Abstract
Building upon the previous chapter by Dimmock, this chapter explores how the emergence of agrarian capitalism created a general condition of market dependence as well as new market imperatives which would subsequently transform English manufacturing, giving rise to capitalist industry in the form of the first Industrial Revolution. Whereas the emergence of agrarian capitalism required, primarily, the subsumption of land to capital, the emergence of industrial capitalism required the subsumption of labor to capital. In artisan workshops, putting-out operations and among highly proletarianized collier workforces, the rule in pre-capitalist manufacturing was for the direct producers to maintain control over the labor process. The Statute of Apprentices of 1563 actually enshrined the by-laws of the guilds in statute law, providing legal sanction for artisanal control over production. Once the imperative for “‘improvement” caught hold of manufacturing, however, employers began to introducing innovations in labor organization and in machinery. While these new production methods were designed to supersede customary production methods, generations of struggle led by artisans seeking to maintain the control over the labor process which they had long enjoyed would ensue. Only by enlisting the coercive powers of the state, both legislative and military, were capitalist employers able to prevail.
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Notes
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Žmolek, M.A. (2019). “Compelled to Sell All”: Proletarianization, Agrarian Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. In: Lafrance, X., Post, C. (eds) Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95657-2_3
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