Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth- Century Industrialization

Handbook of The Economics of Innovation, Vol. 1, 2010

on receiving credit and recognition for the contribution as part of a signaling game in which the goal is to establish a reputation. Much innovation in the past functioned very similarly. The dichotomy according to which science operated according to open-source systems whereas technology was subject to private property constraints is seriously exaggerated. Equally important in making innovation a unique topic in economic history is the fact that technology is produced under the kind of uncertainty that can be characterized as a combination of unintended consequences and unknown outcomes. In large part this is the case because technology is normally developed when the exact modus operandi of the physical, biological, or chemical processes utilized are at best understood very partially. Many inventions have unforeseeable spillover effects on the environment, human health, or the social fabric. Moreover, many innovations are often combined with other techniques in ways not originally foreseen, to produce wholly novel hybrid techniques that do far more than the simple sum of the components. As a consequence, inventors are often surprised by the eventual outcomes of what seems successful innovation. Such surprises can be, of course, positive or negative. The progress of technology has been explained by both internalist and externalist theories. Internalists see an autonomous logic, an evolutionary process in which one advance leads to another, in which contingency plays a major role, in which the past largely determines the future. Externalists think of technological change as determined by economic needs, by necessity stimulating invention, by induced innovation being guided by factor prices and resource endowments. In the same camp, but with a different emphasis are social constructionists who regard technology as the result of political processes and cultural transformations, in which certain ideas triumph in the marketplace because they serve certain special class or group interests and powerful lobbies. The history of technology since the Industrial Revolution provides support as well as problems for all of those approaches. A more inclusive approach would separate the process into interactive components. For instance, there is no question that economic needs serve as a "focusing device" in Rosenberg's (1976) famous simile, but the popular notion that "necessity is the mother of invention" manages to be simultaneously a platitude and a falsehood. Societies tend to be innovative and creative for reasons that have little to do with pressing economic need; our own society is a case in point. Modern western society is by and large wealthy enough to not feel any pressing "need," yet it is innovative and creative beyond the wildest dreams of the innovators of the eighteenth century. There was no "necessity" involved in the invention of ipods or botox. The social agenda of technology is often set by market forces or national needs, but there is nothing ever to guarantee that this agenda will be successful and to make sure what it will lead to. Technology moves at a certain speed, and in certain directions, and the study of innovation helps us understand these laws of motion. Moreover, to come to grips with why technology changes the way it does, we need to be clearer about the way in which prescriptive knowledge (technology) and propositional knowledge (science and general knowledge about nature) affect one another. Knowledge about the physical environment creates an epistemic base for techniques in use. Technology, in turn, sets the agenda for scientists, creating a feedback mechanism. Why, for instance, 7 steam engines and develop the iron-processing improvements that Britain did on its own. Not all artisans were friendly and conducive to technological progress, as Hilaire-Pérez points out. The armourers' resistance to Honoré Blanc and interchangeable parts in musket making helped derail a potentially promising advance. The Lyon weavers' resistance to the Jacquard loom failed, but only after the innovators were given military protection. The First Industrial Revolution: a New Approach The absence of long-term growth in most societies is thus clearly overdetermined. The real miracle is not that these Malthusian societies grew so slowly, but that they were, in the end, replaced by a society in which rapid growth became the norm. What I have called the Industrial Enlightenment (Mokyr, 2002) was an attempt to recognize this problem and rectify it. The Industrial Enlightenment was an attempt to carry out Bacon's dream that useful knowledge would become "a rich storehouse, for the Glory of the Creator and relief of Man's estate" (Bacon, ed. Vickers, 1996, p. 143). In the New Organon Bacon explained what became almost axiomatic to his followers in the eighteenth century: "If Man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition…is without doubt a wholesome thing and …noble… Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command Nature except by obeying her" (aphorism 129, cited in Bacon, ed. Sargent, 1999, p. 147). The influence of Bacon on subsequent generations was enormous. Clearly, he had expressed a sentiment that was already in the air at his time, but by expressing it with precision and impeccable logical reasoning, he became, with

International Review of Social History, 2019

It is an interesting time to write about factories. The once very popular industrial workplace has lost its charm for labour historians with the geographical and thematic broadening of the field. As theoretical interventions encompassing transnational dimensions brought forms of non-wage and non-industrial labour to the fore, labour historians have moved away from the industrial workplace. Just as the large Fordist factory ceased to be the political and cultural reference point for policymakers, employers, and organized labour, writing about factories has largely gone dormant.

2017

Technological change was a central component in the industrialisation process of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and thus in the making of the modern world economy. Nevertheless, more than two centuries after the beginnings of industrialisation, our understanding of the factors that impelled and shaped the development, diffusion and impact of the new technologies of early industrialisation remains far from complete. As a consequence, important questions concerning the place and interpretation of technological change in industrialisation remain unresolved. The idea that we know relatively little about the sources and outcomes of innovation in the industrial revolution may seem strange, since there is a large historical literature organised explicitly or implicitly around the idea that technological change and industrialisation are intimately linked. Indeed there are many writers for whom new technologies are industrialisation, and so the emergence of new technique...

The Historical Journal, 1984

The Historical Journal, 27, 2 (i o84), pp. 473-4-9)2 Printed in Great Britaini HISTOiRIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW PROTO-INDUSTRIALIZATION? COTTAGE INDUSTRY, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION I Small-scale, traditional local handicrafts had always existed in rural areas, but in the period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century a new economic development occurred in many regions to which considerable attent.ioin is now being paid. TIhere was an expansion of rural industry without major changes in the techniques or scale of production. This developmental phase has recently been termed 'protoindustrial'a form of 'Industrialization before industrialization' which it is claimed holds the key to the question of why the industrial revolution took place.1 Drawing on the work of'Braun and others, the theory of proto-industrialization was originated by Mendels in his work on Flanders2 and has been further developed particularly by Medick, Kriedte and Schlumbohm of the Max-Planck Institut fhr Geschichte in Gottingen as a way of explaining the transition both from feudalism to capitalism, and from a traditional society of peasant agriculture to the modern industrial world. As a description of the nature of expanding rural industry during this period, and as an explanation of industrialization, the theory put forward in Industrialization before ind2ustrialization is very wide-ranging over time and space, and has invited much discussion. We intend here to consider and appraise this concept and the arguments made for its importance. Proto-industry occurred in the countryside among peasant farmers and serniproletarianized workers in need of an incomc supplement. It was however controlled by urban capital, which integrated it into a new set of regional, supra-regional and international markets.3 I'he goods produced were mainly textiles with their mass market potential, but industrial activities included gloving, straw-plaiting, glassmaking, leather and metal working. Previously, petty producers had commonly owned the means of production, and sold their products locally or to a middleman, but proto-industry made them much more dependent o01 capital and upoIl entrepreneurial commission. Proponents of proto-industrial theory stress that in I P. Kriedtc, H. Mcdick and j. Schlumbohm, Industrialization before industrialization (Cambridge, I98I). Translated by B. Schempp, first published as Ihdustrialisierung vor der Industriali.sieruyng (Gdttingen, 1977). (Henceforth KMS). 2 F. F. Mendels, 'Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the induistrializatioin process', .7nl qf Economic History, xxxii (1972). The work of Mendels and of Kriedtc, Mccdick and Schlumbohm cannot be seen as part of the same intellectual tradition. The former is influenced by modernization theory, and the latter espouisC various forms of Marxism. The criticisms of this article are directed at aspects of proto-industrial theory held by all its exponent.s. 3 KMS, pp. 2-3. 473 474 HISTORICAL JOURNAL England in particular there was a 'reorganization of rural relations of production according to the laws of the market' from the sixteenth century onwards.4 Furthermore, and drawing on the classical economic theory that markets overseas incorporated productive resources more effectively than did local markets, it is argued that 'foreign trade was not only the " handmaiden " of proto-industrialization, but, indeed, its " engine of growth" '.5 Such a wider market acted as a powerful agent of social and demographic change, having far-reaching effects on an economically traditional form of production, still based on conservative inclinations among rural producers who wished to maintain intact their family economies. Proto-industry is held to be specifically but not completely capitalist, an adaptation of capital to existing conditions of labour availability. Untrammelled by urban guild and company restrictions, rural workers were particularly attractive to entrepreneurs since they often had a subsistence base in agriculture and could thus forgo part of their wages, which were extracted as surplus by the capitalist.6 Throughought Europe, the theory argues, merchant capital exploited an impoverished 'peasantry' who were responding to subsistence needs in the way predicted by Chayanov for Russia: when labour input of land had increased to the point where marginal returns to additional inputs were negligible the family would turn to non-agricultural work.' The peasant family was a self-exploitative entity searching for day-today subsistence without any calculation of the cost of its labour.8 The 'total labour force' of the family was applied in an attempt to maximize use values rather than exchange values, to augment gross product rather than net profit.9 The theory of proto-industrialization has it that maximum total labour income was achieved by the joint working capacity of husband and wife plus a large number of economically productive children.'0 Proto-industrial workers are believed to have had an earlier age at first marriage than their traditional agricultural counterparts, a higher proportion ever married and consequently higher fertility and population growth rates." The reason for this is thought to be that 'generative reproduction among the landless and land-poor industrial producers was no longer tied to the "social reproduction" of a relatively inflexible rural property structure'.'2 'The family engaged in domestic industry reproduced itself in such numbers in order to subsist through its labour, and not primarily to consume "surpluses", still less to accumulate them. "13 Proletarianization of labour freed more people ' from traditional controls which had previously been effective measures of maintaining an optimum population size'.'4 ' Children necessarily counted as labour power... they were also " living capital" that served to support the parents during their old age. "" Because of this it was necessary to have children early and frequently, and to retain them 4 KMS, p. 21. 5 KMS, P-34-6 KMS, p. 23-7 KMS, pp. i6, 26. 8 P. Jeannin, 'La proto-inddustrialization: d6veloppement oti impasse?', Annales E.S.C. 27 KMS, I. 6. 28 R. L. Rudolph, 'Family structure and proto-industrialization in Russia', Jnl Leon. HIst. x. ('I 980), II I. 29 KMS, p 20. 30o Klima, 'Rural domestic inidustry', pP. 49, 53. KMS, p). 20; Klirmia, 'Rural domestic inidustry', p. 52. 2 Rudolph, 'Family structure and i)roto-iIidlistiializttioIi', pp. 116 I 7. Klima, 'Rural domestic inidustry', P. 55. 4 Rudolph, 'FI;amIily structure and proto-industrialization', p. 11i5 R. M.I Smith, 'Fertility, ecoriornoy anid household folmationi in Elnlglanld over three (centurics', Pidmlation anzd Develolpment Review, vii (ioq8 i), 618; R. M. Smith, 'The pieople of Tuscaniy anid their families in the fiftecenth lcentury: Medieval or Meditcrranean?', Inl (f F7amily i-story, Vi (io8i); C. Mosk, 'Nuptiality in M\ijijapan-', mnl ol Social History, xiii (io8o) Rudolph, ' amily structu re anid proto-indlustrializationl', pp. II 2, I 1 4.. Mosk, 'Nuptiality in Meiji Japan'; Rudolph, 'FIamily structure anld protoinidustrializationi', pp. 11 2-15-I)lid 1. 114. 38 Ibid. pp. 112 13. 40 See Smith, 'People of Tuscany', pp. I20 3 onl southernl Europe, which shatres somc importatnt culturatl facets with eatsternl Europe. 41 KMS, pp. 6-7. 42 J. Thirsk, 'Inidustries in the countryside', in F. J. Fisher (ed.), E.ssays in the economnic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England (Caimbridgc, I 96 I). 43 In patssinig it is worth niotinig thatt there is nio necessary association of proto-inidustry with patrtible inheritance; demantld for by-employmients could be equatlly stronig in aireats of impatrtible inheritance where younger soi0s would be left laindless. 44 Metndels, 'Proto-industriatlizattionl: theory and reatlity', p. 79. 45 KMS, pp-14, 26.

This paper proposes a reading of Marx's exposition of the forms of the real subsumption of labor to capital -in particular, the system of machinery of large-scale industry -as constituting the dialectical presentation of the determinations of revolutionary subjectivity. The proposition that real subsumption constitutes the ground of revolutionary subjectivity is the concretization of that insight about the most general determination of the process of "natural history" constituting the development of humanity that Marx expounded in the Paris Manuscripts in 1844. According to that early text, the content of the history of the human species consists in the development of