“What are the results of our review. We have become convinced of the absolute unsoundness of the Narodnik contention that the buyers-up, and even the assembly workshop masters, are mere usurers, elements alien to production, and so on. Despite the above-mentioned inadequacy of the Sketch data, despite the absence in the census programme of questions about the business conducted by the buyers-up, we have succeeded in establishing, for most of the industries, intimate ties between the buyers-up and production—even their direct participation in production, “participation” as owners of shops which employ wage-workers. Nothing could be more absurd than the opinion that working for buyers-up is merely the result of some abuse, of some accident, of some “capitalisation of the process of exchange” and not of production. The contrary is true: working for a buyer-up is a special form of production, a special organisation of economic relations in production—an organisation which has directly sprung from small commodity production (“petty people’s production,” as it is customary to call it in our lofty literature), and which to this day is connected with it by a thousand threads; for it is the most prosperous petty masters, the most go-ahead “handicraftsmen,” who lay the basis for this system by extending their operations through supplying work to domestic workers.” (p 434)
The supposedly independent producers were, in reality, mere adjuncts of the factory system. Changes in technology, and consequent changes in production, means that, over time, the extent to which those adjuncts play a greater or lesser role vary. For example, in the post-war period, there was a growth of conglomerates, and of large-scale vertical and horizontal integration. Large businesses bought up their suppliers, as well as their industrial customers, and they bought businesses in associated fields, for example, pottery manufacturers bought up glass manufacturers. They also built up or established their own ancillary production, including buying up existing businesses in those fields. For example, most large businesses had their own maintenance departments, employing engineers, electricians, joiners, plumbers and so on. In the 1980's, however, changes in technology led to this being reversed, and businesses concentrated on core production, sub-contracting things like maintenance, cleaning and so on to external companies, who also specialised in those areas. The external companies, as with the adjuncts described above, were often small, local companies, which, thereby, were entirely dependent on the large company for their existence, and which could dictate terms, prices, specifications etc. to them.
“In the scientific classification of forms of industry in their successive development, work for buyers-up belongs to a considerable extent to capitalist manufacture, since 1) it is based on hand production and on the existence of many small establishments; 2) it introduces division of labour between these establishments and develops it also within the workshop; 3) it places the merchant at the head of production, as is always the case in manufacture, which presupposes production on an extensive scale, and the wholesale purchase of raw material and marketing of the product; 4) it reduces those who work to the status of wage-workers engaged either in a master’s workshop or in their own homes. These features, as we know, are typical of the scientific conception of manufacture as a special stage in the development of capitalism in industry (see Das Kapital, I, Kapital XII). This form of industry, then, already implies the deep-going rule of capitalism, being the direct predecessor of its last and highest form—large-scale machine industry. Work for the buyer-up is consequently a backward form of capitalism, and in contemporary society this backwardness has the effect of seriously worsening the conditions of the working people, who are exploited by a host of middlemen (the sweating system), are disunited, are compelled to content themselves with the lowest wages and to work under the most insanitary conditions and for extremely long hours, and—what is most important—under conditions which render public control of production extremely difficult.” (p 435)
No comments:
Post a Comment