From the late middle ages to markets

As previously mentioned (here), in 2023 I read a history of how our modern world work arose, as it appeared to the author (Stolzoff, 2023):

This brings us to 1500, where "the new profession of the merchant capitalist emerged. Merchants purchased foreign goods cheaply and sold them to the European aristocracy for large profits. They persuaded craftsmen to sell them their goods and then traveled from town to town in search of the best price. This meant that craftsmen now competed with other craftsmen outside of their region. The market, rather than the guilds, increasingly dictated prices, and the guilds broke down" (37%).

While "[i]nitially, merchants simply connected producers and consumers, but [...] they began to have a say in how goods were produced", commissioning pieces from artisans, supplying "raw materials", and paying an hourly rate. Merchants "now acquired wealth by controlling the means of production—as capitalists. This meant a major loss of autonomy for [artisans], as anyone who has ever been an employee knows" (37%).

"When prices were fixed and customers were local, workers produced and sold only what they needed", but with the arrival of "a capitalist world [...] the ownership class drove down the cost of production, [...] pressur[ing] workers to work more for less. Workers, who often did not have the wealth to invest in the facilities upon which their work depended, succumbed to those who paid their wages. They were only as valuable as what they were able to produce" (37%). 

From 1700 to 1800, "technological advances catapulted the world from economies based on handcrafts and farms to those based on manufacturing and factories. Rather than work in markets and fields, workers flocked to production lines that split jobs into repetitive tasks. As Karl Marx theorized, labor under industrialized capitalism alienated workers from the products of their work. Rather than make goods for their local communities, workers made goods that were shipped to places they couldn’t see. This type of industrialized labor, according to Marx, estranged workers not only from what they produced but also from their humanity—from the communities and identities that made them who they were" (37%).

But is this accurate? Some is. 

Like Stolzoff (2023), Lucassen notes (2021) that there was downward pressure on wages, with worker wages barely increasing for the first half-century of the Industrial Revolution, alongside work hours having significantly extended.

But not all seems so straight-forward. Globally, and concurrently across Asia, India, and Western Europe, we were "increasing the input of labour on the market – that of men and, now, women and even children – called the ‘industrious revolution’" at the end of the 1700s (Lucassen, 2021, p. 194). Incas and Aztecs fell in the Americas, while the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English were at their colonising peaks, making deals in Asia and Africa, and taking over the Americas. Western Europe quickly became the market leader, and "From Ireland to Japan and from the Philippines to Portugal, the products of labour, insofar as they were not consumed within the household, were offered for sale and traded on the market. Small, independent farmers and artisans dominated" (p. 196).

But the breadth of global production and the number of people getting into global logistics meant that the volume and breadth of goods increased hugely. Once plantations were established, some products  one requiring significant investment to produce suddenly cost little - such as sugar. It was stable and could be transported great distances. It was cheaper than beets or honey to produce in other nations. It was effectively a 'new technology' which broke the old system, and those who worked within it. Those people now needed new work, so took up factory roles. Yes, they were worse off. They had lost their trades. But the reason seems less political than Stolzoff (2023) suggests.

Perhaps the issue was not so much labour being undermined by capitalists, but new technology overtaking old, and we humans are the great switching predator, following the path of least effort.

Sam

References:

Lucassen, J. (2021). The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind. Yale University Press.

Stolzoff, S. (2023). The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work[e-book]. Penguin.