From an analysis of a hypothetical transition from manufacture capitalism to socialism, we intend to stress the reason why, according to Marx´s proposition, it is demanded that this transition takes place under machinery´s domain. In the case of manufacture it is possible to identify a trade-off between the productive efficiency and the humanization of the labor activities. We then intend to clarify that the initially hypothetical speculation acquires a historic sense in as much as taylorism-fordism´s nature can be understood as a "reinvention of the manufacturing system". We shall then argue that the wide assimilation of taylorism-fordism in the Soviet Union´s experience of socialism implementation imprisoned it within the mentioned trade-off, which caused the first experience of capitalism´s surmount to be perversely impregnated with the immanent mediocrity of taylorism-fordism. Finally, we shall comment briefly on the developments that the recent automation of microelectronic base might take in a socialist project.
labor process; manufacturing system; socialism; Taylorism-Fordism; machinery