible’ communism.”

马克思在其时代对协作生产具体形式的设想是合作社，但在对此展开具体说明之前，亦需要对当时已经存在的合作社予以扬弃。马克思与琼斯以罗奇代尔、帕迪厄姆、布拉福德的合作社为例，指出其局限：它们的系统是孤立的，建立在个人利益与对抗性利益之上，即将利益局限在一个区域内的一部分人当中。在这种自我设限的前提下，合作社之间只能彼此竞争。所以它们在本质上敌视自主进行的联合劳动，是对劳动解放的希望的致命一击。而通过对彬格莱与伯里的合作社情况的分析，马克思与琼斯发掘出有益的制度。例如，将利润分配给成员与社会，或者给予成员获得同其购买量相当的利润份额的权利，这些都是巨大的进步。总结而言，前者是对资本主义虚伪本质的揭示，后者是对共产主义现实性的揭示，正是在这种双重揭示之下，马克思对合作社给予了高度评价，称之为“‘可能的’共产主义”。

To avoid falling into the rut of utopian socialism, Marx did not provide the specific operational mechanisms for the cooperatives he envisioned, but he gave two principled stipulations: First, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the political prerequisite for ensuring that laborers can manage themselves and thereby thoroughly transform society. On this basis, Marx praised the Paris Commune [4]4 Paris Commune: The revolutionary workers’ government that ruled Paris from March to May 1871, which Marx analyzed as a model of proletarian dictatorship. as “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.” Second, the opportunity for economic revolution and its success lies in fully absorbing and liberating “the new social elements which bourgeois society itself breeds,” and these new social elements are brought forth by the irresistible development of the contradictions within capitalist society itself. For example, Marx believed that the cooperative factories of his time were only possible on the basis of the factory system and the credit system born of capitalism.

为了避免落入空想社会主义的窠臼，马克思并没有给出他设想中的合作社具体的运作机制，但给出了两个原则性规定：其一，无产阶级专政是保证劳动者得以自我管理进而彻底改造社会的政治前提。基于此，马克思称赞巴黎公社“是生产者阶级同占有者阶级斗争的产物，是终于发现的可以使劳动在经济上获得解放的政治形式”。其二，经济革命及其成功的契机在于充分吸收并解放“资产阶级社会本身孕育着的新社会因素”，而这种新社会因素是由资本主义社会本身矛盾不可遏制的发展带来的。例如，马克思认为当时的协作工厂只有基于诞生于资本主义的工厂制度与信用制度才是可能的。

It can be seen that, regarding the real path to communism, Marx in his later years gave his answer through the conception of cooperative economy embodied in the cooperative — a conception that is both realistic and principled. This has philosophical effects at two levels: First, it transcends attempts to unify particular individuals through external forces, emphasizing the importance of subjective individual self-liberation. Second, it transcends theories that blindly trust individual power while ignoring concrete relations of production and conditions, emphasizing the importance of objective real circumstances. It is precisely this dual emphasis on both the subjective and objective levels that prevents Marx’s conception from becoming a utopia or a blind activism.

可见，关于通往共产主义的现实路径为何，马克思在晚期用合作社这一兼具现实性与原则性的协作经济式构想给出了他的解答，其具有两个层面的哲学效应：其一，超越了那种企图用外部力量来统一特殊个人的尝试，强调了主观层面个人自我解放的重要性。其二，超越了那种忽视具体的生产关系以及条件而对个人力量盲目信任的理论，强调了客观层面现实形势的重要性。正是这种对在主客观两个层面的双重强调，使得马克思的设想不至于成为一种空想抑或一种盲动。

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