We have seen, previously, Lenin's criticism of the Narodnik theory that has industrial capitalism arise as large-scale machine industry, with no pre-history, as manufacturing industry, handicraft industry and so on. In the same way, Roberts' account also goes to industrial capital as large-scale machine industry, after 1800, which is where he dates the Industrial Revolution as beginning. In his account, which starts from the false assumption that capitalism begins in agriculture, not industry, the feudal landlords somehow decide to become capitalist landlords, back in the 15th century, meaning that, as with the Narodniks, this is a subjectivist theory of history, whereby it is the ideas in the heads of people that drive material change, not vice versa. In Roberts' theory, feudal landlords decide, out of the blue, to become capitalist landlords. They swap the surplus labour they already receive from peasants as corvee labour, or rent in kind, for surplus value, in the form of money profits. They drive some of the peasants off the land, though, without capitalist industry to employ them, its not clear where they go. Roberts elides this point and simply assumes that these unemployed labourers move to the towns to be employed by industrial capitalists who also now appear out of thin air.
According to Engels, however,
“The instrument that gradually brought about this revolution in price formation was industrial capital. Rudiments of the latter had been formed as early as the Middle Ages, in three fields — shipping, mining, and textiles. Shipping on the scale practiced by the Italian and Hanseatic maritime republics was impossible without sailors, i.e., wage-labourers (whose wage relationship may have been concealed under association forms with profit-sharing), or without oarsmen — wage-labourers or slaves — for the galleys of that day. The guilds in the ore mines, originally associated workers, had already been converted in almost every case into stock companies for exploiting the deposits by means of wage-labourers. And in the textile industry, the merchant had begun to place the little master-weaver directly in his service, by supplying him with yarn and having it made into cloth for his account in return for a fixed wage — in short, by himself changing from a mere buyer into a so-called contractor...
Theoretically, there is no difficulty at all in the fact that competition reduces to the general level profits which exceed the general rate, thus again depriving the first industrial appropriator of the surplus-value exceeding the average. All the more so in practice, however, for the spheres of production with excessive surplus-value, with high variable and low constant capital — i.e., with low capital composition — are by their very nature the ones that are last and least completely subjected to capitalist production, especially agriculture.”
(Capital III, Supplement, The Law of Value)
The reason for this, is as Engels has described. Capital enters these spheres by the vector of the commercial and money-owning capitalist, where independent producers have failed. In conditions where those producers still had a plot of land to provide their own food and subsistence, its not the ability to reproduce their labour-power that is a problem, but to reproduce the consumed materials. The greater the proportion of material cost, in their production, i.e. the higher the organic composition, the more this constitutes a problem for them. Its in these spheres, where the merchant goes from being the seller of material to the independent producer to being such a contractor, who provides the material for free, but then appropriates the whole product, in exchange for what amounts to only a wage.
The problem faced by Roberts in his account is the same problem that Danielson faced in his Narodnik account of the development of capitalism in Russia.
“Did Mr. N.-on raise the problem of the development of Russian machine industry? No. True, he did say that it was preceded by work in the home for the capitalist, and by the hand-labour “factory” but he not only failed to explain the relation of machine industry to the preceding stage, he even failed to “notice” that it was wrong in scientific terminology to apply the term factory to the preceding stage (production by hand in the home or in the capitalist’s workshop), which should undoubtedly be described as capitalist manufacture.” (p 188)
This question is of vital importance, Lenin notes, and for similar reasons, Roberts' false account is of vital importance today.
“Firstly, Mr. N.-on thereby identifies capitalism with machine industry. This is a gross mistake. What constitutes the importance of the scientific theory is that it cleared up the real place of machine industry as one of the stages of capitalism. If Mr. N.-on shared the point of view of this theory, could he have depicted the growth and victory of machine industry as “the struggle between two economic forms”: between some unknown “form based on the peasantry’s ownership of instruments of production” and “capitalism” (pp. 2, 3, 66, 198 et al.), whereas, in fact, we see a struggle between machine industry and capitalist manufacture?” (p 188-9)
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