Having looked in detail at the transition from handicraft production to manufacturing in the previous two chapters (on cooperation and the division of labour), in Chapter 15 of Capital, Vol. I, Marx turns his attention to the transition from manufacturing industry to the period of the production of machinery by machinery, the development of which is sometimes called machinofacture in order to distinguish this from manufacture proper. If, as we have seen, the period of manufacturing industry can be said to extend from the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century as Marx claims (1974a, 318 [1976, 492]), then the period of machinofacture may be said to start from the last quarter of the eighteenth century and extend to at least the early twentieth century. Just as manufacturing industry is distinguished from handicraft production by the deskilling of the labour process involved in manufacturing industry, machinofacture is distinguished from manufacture by the fact that in machinofacture machinery replaces not just a less sophisticated tool of production, but the human hand itself (1974a, 363 [1976, 506]).

The main theme of this very long chapter (1974a, 351–475 [1976, 492– 639]) is that it is not machinery but its capitalist employment that has made the introduction of labour-saving machinery such a burden to mankind, and not the blessing it might otherwise have been in a socialist society. This point is neatly summarized by Marx as follows: