Danielson had correctly described the socialisation of labour, in terms of the organisation of work for the whole of society, and the unifying of industrial labour, so as to obtain the product of common labour, i.e. the social division of labour.
“But if that is so, why judge the “mission” of capitalism by the number of factory workers, when this “mission” is fulfilled by the development of capitalism and the socialisation of labour in general, by the creation of a proletariat in general, in relation to which the factory workers play the role only of front rankers, the vanguard. There is, of course, no doubt that the revolutionary movement of the proletariat depends on the number of these workers, on their concentration, on the degree of their development, etc.; but all this does not give us the slightest right to equate the “unifying significance” of capitalism with the number of factory workers. To do so would be to narrow down Marx’s idea impossibly.” (p 316)
Given that this was written 130 years ago, there is a lesson here for those, today, who would also like to narrow down the definition of the working-class to only the factory or blue-collar worker.
Lenin refers to Engels' “On the Housing Question”, in which he says that Germany was peculiar, in Western Europe, in the extent to which its workers had sizeable gardens to their houses.
““Rural domestic industry carried on in conjunction with kitchen-gardening or ... agriculture,” he says, “forms the broad basis of Germany’s new large-scale industry.” This domestic industry grows increasingly with the growing distress of the German small peasant (as is the case in Russia, let us add), but the COMBINATION of industry with agriculture is the basis not of the WELL-BEING of the domestic producer; the handicraftsman, but on the contrary, of his greater OPPRESSION.” (p 317)
In other words, the worker, here, provides a part of their subsistence from these garden plots. The handicraft worker may work in their house, via the Putting Out System, or may have worked with others in small workshops, but, being tied to their neighbourhood, they were captive to the local employers. These employers could then pay prices that not only appropriated surplus value from the worker, but even ate into their wages. But, the other side to this Engels explains, is that, by these means, industrial production, and the industrial revolution was being spread more evenly across Germany than in Britain and France, where it had been concentrated in the major towns and cities.
““This explains why in Germany, in contrast to England and France, the revolutionary working-class movement has spread so tremendously over the greater part of the country instead of being confined exclusively to the urban centres. And this in turn explains the tranquil, certain and irresistible progress of the movement. It is perfectly clear that in Germany a victorious rising in the capital and in the other big cities will be possible only when the majority of the smaller towns and a great part of the rural districts have become ripe for the revolutionary change.”” (p 317)
Consequently, Lenin says, this shows that the success of the workers' movement depends not only on the growth of the number of factory workers, but on the number of handicraftsmen. This is of particular interest and relevance today, as technological developments again means that there is a large-scale growth of today's equivalents of the handicraftsmen; workers not congregated in large factories, but still wage workers, experiencing a common situation vis a vis capital.
“Yet our exceptionalists, ignoring the purely capitalist organisation of the vast majority of the Russian handicraft industries, contrast them, as a sort of “people’s” industry, to capitalism and judge “the percentage of the population at the direct disposal of capitalism” by the number of factory workers!” (p 317-8)
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