Ch. 4, pp 179-186

This installment begins slowly and soon had a couple of sentences I couldn’t make any sense out of but it was worth persevering because, with this book, everything makes sense sooner or later. We’re now five pages short of the beginning of Chapter 5 so I’m expecting the next few pages to be the turning point of the book and where conclusions start to be moved towards. Chapter 5 will begin on page 187 of 262 so we’re about two thirds through now. No images this week but a lot to think about.

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7. It’s not the workers who are exploited

There’s no choice but to re-concentrate the division of labour as Marx said

“When people working either together or in parallel in a planned manner, many people call this cooperation.” (Marx, Theory of Capital, Vol. 1A, p.479). “Through the cooperation of other people, workers can be made to throw off the framework of the individual and develop the nature of their kind.” (ibid, p.485)

This is one of those sentences I mentioned. Part of the difficulty in translating is that you can only make sense of something when it makes some sort of sense already. Even translation apps have trouble translating things they’re not expecting you to say, and begin to fail when the thing said isn’t the statistically most likely. Many a time when using a smartphone translation app, I’ve seen the thing I wanted to say replaced by something nonsensical. If predictive translation doesn’t get more predictions correct, the effect will be to discourage original statements and we will have a situation where technology works to prevent individual expression. But here we are. My problem with Marx’s statement was that I couldn’t imagine how an awareness of individuality could hinder production increases. Now that I can, I hope I don’t start seeing evidence of it everywhere.

“It is not possible for one man to lift a load of one ton, and it is still not possible if ten men were to try. However, if one hundred persons were to try, they might only have to use their fingertips.” (John, Belaze [?], A Proposal for Establishing a Specialized School of Engineering as quoted in ibid, p480) There are no individuals in the one hundred persons lifting the one ton as quoted by Marx. This is the “oneness” mentioned by Arendt. The cooperation by the workers is no more than the sum of their efforts. The one hundred persons are treated as one person without a personality. The labour force required to lift the load is re-concentrated by the labourers that divide the labour. This is cooperation as Marx saw it. It is the combining of the individual identical labour forces of the respective laborers. And so, “It through the cooperation of other people, that workers can be made to throw off the framework of the individual and develop the nature of their kind.” They have been anonymized. “Excellence has been anonymized” (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.73) and reduced to a labour force. Cooperation for Marx was the cooperation that occurs in labour, and goes no farther than the re-concentration of the labour divided. What is important here is not that cooperation enables the productivity of an individual to be increased, but that it is the starting point of productivity. In other words, productivity itself was only the individual forces combined. The objective has been given and the combining of forces is one means by which it is executed. Any laborer can attain that objective by combining his efforts. It is not necessary for any laborer to be excellent.

This definition of cooperation is completely different from cooperation in the polis where it was “not necessary for an individual to distinguish themselves from other people, because they should indicate they are the one in a million through unique achievements and performance.” Cooperation in the polis was cooperation that took place in the space of the world while anonymized cooperation is cooperation that takes place in the space of society.

Architectural design is the cooperation of specialists

Many different people participate in the architectural design that we perform. The architectural design is established through cooperation between many people that include the client, the users, people living nearby, the architect, structural consultants, MEP consultants, civil engineering consultants, lighting designers, furniture designers, signage designers, landscape designers, as well as others depending upon the type of project. This type of cooperation is something completely different from the re-concentration of individual labour forces. “Two persons combining their labour” is precisely the opposite of Arendt’s “the cooperation of oneness”. (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.84) Separation of labour does not work in architecture. There is no oneness because an idea from one person can influence the whole. A new discovery in the structural analysis by a structural engineer can influence the direction of an entire project. A suggestion by a furniture designer can sometimes change the shape of the architecture. The voice of one person living nearby can sometimes influence the entire group. It is returning to the beginning many times. It is not the case that one proceeds in a direct line to the objective. The objective itself is liable to change. This is because architectural design is not labour but work. Cooperation demands excellence from all who are participating.

Unlike the cooperation (Kooperation) required to achieve a prior objective by the most efficient means, the cooperation in architecture has no means. It is not [about] efficiency of means. It is not that there is a predetermined objective. We attempt to determine the objective of the architecture each time we analyze the environment, the use, the users along with our way of thinking. The objective of a building always changes according to where a building will be and who will be using it. Even if there was a standard way of thinking, it would be necessary to revalidate it each time. Any standards need to be revalidated in accordance with the characteristics of the location. In the sense of “the starting point for productivity”, this method does not have such a poor efficiency.

Why is the type of cooperation that occurs in architectural design so different from the Kooperation of which Marx writes? In contrast with the cooperation of work on the one hand, we have the cooperation of labour on the other but Arendt says the difference between the two is not fully understood. Not only that, it is only recognized as the starting point for productivity. This is to say that, for the people within in an economically-organized society, cooperation is cooperation for financial profit. In order to have cooperation as Marx understood it, labour itself would need to have separation of labour. Separation of labour for labour “should not be confused with the principle of specialization. This principle of specialization is something that can be seen in the process of general work but is usually seen as the separation of labour with labour [a single task]. (ibid., p.183) Architectural work is the work of specialists. “Because of its nature, the specialization of work requires the various types of skills to be combined and organized whereas with the separation of labour, all activity is combined into the one thing (as in the example of the one hundred people lifting the one-ton load). This homogeneity is taken as a premise and so no specialized skills are required.” (ibid., pp.183-184) The cooperation of we architectural designers is the cooperation of specialists, and is completely different from labour. In today’s society (bureaucratic society, mass society, consumer society, market society), design work is fundamentally regarded as labour, as labour that has separation of labour and that is anonymous.

For me this was the most interesting passage. Cooperation for Marx was the cooperation of one hundred, faceless workers combining their labour force for the single objective. It’s how we Westerners (possibly still unfairly) regard the Japanese ability to unite and get things done for some shared goal. Implicit in this is a criticism of a perceived herd mentality, but this maybe says more about us. It is true though, that people “lose face” by letting down “the collective face”. I understand Yamamoto’s depiction of architecture as a good type of cooperation where everybody, including the client, brings their own skills to the project in a spirit of cooperation and in a situation where any one of the stakeholders can change the nature of the goal. I only experienced this once in my architectural career but it was a wonderful thing. This is a bit sad, but I treasure the memory and am glad I experienced it that once.

I think the current Western model called group work is Kooperation by another name because the self is subordinate to the group effort – everyone in the group gets the same grade. Teamwork is slightly different. It’s is a sporting metaphor and, although the players may have individual skills, they’re expected to cooperate for one very narrowly defined goal – to win, and this is itself a metaphor for our prevailing economic system. Although some level of specialist skill is required (such as in tightly defined player positions and roles) it too is probably just Kooperation by a different name. I’m only thinking about these things now because next week is presentation week for the semester project that involves a combination of individual work (individual buildings for repair and re-use) and cooperative work (in that the buildings are all on the same site, some of them connected). The individual work will be individual as always but what type of cooperation the cooperative work will exhibit is still unknown because, two days before presentation [ ! ], I don’t see any evidence of it in the form of the existing and proposed site models with, for example, shared landscaping. I expect sometime tomorrow night there’ll be a brief session of teamwork cooperation for the narrowly-defined goal of getting the thing done, followed by an intensive session of all-hands-on-deck Marxian Kooperation where it doesn’t matter who does what.

The exploited are those who wish to excel

Why does this happen? The work of designing architecture used to be work that took into consideration the characteristics of the place, and the characteristics of the users. This was because it aspired to replace standardized labour. It aspired to replace the space of society with the space of the world. The work for making the space of the world was replaced by labour for making the space of society. The persons that made this change were the architects at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the 19th century and before, architects believed that architecture had to consider its location, and thought about what style of building would be best suited to it. But who would that architecture symbolize? There was a change in thinking. [The practice of] architecture came to work for the development of society in accordance with the needs of economically organized society, and those needs were function whether society is thought of mass society or market society. If society is a bureaucratic society, then those needs were orders [as in directives].

As architectural designers, we make the things of the world. Architecture is not something that can be consumed. That architecture may exist in that place for a hundred years or more. This is because architecture is a thing of the world that has durability. Making the things of the world is the work of the designer. That building that is there now must convey the thoughts of the people that made it to people living there one hundred years on. If we have experienced or can imagine what it is like to live in a building one hundred years old, then it is possible for us to imagine what people one hundred years from now might think. It is possible to feel those thoughts. Architecture is one of those things with durability. It is a thing of the world. It is not just a building. Even if the person making the thing was a builder, the desire was to “add to the things of the world that have durability.” The thinking was that people would live on by creating these things of the world that had durability. They wanted to make things of the world with durability. Even if laborers were actually used, there was the desire to perform work and not labour. Losing the distinction between work and labour, when looked at the other way, is as if our bodies are both labourers and workers at the same time. We labourers have to discover the work within our labour. Unless we do, we are slaves working to live.

Marx said that workers were exploited. “It is not so much the workers but the surplus labour force of humans that explains the productivity of labour.” Arendt, The Human Condition, p.142) “This surplus of labour is the amount of labour force that still remains after the workers’ means of regeneration has been expended.” (ibid. p.161) Labourers must labour over and above their labour force necessary for living. Marx believed that this was exploitation. However, it is not the labour force that is being exploited. It is the will to work by discovering the work [that exists] within labour. Marx termed this will to work “willingness.” [my best guess – sorry]. “Most productive labour generates competition even if only through social contact, that energizes the willingness (the Lebensgeister, animal spirits) [aha!], is only for labour “In the space that is society.” It is not present in cooperative labour. “Willingness” is not Marx’s animal spirits, but the willingness to work. I am in this camp. The power that we see and the power that we hear resides in this. Through wage labour, we (labourers) have tried to show we are the best in 10,000.” What this means is that it is the people who try to excel in the work who are exploited. The space of society homogenizes and unifies and gives the name of labour force and converts it into a nmonetary equivalent. This kind of exploitation has become a huge force driving the development of society. Designers who produce a preliminary design and make a bid of ¥1 are also guilty of designing only for the here and now. This desire to keep taking back is product of the space of society.

The world is not a space that existed in the past and that is now lost to us

We, (as wage labourers) “are heard and seen by others.” (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.87) and a robbed of power and “must leave this world in which we have existed, without having ever left a trace.” (Arendt, ibid., p.83) This is the space of society.

However, even if we are in that society, we (labourers) can still indicate that we may be that “one person in ten thousand.” It is not the case that we are age labourers selling our time and labour. We are not wage labourers. “There is practically no support for this assertion of mine.” (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.134) The reason why we have lost this distinction between labour and work is because we live in the space of society (which is space that is economically organized), and we are looking at society from within the space of society. It is not possible for us to see the space of the world.

For as long as we remain in the space of society, the space of the world will be a thing of the past, and it will seem like something that is now lost to us. Those wanting to design the space of the world are seen as fantasists. However, the space of the world is not lost. It is not a space that existed in the past and that is now lost to us. Even now, the world is a space that is close to us. It is space in opposition to standardized bureacratically managed space. It is a space that we need to have a strong will to design and configure for the future.

• • • 

2024/12/08 Ch. 4, pp. 179-186
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 175-179
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 169-175
2024/10/20 Ch. 4, pp.163-168
2024/10/06 Ch. 4, pp.159-163
2024/09/29 Ch. 4, pp.156-159
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.152-155
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.146-151
2024/08/25 Ch. 3, pp.135-143
2024/08/18 Ch. 3, pp.128-135
2024/08/11 Ch. 3, pp.120-128
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.115-120
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.108-114
2024/07/14 Ch. 3, pp.101-107
2024/06/30 Ch. 2, pp.92-100
2024/06/23 Ch. 2, pp.87-92
2024/06/16 Ch. 2, pp.78-87
2024/06/02 Ch. 2, pp.69-78
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.66-70
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.58-66
2024/05/05 Ch. 1, pp.46-55
2024/04/28 Ch. 1, pp.35-46
2024/04/21 Ch. 1, pp.23-35
2024/04/07 Ch. 1, pp.18-23
2024/03/31 Ch. 1, pp.14-18
2024/03/24 The Space of Power vs. The Power of Space: Preface pp. 7-11

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Revisited this week:

• Mission Statement
• It’s Not Rocket Science #3: Yakhchal
• It’s Not Rocket Science #11: Keeping the Water Out
• Architecture Misfits #38: The Unknown Architect