Carrol:
>Characteristically, in a slave system, the overseer,
> master, would tell the slaves: collate those newsletters. Period! ....
> This is incidentally key to what Yoshie and I and others are currently
> battling out with Mark and Lou. Capitalism is _different_; it is very
> near to _unnatural_, a freak, an accident which very well might not ever
> appear were the tape of human history (using Gould's metaphor) to be run
> over again.
This is a cavalier dismissal of how actual slave societies functioned.
Ancient Rome was a slave society. It also had highly developed divisions of
labour in many spheres of industry where slave labour was widely or
exclusively used, from mining to agriculture to consumer goods production to
the Roman defence industry. Taking the latter first, the Roman army operated
large and complex production and supply systems for a wide range of war
materiel. There were production lines for whole fortresses, which were
manufactured in kit form using detailed planning ands a high division of
labour, to be transported and assembled on location. Weapons suchs as
ballistae were similarly maunfactured. In agriculture, the cycle of
planting, tending and harvesting olive groves was the subject of whole
handbooks giving exact details on how cuttings should be taken and what kind
of gound they should be planted in, with what kinds of nutrients applied
when, and so on. The work was done by slaves and was highly specialised.
To take earthenware production in Roman Britain, the level of commercial
organisation, supply and distribution and manufacturing processes reached a
high level altho there were few factories such as the famous one at Nevers
in Gaul, producing so-called Samian ware in large amounts (productioon
levels of 100,000 units per month were reported). Pottery production
occurred in smaller or larger factories were craftsmen oversaw slaves who
were often highly skilled workers themselves. What was true of pottery was
also of course, true of glassware and metalware.
British pottery was of a lower quality. When the Romans arrived the demand
for pottery escalated to an astronomic level, importing pottery for the
Roman army was expensive and the British turned pottery into a growth
industry. There were some 50,000 Roman soldiers in Britain - a captive
market.
Potteries were founded all over Britain. Workshop typically had three or
four kilns, each holding up to 500 items in one firing. The furnace under
the kiln was fuelled with firewood and slaves worked to keep the kiln at the
correct temperature, again a highly specialised task.
Pottery was produced in buildings built mainly of timber about 120ft x 60ft
(37m x 18m) in size. The inside was divided into aisles with the kilns at
one end of the building. These were large in construction, circular, made of
brick and having an access door, stoke hole underneath and a chimney at the
top. Construction firms employed slave labour in these tasks.
The production process was started by a team of craftsmen who formed the
basic shape of the pot using clay from a mound outside. They would work in
by hand until it was suitably pliable then they would throw it onto their
revolving wheel and begin to mould the desired shape using their hands. When
dry, designs would be added by hand.
They were then passed onto the firing team, a group of men whose job was to
undertake the exacting task of baking the clay to just the right temperature
for a specified time. The pots were carefully arranged in the kiln to use up
as much space as possible and to ensure that none fell over. If any did, it
would have a domino effect and ruin most of the work. There could be up to
500 items in one kiln, such was their size. The firewood was placed under
the kiln through the stoking hole. The final product was packed into crates
and transported to the river for delivery. Trade marks identified the
outpout of different potteries.
An owner of one business (Albinus) had workshops at Radlett and Brockley
Hill in the South East, north of Londinium. In the ten years from 90-100AD.,
he sold more mortaria (grinding bowls) than any other maker and his work has
been found all over Britain as far as the Scottish borders. The extensive
scale of pottery production required power credit instutitons and an
efficient banking system; leading Roman families were deeply involved in
financing the trade and giving it capital depth.
These production methods continued after the fall of Rome and throughout the
middle ages. The major changes associated with the early capitalist period
were not so much in the intensification of the division of labour, and
certainly not in the use of 'free labour', but to begin with, in acquiring
the superior skills of Asian producers. Only when Wedgwood and others learnt
how to copy "China" did mass production really take off in Coalport and then
in the Staffordshire Potteries.
John Rose [b.1772[ opened his first Coalport factory in 1795 on a site in
between the eastern branch of the Shropshire Canal and the River Severn. It
was ideally situated to take advantage of not only the transportation
system, but also the nearby deposits of alluvial clay and coal for the
kilns.Coalport became known for its creation of beautiful, highly coloured,
fine porcelain decorated with flowers and by the 1830s Coalport had become
one of the more distinguished English potteries.
The Coalport pottery stands on the bank of the River Severn a few miles from
Coalbrokkdale, where the Quaker Darby family ran the Coalbrookdale ironworks
after 1708. The whole area beca,e known as 'not the birthplace, but the
marriage-bed, of the Industrial Revolution'. Here in microcosm were all the
attributes allegedly uniquely British, and unique to the capitalist
mode-of-production. But how unique were they, in fact?
In 1711, the coke-smelting process was developed, in 1755 a steam engine was
added to the Coalbrookdale furnace, plateways and then railways were laid
and canals dug throughout the valley. The famous Iron Bridge over the Severn
Valley Gorge was completed in 1777. It is now a World Heritage Site, because
of its claim to be the world's first bridge made of iron. In fact, chain
link bridges made of iron were known in China from the middle ages.
What was important about the Severn Valley was its place withion the
emergent capitalist world-system. The mass production of iron using coke
began--a crucial event in the Industrial Revolution. A huge trade connected
the ironworks, mines and potteries of the Severn Valley with Ellesmere and
Livberpool in the north and Bristol in the south. The famous iron missionary
cooking pots which floated down the Severn on barges from the Darby works,
were taken from Bristol to Africa, from where slaves were shipped to
America: and it was these slaves, according to Michael Perelman and many
others-- and not 'free labour' - who launched American capitalism. The
cotton they produced came back to Liverpool and Manchester along the same
system of canals and railways. The English trade with Asia followed the same
trajectory. Until the mid-19th century, the finest bone chinaware still came
from Asia where it was mass-produced in huge volumes.
Wedgwood China was always a competitor for Coalport. Wedgwood China has its
origins in 1759, when Josiah Wedgwood established a pottery near
Stoke-on-Trent at the former Ivy House works in Burslem, England. By 1761,
Wedgwood had perfected a superior quality, inexpensive clear-glazed
creamware that proved very successful.
Wedgwood moved his pottery from the Ivy House to the larger Brick House
works in Burslem in 1764. Wedgwood china continued to grow in stature until
1766, at which time Wedgwood was appointed "Potter To Her Majesty" by Queen
Charlotte. Wedgwood immediately named his creamware "Queen's Ware". Wedgwood
china was produced at the Brick House works until 1772. Wedgwood built a new
factory in Etruria, which began operating in 1769, the same year he formed a
partnership with Thomas Bently.
Wedgwood's most famous set of Queen's Ware, the 1,000 piece "Frog" service,
created for Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was produced at the
Etruria factory in 1774. By the late 1770s, the Wedgwood product line
included black basalt, creamware, jasper, pearlware, and redware. This was
all just advertising of course; what Wedgwood and Coalport really did was to
mass produce good quality chinaware for the burgeoning urban middle classes.
Just then they were flush with money: as Ernest Mandel wrote (cited by Lou
Proyect on the marxism list, 01.06.01): there was a:
"direct relationship between the plundering of
India by the East India Company, after the battle of Plassey, and the
beginning of the industrial revolution: "Very soon after Plassey the Bengal
plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been
instantaneous, for all authorities agree that the 'industrial revolution',
the event which has divided the nineteenth century from all antecedent
time, began with the year 1760 (the battle of Plassey occurred in 1757) ..
. At once, in 1759, the bank (of England) issued �10 and �15 notes (for the
first time)."
The writer recalls that Burke estimated at �40 million the British
extortions in India between 1757 and 1780. H. V. Wiseman estimates that
between 1770 and 1780 the labour of slaves in the West Indies brought
another �40 million to Britain. Around 1770 the value added annually (wages
plus profits) in the whole of British industry was put at only �24~5
million in the well-known writings of Arthur Young (Political Arithmetic,
etc.). It can be concluded without exaggeration that for the period
1760-1780 the profits from India and the West Indies alone more than
doubled the accumulation of money available for rising industry..."
Despite all this, machinofacture and all the blessings of 'free-labour' were
slow to make their appearance in the so-called 'engine' of British
capitalism. Raphael Samuel describes some aspects of the pottery labour
process which even *after* the Industrial revolution were very primitive.
The heavy jobs were in the input side:
"Clay-getting, though providing two major industrial raw materials, for
pottery and bricks, was less affected by nineteenth century 'improvement'
than any other branch of extractive industry, with the possible exception of
salt. In the china clay industry of Cornwall, which shipped vast quantities
of working materials to the Potteries of North Staffs., there were no
mechanical aids and only the most primitive plant. The clay was puddled
(i.e. sifted, washed and homogenized) in open-air pans, 'forty feet in
diameter, and from six to ten feet deep';59 it was dried by the wind and
sun, with reed thatches to cover it when it rained. Pumping engines (bought
second-hand from bankrupt tin and copper mines) were an innovation of the
1860s and 1870s; kilns came even later. The clay diggers worked with a heavy
pick (the heaviest pick in Cornwall, according to an authoritative account
published in 1875), and a long, square-mouthed shovel ~ In the settling pans
they stirred the mass of slime with a 'dubber' and brought it to consistency
by trampling. The boy-runners, who had the job of haulage, carried the
blocks of clay on boards, with a stiff leather shield 'to keep the wet clay
from reaching one's chest. 'Balmaidens' (the women workers who cleaned the
final impurities from the clay) used a small iron scraper 'resembling a . .
. Dutch hoe'. In the i86os they were expected to clean two or three tons a
day for the princely sum of 1 s[hilling]." [Raphael Samuel: WORKSHOP OF THE
WORLD: Steam Power and Hand Technology in mid-Victorian Britain. HISTORY
WORKSHOP No. 3 Spring 1977].
But Samuel shows that things were just as bad in the actual production of
pottery:
"The manufacture of china-ware and crockery presents an even more striking
instance than glassmaking of mass production on the basis of hand
technology. In spite of the early appearance of a factory system (pioneered
in the 1760s and 17708 by Josiah Wedgwood), and an intense development of
the industry in North Staffordshire, a very simple technology prevailed -
'the same essential appliances as were used in Egypt four thousand years
ago'. 'There are none of the noisome adjuncts and deafening sounds of the
huge cotton or woollen factory, where hundreds of hands are working
together, and have to feed the gigantic machinery which dwarfs them all', an
American visitor to the Potteries wrote in 1871, ' .. . There are a large
number of rooms, and only a few operatives in each. Each potter works
independently'. In the 1870s machinery, in the form of steam-powered
'jiggers' and 'jollies', was slowly making its way. But it advanced faster
in the out-potteries, such as those of Glasgow and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, than
in the hinterland of the industry, at least partly, it seems, because of the
strength of the workers' opposition. In 1889 its impact was still
sufficiently limited for a Factory Inspector to report that 'by far the
larger number of china manufacturers do not employ steam power'.138
Pottery work was very physical, and involved, in every department of
production, a more or less continuous personal handling of the clay. The
thrower shaped his ware on the wheel 'by the exquisitely fine touches of
thumb... finger and palm'. He had to keep his hands constantly wet 'so as to
mould the clay with the least possible friction'. So did the handlemakers.
'The operator. . . gives it the required shape . . . with no other tools
than his wet fingers, a drop of adhesive liquid, and a moist sponge.'*
* The fitting of handles was at one time even more physical, as 'Old Potter'
recalls in his account of childhood work in the 1840s: '(Handles) were made
by two half moulds made to fit into one another by notches on one side and
holes on the other. The pieee of clay to form the handle was placed in the
bottom half of the mould, then the top half was put on and pressed down by
the boy's stomach, with a sort of wriggle'.
Platemakers worked in a similar way, except that the final shape of their
ware depended on flicks of the wrist. Dippers prepared the ware for firing
by steeping it in a glaze tub. 'The right hand and arm . . are plunged
nearly up to the elbow as he passes the piece of ware through the liquid. .
. Then with a rapid circular movement of the hand .. . a movement that only
years of practice can teach . . he makes the glaze flow thin and even over
the surface, and shakes off what is superfluous.'
Motive power in the Potteries, such as it was, also depended on the human
body. The thrower's wheel was turned by a 'baIler' ('generally a female')
whom he employed full-time to keep the wheel on the go, and feed him with
small lumps of clay.141 The turner's wheel was kept moving by a
lathe-treader, again a woman, who was paid (in the 1890s) 4d. for every 1s.
that he earned.142 She rested the weight of her body on the left foot while
turning the wheel with her right - Dr. Atlidge described her work in 1878 as
a sort of 'perpetual jumping on one foot'.143 Platemakers also had a wheel
turner, though in their case boys were employed rather than women or
girls.'44 Attempts to introduce steam to these departments of the work were
bitterly resisted by the operatives, and also found little favour with the
Staffordshire manufacturers, '. . . With steam it was difficult to regulate
the different speeds required', Clara Collet was told in 1893, when
enquiring into this particular branch of women's employment.'4 " [ibid]
So essentially nothing had changes since ancient Egyptian pottery production
4000 years before: except for the deepening of the dividion of labour.
Whether people- the 'free-lavour' doing the tasks Samuel described has any
subjective feeling of freedom is questionable.
I do not agree with A G Frank that we can no longer speak of a 'capitalist
era' or 'capitalist mode of production' as discrete things. What capitalism
did was to create the first true world-system and to do so on the highly
entropic basis of what Marx called relative surplus-value extraction, ie, by
means of rising productivity. From the start, the class struggle this
initiated was never just struggle at the point of production, within the
capitalist labour-process; it was always universal and was located wherever
capitalism seized hold of existing relations, transformed them and conjoined
them to the capitalist world-system. In other words, class struggle cannot
be redfeined to include only the so-called 'free workers' in the imperialist
west and to ignore colonial subjects who, though enslaved, had also been
'freed' of their own means of production and were also just as much a part
of the global circuits and total reproduction process of capitalism. The
struggle of the American First Nations against colonial exterminism, like
the struggle of plantation slaves against slavery, were just as much forms
of class struggle as were the battles fought by women and children forced to
endure foreshortened lives in the poisoned workshops of the potters, or the
coalminers forced to dig for coal and made even to buy their own pitprops
out of their own wages. To give a political or theoretical priority to
workers in the west, and to ignore the bitter struggles of immiserated
millions in the colonial world, is wrong both in theory and in practice.
Mark Jones
