As Marx points out in Theories of Surplus Value, this period of primitive capital accumulation is not at all characterised by the employment or accumulation of additional means of production, but by the process of concentration and centralisation of existing means of production in a few hands, in a few locations. This very process, also, itself facilitates cooperation in production, which reduces costs, and brings competitive advantage to the capitalist producers, putting further stress on the artisan producers, more of whom, thereby, go under, accelerating the process. The more of these producers who go under, and become wage workers, the more they must rely on the market to obtain the commodities required for their own reproduction. An artisan producing leather goods, for example, may have worked for four hours of the day, on their own plot of land, growing food required for their family's consumption. Now, turned into a wage worker, they must work 8, 10 or 12 hours a day solely on leather goods production, so that they must now buy their food also in the market. As Lenin described earlier, this is also the process by which a large market for agricultural commodities is developed, which opens the door for capital to begin to operate in agriculture, as well as industry.
“It goes without saying that the domestic system of large-scale production is a capitalist form of industry: here we have all its features—commodity economy already at a high level of development, the concentration of the means of production in the hands of individuals, and the expropriation of the mass of the workers, who have no means of production of their own and therefore apply their labour to those of others, working not for themselves but for the capitalist. Obviously, in its organisation, handicraft industry is pure capitalism, it differs from large-scale machine industry in being technically backward (chiefly because of the preposterously low wages) and in the fact that the workers retain diminutive farms. This latter circumstance particularly confuses the “friends of the people,” who, as befits true metaphysicians, are accustomed to think in naked and direct contrasts: “Yea, yea—nay, nay, and whatsoever is more than these comes from the evil one.”” (p 209)
In short, the Narodniks position was that if the workers have no land there is capitalism, and if they have land there is no capitalism. But, as Lenin illustrated previously, in relation to the silk industry, the fact that workers retain a small piece of land does not mean they have time to utilise it, to meet their needs. Moreover, as the previous analysis indicated, for even most of the middle peasants, let alone the poor peasants, the size of the plot they had was inadequate to meet basic consumption requirements. It is this which leads these poorer peasants to rent out or sell the land they can now no longer farm to their richer neighbours, as Lenin described in “On The So Called Market Question”. It is by this process that capital and capitalist production extends from the towns and industry into agriculture, as the richer peasants produce an increasing proportion for the market, and employ wage labour to do so.
“They do not know, it seems, that capitalism—while still at a comparatively low level of development—was nowhere able to completely separate the worker from the land. For Western Europe, Marx established the law that only large-scale machine industry expropriates the worker once and for all.” (p 209)
In other words, as stated earlier, Marx distinguishes between the formal subordination of labour and the real subordination of labour. The handicraft worker who loses their means of production always has the theoretical possibility of regaining them. A wheelwright who produces wheels can always theoretically regain their means of production, and return to independently producing wheels for customers rather than selling their labour-power to a master. Even as a detail worker, within an extended division of labour, they may be able to do that. For example, if their job in the workshop is producing spokes, they may still retain the overall skill as a wheelwright, and be able to return to such production, or they may become an independent producer of spokes, who sells them as components to other wheelwrights.
However, once production of wheels becomes something undertaken by the use of large-scale machinery, this possibility ceases. Firstly, the labourer exists not as an artisan, for example a wheelwright, or even as a detail worker, producing components by hand, but only as a machine operator. And, that machine production takes place in factories. Apart from some initial training, a machine operator in one trade is pretty much the same as a machine operator in another. For example, a lathe operator employed in turning spokes for wheels performs the same function as the lathe operator who turns legs, and other parts of chairs in the furniture factory.
The labour itself becomes homogeneous factory labour, and as such can only ever be employed as such. Moreover, because the production of both wheels and furniture now requires this large-scale machinery, and a factory in which to operate it, the individual labourer is no longer able to amass these means of production, in the way they could when it only required a number of hand tools plus raw materials. Labour is, at this point, really subordinated to capital.
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