Page:Karl Kautsky - From Handicraft to Capitalism - tr. H. J. Neumann (1907).djvu/14

 resorted to physical force to safeguard their interests and thereby hasten the course of development, and it was physical force in its most brutal and most cruel form which assisted in the birth of capitalist society.

Externally, the new method of production differed at first but very slightly from the old. Its original form was that the capitalist supplied the workers whom he had hired, his wage workers, with raw material, for instance, with yarn in the case of weavers, which they worked up at home in order to deliver up the product to the capitalist. Of course, already in this form, which was the nearest approach to handicraft, capitalist production marked a vast difference between the handicraftsman on his own account and the wage worker producing in his home. We intend to consider later the change in the position of the worker caused by the new method of production, and shall, therefore, here deal only with the development of the latter.

The capitalist next ceased to allow the workers to perform the work in their own homes. He made them work in his workshops where he was better able to watch and drive them. This first of all created the basis of the real industrial capitalist enterprise on a large scale, and also the basis for that evolution of methods of production which has since been going forward with ever more rapid pace. Only by many working together in the workshop was division of labour made possible in production. Under the reign of petty enterprise division of labour had caused an increase in the number of trades and a decrease in the variety of articles which each producer made. But each one produced an entire article. Division of labour in bakeries for instance meant that each baker no longer produced every kind of bread. Some produced only white bread, others only brown bread. But every one produced whole loaves of bread. Division of labour in large concerns, however, has the effect of distributing the various processes necessary to the production of an article amongst certain workers who are working into each other's hands. The individual worker is more and more limited to a few single processes, which he repeats continually. A large concern where production is carried on in this way is a manufactory. The productivity of the labour of each individual worker is thereby increased. But another effect has proved to be of still greater importance. The division of labour in a particular trade having progressed so far as to divide the production of one article into its simplest processes and to reduce the worker to a mere machine, the replacing of the worker by a machine was only a small step.

And this step was taken. It was favoured by the development of natural science, above all, by the discovery of the motive power of steam, which for the first time provided a power quite independent of the elements and entirely subservient to man.

The introduction of the machine into industry signified an economic revolution. Through it the large capitalist concern obtained its highest and most perfect form, the factory. In the machine capitalist production was given its mightiest weapon, which easily conquered all resistance and made the course of economic development a great triumph of capital.

In the seventies of the Eighteenth Century the first practical machines were invented. They were introduced into the textile industry in England. From that period also dates the invention of the steam engine. Thenceforth the machine conquered one industry after another. Up to the forties of the last century capitalist industrialism outside of