SECTION 9
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| The Factory Acts, that took a lot of their information from that collected by Factory Inspectors, like Leonard Horner, were opposed by individual capitalists, but were ultimately in the interests of modern machine industry, of Capital in General, particularly the big capitalists. |
THE FACTORY ACTS. SANITARY AND EDUCATIONAL CLAUSES OF THE SAME. THEIR GENERAL EXTENSION IN ENGLAND
Although the Factory Acts were fought for by
workers, and implemented by a Capitalist State in the face of
opposition by Capitalists at an individual level, those Acts were
themselves in the interests of Capital in General, and particularly
the bigger capitalists. They flowed necessarily from the needs of
Capitalism, as machine industry developed, just as later was the case
with the Welfare State.
“Factory legislation, that first conscious
and methodical reaction of society against the spontaneously
developed form of the process of production, is, as we have seen,
just as much the necessary product of modern industry as cotton yarn,
self-actors, and the electric telegraph.” (p 451)
This is not at first apparent, as a modern machine
industry is introduced. Even as the working day is limited, the
capitalists seek to intensify labour, and to cut costs in other ways.
Marx highlights the way capital saved money by providing workers
with insufficient breathing space, lack of other sanitation in the
factory, lack of safety provision etc., which had a high cost in
death, injuries and disease for workers.
“The sanitary officers, the industrial
inquiry commissioners, the factory inspectors, all harp, over and
over again, upon the necessity for those 500 cubic feet, and upon the
impossibility of wringing them out of capital. They thus, in fact,
declare that consumption and other lung diseases among the workpeople
are necessary conditions to the existence of capital.” (p 453)
The other aspect of the Acts was the education
provisions. The experience was salutary, and provided the basis for
Marx’s view of how workers' education should be provided. He cites
the finding that,
“The factory inspectors soon found out by
questioning the schoolmasters, that the factory children, although
receiving only one half the education of the regular day scholars,
yet learnt quite as much and often more.” (p 454)
Referring to a speech by Senior, Marx notes,
“He there shows, amongst
other things, how the monotonous and uselessly long school hours of
the children of the upper and middle classes, uselessly add to the
labour of the teacher, “while he not only fruitlessly but
absolutely injuriously, wastes the time, health, and energy of the
children.” From the Factory system budded, as Robert Owen has
shown us in detail, the germ of the education of the future, an
education that will, in the case of every child over a given age,
combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only
as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but
as the only method of producing fully developed human beings.” (p
454)
At the same time, children employed in the modern
factories were kept day in day out to the same repetitive tasks that
provided them with no useful skill.
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| Capitalism itself leads to the application of science to production, by technologists like Babbage. Without this revolutionary aspect of Capitalism, the transition from Capitalism to Socialism is impossible. |
The previous modes of production, which developed
the different trades, were essentially conservative whereas modern
capitalist production is revolutionary. Previously, the trades were
secretive, whereas modern industry is based on throwing open the
productive process, analysing it, and applying science to it.
“The principle which it pursued, of resolving
each process into its constituent movements, without any regard to
their possible execution by the hand of man, created the new modern
science of technology.” (p 456)
This creates all of the vicissitudes of
capitalism, previously described, but, Marx continues,
“This is the negative side. But if, on the
one hand, variation of work at present imposes itself after the
manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly
destructive action of a natural law that meets with resistance at all
points, modern industry, on the other hand, through its catastrophes
imposes the necessity of recognising, as a fundamental law of
production, variation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer
for varied work, consequently the greatest possible development of
his varied aptitudes. It becomes a question of life and death for
society to adapt the mode of production to the normal functioning of
this law. Modern industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of
death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, grappled by life-long
repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to
the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit
for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and
to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many
modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers.
One step already spontaneously taken towards
effecting this revolution is the establishment of technical and
agricultural schools, and of “écoles d’enseignement
professionnel,” in which the children of the working-men receive
some little instruction in technology and in the practical handling
of the various implements of labour.” (p 458)
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| Bismark, the Bonapartist State Capitalist, modernised and industrialised Germany from the top down, from his base in Prussia. A fundamental aspect to that modernisation was the early introduction of National Insurance, and a Welfare State to ensure Labour Power was efficiently reproduced for the benefit of Capital in General. |
In fact, the more capitalist production and
society has developed, in this way, with increasing diversity and
technological complexity, the more capital is forced to extend and
deepen this education and training for workers. Moreover, the more
capital is forced to invest in this education and training, the more
it is forced to ensure that the workers in whom it has invested such
resources, are kept alive and healthy, so as to reproduce that value.
There is no point spending tens of thousands of pounds in educating
new workers, if they die young, before they have had chance to
reproduce that value. That is why industrial Capital is led
naturally to introduce the Welfare State in order to ensure that
workers health and education is consumed at the necessary minimum
level. The first National Insurance scheme was introduced in Prussia
in the first half of the 19th Century, and as part of the
industrialisation of Germany, Bismark introduced such a scheme
nationally.
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| Mass production, State Capitalist Education factories were established by Capitalist States as part of a Welfare State, organised along Fordist lines, to ensure that labour-power was reproduced, at the least cost, in the necessary quantities and quality required to meet the needs of the accumulation of Capital. |
By financing such Welfare States via a State-run
National Insurance Scheme, Capital ensures that workers pay for it
out of their wages collectively, so as to ensure that the required
minimum level of consumption to meet the needs of Capital.
That is necessary, because we know, for example, that given the
choice in relation to things such as dental care, workers will not
necessarily devote the necessary amount of their income to
healthcare, as opposed to other forms of consumption. In this way,
Welfare States operate in the same way that the Truck System operated
in the 19th Century.
Modern industry was having other effects. The
State had kept out of relations within the home, but the exploitation
of children by their parents within the system, eventually provoked a
response for their protection. But, also alongside all of the
horrors that went along with the exploitation of women and children
in the workplace, it created a new economic relationship that
undermined their millennia long dependence upon paternalism.
Two things bring about the regulation of
capitalist production at the level of social production.
“There are two circumstances that finally
turn the scale: first, the constantly recurring experience that
capital, so soon as it finds itself subject to legal control at one
point, compensates itself all the more recklessly at other points;
secondly, the cry of the capitalists for equality in the conditions
of competition, i.e., for equal restraint on all exploitation of
labour.” (p 460)
Marx quotes the Children's Employment Commission
in its submission on extending the scope of the Factory Acts, and the
effect it would have on adult workers, and the beneficial effect it
would have for capital in general.
“It would enforce upon
them regular and moderate hours; it would lead to their places of
work being kept in a healthy and cleanly state; it would therefore
husband and improve that store of physical strength on which their
own well-being and that of the country so much depends...” (p 462)
As Marx had set out previously, what capital
insists on above all else is a level playing field for all
exploitation. Though, of course, such a level playing field benefits
the bigger capitalists who can afford to play on it. It was this
principal that led Winston Churchill to introduce the first Minimum
Wage back in 1909, saying,
“It is a national evil that any class of Her
Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living
wage in return for their utmost exertions… where you have what
we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of
bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad and the bad by
the worst; the worker, whose whole livelihood depends upon the
industry, is undersold by the worker who only takes up the trade as a
second string… where these conditions prevail you have not a
condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”
But, this principle is also accepted by
Libertarians too. Hayek, in “The Road To Serfdom”, wrote,
“...but there can be no doubt that some
minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health
and capacity to work, can be assured to everybody...
Nor is there any reason why the state should
not assist the individuals in providing for these common hazards of
life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can
make adequate provision.” (p 90)
Elsewhere echoing Marx’s point that what Capital
requires is a level playing field, Hayek writes,
“Similarly, with respect to most of the
general and permanent rules which the state may establish with regard
to production, such as building regulations or factory laws: these
may be wise or unwise in the particular instance, but they do not
conflict with liberal principles so long as they are intended to be
permanent and are not used to favour or harm particular people.” (p
60)
It was under these conditions that the Factory
Acts Extension Act, and Workshops Regulation Act of 1867 were
introduced, covering all factories and workshops, including
employment of children in the home.
But, both still remained inadequate. The former
contained many exceptions, introduced as a compromise, whilst the
latter was left to be implemented by municipal authorities, who
failed in their responsibility. Even when it was taken away from
them and given to the Factory Inspectorate, the latter were given
hardly any extra staff to cope with the added workload.
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| Factory Acts were introduced by Tories and Landlords as revenge for the Liberals Repeal of the Corn Laws. |
“What strikes us, then, in the English
legislation of 1867, is, on the one hand, the necessity imposed on
the parliament of the ruling classes, of adopting in principle
measures so extraordinary, and on so great a scale, against the
excesses of capitalistic exploitation; and on the other hand, the
hesitation, the repugnance, and the bad faith, with which it lent
itself to the task of carrying those measures into practice.” (p
464)
Some of the reasons for this are to be found in
the politics involved, deriving from the vested interests in each
industry. For example, as Marx points out, one of the reasons the
Factory Acts were passed was because the Tory representatives of the
old Landlord class took revenge on the Liberal representatives of
capital, for inflicting the defeat on them of the repeal of the Corn
Laws. But, as Marx points out in relation to mining.
“The Inquiry Commission of 1862 also proposed
a new regulation of the mining industry, an industry distinguished
from others by the exceptional characteristic that the interests of
landlord and capitalist there join hands. The antagonism of these two
interests had been favourable to Factory legislation, while on the
other hand the absence of that antagonism is sufficient to explain
the delays and chicanery of the legislation on mines.” (p 464)
Marx then details these delays and chicanery in
relation to a series of pieces of legislation relating to mining.
Variation of work muss be a fundamental law of production. thas is the socialist society.
ReplyDeleteLenin, Trotsky and Stalin were not socialist but state capitalist.