Thus the manner by which the machine itself produces something is also essentially different from handicraft activity, assuming that there is still anything at all like craft production within positionality.
The tractors and automobiles are brought out, spewed out, serially piece by piece. But where out there does something put out in this manner stand? Into what standing is it so brought?
The automobile is put out in such a way that it is in place and at the ready, i.e., immediately and constantly deliverable. It is not produced so that it would stand there and remain standing there like the jug. The automobile is much more imposed upon to leave and indeed as something orderable that, for its part, can be challenged forth precisely for a further conducting along, which itself sets in place the promotion of commerce.
What the machines put out piece-by-piece they put into the standing reserve of the orderable. That which is put out is a piece of the standing reserve [Bestand-Stück]. This word is now used in a strict and new sense.
The piece [das Stück] is something other than the part [der Teil]. The part shares itself with parts in a whole. It takes part in the whole, belongs to it.12 The piece on the contrary is separated and indeed, as the piece, is even isolated from the other pieces. It never shares itself with these in a whole. The piece of standing reserve does not even share itself with its own kind in the standing reserve. The standing reserve is much more that which has been shattered [Zerstückte] into the orderable. This shattering does not break apart, but instead precisely creates the standing reserve of the pieces of inventory. Each of these is loaded into and confined in a circuit of orderability. The isolating of piece from piece corresponds to the confining of everything that has been isolated in an industry of requisitioning.13
If one wanted to take away, piece by piece and all together, the pieces of inventory in a fleet [Bestand] of automobiles and put them somewhere else, then the pieces would be torn out of the circuit of their orderability. The result would be some kind of automobile graveyard. The parking lot is something different, since there every car in its orderability stands at the
12. completes its wholeness
13. unity of the standing reserve—how?