From passages to an answer key

Here as everywhere else, we must distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.

Why it counts The passage directly says factory machinery reverses the tool relation and subordinates the worker under capitalist production.

Why it counts The worker literally becomes part of the mechanism while the owners benefit; the passage directly answers that machinery binds under this arrangement.

They are called "labour-saving" machines—a commonly used phrase which implies what we expect of them; but we do not get what we expect. What they really do is to reduce the skilled labourer to the ranks of the unskilled, to increase the number of the "reserve army of labour"—that is, to increase the precariousness of life among the workers and to intensify the labour of those who serve the machines (as slaves their masters).

Why it counts Morris directly rejects the claim that contemporary machinery saves labour and grounds the answer in deskilling, precarity, and intensified service to machines.

Why it counts The passage answers that machinery can bind even with short hours and good pay because specialized service dulls other capacities and extinguishes desire.

In a true society these miracles of ingenuity would be for the first time used for minimizing the amount of time spent in unattractive labour, which by their means might be so reduced as to be but a very light burden on each individual. All the more as these machines would most certainly be very much improved when it was no longer a question as to whether their improvement would "pay" the individual, but rather whether it would benefit the community.

Why it counts The passage gives a clear conditional liberation position: machinery can reduce toil when judged by community benefit rather than private return.

In the past hundred years, for example, the greatest factor tending toward increasing the output, and thereby the prosperity of the civilized world, has been the introduction of machinery to replace hand labor. And without doubt the greatest gain through this change has come to the whole people—the consumer. Through short periods, especially in the case of patented apparatus, the dividends of those who have introduced new machinery have been greatly increased, and in many cases, though unfortunately not universally, the employees have obtained materially higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions.

Why it counts Taylor explicitly argues that machinery produces widespread prosperity and can bring workers higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions. The existing instrument code is only a partial fit for this material-welfare ground.

It is true that disappointment has followed disappointment, and that discovery upon discovery, and invention after invention, have neither lessened the toil of those who most need respite, nor brought plenty to the poor. [...] The enormous increase in productive power which has marked the present century and is still going on with accelerating ratio, has no tendency to extirpate poverty or to lighten the burdens of those compelled to toil. It simply widens the gulf between Dives and Lazarus, and makes the struggle for existence more intense.

Why it counts George directly contrasts labor-saving productive power with the persistence of toil and explains the failure through unequal distribution.