The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter VI. Capitalist Manufacture and Capitalist Domestic Industry

VII. Capitalist Domestic Industry as an Appendage of Manufacture

Capitalist domestic industry – i.e., the processing at home, for payment
by the piece, of raw materials obtained from an entrepreneur – is also
met with, as indicated in the preceding chapter, in the small peasant
industries. Later we shall see that it is met with again (and on a large
scale) alongside the factory, i.e., large-scale machine industry. Thus,
capitalist domestic industry is met with at all stages of the development
of capitalism in industry, but is most characteristic of manufacture. Both
the small peasant industries and large-scale machine industry manage very
easily without domestic industry. The manufactory period, however, of capitalist development, with its characteristic
retention of the worker’s connection with the land, and with an
abundance of small establishments around big ones – can be imagined with
difficulty, or hardly at all, without the distribution of home work. [1]

And the facts of
Russia do indeed show, as we have seen, that in the industries organised
on the lines of capitalist manufacture the distribution of home work is
particularly widespread. That is why we think it most appropriate to
examine in precisely this chapter the characteristic features of
capitalist domestic industry, although some of the examples quoted below
cannot be assigned specifically to manufacture.

Let us point, first of all, to the multitude of middlemen between the
capitalist and the worker in domestic industry. The big entrepreneur
cannot himself distribute materials to hundreds and thousands of workers,
scattered sometimes in different villages; what is needed is the
appearance of middle-men (in some cases even of a hierarchy of middle-men)
to take the materials in bulk and distribute them in small quantities. We
get a regular sweating system, [2] a system of the severest exploitation: the
“subcontractor” (or “workroom owner,” or “tradeswoman” in the lace industry, etc., etc.), who is close
to the worker, knows how to take advantage even of specific cases of his
distress and devises such methods of exploitation as would be
inconceivable in a big establishment, and as absolutely preclude all
possibility of control or supervision. [3]

Alongside the sweating system, and perhaps as one of its forms, should be
placed the truck system [4]

--the system of payment in provisions–which is prohibited in factories, but continues to reign in handicraft industries,
especially where the work is distributed to homes. Above, in describing
the various industries, instances were given of this widespread practice.

Further, capitalist domestic industry inevitably entails extremely
insanitary working conditions. The utter poverty of the worker, the utter
impossibility of controlling working conditions by regulations of any
kind, and the combination of the living and working premises, such are the
conditions that convert the dwellings of the home workers into hotbeds of
infection and occupational disease. In the large establishments one can
fight such things; domestic industry, however, is in this respect the most
“liberal” form of capitalist exploitation.

An excessively long working day is also an essential feature of domestic
work for the capitalist and of the small industries in general. Instances
have been given illustrating the comparative length of the working day in
the “factories” and among the “handicraftsmen.”

The drawing of women and of children of the tenderest age into production
is nearly always observed in domestic industry. To illustrate this, let us
cite some facts from a description of the women’s industries of
Moscow Gubernia. There are 10,004 women engaged in cotton winding;
children start work at the age of 5 or 6 (!); daily earnings are 10
kopeks, yearly 17 rubles. The working day in the women’s industries
in general is as much as 18 hours. In the knitting industry children start
work from the age of six, daily earnings are 10 kopeks, yearly 22
rubles. Altogether 37,514 females are employed in the women’s
industries; they begin working from the age of 5 or 6 (in 6 out of 19
industries, which 6 industries account for 32,400 female workers); the average daily earnings are 13 kopeks, yearly 26 rubles 20 kopeks. [5]

One of the most pernicious aspects of capitalist domestic industry is that
it leads to a reduction in the level of the worker’s requirements. The employer is able to recruit workers in remote districts
where the popular standard of living is particularly low and where the
worker’s connection with the land enables him to work for a bare
pittance. For example, the owner of a village stocking establishment
explains that in Moscow rents are high and that, besides, the knitters
“have to be . . . supplied with white bread . . . whereas here the
workers do the job in their own cottages and eat black bread. . . . Now
how can Moscow compete with us!” [6]

In the cotton-winding industry the explanation of the very low wages is that for the peasants’ wives, daughters, etc.,
this is merely a supplementary source of income. “Thus, the system
prevailing in this trade forces down to the utmost limit the wages of
those for whom it is the sole means of livelihood, reduces the wages of
those who obtain their livelihood exclusively by factory labour below
their minimum needs, or retards the raising of their standard of
living. In both cases it creates extremely abnormal conditions.” [7] “The factory
seeks cheap weavers,” says Mr. Kharizomenov, “and it finds
them in their native villages, far from the centres of industry. . . . That wages drop steadily as one moves from the industrial
centres to the outer regions is an undoubted fact.” [8]

Hence, the employers are perfectly well able to take advantage of the conditions
which artificially tie the population to the rural districts.

The isolation of the home workers is a no less pernicious aspect of this
system. Here is a graphic description of this aspect of the matter, as
given by buyers-up themselves: “The operations of both” (the small and the big
buyers-up of nails from the Tver blacksmiths) “are organised
according to one system – when they collect the nails, they pay partly in
money and partly in iron, and to make the blacksmiths more tractable always have them working in their homes.” [9]

These words provide a simple clue to the “vitality” of our
“handicraft” industry!

The isolation of the home workers and the abundance of middle-men
naturally lead to widespread bondage, to all kinds of personal dependence,
which usually accompany “patriarchal” relationships in remote
rural districts. Workers’ indebtedness to employers is extremely
widespread in the “handicraft” industries in general, and in
domestic industry in particular. [10]

Usually the worker is not only a
Lohnsklave but also a

Schuldsklave . [11]

Instances were given above of the conditions in which the worker is placed by the “patriarchal character” of
rural

relationships. [12]

Passing from the description of capitalist domestic industry to the
conditions making for its spread, we must first make mention of the
connection between this system and the tying of the peasant to his
allotment. The lack of freedom of movement, the necessity of occasionally
suffering monetary loss in order to get rid of land (when payments for the
land exceed returns from it, so that a peasant who leases his allotment
finds himself paying a sum to the lessee), the social-estate exclusiveness
of the peasant community – all this artificially enlarges the sphere of application of capitalist home-work, artificially binds the peasant to
these worst forms of exploitation. Obsolete institutions and an agrarian
system that is thoroughly saturated with the social-estate principle thus
exert a most pernicious influence in both agriculture and industry,
perpetuating technically backward forms of production which go hand in
hand with the greatest development of bondage and personal dependence,
with the hardest lot and the most helpless position of the working people. [13]

Furthermore, there is also an undoubted connection between home-work for
capitalists and the differentiation of the peasantry. Extensive incidence
of home-work presupposes two conditions: 1) the existence of a mass of
rural proletarians who have to sell their labour-power, and to
sell it cheaply; 2) the existence of well-to-do peasants, well
acquainted with local conditions, who can undertake the function of agents
in distributing work. A salesman sent in by the merchant will not always
be able to fulfil this function (particularly in the more or less complex
industries) and will hardly ever be able to fulfil it with such
“virtuosity” as can a local peasant, “one of themselves.” [14]

The big entrepreneurs would probably be unable to carry out half their operations in distributing work to home workers if
they did not have at their command a whole army of small entrepreneurs who
can be trusted with goods on credit or on commission, and who greedily
clutch at every opportunity of enlarging their small commercial
operations.

Finally, it is extremely important to point to the significance of
capitalist domestic industry in the theory of the surplus-population created by capitalism. No one has talked so much about
the “freeing” of the Russian workers by capitalism as have
Messrs. V. V., N.-on and other Narodniks, but none of them has taken the
trouble to analyse the specific forms of the “reserve army” of
labour that have arisen and are arising in Russia in the post-Reform
period. None of the Narodniks has even noticed the trifling detail that
home workers constitute what is, perhaps, the largest section of our
“reserve army” of capitalism. [15]

By distributing work to be done in the home the entrepreneurs are enabled to increase production immediately to
the desired dimensions without any considerable expenditure of
capital and time on setting up workshops, etc. Such an immediate
expansion of production is very often dictated by the conditions
of the market, when increased demand results from a livening up
of some large branch of industry (e.g., railway construction),
or from such circumstances as war, etc. [16]

Hence, another aspect of the process which we described in Chapter II as the formation of an agricultural proletariat
of millions, is, incidentally, the enormous development in the post-Reform
period of capitalist domestic industry. “What has become of the
hands released from the occupations of domestic, strictly natural economy,
which had in view the family and the few consumers in the neighbouring
market? The factories overcrowded with workers, the rapid expansion of large-scale domestic industry provide a clear answer”
( Industries of Vladimir Gubernia , III, 20. Our italics). The
figures given in the following section will show how great the number of
workers employed by entrepreneurs in domestic industry must be in Russia
today.

---
Notes:
[1]
In Western Europe also, as we know, the manufactory period of capitalism
was distinguished by the extensive development of domestic industry – in
the weaving industries for instance. It is interesting to note that in
describing clock-making, which he cites as a classic example of
manufacture, Marx points out that the dial, spring and case are rarely
made in the manufactory itself, and that, in general, the detail worker
often works at home ( Das Kapital , 1, 2-te Aufl.,

S. 353-354). [17] — Lenin

[2]
These words are in English in the original.— Ed .

[3]
That, incidentally, is why the factory fights such middle-men, as, for
example, the “jobbers,” workers who hire workmen on their own
account. Cf. Kobelyatsky: Handbook for Factory Owners ,
etc ., St. Petersburg, 1897, p. 24 and foll. All the literature on
the handicraft industries teems with facts testifying to the extreme
exploitation of craftsmen by middle-men where work is distributed to
homes. Let us cite as an example Korsak’s general opinion,
loc . cit ., .p. 258, the description of “handicraft” weaving (quoted above), the descriptions of the
women’s industries in Moscow Gubernia ( Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia , Vols. VI and VII), and many others.— Lenin

[4]
These words are in English in the original.— Ed .

[5]
Mme. Gorbunova, who has described the women’s industries, wrongly
gives the earnings as 18 kopeks and 37 rubles 77 kopeks respectively, for
she takes only the average figures for each industry and leaves out of
account the different numbers of women working in the different industries. [18] — Lenin

[6]
Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia , Vol. VII, Pt. II,
p. 104.— Lenin

[7]
Ibid ., p. 285.— Lenin

[8]
Industries of Vladimir Gubernia , III, 63. Cf. ibid ., 250.— Lenin

[9]
Reports and Investigations , 1, 218. Cf. ibid ., 280:
statement by factory owner Irodov that he finds it more profitable to give
out work to hand weavers working in their homes.— Lenin

[10]
Examples of workers’ indebtedness to employers in the brush industry
of Moscow Gubernia ( Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia ,
Vol. VI, Pt. I, p. 32), the comb industry ( ibid ., 261), the toy
industry (Vol. VI, Pt. II, 44), the stone-setting industry, etc., etc. In
the silk industry the weaver is up to his ears in debt to the factory
owner, who pays his taxes and, in general, “rents the weaver as one
rents land,” etc. ( Industries of Vladimir Gubernia , III,
51-55).— Lenin

[11]
Not only a wage-slave, but also a debt-slave.— Lenin

[12]
“Of course,” we read of the blacksmiths of Nizhni-Novgorod
Gubernia, “here, too, the master exploits the worker’s labour,
but to a lesser degree (?), and moreover it is done patriarchally, as it
were, by common consent (!) without any misunderstandings”
( Transactions of the Handicraft Commission , IV, 199).— Lenin

[13]
Of course, in all capitalist society there will always be a rural
proletariat that agrees to take home-work on the worst terms; but obsolete
institutions enlarge the sphere of application of domestic industry and
hinder the struggle against it. Korsak, as far back as 1861, pointed to
the connection between the tremendously widespread nature of domestic
industry in Russia and our agrarian system ( loc . cit .,
305-307).— Lenin

[14]
We have seen that the big master-industrialists, the buyers up, workroom
owners and subcontractors are at the same time well to-do
agriculturists. “The subcontractor,” we read, for example, in
a description of galloon-weaving in Moscow Gubernia ( Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia , Vol. VI, Pt. II, p. 147), “is a
peasant just like his weaver, but has a cottage, a horse and a cow more
than the weaver has, and perhaps is able with his whole family to drink
tea twice a day.”— Lenin

[15]
This error of the Narodniks is all the more gross in that the majority of
them want to follow the theory of Marx, who most emphatically stressed the
capitalist character of “modern domestic industry” and pointed especially to the fact that these home workers constitute one of the forms of the relative surplus-population characteristic of capitalism . ( Das Kapital , I2, S. S. 503 u. ff.; 668 u. ff.;
Chapter 23, § 4 particularly.) [19] — Lenin

[16]
A small example. In Moscow Gubernia, the tailoring industry is widespread
(Zemstvo statistics counted in the gubernia at the end of the 1870s a
total of 1,123 tailors working locally and 4,291 working away from home);
most of the tailors worked for the Moscow ready-made clothing
merchants. The centre of the industry is the Perkhushkovo Volost,
Zvenigorod Uyezd (see data on the Perkhushkovo tailors in Appendix I to
Chapter V, Industry No. 36). The Perkhushkovo tailors did particularly
well during the war of 1877. They made army tents to the order of special
contractors; subcontractors with 3 sewing-machines and ten women day
workers “made” from 5 to 6 rubles a day. The women were paid
20 kopeks per day. “It is said that in those busy days over 300
women day workers from various surrounding villages lived in Shadrino (the
principal village in the Perkhushkovo Volost)” ( Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia , Vol. VI, Pt. II,
loc . cit ., 256). “At that time the Perkhushkovo tailors, that is, the owners of the workshops, made so much money that
nearly all of them built themselves fine homes” ( ibid .). These hundreds of women day workers who, perhaps, would
have a busy season once in 5 to 10 years, must always be available, in the
ranks of the reserve army of the proletariat.— Lenin

[17]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, pp. 342-343. [p.442]

[18]
The reference here is to M. K. Gorbunova’s Women’s Industries in Moscow Gubernia , Part IV ( Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia . Section covering economic statistics, Vol. VII, Part
II, Moscow, 1882). Introduction, p. IX. [p.444]

[19]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, pp. 478, etc., pp. 643,
etc.; Chapter XXV, Section 4 particularly. [p.447]