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Companies are more and more using subcontracting relations as a means of
managing labour force and the organisation of the labour process. Principal
contractors are deciding and planning how subcontractors have to perform
their activities. Subcontracting relations consist basically in shifting
constraints and risks on to downwards suppliers which actually creates a
hierarchical chain between formally independent entities.
I propose here to interpret this contemporary phenomenon of vertical
disintegration through the works of Marx on the dynamics of the division of
labour and on the forms of subordination. In particular, this view is helpful to
grasp the ongoing unity of the production process despite its apparent
fragmentation and to focus back again on the labour/capital relationship
rather than on technical determinism and inter-firm cooperation.

subcontracting relations; Marx; division of labour