The continuing development of productive forces creates the material conditions for new and unknown social relations—relations which are already in the process of formation in the old society but which cannot mature until they burst the fetters of the dominant social order. The consciousness of an epoch reflects only the dominant forms of social relations, although these are not the only forms. The hegemony of the dominant forms is restricted and sometimes challenged by survivals or even by renaissances of earlier forms, and it is undermined by new forms which develop under the protection of the dominant forms. The new forms are only buds; they are embryonic forms, and not forms of social relations in a full sense. They are neglected by consciousness, not because they are embryonic, nor because their magnitude or importance are negligible, but because the consciousness of an epoch is designed to reflect only the dominant forms. However, at the heart of the production process itself, where the accumulated productive forces are created, the dominant forms of social activity do not exhaust the possibilities of contemporary human existence. The ambiguity at the heart of the production of Capital, the ambiguity of activity that simultaneously consists of producers activating things and things activating producers, shatters the hegemony of the dominant form. Because of the dynamic character of the productive forces, producers must respond to continually changing circumstances. If they are not to be stamped, crushed or ground, producers are constantly forced to remain "on the ball;" unlike the colonized, they cannot imagine that the personified power of the official is the only form of human power, and unlike the official, they cannot renounce their self-powers and immerse themselves in the powers personified by the office.
It is precisely at the heart of the production process that the automatic individual is least developed. The illusion that production consists of things animating things is created by capitalist staging, lighting and sound effects, and it causes audiences to misconceive the nature of productive activity. It has not in fact been practicable to replace the human producer with a machine whose behavior is pre-determined. The social scientists looking for the robots who operate the technology, the machines that run the machines, have been surprised to find unruly, undisciplined human beings. The scientists have in general been disappointed. At the very center of the sophisticated mechanism that has become synonymous with efficiency itself stands an unpredictable and intractable demon. It turns out that the speed of the assembly line depends on whether or not individuals agree to perform the number of motions programmed. The magnitude of the product depends to an increasing extent on the quantity of the product workers take home in their lunch boxes, if not in trucks. The quality of the sophisticated product depends on the willingness of qualified workers to desist from making unsupervisable changes in minute measurements and adjustments. The continued existence of the directors, programmers, foremen
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