As Engels describes, in his Supplement to Capital III, the price the spinner sold the yarn to the merchant for, only allowed the merchant to make the average commercial profit, but, now, the merchant negotiates a price for the yarn that only pays the spinner the equivalent of a wage, which is less than the new value the spinner has added. So, in addition to the previous commercial profit, the merchant, now, obtains the surplus value the spinner has created by their labour, i.e. the difference between the new value created by their labour, and the value of their labour-power/wages.
As Lenin, describes, in his analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia, there are several variations on this. For example, the Buyer-Up, is an independent commodity producer themselves, but who produces on a larger-scale, possibly having more family members as workers, and so on, and whose larger-scale production means they have economies in selling into markets. They accumulate money from these sales, which, then, allows them to offer to take their neighbours commodities to market, and to buy those commodities from them below their value, to cover the cost.
This is the genesis of capitalist production in the towns. The same is true with the workshop, except that the various spinners, weavers, wheelwrights and so on are brought together under one roof. But, at first, they continue to operate as before, as individual handicraft producers, bringing their existing tools etc. with them. As Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, this primitive accumulation of capital, does not represent any considerable expansion of it, but only this concentration and centralisation of the existing means of production in a few places. Indeed, at first, the handicraft workers, in the workshop, individually negotiate a price for their output with the capitalist workshop owner, much as did the worker in the Putting Out System, and so this price tends to reinforce the idea that what they are being paid for is their individual concrete labour. Its why, as set out, in Capital I, a lot of the analysis by the earlier economists, was based on this idea that what was being sold was labour, not labour-power, and so had to explain, and subsequently justify, the existence of profits, because, if the worker was being paid for the labour they provided, i.e. the value added, the wage would be equal to that value, leaving nothing for profit.
The workshop or manufactory offers advantages for the capitalist, because they can enjoy economies of scale, in the purchase of materials and so on, but, one such advantage is in terms of energy. A water-wheel can drive several machines, and so the limitations of machines depending on human motive power is ended. That is why these earlier factories, utilising machinery, are located on rivers, as with Arkwright's mill, prior to the intervention of steam-power. But, the spinning-machine is a different technology to the spindle or the spinning-wheel. The spinning machine reduces the worker to being an appendage of the machine, a machine minder, a function that any average person can perform.
But, even before the introduction of machine production, the move of handicraft production into the workshop/manufactory starts the process of division of labour within it. The social division of labour involves different members of society specialising in the production of different products, for example, some members of a tribe being hunters, whilst others specialise in agriculture, or the production of pottery. But, the division of labour, in the factory, involves breaking down the production of any given product into a series of much smaller activities, each of which becomes the realm of different workers, as with Adam Smith's pin.
As soon as this process begins, as Marx describes, in Capital I, with workers becoming “detail workers”, and so on, a further social change goes along with it. The individual handicraft worker, say a spinner, working in a workshop/factory, is formally subordinated to capital. It is the capital of the private capitalist that employs them, their labour and its product is alienated to the capitalist. But, they remain a producer of an actual commodity – yarn – that is sold on the market. If their condition changes, they could, again, become an independent commodity producer of yarn. But, when they become a producer of a component of the yarn, or some other commodity, that is no longer the case. When they become only the minder of machine, so that their labour is only machine-minding labour/factory labour, the possibility of independence is gone. They are, then, really subordinated to capital.
“Labour is organized, is divided differently according to the instruments it disposes over. The hand-mill presupposes a different division of labour from the steam-mill. Thus, it is slapping history in the face to want to begin by the division of labour in general, in order to get subsequently to a specific instrument of production, machinery.
Machinery is no more an economic category than the bullock that drags the plough. Machinery is merely a productive force. The modern workshop, which depends on the application of machinery, is a social production relation, an economic category.” (p 123-4)
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