C. Modern Manufacture
Marx then gives extensive examples of these kinds
of employment and the abuses associated with them. As Marx says,
many of these have already been elaborated in the Chapter on the
Working Day. More still are given by Engels in The Condition Of The Working Class In England and for that reason, I do not intend
detailing them here.
E. Passage of Modern Manufacture, an Domestic Industry into Modern Mechanical Industry. The Hastening of This Revolution by the Application of the Factory Acts to those Industries
“The cheapening of labour-power, by sheer
abuse of the labour of women and children, by sheer robbery of every
normal condition requisite for working and living, and by the sheer
brutality of overwork and night-work, meets at last with natural
obstacles that cannot be overstepped. So also, when based on these
methods, do the cheapening of commodities and capitalist exploitation
in general. So soon as this point is at last reached — and it takes
many years — the hour has struck for the introduction of machinery,
and for the thenceforth rapid conversion of the scattered domestic
industries and also of manufactures into factory industries.” (p
442)
In 1861, around 1 million people were employed
outside the factory system, in manufacture and domestic production of
clothing alone. Many of these, Marx says, are workers that had been
“set free” as a result of the introduction of machines into
factories.
“The production of wearing apparel is carried
on partly in manufactories in whose workrooms there is but a
reproduction of that division of labour, the membra disjecta of which
were found ready to hand; partly by small master-handicraftsmen;
these, however, do not, as formerly, work for individual consumers,
but for manufactories and warehouses, and to such an extent that
often whole towns and stretches of country carry on certain branches,
such as shoemaking, as a speciality; finally, on a very great scale
by the so-called domestic workers, who form an external department of
the manufactories, warehouses, and even of the workshops of the
smaller masters.” (p 442-3)
Now, the raw materials were provided by machine
industry and the mass of the workers to process them, workers that
had been replaced by it. This vast reserve army was now available
for capital to attract or repel according to the needs of market
conditions.
“The decisively revolutionary machine, the
machine which attacks in an equal degree the whole of the numberless
branches of this sphere of production, dressmaking, tailoring,
shoemaking, sewing, hat-making, and many others, is the
sewing-machine.” (p 443)
That is perhaps fitting because thousands of years
earlier, one of the most important tools developed was the bone
needle, which made it possible for the first time, to create fitted
clothing as opposed to merely draped animal skins.
As with the introduction of machinery elsewhere,
the wages of the machine workers rises compared to that of the
domestic hand workers. The more highly skilled, usually male workers
sinks, unable to compete with the machines. The majority of the
machine workers are young women and girls. The elderly women and
young children are driven out.
On the one hand, Marx describes the rise in
London, in the ten years up to 1864, of starvation which coincided
with the introduction of the sewing machine. That, as a result of
those thrown out of work. On the other, these new machinists worked
in poor conditions, and for long hours, though not as long as for
those previously employed in domestic production.
Exactly how the sewing machine changed the
production in each area depended on how it was previously organised
i.e. on the basis of manufacture or handicraft, simple co-operation
and so on, and this varied from one type of product to another.
“In tailoring, shirtmaking, shoemaking, &c.,
all the forms are intermingled. Here the factory system proper.” (p
444-5)
As more capital is invested in sewing machines so
these machines produce a glut of commodities. The domestic workers
are expropriated as they sell their own machines. This leads to an
overproduction of machines. The machine makers then turn to renting
machines, thereby destroying the small scale machine owners. In the
meantime, continual changes in the production of machines reduces
their value,
“...and their ever-increasing cheapness,
depreciate day by day the older makes, and allow of their being sold
in great numbers, at absurd prices, to large capitalists, who alone
can thus employ them at a profit.” (p 445)
On the one hand this process of concentration into
larger workplaces drives towards the introduction of steam power to
drive a large number of machines, but at the same time, the
introduction of steam provides another advantage over the small
producers, further stimulating concentration.
“Thus England is at present experiencing, not
only in the colossal industry of making wearing apparel, but in most
of the other trades mentioned above, the conversion of manufacture,
of handicrafts, and of domestic work into the factory system, after
each of those forms of production, totally changed and disorganised.
under the influence of modern industry, has long ago reproduced, and
even overdone, all the horrors of the factory system, without
participating in any of the elements of social progress it contains.”
(p 446)
Marx sets out the basis of Engels' later comment
in the 1892 Preface to “The Condition of the Working Class”, that
the large employers embraced the Factory Acts as a means of
destroying their smaller competitors.
“This industrial revolution which takes place
spontaneously, is artificially helped on by the extension of the
Factory Acts to all industries in which women, young persons and
children are employed. The compulsory regulation of the working-day
as regards its length, pauses, beginning and end, the system of
relays of children, the exclusion of all children under a certain
age, &c., necessitate on the one hand more machinery and the
substitution of steam as a motive power in the place of muscles. On
the other hand, in order to make up for the loss of time, an
expansion occurs of the means of production used in common, of the
furnaces, buildings, &c., in one word, greater concentration of
the means of production and a correspondingly greater concourse of
workpeople. The chief objection, repeatedly and passionately urged on
behalf of each manufacture threatened with the Factory Act, is in
fact this, that in order to continue the business on the old scale a
greater outlay of capital will be necessary. But as regards labour in
the so-called domestic industries and the intermediate forms between
them and Manufacture, so soon as limits are put to the working-day
and to the employment of children, those industries go to the wall.
Unlimited exploitation of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation
of their power to compete.” (p 446-7)
The equivalent today, in Britain, is the extent to
which Welfarism subsidises the worst employers. So long as bad
employers can pay low wages, and still attract workers, whose income
is bolstered by transfers from other workers, in the form of Child
Benefits, Tax Credits , and so on, those – usually small,
inefficient – employers will do so. That in itself holds back the
clearing out of these types of inefficient capital, and their
replacement with efficient, more high value production, able to pay
better wages to its workers.
A similar process was described by Marx in
relation to earthenware manufacture, where employers objected to the
limitation and pausing of the working day, on the grounds that it was
not compatible with the production process.
“In 1864, however, they were brought under
the Act, and within sixteen months every “impossibility” had
vanished.
'The
improved method,” called forth by the Act, “of making slip by
pressure instead of by evaporation, the newly-constructed stoves for
drying the ware in its green state, &c., are each events of great
importance in the pottery art, and mark an advance which the
preceding century could not rival.... It has even considerably
reduced the temperature of the stoves themselves with a considerable
saving of fuel, and with a readier effect on the ware.'
In spite of every prophecy, the cost-price of
earthenware did not rise, but the quantity produced did, and to such
an extent that the export for the twelve months, ending December,
1865, exceeded in value by £138,628 the average of the preceding
three years.” (p 447)
How many firms that survive in Britain today, only
on the basis of the low wages and poor conditions of their workers,
would have to invest in and develop more efficient methods if the
income of those workers were no longer supplemented by transfers from
other workers? In fact, according to a report in the FT recently, 10% of British firms are "zombie" companies, essentially bust, unable to generate enough income to repay the capital sum on their loans, and only able to pay the interest because of unsustainably low interest rates and forbearance by banks afraid that calling in the loan would mean losing most of their money. These inevitably small firms, emply around 2 million workers, who will also be on very low wages, and poor conditions. It amounts to not only 2 million workers tied up in inefficient production, explaining the recent ONS data about the number of workers who are under employed, and why the economy is shrinking, but unemployment has not risen, but also large amounts of Capital tied up that could be employed elsewhere in the economy more effectively in high value production, paying workers higher wages, and providing them with better conditions. It also means that the bank lending to these companies is locked up, that could have been available for recapitalising the bank, or for lending to more profitable companies.
A similar regulation occurs in respect of the
peaks and troughs of employment during the year. Marx describes how,
in addition to the normal business cycle, improved means of
communication had led to buyers giving orders at short notice, to
suppliers, for large orders. Together with changes in fashion, this
meant suppliers needed to quickly employ workers, and work them for
long hours, to complete the orders. Then these workers would be laid
off, cast back into the reserve army.
But, the introduction of the Factory Acts
prevented this overwork during given periods, which meant work over
the year itself had to be spread out, and this was itself more
compatible with the needs of large scale machine industry, that
production should be more or less at a steady rate, and continuous.
“The thoroughly conscientious investigations
of the Children’s Employment Commission prove that the effect of
the regulation of the hours of work, in some industries, was to
spread the mass of labour previously employed more evenly over the
whole year that this regulation was the first rational bridle on the
murderous, meaningless caprices of fashion, caprices that consort so
badly with the system of modern industry; that the development of
ocean navigation and of the means of communication generally, has
swept away the technical basis on which season-work was really
supported, and that all other so-called unconquerable difficulties
vanish before larger buildings, additional machinery, increase in the
number of workpeople employed, and the alterations caused by all
these in the mode of conducting the wholesale trade. But for all
that, capital never becomes reconciled to such changes — and this
is admitted over and over again by its own representatives — except
“under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament” for the
compulsory regulation of the hours of labour.” (p 450-1)
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