3) The Proximate Effects Of Machinery On The Workers
a) Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital. The Employment of Women and Children
One of first effects of the introduction of
machinery was that because some of the muscular power that was
previously required was now provided by the machine, workers no
longer needed to be strong or even fully developed. That meant that
women and children could be employed both because they were cheaper
to employ, and because they were often more dexterous than male
workers.
So, whole workers families tended to be employed,
which meant, given the long hours, that many of the things that had
previously been part of a healthy family life disappeared. Children
lost out on play, the performance of various aspects of domestic
production ceased.
“Dr. Edward Smith, during the cotton crisis
caused by the American Civil War, was sent by the English Government
to Lancashire, Cheshire, and other places, to report on the sanitary
condition of the cotton operatives. He reported, that from a hygienic
point of view, and apart from the banishment of the operatives from
the factory atmosphere, the crisis had several advantages. The women
now had sufficient leisure to give their infants the breast, instead
of poisoning them with “Godfrey’s cordial.” They had time to
learn to cook. Unfortunately the acquisition of this art occurred at
a time when they had nothing to cook. But from this we see how
capital, for the purposes of its self-expansion, has usurped the
labour necessary in the home of the family. This crisis was also
utilised to teach sewing to the daughters of the workmen in sewing
schools. An American revolution and a universal crisis, in order that
the working girls, who spin for the whole world, might learn to sew!”
(Note 3, p372)
The value of labour-power is determined not just
on the basis of the cost of reproducing the individual worker, but
that of the average worker's family, because capital has to ensure
the supply of future generations of workers. However, if capital can
employ all of the members of the worker's family, the cost of
reproducing that family is spread over the wages paid to them all,
not just to the father. Consequently, the value of labour-power,
and, therefore, wages fall, whilst capital gets to exploit not just
one worker but the whole family.
This has been witnessed at various times, when an
expansion of capital has meant that capital sought to employ more
workers. Much of Marx’s description of the consequences could be
applied, for example, to the period after WWII, when large numbers of
married women were encouraged to join the labour market.
““The numerical increase of labourers has
been great, through the growing substitution of female for male, and
above all, of childish for adult labour. Three girls of 13, at wages
of from 6 shillings to 8 shillings a week, have replaced the one man
of mature age, of wages varying from 18 shillings to 45 shillings.”
(Th. de Quincey: “The Logic of Political Econ.,” London, 1844.
Note to p. 147.) Since certain family functions, such as nursing and
suckling children, cannot be entirely suppressed, the mothers
confiscated by capital, must try substitutes of some sort. Domestic
work, such as sewing and mending, must be replaced by the purchase of
ready-made articles. Hence, the diminished expenditure of labour in
the house is accompanied by an increased expenditure of money. The
cost of keeping the family increases, and balances the greater
income. In addition to this, economy and judgment in the consumption
and preparation of the means of subsistence becomes impossible.
Abundant material relating to these facts, which are concealed by
official Political Economy, is to be found in the Reports of the
Inspectors of Factories, of the Children’s Employment Commission,
and more especially in the Reports on Public Health.”” (Note 1, p
373)
In the post war period, the same things could be
seen as, in return for earning a wage, large amounts of domestic
labour, formerly performed manually, by housewives, was done instead
by domestic machinery e.g. vacuum cleaners, washing machines, TV to
entertain children, as well as a welfare state to provide care etc.
That in turn created a large demand for all of these new consumer
goods, developed as part of the Long Wave innovation cycle, which
could be paid for out of the additional wages being earned.
Machinery also changes the relation between
capital and the worker. Its no longer a free contract for the sale
of labour-power. The worker now also sells the labour-power of their
children, turning them into slave owners, and their children into
slaves. All of the atrocious practices involved in this, which
included the prostituting, in large numbers, their own wives and
daughters, have been well documented, as well as described in the
novels of Dickens and his contemporaries.
“The revolution effected by machinery in the
juridical relations between the buyer and the seller of labour-power,
causing the transaction as a whole to lose the appearance of a
contract between free persons, afforded the English Parliament an
excuse, founded on juridical principles, for the interference of the
state with factories. Whenever the law limits the labour of children
to 6 hours in industries not before interfered with, the complaints
of the manufacturers are always renewed. They allege that numbers of
the parents withdraw their children from the industry brought under
the Act, in order to sell them where “freedom of labour” still
rules, i.e., where children under 13 years are compelled to work like
grown-up people, and therefore can be got rid of at a higher price.
But since capital is by nature a leveller, since it exacts in every
sphere of production equality in the conditions of the exploitation
of labour, the limitation by law of children’s labour, in one
branch of industry, becomes the cause of its limitation in others.”
(p 374-5)
Today, the representatives of the more reactionary
sections of capital, within the Tory Party, are marked by their high
moral tone on issues like the family, on abortion, on drug use etc.
Yet it was capital via the introduction of machine industry that
caused the greatest damage in all these respects. Women employed in
the most degrading conditions; children employed in conditions of the
most terrible immorality, the needs of work causing mothers to
abandon their children or else replace their own care by dosing them
up with opiates like laudanum and so on.
“In fact, the revolution in the mode of
cultivation had led to the introduction of the industrial system.
Married women, who work in gangs along with boys and girls, are,
for a stipulated sum of money, placed at the disposal of the farmer,
by a man called the “undertaker,” who contracts for the whole
gang. “These gangs will sometimes travel many miles from their own
village; they are to be met morning and evening on the roads, dressed
in short petticoats, with suitable coats and boots, and sometimes
trousers, looking wonderfully strong and healthy, but tainted with a
customary immorality and heedless of the fatal results which their
love of this busy and independent life is bringing on their
unfortunate offspring who are pining at home.”
Every phenomenon of the factory districts is
here reproduced, including, but to a greater extent, ill-disguised
infanticide, and dosing children with opiates.
“My knowledge of such evils,” says Dr.
Simon, the medical officer of the Privy Council and editor in chief
of the Reports on Public Health, “may excuse the profound misgiving
with which I regard any large industrial employment of adult women.”
“Happy indeed,” exclaims Mr. Baker, the
factory inspector, in his official report, “happy indeed will it be
for the manufacturing districts of England, when every married woman
having a family is prohibited from working in any textile works at
all.”” (p 376-7)
Marx goes on, referring to Engels' extensive
accounts in “The Condition Of The Working Class”, too of the moral
degradation of women and children, and to the “intellectual
desolation” also caused. That was despite the clauses in the
Factory Acts, requiring education as a condition for employing
children. It is only when capital itself requires educated workers
that it begins to provide systematic education by the State. Prior
to that it was workers who organised their own education via their
Co-operative Societies, which provided libraries and meeting rooms
above the shops, organised schools and lectures.
Where employers did provide 'education' prior to
the 1844 Factory Act, it was frequently by people who themselves
could neither read nor write. It was these kinds of conditions,
including the selling of their children's labour-power, which led
Marx, in writing the program of the First International, to stress
that although he opposed State provided education, it was necessary
to have statutorily determined minimum standards of education, that
had to be provided by employers.
“By the excessive addition of women and
children to the ranks of the workers, machinery at last breaks down
the resistance which the male operatives in the manufacturing period
continued to oppose to the despotism of capital.” (p 379)
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