10) Modern Industry and Agriculture
“If the use of machinery in agriculture is
for the most part free from the injurious physical effect it has on
the factory operative, its action in superseding the labourers is
more intense, and finds less resistance, as we shall see later in
detail. In the counties of Cambridge and Suffolk, for example, the
area of cultivated land has extended very much within the last 20
years (up to 1868), while in the same period the rural population has
diminished, not only relatively, but absolutely...
In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry
has a more revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that
it annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and
replaces him by the wage-labourer. Thus the desire for social
changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the same level in
the country as in the towns. The irrational, old-fashioned methods of
agriculture are replaced by scientific ones. Capitalist production
completely tears asunder the old bond of union which held together
agriculture and manufacture in their infancy. But at the same time it
creates the material conditions for a higher synthesis in the future,
viz., the union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the more
perfected forms they have each acquired during their temporary
separation.” (p 473-4)
Marx describes the separation of Man from Nature,
and its effects on the environment, in a way only more recently
discussed by environmentalists. In the past, Marx says, the products
of nature, consumed by Man in the form of food and clothing, were
naturally returned to it. But, now, with masses of people
concentrated in the towns, this does not happen, with a consequent
effect on the fertility of the soil. That process contributes to the
deterioration of the health of the town worker and the intellectual
life of the rural labourer.
“In agriculture as in manufacture, the
transformation of production under the sway of capital, means, at the
same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour
becomes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the
labourer; the social combination and organisation of labour-processes
is turned into an organised mode of crushing out the workman’s
individual vitality, freedom, and independence. The dispersion of the
rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of resistance
while concentration increases that of the town operatives...
Capitalist production, therefore, develops
technology, and the combining together of various processes into a
social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth —
the soil and the labourer.” (p 474-5)
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