THE USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
THE INSTITUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING-CLASS
MOVEMENT
The International Working-Class Movement
PROBLEMS,
OF HISTORY
AND THEORY
__TITLE__ The International Working-Class MovementTHE ORIGINS
OF THE PROLETARIAT
AND ITS EVOLUTION
AS A REVOLUTIONARY
CLASS
In seven volumes
Introduction by Academician B.N.PONOMAREV
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW
Translated from the Russian by Yuri Shirokov and Campbell Creighton Designed by V. V. Yeryomin
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 9
VOLUME ONE.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE PROLETARIAT AND ITS EVOLUTION AS A REVOLUTIONARY CLASS
37Part One.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROLETARIAT INTO
AN INDEPENDENT SOCIAL FORCE
39Chapter 1.
The Origins of the Proletariat. The Initial Stage of Its Evolution and Labour Struggle
41 The Origination of the System of Wage Labour
42 The Characteristics of the Emerging Proletariat
59 The Condition of the Proletariat
72 Labour Struggle Against Exploitation
85Labour Participation in the Anti-Feudal Movements 94
The Workers' Role in the Early Bourgeois Revolutions
101Chapter 2.
The Formation of the Industrial Proletariat. The Working Class in the Early Stages of the Industrial Revolution
120 The General Features and Patterns of Formation
120 The Distinctions of the Formative Process in Individual Countries
140Chapter 3.
Unification and Organisation into a Class 175
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The General Editorial Committee:
B. N. Ponomarev, Chairman, T. T. Timofeyev, Deputy Chairman, A. I. Sobolev, Deputy Chairman, 0. T. Bogomolov, A S Chernyayev, G. G. Diligensky, P. N. Fedoseyev, B. G. Gafurov, A. A. Galkm, Y. M. Garushyants, S. S. Khromov, A L Narochmtsky, A. P. Poryvayev, S. S. Salychev, A. N. Shlepakov, Y. B. Shmeral, M. I. Sladkovsky, V. G. Solodovnikov, V. V. Volskv, V. V. Zagladin, E. M. Zhukov
© HaflaiejibciBO ^Mucnfa", 1976 English translation © Progress Publishers 1980 Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
0901000000CONTENTS
CONTENTS
The Socio-Economic Position of the Working Class in Conditions of the Developing Industrial Revolution
175 The Economic Struggle
190 First Lahour Organisations. The Origination of Trade Unions
218 Chapter 4.
The Forerunners of Scientific Socialism. Utopian Socialism in the Earlier Half of the Nineteenth Century
239 ' The Early Socialist and Communist Utopias
239 English Utopian Socialism
243 French Utopian Socialism
257 Dissemination of Ideas of Utopian Socialism in Russia
271 Utopian Socialism in the United States
279 Utopian Socialism and the Development of the Labour Movement
281 Chapter 5.
The Emergence of the Politically Independent Working-Class Movement
291The Practices of the Struggle for Political Independence
291Lahour Revolts in France. The Proletarians and the
Republicans
293The League of the Just. Independent Actions of the German Workers
304 Chartism---the First Mass Proletarian Revolutionary Movement
311 The Struggle of the Proletariat in the United States
324The Social Consciousness of Proletariat in the Pre-Marxian Period
329The Doctrines of the Utopian Communists
329 The Views of Revolutionary Chartism
347 Part Two.
THE WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT AND THE FOUNDING
OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
361Chapter 6.
The Emergence of Marxism. The Birth of the Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat
363 , The Greatest Revolution in Science
363 The Theory of Scientific Communism in the Making
366 The Communist League
382 The Manifesto of the Communist Party
395Chapter 7. The Working Class in the European Revolutions of 1848-1849;
406The Confrontation Between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie in France
408The Workers on the Road to Rebellion After the February Revolution
408 The June Uprising of' the Parisian Workers
434The Struggle Against Absolutism and Reaction, for Democracy
452The Proletariat and the Revolutionary Outbreak in Germany
452The Programme, Strategy and Tactics of Marx and Bngels
in the Revolution. The Activities of the
Communist League
463The Workers' Resistance to a Counter-Revolutionary Offensive. Rearguard Battles
470The Working Class and the Revolution in the Austrian
Empire
480 8CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
England in 1848: the Last Upsurge of the Mass Chartist Movement
492Chapter 8.
The Development of Marxism in the 1850s and Early 1860s
498of 1T84S ^Iq^F,^^^ aD,d Engds °I lte ExPerience of ..the ..Revolutions of 1848-1849. Further Development of the Theory of Scientific Communism
498 The Economic Theory of Marx and the Working Class
515Chapter 9.
The New Upsurge of the Working-Class Movement and Formation of the First International
534Marx and Engels Fight to Establish the Principles of Proletarian Internationalism
534 The Prerequisites of International Unity of the Proletariat
536The Founding and Constituting of the International Working Men's Association
550 Emergence of a Mass Organisation of the Workers
559International Solidarity in Practice. Development of a Programme of Proletarian Action
581 Consolidation of the National Sections of the Working-Class Movement
596 The European Powers' Foreign Policy and the International Proletariat
600 The Proletariat and the Emancipation Struggle of Oppressed People*
612Chapter 10. The Ideological Struggle Around the Proletariat's Historical Role
618Chapter 11. Conclusion 640
Some Results of the Working-Class Struggle in the First Stages of Its Development
640Name Index 667
The international revolutionary movement of the working class has a long, heroic and complex history---from the early battles against the exploiters to its conversion into the most powerful social force exerting a growing influence on world development in favour of peace and socialism, national and social emancipation.
Marxist-Leninist theoreticians have invariably paid close attention to a profound and comprehensive study and generalisation of the historical experience gained by the proletariat in the course of its class struggle. The founders of scientific communism said that without "understanding the necessary historical connection and, thereby, the possible course of developments no successful party policy is possible".^^1^^ Marxism-Leninism proceeds from the need for research into the whole wealth of international experience of proletarian struggle and for securing a situation in which class-conscious workers could "have an understanding of the significance of their movement and a thorough knowledge of it".^^2^^ This is precisely what the production of generalising work on the history of the world workingclass movement is called upon to facilitate.
Marxist scientific thought has done very much for the objectiv& study of the experience of proletarian struggle. Marx, Engels, Lenin have produced unsurpassed specimens of a comprehensive historical analysis. There are successes in the study of the labour movement in individual countries, the history of socialist thought and the development of scientific communism, the history of international labour organisations, etc.
Nevertheless, the demand for works summing up the international experience of revolutionary labour struggle at its different stages---
~^^1^^ Marx/Engels, Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1967, Bd. 35, S. 366.
2 V. I. Lenin, "The Working Class and Its Press", Collected Works, Vol. 20, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 363.
10INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
11works interpreting the past in the interest of the present and future, has not been satisfied and continues to grow. Such a generalising work can rely today only on numerous concrete studies based on Marxist-Leninist methodology. The documentary basis for presenting the history of the international working-class movement has widened substantially. The creative development of the MarxistLeninist teaching by the CPSU and the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties affords new possibilities to the modern researcher. Also of major importance is the fact that over the last few decades the international working-class movement has gained valuable new experience making possible a comprehensive assessment of the past phenomena and processes.
This is what largely predetermined the main tasks facing the team of the authors of the present multi-volume edition. It is a question of presenting an adequately complete picture of the socio-economic, ideological and political development of the working class, its maturing as the leading force in the revolutionary remaking of society. This must not be simply an exposition of the history of "civil society" with a certain emphasis on the role and activities of the working •class. Such an approach would lead to a repetition in principle of what has already been published in the form of works on modern and recent history. The authors intended to present against the background •of society's general progress a coherent description of events and problems directly related to the evolution of the working class, to show by citing concrete material its growing role as a factor ensuring mankind's social progress.
As Lenin pointed out, Marx's method consists in establishing, "in the first place, the movement of which class is the mainspring of the progress possible in those concrete conditions".^^1^^ It is perfectly obvious how important this general methodological principle is for the study of the evolution of the class whose transforming-- constructive activities are crucial to mankind's deliverance from war, poverty, •exploitation, and oppression, the realisation of socialist ideals.
On the basis of the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the leading •social role of the proletariat the working-class movement is considered as a totality of all forms of working-class activity in implementing its world historic mission. Viewed from this angle, the workingclass movement originated at the same time as the working class itself.
The international working-class movement naturally implies the •existence of at least a few national working-class movements, but it is not simply their sum total. Uniting the national movements, it
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Under a False Flag", Collected Works, Vol. 21, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 143.
reflects at the same time the common content of the class struggle, which constitutes the international essence of the working class.
This interpretation of the subject of research makes possible a more clear-cut definition of the place of the international workingclass movement in the common historical process. Its history is considered as part of general social history. Accordingly, social history stands out as the milieu of the history of the international working-class movement, since the working class exists, develops and struggles in a definite society, in a definite country.
The authors of this generalising work on such an important subject deem it their duty to observe as consistently as possible Lenin's idea that a historical phenomenon can be understood correctly and •completely only if it is examined from the angle of its origin and its main developmental stages, so as to clear up what it has come to be from the angle of this evolution.^^1^^
This idea underlies the structure of this edition, as well as the •division of working-class history into periods.
The edition opens with a volume covering a long historical period. The wide chronological limits of the volume are motivated by the •exposition of working-class history beginning with the emergence of the proletariat. In this respect the authors have been guided by the instructions of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, who considered the proletariat as a historical category, which came into being along with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production and dates back to the time when the feudal system was on the whole still predominant.
The study of the history of the proletariat in its early stages, including the epoch "when modern bourgeois society was in its infancy",^^2^^ is a prerequisite for an in-depth analysis of its later development. While being a matter of independent scientific interest, this study is at the same time of fairly great importance for a correct understanding of the proletariat's further history. The growth of the proletariat in the world widely differed from region to region. A phase passed in one European country in the 16th to the first half of the 18th century might have dragged out in another for a variety of reasons, and in certain countries was belated by one hundred years or more. In that situation the specific distinctions of the early formative stages of the proletariat continued to influence the general development of the international working-class movement not only throughout the 19th but also in the 20th century.
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, "The State", Collected Works, Vol. 29, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 473.
~^^2^^ Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, p. 157.
12INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
13In the first volume an attempt has bee,n made to reveal on the basis of concrete historical material the fundamental laws and major characteristics of the evolution of the international working-class movement.
Describing the formation of the working class, the authors focussed their attention on the most typical methods of proletarian strugglein that period. Upholding their vital interests and resisting the capitalists, the proletarians set up their first trade associations. Theexperience of their activities was a primary school of its own kind,, in which the proletarians learned to identify their class enemy--- the bourgeoisie---and became increasingly aware of the need for a systematic and organised struggle against it. The proletarians, who constituted an important and the most restive section of the indigent urban lower classes, took an active part in anti-feudal movements: the French bourgeois revolution of the late 18th century, the War of Independence of the American colonies, the Pugachev peasant uprising in Russia, etc.
At the next stage, when the process of the formation of the industrial proletariat, i.e., the core of the working class, was completed in England and took a rapid course in some other countries, the working-class struggle advanced to a new, higher plane. This was the maturing of the proletariat as a politically independent force, awaremore or less clearly of the cardinal contradiction between its interests and those of the bourgeoisie. This was evidenced by such outstanding events of the class struggle in the thirties and forties as the Chartist movement in England, the Lyons uprisings of 1831 and 1834 in France, the Silesian weavers' uprising of 1844 in Germany.
At that time capitalism was as yet in the stage of ascent. The working class, which more and more clearly manifested itself as an independent political force, continued to take an active part in the general democratic movement. It fought energetically against the enemies of its enemies---be it the feudal aristocracy or the elite of the bourgeoisie itself (the financial aristocracy). In the course of this struggle the proletarians acquired political experience and became increasingly differentiated from the bourgeois part of the democratic strata of society.
One of the main tasks of the contributors to the first volume was to define the historic significance of the early politically independent actions of the working class as a fighter for its own emancipation, as well as for democratic progress.
The inception of the class awareness of the proletariat is among the fundamental problems of the rising and evolution of the international working-class movement. Hence the need to trace the path from the worker opposition to machine industry to the realisation of the responsibility of the capitalist system for the use of machines as an
instrument of exploitation, to describe the gradual transition from the naive and vague dreams of a society of "general equality and prosperity" to the origination of the scientific theory of struggle for socialism and communism. The most important part of this analysis is the history of the development of the Marxist teaching on the world historic mission of the working class, the enrichment of this teaching iy Marx and Engels on the basis of the practical experience gained in the class battles, the propagation of Marxism within the proletarian masses. It was scientific communism that opened the way for the transition of the spontaneous labour movement to class consciousness.
The authors pay special attention to the culminations of the class struggle of the proletariat, its revolutionary actions where they reached their climax within the framework of bourgeois revolutions or, at definite moments, even extended beyond it, as was the case during the June uprising in Paris in 1848.
The rise and development of the class struggle of the proletariat as an international phenomenon is another important range of problems discussed in the volume. Concrete historical material is presented to show how the labour movement, which had begun as far back as the epoch of the disintegration of the feudal system, gradually became internationalised not only in theory but also in practice. For a long time the proletarians waged their class struggle within •their national boundaries, since the economy of ascending capitalism developed mainly on the basis of national markets. For all that, the universal laws of the proletarian movement, which was^increasingly active as a great united international force, became manifest at an •early stage.^^1^^
The first volume covers the initial period of the history of the working class and the labour movement. From the viewpoint of the socio-economic evolution of the working class, the material on this period throws into relief the following main developmental stages: the pre-proletariat, the manufactory proletariat, the industrial proletariat. In many countries, and even on whole continents, the proletariat had not passed these stages until the 20th century, and, accordingly, its concrete history is expounded in the subsequent volumes.
These, just as other Marxist-Leninist criteria of the dynamics of the development of the working class and the labour movement to be discussed below, make the basis for the edition as a whole. They are present to a varying degree in all of its volumes.
The development of the^working class in the process of its conversion from a "class in itself" into a "class for itself" is examined, for
~^^1^^ See Marx/Engels, Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1963, Bd. 22, S. 515.
14INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
instance, in the following stages: (1) a passive, exploited mass; (2) the proletariat as a growing factor in economic and social struggle; (3) the working class as a conscious social force, the vanguard contingent of the working people and an active fighter for mankind's general emancipation from exploitation, national and social oppression.
The stages in the evolution of the working-class movement are also determined by the level of organisation, the ways and means of struggle: the initial forms of social protest, the beginning of organised struggle, the combination of economic and political struggle and understanding of the ultimate goals of the movement, the constructive activities of the working class as the leading force of society on a national and international scale.
Having passed the stage of influence of Utopian socialist theoriesr the ideological development of the working class subsequently reached a qualitatively new level characterised by the emergence and spread of Marxism and then by the advent of the Leninist stage in the development of scientific communism and the working-class movement as a whole.
At the same time, no chronology of working-class history is possible without the background of events of general historic significance, particularly those which, by reason of their wide scale and comprehensive scope, incorporate, as it were, all of the aforesaid chronological criteria, marking out thereby the turning-points of history. Among them are the greatest social revolutions of the modern times and their consequences. One of such turning points of crucial importance for the international working-class movement was the industrial revolution. It had a direct bearing on the final formation of that social group in capitalist society which Marx and Engels described as the modern proletariat.^^1^^ It was precisely in that period that the working class took its first action against the bourgeoisie as a class and Marxism came into being as a scientific proletarian ideology. The industrial revolution, however, ran an irregular course, and its period widely varied from country to country between the late 18th and the latter half of the 19th century.
new phase".^^1^^ That period had lasted until the early years of the 20th century, when capitalism finally developed into a new, imperialist stage. During those thirty-odd years the working-class movement made substantial progress. Its influence and scale increased, and it advanced by far organisationally and ideologically. In the most developed capitalist countries the working-class movement experienced "a phase of `peaceful' preparations for the changes to come".2 The period of formation and growth of mass socialist parties is characterised, to quote Lenin, "by the tremendous spread of socialism, the unprecedented growth of all kinds of organisations of the proletariat, and the all-round preparation of the proletariat in the most varied fields for the fulfilment of its great historic mission.''^^3^^
At the same time, the late 19th and the early 20th century saw a wide spread of opportunism in the form of Bernstein's revision of Marxism and the practices of English reformism. That phenomenon was attributable to the transition of capitalism to its imperialist stage and the new economic opportunities available to the bourgeoisie as a result of the exploitation of the colonies. The colonial superprofits became a source for feeding up a part of the working class and cultivating a worker elite, "the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class",^^4^^ as Lenin called them. On that basis the ruling class finally developed its new tactics of systematic efforts to split the ranks of the proletariat and indoctrinate part of it with bourgeois ideology. While making full use, as before, of the machinery of coercion against the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, particularly in the imperialist period, more and more often resorts to such methods. Speaking at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in 1969, Leonid Brezhnev said in this context: "In an effort to reinforce their social hinterland areas, the capitalists combine methods of suppression with partial satisfaction of the working people's demands---a method which Lenin said was one of 'concessions of the unessential while retaining the essential' (V. I. Lenin, "Tasks of Proletariat in Our Revolution", Collected Works, Vol. 24, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 64), sowing the illusion that the working class can achieve its aspirations through agreements with
Another turning-point which ushered in the next period was in the early 1870s. It was opened by the Paris Commune of 1871, a milestone event in the history of the world proletariat, when, as Marx put it, "with the struggle in Paris the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class and its state has entered upon a
~^^1^^ See Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, p. 175.
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 248.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of Karl Marx", Collected Works, Vol. 18, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 583.
~^^3^^ V. I. Lenin, "August Bebel", Collected Works, Vol. 19, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 296.
~^^4^^ V. I. Lenin, "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism", Collected Works, Vol. 22, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 194.
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
17the employers, without a revolutionary transformation of society, within the framework of the capitalist system.^^1^^
The transition to imperialism, however, completed the period of the relatively ``peaceful'' development of the international workingclass movement. In Russia, to where its focus had shifted, a prerevolutionary situation took shape at the turn of the century.The Leninist stage in the working-class movement began in the midnineties. The emergence of Bolshevism as a trend of political thought and a political party was the greatest event in the history of the international working-class movement. It marked a radical turn from the traditional Social-Democratic parties to the proletarian party of a new type.
Thus, two currents finally developed in the international workingclass movement at the turn of the century: the revolutionary MarxistLeninist, and the reformist, opportunist one. The former opened up the prospect of world historic victories of the working class, which it won in the 20th century. The latter became a permanent inhibiting factor in the development of the working-class movement and repeatedly led it, as well as whole states and peoples, to severe defeats.
The Russian Revolution of 1905-1907was an important landmark in world history, as well as the world revolutionary process. That •was the first popular revolution in the imperialist epoch. It advanced Russia's proletariat to the vanguard of the revolutionary movement, •demonstrating the country's immense revolutionary democratic potential and the maturity of its working-class movement. The working class wrested leadership of the masses from the hands of the bourgeoisie and came forward as the leader and hegemon in a bourgeois-democratic revolution for the first time in history. This proved the ability of the proletariat to lead a revolution even in a country where it constituted the minority of the population. Having demonstrated the ability of the democratic peasant masses to help the proletariat to take over power, the revolution clearly revealed the counter-revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie.
New methods and forms of mass struggle were proposed and tested in the course of the revolution. A massive political strike growing into an armed uprising was used in practice. The rudimentary form of a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry came into being in the form of Soviets of workers' deputies.
For the first time in the history of revolutions a Marxist party of the working class came out as an independent political force with its own programme, strategy and tactics. Two political lines---the
revolutionary, proletarian line upheld by the Bolsheviks and the reformist, opportunist line of the Mensheviks had to face a historical test in the crucible of revolutionary battles. This historical test demonstrated with full clarity the untenability of the reformist path and its formidable danger to the working class.
The practices of the revolutionary movement contributed to the continued enrichment of the Marxist theory of revolution, which was profoundly developed in Lenin's works.
The revolution of 1905-1907 was of great international significance. By giving an impetus to the working-class struggle in the capitalist countries of the West, it stimulated at the same time an upsurge of the national liberation movement in Asia, the involvement of hundreds of millions of working people in the East in the world revolutionary process, and opened up the prospect of unification of the working-class and the national liberation movements for a joint struggle against imperialism.
The years following the revolution saw a further widening and deepening of the working-class movement, as well as an exacerbation of the struggle between its revolutionary and reformist currents. The struggle against the danger of a world war assumed a growing importance for the working-class movement. That danger was aggravated by the entry of capitalism into the imperialist phase, which was characterised by a sharply increased unevenness of development in both the economic and political fields. The world had already been carved up by the biggest imperialist powers. A disturbance of the balance between them generated a striving for a re-division of the world, which could be effected only at the expense of some state, i.e., through war. Preparing for a struggle for a re-division of the world, the imperialists expected to use war also for suppressing the increased proletarian and national liberation movement. They hoped to poison the international proletariat with the venom of chauvinism, to undermine its unity, to exterminate physically a considerable proportion of the progressive workers and thereby to weaken the revolutionary onslaught of the masses.
The revolutionary wing in the international working-class movement persistently called public attention to the increased danger of war and sought to mobilise the efforts of the working class to avert it. Under the influence of this wing the Stuttgart (1907) and Basel (1912) congresses of the Second International adopted resolutions urging the workers on behalf of all socialist parties to fight against the outbreak of war or for the cessation of the war already begun and, what was most important, for using the crisis created by the war to overthrow capitalism. However, the increased influence of opportunism in most workers' parties at the time prevented the power of the working-class movement being used to avert a conflict between im-
2-0715
~^^1^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, Prague, 1969, p. 149.
18INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
perialist states. The First World War broke out in 1914. During four years armies of millions of officers and men engaged in reciprocal destruction to satisfy the predatory ambitions of the capitalist monopolies. A few score million people were killed or maimed, and whole states were doomed to famine and ruin. The war clearly exposed the true face of imperialism as the greatest source of disasters for the peoples. The opportunist majority of the parties of the Second International supported their national imperialist bourgeoisie in the war. They assumed thereby political responsibility for the holocaust into which mankind had been hurled by the imperialists. The Second International broke up into hostile political parties, demonstrating the disastrous consequences of opportunism and reformism.
Only the revolutionary section of the labour movement remained loyal to its internationalist principles. In Russia, Lenin's Bolshevik Party came forward with a strong denunciation of the imperialist war, the policy of "one's own" government and called for ending the war by revolutionary means. The internationalist position was taken up by the Bulgarian party of the ``Tesnyaki'', the Serbian Social-- Democrats and Left-wing groups in some other parties (German, Italian, etc.). It was precisely the activities of the revolutionary internationalists that laid the groundwork for the later revival of the international labour movement, but now on a new basis, purged of reformism and opportunism.
The Great October Socialist Revolution, which ushered in the era of the triumphs of socialism and communism, was a crucial turningpoint in the international labour movement. This revolution radically changed the course of world history and gave a new trend to world development. It breached the front of imperialism and put an end to its undivided supremacy.
In the history of mankind that was the first revolution to grant the working class and nations not only formal political rights but also the material conditions required to enjoy them. In a vast territory, on the ruins of one of the largest imperialist states, it established a working people's state, which abolished the exploitation of man by man. The revolution showed the practical way out of the imperialist war. One of the first legislative acts of the new revolutionary government was Lenin's Decree on Peace, which appealed to the peoples and governments of all countries to end the senseless and criminal bloodshed. New principles of international relations were proclaimed and then put into practice.
The revolution showed all nations, the dependent and oppressed peoples in the first place, the right way of solving the national question.
The world historic consequences of the October Revolution con-
clusively demonstrated the universal character of Lenin's theory of socialist revolution, the immense significance of its experience and lessons for all nations. The revolution became a rich source of new ideas for the continued enrichment of Marxist-Leninist theory. The theory and practice of socialist revolution in the USSR assumed tremendous significance for the international proletariat.
The victory of the socialist revolution in Russia confirmed the force of attraction of Marxist-Leninist ideas, the correctness of the Bolshevik Party's strategy and tactics, facilitating thereby the struggle for democracy, socialism and peace by the working people in all countries.
The exploited and oppressed masses throughout the world were stirred to action by the direct influence of the October Revolution, in conditions of a sharp exacerbation of the contradictions of the capitalist system. A year after it, in November 1918, the absolutist Kaiser regime in Germany was overthrown by a bourgeois-- democratic revolution. The tide of revolution swept away the Habsburg monarchy in Austria-Hungary. The Austrian, Hungarian and Czechoslovak republics emerged from the ruins of that Empire. An independent Polish state came into being in Eastern Europe. The revolutionary movement enveloped Serbia and other Southern Slav regions, Bulgaria and Rumania. The West European countries---France, Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and others---were swept by a wave of strikes and massive anti-government demonstrations and meetings. Engels' prediction, who had written prophetically in the 19th century that crowns would litter the streets by the dozens, came true in the literal sense.^^1^^
In that situation of a powerful revolutionary upsurge Communist parties were founded in a number of countries. In 1919 the Communist International was set up, which was called upon to accelerate the formation of revolutionary parties, thereby giving the labour movement the ultimate weapon for victory over capitalism.
The victory of the working people in Russia gave powerful impetus to the national liberation movement. The peoples of the colonial and dependent countries rose with renewed enthusiasm to a struggle against colonial oppression.
The next period in the history of the international labour movement was ushered in by the rout of the fascist Axis powers in the Second World War (1939-1945). That was the most sanguinary war in human history. Its impact on all spheres of social life was without precedent. The future of all nations and countries was at stake in that gigantic battle. There lies the world historic significance of
~^^1^^ See Marx/Engels, Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1962, Bd. 21, S. 351.
2*
20INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
21victory over fascism. The Soviet Army and the people were the decisive force that put to rout fascism and Japanese militarism. The significance of this fact transcended by far the limits of its time. The Soviet-German front was the scene of confrontation not only between two armies but also between two antagonistic social systems: a confrontation of fundamentally opposite economic and political principles, incompatible cultures and ideologies. The defeat of Hitler Germany, imperialist Japan and their allies met the interests of all progressive mankind, of democracy and socialism.
The victory over fascism paved the road for a long series of victorious popular revolutions, which toppled the capitalist system in another eleven countries of Europe and Asia, and then in Cuba. This development ranks next in importance to the October Revolution in world history: socialism stepped out of the limits of one country to become a world system. This confirmed Lenin's prevision of another ineluctable severe defeat of imperialism in the event of war, which would inevitably lead to an "extension of socialism".^^1^^
The Soviet Union's power and prestige made it possible to accomplish the formidable historic task of preventing a situation where the takeover of government by the working class, the working people would be followed by imperialist armed intervention and a bloody civil war, as had been the case in Soviet Russia when it was alone. It was easier to overcome the difficulties of the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, relying on the political support and assistance of loyal and dependable friends.
The positions of world capitalism were greatly undermined. In Europe, it came out of the war, shaken down to its deepest roots. The instability of all its foundations---from the economic to the ideological---was a typical phenomenon in most countries of not only Eastern but also Western Europe. The unity of the popular, democratic forces had been forged in the course of the anti-fascist struggle in the ranks of the Resistance, in which socialist and other patriotic organisations had fought side by side with the Communists. The Communist parties had proved to be the most selfless and consistent fighters against the fascist invaders and their collaborators. The international communist movement came forward as a close-knit and high-principled force opening up for all nations the prospect of deliverance from exploitation, national and social oppression, the prospect of genuine peace and socialism. In the early ostwar years,
the working people in a number of capitalist countries succeeded in making such socio-political gains which they had been unable to achieve during the long decades of earlier stubborn class battles.
Containing and diverting against itself the main forces of imperialism, the socialist system undermined its ability to keep foreign peoples in subjection. They were facing an enemy who could now be forced to retreat. A powerful tide of the national liberation movement surged in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The world colonial system began to disintegrate. This process resulted in the appearance of more than eighty newly independent states on the world map. Many of them have by now made substantial progress along the path of social transformations. That was the birth of a new force, which--- in alliance with world socialism---has enormous anti-imperialist potentials.
In today's situation where existing socialism has become a decisive factor of modern history, the world labour movement has every reason to sum up the results achieved by the two main contingents which took shape at one time in the organised labour movement, and to establish who is right in the historic dispute between the MarxistsLeninists and the social-reformists.
What could its reformist opponents oppose to the victories of existing socialism?
Social-reformism as an ideological current is usually characterised by the following features:
---denial of the necessity of a proletarian revolution for transition from capitalism to socialism, acceptance of exclusively evolutionary forms of social progress, which leads in fact to reconciliation with capitalism;
---admiration for bourgeois democracy and elevation of parliamentary activity to an absolute;
---a negative attitude to the idea of the historic mission of the working class as the leader of all working people in building a socialist society, rejection of the Marxist-Leninist thesis on the dictatorship of the proletariat as the sine qua non of success in the struggle for remaking society on socialist principles;
---substitution of the slogan of class collaboration for the idea of the class struggle, reliance on a coalition with the ruling quarters of the bourgeoisie, and on reforms within the framework of the capitalist system;
---departure from scientific socialism and adherence to various bourgeois economic, political and philosophical theories;
---denial of the international significance of Leninism as a new stage in the development of the theory and practice of proletarian revolution.
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution", Collected Works, Vol. 33, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 56; V. I. Lenin, "Session of C.E.C., Moscow Soviet and Trade Unions", Collected Works, Vol. 27, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p. 423.
22INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
23The content of reformist ideology conclusively proves the Marxist thesis to the effect that in accordance with the existence of the two main classes of capitalist society two ideologies---bourgeois and socialist---emerge within it. A decline of one of them leads to elevation of the other. As Lenin put it, "the only choice is---either bourgeois or socialist ideology".^^1^^
After the collapse of the Second International the main watershed between the revolutionary and the reformist trend in the labour movement was the attitude to a socialist revolution, and after October 1917, more specifically, the attitude to the October Socialist Revolution. The leading social-reformist theoreticians alleged that Russia as an economically backward country had not yet matured for a socialist revolution. After the revolution did take place they took an active stand against it, incessantly predicted its doom, gloating over the difficulties in the formation of a new society.
Ignoring all sombre prophecies, the Bolshevik Party, the working class of Russia led by Lenin practically got down to the work of socialist construction. Defying the unfavourable conditions in which it had to be done (the underdeveloped economy, the devastating ravages of the long years of the imperialist and the civil war, the hostile capitalist encirclement), searching in a spirit of creativity for new ways and means of coping with the constructive tasks of the revolution, they set a practical example of solving the ``perennial'' problems of transition to socialism, which were and remain a stumbling-block for reformism. Under the leadership of the CPSU a socialist society was built within a brief historical period.
In a number of capitalist countries Social-Democratic, reformist parties were in power for a long time, in certain cases for decades. During this time the working class by its stubborn struggle forced the bourgeoisie to make certain concessions. This was facilitated decisively by the achievements of existing socialism, which had shown an example of real solution to modern social and political problems.
The reformists usually credit themselves with a certain improvement in the living conditions of the working class in the industrialised capitalist countries. Even they, however, admit that nothing has been achieved in the fundamental questions of remaking society. Having opposed the revolutionary wing of the labour movement, they promised many times and for many decades to achieve socialism without cataclysms and difficulties, without the class struggle. These promises have not been fulfilled. In the final analysis, in no country have the reformist parties been able to ``replace'' capitalism
with socialism. In fact, in most cases they made only half-hearted efforts to this end.
Under governments formed by the Social-Democrats monopoly capital usually retains its positions. In some countries the SocialDemocrats and bourgeois parties joined in government coalitions. Of course, such cabinets are preferable to reactionary, let alone frankly fascist regimes. However, the activities of the reformists keep within the limits of bourgeois society. Everywhere they are bound hand and foot by the actual domination of the bourgeoisie.
Opposing the revolutionary path of the development of the labour movement, the reformist theoreticians accused and are accusing the Marxists-Leninists of renunciation of and contempt for democracy. They extoll some non-class democracy in opposition to the MarxistLeninist doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. History, liowever, has settled this dispute in favour of the proletarian revolutionaries.
One of the characteristics of imperialism, Lenin pointed out, is "political reaction all along the line...''^^1^^ Preservation of the capitalist relations, therefore, is fraught with the constant danger of the most reactionary quarters of the ruling bourgeoisie resorting to brutal, terrorist means of suppression. The only effective factor in offsetting this danger is counteraction by the popular masses, the working class first and foremost. Preserving the foundations of monopoly capitalism, the reformists contribute thereby to the continuation of this danger. Ignoring it, blindly reposing their hopes in the parliamentary "rules of the game", resisting unity of action of the working class, the reformist parties weakened it in the face of an offensive by the rightist forces. This was the case, for instance, in Germany in the period after the First World War, where the repeated stay of SocialDemocracy in power (for more than ten years in all) was followed by the rapid sliding of the political situation to the right, culminating in the government takeover by the Nazi party. This was made possible to no small extent by the myopic position of the then leaders of German Social-Democracy, who had concentrated their efforts on the struggle against the Communist Party and shut their eyes to the actual, mortal danger from the right. All this ended eventually in a tragic disaster for the German working class, all working people, and caused severe losses not only to the communist but also the social-democratic movement. The Nazi takeover of power in Germany led to the Second World War, in which scores of millions of people died.
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "What Is to Be Done?", Collected Works, Vol. 5, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 384.
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism", Collected Works, Vol. 23, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 106.
24INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
What have the practices of the dictatorship of the proletariat shown?
In the USSR it became a means of building a socialist society. Truly socialist democracy---democracy for the majority---triumphed in the country. In the Soviet Union and other socialist countries social and political inequality was uprooted: the exploitation of man by man was abolished, and the means of production were made the property of the whole society. The development of democracy in the Soviet Union resulted in a situation where "the state, which arose as a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, has, in the new, contemporary stage, become a state of the entire people, an organ expressing the interests and will of the people as a whole".^^1^^
It was only because a powerful socialist state existed in the world that the European, nations were delivered from the yoke of the fascist invaders, and avoided total plunder and physical extermination. In other words, it was precisely the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat that saved the freedoms and gains of the working people on a worldwide scale. In this question, too, historical truth was on the side of the Communists.
The international labour movement has also repeatedly dealt with various left opportunist trends.
The outward radicalism and ``revolutionism'' of the positions upheld by the ``left'' opportunists in the past and today reflect the confusion and disorientation of numerous intermediate social groups in capitalist society, which are extremely resentful of the conditions of their existence but are not yet prepared to assimilate the ideas and principles of proletarian, scientific socialism.
``Left" opportunism has always been characterised by the following features:
---proclivity to ostentatious slogans with utter contempt for dayto-day work to lay the groundwork for revolutionary transformations;
---adventurism based on unwillingness to reckon with the objective situation: the degree of progression towards a revolutionary crisis, the alignment of political forces, the sentiments of the masses, and the degree of their readiness for determined action;
---social orientation on the petty-bourgeois strata and the lumpenproletariat;
---a hostile or nihilistic attitude to the main, politically active mass of the working class having the experience of economic and social struggle;
---efforts to oppose the mental and the manual workers to one another, appealing now to the workers against the intelligentsia, now tothe intelligentsia against the workers.
Like reformism ``left'' opportunism is not simply fruitless but alsovery harmful to the working class and its movement. All attempts of the so-called ``ultra-leftists'' to put their ideas into practice have come to nothing. Reaction usually took advantage of their actions as a pretext for massive savage reprisals against the working class, its organisations and all democratic forces. Adventures of this kind more than once hurled the revolutionary movement backwards.
As the history of the working-class movement shows, there is a deep-seated link botween right and ``left'' opportunism. Leftist deviations repeatedly came on the scene in the working-class movement as a reaction to the opportunistic ``sins'' of the Right-wing leaders of Social-Democracy. And conversely, in the final analysis leftist extremes invariably nourished the right opportunistic views, socialreformist sentiments and alienated part of the workers with their recklessness and adventurism.
That is not the only point, however. Although in the ideological and theoretical field the line of demarcation between the right opportunist and leftist conceptions is fairly clear, in the sphere of practical politics quite a few cases of direct links between them are known. Their most typical common platform is anti-communism and antiSovietism. This platform is the nutrient medium for hybrid conceptions which can in equal measure be attributed to the right and ``left'' varieties of opportunism.
A few highly Important continual problems advanced by the actual progress of the working-class movement are traceable throughout its history.
One of them, which is indispensable for understanding the world historic role of the proletariat, is the character and direction of its development.
Already the earliest Marxist documents, primarily the Communist Manifesto, contain the major theses on the development of the proletariat. They also outline the principal characteristics of its; development as the main, ascending social force in capitalist society.
First of all, the proletariat grows numerically. From a small section of society it transforms into an increasingly massive class. Eventually, as is shown by the example of the most developed countries, the proletariat embraces the majority of the gainfully employed population.
The internal structure of the proletariat changes along with its increase in numbers. At the same time, the industrial core of the
~^^1^^ The Road to Communism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1962, p. 547.
26INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
27working class steadily grows in importance, because it is directly linked with the most developed, modern productive forces requiring an ever greater share of mental work.
The quantitative and qualitative changes are accompanied by 'organisational development. The histories of the political parties of the working class, the trade unions, the co-operatives, etc., are elements of the history of the international working-class movement.
Particularly important is the problem of the vanguard role •of the Communist parties and the world communist movement in the working-class movement in individual countries and in the International working-class movement as a whole. The Communist Party is the most dynamic and single-minded section of the movement, its leading part equipped with a scientific theory. "The Party," Lenin said, "is the politically conscious, advanced section of the •class, it is its vanguard. The strength of that vanguard is ten times, a hundred times, more than a hundred times, greater than its numbers.''^^1^^ He believed that the most difficult as well as the most important matter was "of converting the Party into the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat without permitting it to become divorced from the masses, but, on the contrary, by linking it more and more closely with them, infusing them with revolutionary consciousness and rousing them for the revolutionary struggle...".^^2^^ Since the emergence of Communist parties it has never been possible to study the history of the working-class movement without a most careful and •comprehensive analysis of the place and role of the Communists within it.
An important problem, traceable throughout the history of the international working-class movement, is to establish the correlation between the national and the international in the class struggle of the proletariat. Internationalism arose from the identity of the situation of the working class in different countries under capitalism; it reflects the objectives of the class struggle and the universal character of the laws governing the world revolutionary process. At the same time, the specific features of the class struggle in individual countries are deeply rooted in the national soil and are conditioned by the traditions of a given country, its distinctive history, national culture, and national character. A correct assessment of the actual interrelationship of the international and the national has always been
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "How Vera Zasulich Demolishes Liquidationism", Collected, Works, Vol. 19, p. 406.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "Notes of a Publicist", Collected Works, Vol. 16, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 209.
a prerequisite for the strength of the proletariat and success in its struggle.
International solidarity unites all the contingents of the working class. During its history, however, the position of the proletariat, the level of its organisation, the political and ideological forms of the working-class movement and its actual role were not identical in different countries and groups of countries. This, of course, also affects the forms in which the principles of proletarian internationalism are realised. For all the differences that exist and partly increase, the prevailing tendency is one of increasing interdependence and cooperation of workers on an international scale. The growing internationalisation of production, exchange and capital (of which the Common Market and multi-national monopolies are a specific expression under capitalism) imperatively demands defence of the interests of wage labour on a wider than national scale. The need for such unity of action on a class basis is increasingly urgent and tangible, while an awareness of this need spreads ever more widely and infiltrates even the reformist circles of the working-class movement. The involvement of ever greater strata of the masses in the capitalist countries in the struggle against aggression, militarisation, neo-colonialism, racism, neo-fascist reaction, monopoly integration and multi-- national monopolies gives fresh impetus to the practical development of proletarian internationalism, opens up wider opportunities for further enhancement of the international role of the working «lass.
The study of the history of the working-class movement raises the problem of the link between the emancipation of the working class itself, on the one hand- and its involvement in general civic development as the leading social force, as the hegemon class, on the other. At different stages of the development of the working class and the labour movement, individual aspects of this process acquire different significance. Whereas at the time of the origination of international labour organisations the social, political, and ideological emancipation of the proletariat, or, as Lenin put it, its emergence from the general democratic mass had had a major role to play in its consolidation as the prime mover of social progress, the task that came to the foreground later was one of drawing closer to the wide sections of the non-proletarian population, of securing the actual hegemony of the proletariat in solving the cardinal social, national, and general humanitarian problems.
The economic and political demands of the working class reflect the interests of the mass of the people. It is also perfectly obvious that its determining participation (primarily that of the state-- organised working class in the socialist countries) is absolutely indispen-
28INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
29sable for the solution of such vital problems facing mankind as prevention of world thermonuclear war, abolition of the exploitation of man by man in whatever form, of poverty generated by it, eradication of famine and disease, as well as effective measures for environmental protection, rational utilisation of the Earth's resources, etc.
``Revolutions are the locomotives of history",^^1^^ Marx said. Therefore, the problem of revolution is the pivotal question in thehistory of the international labour movement. It also has great practical significance. It is well known that the victory of the October Revolution was immensely facilitated by the fact that Lenin, th& Bolsheviks had profoundly studied the historical experience of all past revolutions of any significance, knew in detail and took intoaccount all generalisations, assessments and conclusions drawn from this experience by the founders of scientific communism---Marx and Engels.
The historical creativity of the working class, the experience of the international labour movement had supplied the background material on which Lenin evolved his theory of proletarian revolution,, whose validity was confirmed repeatedly and is being confirmed by the practice of revolutionary struggle, the historic victories of socialism.
In the present conditions of worldwide transition from capitalism to socialism the problem of transitional forms merits attention. Thequestion of transitional stages and transitional measures on the path to socialism was posed in his time by Marx. He allowed for "such a transitional situation" in which, "on the one hand, the modem economic basis of society has not yet taken shape, but on the other hand, the working masses are sufficiently strong to have such transition measures carried out which will in the final count help towards a radical change of society.''^^2^^
Lenin thoroughly worked out this problem. He made a comprehensive analysis of the question of the development of a democratic intoa socialist revolution, of the economic and political forms of transition to socialism, and advanced the idea of a revolutionary democratic state.
Relying on the ideas of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist parties draw up programmes of sweeping democraticreforms with due regard for the specific conditions in their respective countries and the present stage of world development in general. As stated in the Document of the International Meeting of Commu-
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, "The Class Struggle in France", Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 1, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, p. 277.
~^^2^^ Marx/Engels, Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1968, Bd. 16, S. 368-69.
nist and Workers' Parties, each party is completely independent in planning its policy, choosing the directions, forms and methods of struggle, this or that road to socialism in its own country, the forms and methods of its construction.^^1^^
The tasks of deep-going democratic transformations of the economic structure of society, the idea of establishing a state of a democratic union, a government of left front forces, anti-monopoly democracy--- these and other programme principles advanced by the Communist parties today are called upon to play the role of intermediate and transitional forms where highly mature internal socio-economic and international prerequisites exist for a struggle for socialism.
The problem of correlation of revolution and reform, which is of exceptional importance from both the political and ideological points of view, is a component of the Marxist-Leninist theory of socialist revolution. The history of the international labour movement contains a wealth of material in this field as well.
Lenin described this correlation as follows: "The concept `reform', is undoubtedly the opposite of the concept `revolution'. Failure to remember this contrast, failure to remember the line that divides these two concepts, constantly leads to very serious mistakes in all historical discussions. But this contrast is not something absolute, this line is not something dead, but alive and changing, and one must be able to define it in each particular case.''^^2^^
A revolution means the abolition of a given socio-economic system, the transition to a new quality. A reform is a change effected within the framework of the existing system; however, a reform may be a by-product of revolutionary struggle which has not culminated in final victory. On the other hand, reforms may lead to the conquest of definite positions by the labour movement, to an improvement of the situation of the working class and other working people, to a widening of democratic rights and freedoms. Under certain conditions reforms may be an important factor in preparing a revolution, mobilising the forces of the working class, the working people for a decisive advance. Everything depends on which class succeeds in turning the reforms to advantage.
The cardinal problems of the formation and ascension of the working class are the subject of an acute ideological struggle, which is the main line of long ideological development.
^^1^^ See International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, p. 37.
* V. I. Leniu, "Apropos of an Anniversary", Collected Works, Vol. 17, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, pp. 115-16.
30INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
3f
Of course, time incessantly makes corrections in the content and forms of ideological struggle. Some trends of thought and specific theories which at one time preoccupied their contemporaries have long been forgotten and are of interest only to students of the history of socio-political thought. Others were modified and adapted to new conditions. The principal class meaning of the struggle has remained unchanged. It reflects in a transfigured form the economic, social and political contradictions of antagonistic, capitalist society, and---on the international plane---the struggle between the two systems, the capitalist and the socialist.
The following three main directions may be traced in this struggle.
The first direction is the ideological struggle for goals and ideals. By evolving scientific socialism Marx and Engels put on a material basis the concepts of an ideal social order, which had formerly been of a Utopiarrcharacter. Since its very inception the Marxist-Leninist world outlook has been characterised by a striving for the social and political organisation of society based on the abolition of all forms of the exploitation and oppression of man by man, all forms of social inequality.
The reactionary forces oppose to the social ideal of Marxism-- Leninism a model of social order based on the idea of perpetual and allegedly irremovable inequality between men---economic, social, political,, cultural, racial, national, etc.
In the time of Marx and Engels such ideas were advocated mostly by feudal ideologists. Later, when the bourgeoisie lost its progressivesocial functions, more and more apologists of the capitalist system adopted this platform. Advocates of chauvinism and racism, apologists of colonial conquest and enslavement of other peoples were guided by this platform. In the 20th century these ideas found the most extreme expression in the ideology of fascism. The rout of fascism "left a deep mark on the life of many peoples and changed the face of the world".^^1^^ Even today, however, ideas of this sort loom large in the ideological arsenal of imperialism. They reflect the fear of the modern bourgeoisie in the face of imminent transformations, and sometimes the despair of the petty bourgeoisie the foundations of whose existence are undermined by the rapid development of statemonopoly capitalism.
The struggle against any such views has been and remains part and parcel of the struggle waged by the revolutionary working-class movement and its communist vanguard.
The second direction is the ideological struggle over the question
~^^1^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following'Lenin s Course, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 551.
of the leading social force in social development. Marx, Engels and Lenin substantiated and developed the teaching on the world historic mission of the working class. It is precisely the working class that is able, by virtue of its place in social production and in society in general, to rally behind itself the mass of the working people and achieve a radical, revolutionary abolition of the socio-economic system based on inequality and exploitation.
For more than a century this teaching has been opposed with schemes presenting various other social groups as the leading force in social development. The most primitive apologists of the capitalist system are still upholding the thesis on the progressive essence of the bourgeoisie as a ``productive'' and ``organising'' class. At the same time, they deliberately ignore the fact that modern bourgeois society looks more than ever before like "the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells", that the "conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them".^^1^^ More sophisticated bourgeois ideologists ``nominate'' for the role of the leading social force the technically educated bureaucracy, the managers, etc.
In our day wide currency has been given to bourgeois and reformist-revisionist theories of the growing role of the so-called middle class. In this case the social criteria of class differentiation are simply substituted by technological ones. The "character of labour" is pronounced to be the main criterion of the social differentiation of society. On this basis the really existing middle strata in town and country are lumped together with a substantial proportion of the working class employed outside large-scale machine industry, as well as with the numerous and rapidly growing contingents of workers most closely linked with the processes characteristic of the scientific and technological revolution. This conglomeration of social groups is proclaimed to be some special ``new'' class.
Defence of the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the world historic mission of the working class implies a relentless struggle against such conceptions, which constitute a form of ideological justification of the capitalist system.
The third direction is the ideological struggle over the ways and means of implementing a revolution and social transformations in general. As it follows from historical experience, the application of incorrect, ineffective methods quite often is motivated by class interests and is a means of preventing or retarding actual
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party", Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp. 489, 490.
32INTRODUCTION
'INTRODUCTION
33transformations. The insolvency of reformism and ``left'' opportunism attested to by history does not mean that their danger has been eliminated politically or that the need to oppose them has become less urgent. The differences in the positions of individual contingents of the proletariat, in the levels of their development, in the correlation of ideological influences, etc., objectively lay the groundwork for the existence within the working-class movement of various trends reflecting both the past and the present of the working class.
This is what determines the dual role of the political vanguard of the proletariat---the Marxist-Leninist parties. It implies an all-out effort to facilitate the ideological liberation of all contingents of the working class from alien influences and at the same time by overcoming ideological, political and organisational differences and disagreements, to mobilise the entire working class to a practical struggle for its rights and social progress.
The study of the historical experience of the international working-class movement is assuming special urgency today when new opportunities and prospects are opening up before the world working class, all revolutionary forces.
Over the last few years two interlinked processes have been characteristic of the world situation. This is, on the one hand, the consolidation of the forces of socialism, the socialist community of nations, which cannot be undermined by the subversive actions of the Maoist leadership of the PRG. Existing socialism has achieved spectacular socio-economic successes of world historic significance. Socialism today appears as an advanced civilisation opening up boundless opportunities for progress. This is, on the other hand, the growing struggle of the working class in the capitalist countries and other forms of the liberation movement in the entire non-socialist part of the world. Stimulating and supporting each other and often merging into a common torrent these two processes have led to substantial changes on the international scene in favour of peace, national independence, democracy and socialism, in the interest of the masses.
The new opportunities and prospects for radical social transformations are also connected with the changes in the international situation. In the stubborn struggle still being waged against the forces of militarism and reaction a turn has been achieved from the cold war to detente, to relations based on the principle of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. The successful completion of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe was a milestone on this path. As regards its sources, its essence and its consequences detente is not only an international political but
also a socio-political phenomenon contributing to the development of social relations.
The ripeness of the objective factors lends special urgency to the question of the subjective prerequisites required to bring them into play: the scale and degree of formation of revolutionary, proletarian consciousness, the strength and influence of the political vanguard, its preparedness as the leading force of the working-class movement, all working masses.
Over the past few decades notable changes have taken place in this sphere as well. This is the effect of the long years of work in the working-class movement by the Marxist-Leninist parties consistently upholding the class interests of the working people; the vast experience in the class struggle against the domination of the capitalist monopolies gained over the period by the trade unions with the Communists being actively involved; the practical experience of the economic and political battles amassed by the working class in the course of strikes, demonstrations, and election campaigns; and the fact that the narrow-mindedness and hopelessness of reformist policies are increasingly obvious.
Faced with new tasks and new opportunities the communist vanguard of the working class pays keen attention to the further perfection of its ideological and theoretical arsenal:
---it consistently seeks guidance in the theory of scientific communism, which] sums up the fundamental' laws of social development;
---it demands a revolutionary policy to be pursued with due regard for the distinctions of a given period in the development of a given country;
---it learns tactical skills, all ways and means of the class struggle, develops an ability for quickly changing these ways and means, for regrouping its forces to fit the changing situation;
---it seeks to teach politics? to the masses, referring to their own experience, to persuade them in practice of the need for radical transformations that would put an end to the rule of monopoly capital and the exploitive system;
-^it seeks to formulate relevant slogans to rally around them all contingents of the working class, and other working people;
---its internationalist approach to the internal and international problems of its country educates the masses in an internationalist spirit and enhances their sentiments of proletarian solidarity;
---the Communists come out as the standard-bearers of peace, the
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34INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
35most consistent fighters against the war menace and the arms race.
At the present stage of the struggle for peace, democracy and social progress waged by the labour movement, first priority attaches to unification of all social and political forces opposed to imperialist reaction, the war menace, social and national oppression. During many decades the revolutionary wing of the labour movement has been stubbornly and consistently working for such unification on the basis of the unity of action of the working class. The idea of unity of the anti-imperialist democratic forces, a united labour front, was comprehensively substantiated by the 7th Congress of the Communist International in the thirties. It laid the groundwork for the practical programmes of the anti-fascist Popular Front which greatly contributed to the struggle of the peoples of some countries against reaction and fascism in the prewar years. The idea of unity of action of the working class and all democratic forces was put into effect in the ranks of the anti-fascist Resistance during the Second World War. The organisational unity of the working-class forces was the key factor in the victory of the people's democratic and socialist revolutions in the countries of Central and South-East Europe after the rout of fascism.
Achievement of working-class unity in the capitalist countries, as well as on an international scale largely depends on the mutual relations between the Communists and the Social-Democrats. Seeking the unity of action with the Social-Democrats in the struggle for peace, democracy and social progress, the Communists proceed from the premise that it is a case of collaboration between parties guided by different ideologies and political principles, having their own distinctive traditions and methods of struggle, etc. The principled line of the Communists towards co-operation and unity of action with the social-democratic parties does not rule out the problem of struggle against right opportunist ideology and the policy of class compromise.
Overcoming the resistance of the monopoly bourgeoisie and part of the right-wing leadership of Social-Democracy, the Communist parties have achieved in the last few years certain progress in organising co-operation and the unity of action with the social-- democratic parties. This was reflected in their joint expression of solidarity with the people of Vietnam, in broad campaigns of support for the Chilean democrats, a number of important actions in favour of converting Europe into a continent of peace, security and co-operation, etc. Joint actions of Communists and Socialists in France, Italy, Japan,, Finland, Portugal and other capitalist countries brought about tangible success for the working-class struggle. Unitary pro-
cesses are developing in the international and the majority of the national trade union movements.
Relying on the scientific basis of the struggle for working-class unity---Marxist-Leninist theory---the Communists invariably take account of the changes in the objective and subjective conditions of the class struggle and, accordingly, develop and enrich the platform of the unity of action of the working class, combining it dialectically with criticism of the theory and practice of right and ``left'' opportunism.
The historical circumstances now are shaping in such a way that in a variety of non-socialist countries there is a realistic possibility to rally around the working class a broad-based coalition uniting the majority of the nation.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is making an important contribution to the development of the unity of the labour movement, to the establishment of fruitful contacts between the Communists and the Social-Democrats.
* * * jl
The history of the international labour movement is one of a tough struggle and an intensive search for ways leading to a new, socialist society---a struggle full of heroism and great sacrifices. This struggle witnessed its ups and downs, victories and defeats. Not all events in this history have been studied in equal detail. The main thing is clear, however. Mankind's economic, social and cultural progress achieved by the present time is inseparably linked with the evolution, ascension and growth of the working class and the mass movement it generated. The working-class struggle was and remains to this day the mainspring of both partial and radical social transformations and, hence, of mankind's advance towards a new, socialist society. The success of this struggle is directly dependent on the strength and organisation, the influence and ideological single-- mindedness of the political vanguard of the working class---the MarxistLeninist parties, and on their international unity.
This conclusion is all the more important since Marxism, as Lenin underscored, poses problems "not only in the sense of explaining the past but also in the sense of a bold forecast of the future and of bold practical action for its achievement".^^1^^
Every success, every victory of the working class "bring nearer the hour when all mankind will break the social and moral
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Karl Marx", Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 72.
3*
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36INTRODUCTION
VOLUME ONE
chains of the past and enter a new world, the world of communism".^^1^^
The historical path traversed by the international labour movement and its great achievements are the precious earnest of the role the international working-class movement has yet to play in the future.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE PROLETARIAT
AND ITS EVOLUTION AS A REVOLUTIONARY CLASS
„ \*t- I- Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Speeches and Articles, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 305.
The Editorial Board:
A. S. Chernyayev, Chief Editor,
A. A. Galkin, T. T. Timofeyev
M. A. Zaborov
Part One
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROLETARIAT INTO AN INDEPENDENT SOCIAL FORCE
Contributors:
A.'A. Galkin, D.Sc. (history), Head of the Team, Chapter 11
N. M. Meshcheryakova, Cand.Sc. (history), Chapter 1
M. A. Zaborov, D.Sc. (history), Chapters 2 and 3
Y. P. Mador, Cand.Sc. (history), Chapter 4
A. B. Reznikov, D.Sc. (history), Chapters 5, 7 and 9
(paragraph "The Proletariat and the Emancipation Struggle
of Oppressed Peoples") G. A. Bagaturia, Cand.Sc. (philosophy), Chapters 6 and 8
V. G. Mosolov, Chapter 6 V. S. Vygodsky, D.Sc. (economics), Chapter 8
/. A. Bach, D.Sc. (history), Chapter 9
N. Y. Kolpinsky, Cand.Sc. (history), Chapter 9
T. T. Timofeyev, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy
of Sciences, Chapter 10
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Chapter 1
THE ORIGINS OF THE PROLETARIAT.
THE INITIAL STAGE OF ITS EVOLUTION
AND LABOUR STRUGGLE
The economic system of bourgeois society formed historically OIE the basis of hand-operated technology inherited from the feudal economy and originally established itself in manufactories. It was precisely in that period that capitalist production came into being with its new form of exploitation and masses of its wage slaves came on the scene.
Investigation of the objective prerequisites for the formation of a class of wage workers and the structure of the proletariat in the nascent bourgeois society, however, sheds light only on a part of the problem. The other part is the question of the roots, essence and trends of the historical initiative, activity and gainful employment of the proletariat from the time of the origination of capitalist relations. The labour struggle in the manufactory epoch opens the initial period of the history of proletarian battles. Analysing the antagonisms of society, Marx put the interpretation of the motives for proletarian struggle on the soil of historical materialism. Examining the historical origins of the antagonisms between labour and capital, Marx accentuated the fact that it is precisely the worker who is the vehicleof progress in the mechanism of capitalist production. "The worker here ranks higher than the capitalist from the very outset," Marx says, and, what is particularly important, "the worker as its ( capitalist production---Author) victim rebels against it from the very outset and regards it as a process of his enslavement.''^^1^^
Identification of precisely how the worker rebels against capitalist oppression "from the very outset" of the bourgeois system is included as a natural component in the study of the formative stage of the proletariat, a class which becomes the leading force of social progress in the future.
~^^1^^ Archives of Marx and Engels, Vol. II (VII), p. 35.
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43The history of individual countries and regions in different chronological periods throws into relief on a worldwide historical scale the laws of the origin and early development, as well as the conditions and forms of the initial struggle waged by the nascent proletariat, without glossing over but, on the contrary, emphasising the specific features of the process distinctive of every society and state. The meaning of the problem is fully revealed by comparing its positive solution in the light of the only truly scientific, Marxist-Leninist theory with the interpretation of the same problem by adherents to the bourgeois historical conception. The latter examine the genesis of capitalism and all its characteristic phenomena, including the birth of the proletariat, with a view to whitewashing the history of the emergence of capitalist society. "Capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.''^^1^^ This accusation addressed by Marx to the bourgeoisie and its intellectual elite as far back as the 19th century evokes from them down to this day a permanent polemic---now covert, now overt---with the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of one of the main problems of world history. This polemic pursues an unambiguous goal: to whitewash the methods used to consolidate the bourgeois system, which doomed the great masses of the working population to misfortune and suffering, to justify and -embellish capitalism in particular by rectifying its early history.
THE ORIGINATION OF THE SYSTEM OF WAGE LABOUR
Wage labour existed under all antagonistic social systems but only in the last of them does its exploitation make the basis of society. "Without wage labour" Marx said, "there is no production of surplus value ... without production of surplus value there is no capitalist production, and hence no capital and no capitalist!''^^2^^. In an analysis of historical reality, however, it is not easy to draw a line of distinction between wage labour of the feudal epoch and capitalist wage labour. Not until the advent of wage labour in the system of capitalist relations and the criteria of the historical genesis of capitalism are identified can one answer the fundamental question as to when the worker exploited by the capitalist comes on the scene and the proletariat begins to take shape. Numerous discussions among Soviet and foreign historians attest to the difficulty of a concrete analysis of these problems.
The bourgeois order resting on the exploitation of wage labour by capital was born on the soil of disintegrating feudalism. In the bosom of the medieval system, already undermined but still predominant,
there arose wage labour which had immediately preceded the one that later became an organic component of the new, capitalist structure. In Western Europe the rudiments of capitalist relations appeared in the 14th and 15th centuries. Although wage labour had also been used in other periods of feudalism, nevertheless it was precisely in the above-mentioned centuries, in the final stage of precapitalist development, that it first became the indispensable substance of the unstable and irregular rudimentary capitalist relations which had just taken shape here and there. They appeared in individual localities and still existed wholly in a feudal environment, i.e., "alongside the earlier modes of production but undermining them gradually •everywhere....''^^1^^
Italy furnished the first examples of the origination of embryonic capitalist relations in the cities of Florence, Siena, Lucca, Bologna, «tc. It was not accidental that it was here that "the urban labour of the Middle Ages already constitutes a great advance and serves as a preparatory school for the capitalist mode of production, as regards the continuity and steadiness of labour"^^2^^. His analysis of the transformation of the handicraft industries in Italian cities allowed Marx to conclude that in that country "capitalistic production developed earliest".^^3^^ Incipient capitalist forms also existed sporadically in some Spanish cities, such as Barcelona, and in the Netherlands.
We know of a few handicraft shops which were founded on the early capitalist principles in England as well. It was in the 14th century that the Spring fullers of the then new industrial centre of Lavenham founded a fullery manned by hired workers. The names of some other employers who exploited wage workers have come down to us from that time: Abraham the tinner, the fullers Thomas Peacock, John Tame, Thomas Blanket. Enterprises based on the early capitalist principles were also founded in ship-building, the building trade, and other industries in England.
In the late 15th century 17-20 workers were hired in each of Lyons workshops (France), including some printshops. Even in the economically backward Austrian kingdom early capitalist relations began to develop in the mining industry of Tirol, Karnten, and Krajina in the 15th century. These processes were also characteristic of the German regions proper.
~^^1^^ See K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie (Rohentwurf) 1857-1858, Verlag fur fremdsprachige Literatur, Moskau, 1939, S. 410.
~^^2^^ Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, Part III, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 434.
~^^3^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 670;'see also K. Marx, Grundrisse... , op. cit., S. 410-11.
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 712.
~^^2^^ Archives of Marx and Engels, Vol. II (VII), p. 63.
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45The ``islets'' of capitalist relations in the European countries are strongly emphasised and their significance exaggerated by those Western historians who promulgate the conception of the "crisis of feudalism" in the 14th-15th centuries and ascribe the maturation of capitalism to the same period---a conception which was given wide currency in the fifties of this century. The factual material produced during the last few decades mostly by Marxist scientists conclusively disproves this theory. It shows that the "crisis of feudalism" and the emergence of the capitalist system cannot be found even in the economically developed societies of Western Europe of the 14th-15th centuries. Wage labour, which could really be encountered at that time, had not yet converted into a system. Hired workers made up a negligible proportion of the population and, what is most important, their position, as Marx wrote, was "well protected... by the independent peasant proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the town. In country and town master and workmen stood close together socially".^^1^^ This means that feudal relations, though eroded but still relatively stable, did not allow sale and purchase of labour power to assume a specifically capitalist character. This act had distinctive features as a result of the retention of the right of land ownership, the limited "social estate" character of capital in cities, etc. Even about the general system of economic relations in Britain in the 15th century Marx said categorically that they "excluded the possibility of capitalistic wealth",^^2^^ i.e., systematic and wide employment of wage labour.
The 16th century ushered in the capitalist era. It was precisely from this time that the long process of stabilisation and then victory of the capitalist system and the establishment of manufactory capitalism was in evidence in Europe, the birthplace of capitalism. In some countries of this large region, which stands out as the region of early genesis of capitalism, this process ran a steady course through the 16th-18th centuries, although with a varying degree of intensity (Britain, France) and different results (Britain, the Netherlands); in others, it ran a meandering course with periods of regression (Italy, Spain, partly the German states). For instance, the first sprouts of capitalist relations in the Italian cities withered almost completely during the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, and it was not before the latter half of the 18th century that the new structure began to gain ground again. The same indirect way of genesis of capitalism was to be seen in Spain. There the capitalist structure, which had shown a lively growth as early as the first half of the 16th century, began to decline from the second half of the 16th century, and not
until two centuries later did it show signs of revival. The rapid development of the elements of capitalist production in Germany until the mid-16th century led eventually to an early bourgeois revolution, but its defeat resulted in the country's economic impoverishment, the revival and consolidation of the traditional economic forms. Capitalist enterprise, which had been stifled in the German lands] for two centuries, resuscitated in the 18th century, more definitely towards its end and in the early 19th century. In monarchic Austria the decay of feudalism and the genesis of capitalism, which had begun in the 16th century, lasted up to the first half of the 19th century.
The territories of Europe beyond the Elbe followed the pattern of late development of capitalism. From the mid-17th century, in conditions of the genesis and growth of manufactory capitalism in the advanced countries of Western Europe (and partly in connection with these processes on a worldwide scale) the greater part of the German lands (Schleswig-Holstein, Meklenburg, Pomerania, Prussia), the eastern provinces of the Austrian monarchy (including Czechia, Galicia, Silesia, and Hungary), Poland and Russia experienced a period of neo-feudal reaction. This did not rule out sporadic emergence of capitalist relations in some industries and in individual regions of Central and Eastern Europe throughout the 16 th18th centuries. Even in Russia, where serfdom had "assumed the crudest forms",^^1^^ foci of capitalist relations appeared from time to time in these centuries, although they were unstable until the 1760s and died down at one place to flare up at another. In Poland capitalist enterprise became noticeable only in the late 18th century. The countries of South-East Europe (Serbia, Bulgaria, etc.), which had long been under the yoke of Turkish feudals, took the capitalist road just as belatedly. In Scandinavia the capitalist structure began to shape from the latter half of the 17th century in Sweden and, a century later, in Denmark. In what is now the United States the economic system in the colonial period (the 17th and especially the 18th century) was characterised by capitalist enterprise in rudimentary form. The first bourgeois revolution and the proclamation of independence greatly eased the conditions for successful capitalist enterprise.
The ways of the genesis of capitalism referred to above in general outline in different regions and countries are very essential for understanding the process of maturing and widening the system of wage labour. The universal character of commodity production under capitalism implies the conversion of labour into wage labour and manpower into a commodity. The 16th century opened the epoch when the
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 689.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 672.
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The State", Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 476.
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47system of wage labour and the proletariat actually came into being It lasted until the final stage in the genesis of capitalism---the industrial revolution.
The prerequisite for the system of wage labour---the stem of the genesis of capitalism---was what is known as primary accumulation of capital. It was mainly rooted in the separation of the producer in precapitalist society (i.e., the peasant and the craftsman who had1 acquired personal freedom) from the means of production. The result was such polarisation of the commodity market that made possible the birth of capital as a social relation. The process of "primary accumulation" created the antipodes: the owner of the means of production and the means of subsistence---money, on the one hand, and the owner of only one commodity---labour power, personally free and deprived of the means of production, on the other.
Emphasising repeatedly the diversity of the methods of "primary accumulation" and the identity of their content, Marx summed up thesocial result of this fact in the metaphor: "the servitude of the labourer".^^1^^ The latter meant, in the first place, the brutal exploitation of workers in town and country in precapitalist society in no matter how many different ways and, second, the plight of the expropriated masses of people dumped onto the labour market "as free and ' unattached' proletarians",^^2^^ as Marx put it. Logically separated, these processes in real life coincided in time. Let us examine the first of them.
In Britain "primary accumulation" was launched on an immensescale by coercive methods in the late 15th century. It proceeded violently during three centuries, and the concept of "agrarian revolution" can be fully applied to that country alone. The notorious enclosures of the lands of personally free peasants, the agrarian laws of the presbyterian parliament enacted during the civil war of the mid-17th century and other acts of coercion secured the ``liberation'' of the bulk of the working people from property. "Primary accumulation'* went on there simultaneously in another way as well when the expropriation of peasants and craftsmen was performed by the protracted and distressing operation of purely economic laws immanent in small-scale commodity production; as is known, the latter itself "brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution".^^3^^ In other words, the working population was deprived of the means of production as a result of the differentiation of the stratum of small producers, pauperisation and, finally, the complete expropriation of a definite part of the free toilers of the English countryside, as well as the craftsmen in towns. This was facilitated by the interfer-r
ence of merchant and loan capital. In addition, the process was spurred on by a system of taxes and government debt, protectionism and other levers of "primary accumulation''.
Sixteenth-century English writers describe, forlnstance, the plight of the impoverished tin miners of Cornwall gradually losing their economic independence. Information on the proletarisation of the formerly independent craftsmen of Essex, Worcester and many other counties can be found in petitions of poor people to the royal government.^^1^^
Primarily as a result of coercive methods of "primary accumulation", as well as differentiation according to the property status the labour market in England widened enormously over the period. As evidenced by Gregory King, an English statistician of the late17th century, destitute paupers and their families accounted at that time for one-fourth to one-half of the country's population of 5.5 million.^^2^^
At the turn of the 16th century the same process of expropriation took place in the Netherlands, although it was not as active and radical as in England and was the result primarily of differentiation. Already in the early 16th century 18 to 36 per cent of the population in individual villages were paupers. The differentiation and then expropriation of craftsmen in the Dutch cities took a more rapid course. The external sign of these processes was the decline of the guild organisation and the mass impoverishment of its members. Just as in Britain, an important lever of "primary accumulation" which largely contributed to the pauperisation of small commodity producers was taxation, especially in the cities---a system of exciseduties intended to pay off government loans and interest.
In France "primary accumulation" became a conspicuous phenomenon of the social reality in the 16th century. It was slow and passive in virtue of the specific conditions of economic development, but here too part of the free peasants were dispossessed of their land and joined the ranks of the proletariat. This occurred as a result of the differentiation of the peasantry and under the pressure of the feudalised urban bourgeoisie who appropriated peasant land holdings. Themasses in the countryside and in towns became impoverished and proletarianised under the burden of enormous state taxes and the leasehold system.
The expropriation of peasants in Spain was largely connected with the activities of Mestas, an organisation of rich feudal cattle-breed-
••~^^1^^ The Victoria History: of the County of Cornwall, Vol. 1, London, 1906, p. 558; Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series, 1637, London, 1868, p. 64; The Victoria History of .the County of Suffolk, Vol. II, London, 1907, pp. 26, 258; The Victoria. History of the County of Worcester:, Vol. II, London,' 1906, p. 293.
a Gregory King, Two Tracts, Baltimore, The John Hopkins Press, 1936, p. 39-
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 669.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 669.
n Ibid., p. 714. -
,. \,.-,
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49ers. Ruining the crop farmers, Mestas stepped up its activity in -seizing peasant lands in the late 15th century when the royal government legislatively enforced Mestas' rights to widen pastures at the expense of peasant arable land. There was an exodus of destitute peasants from the villages. Simultaneously the process of ruination of small artisans was in evidence in the cities. The masses languishing under the heel of money-lenders and the extremely burdensome tax system of Spanish absolutism underwent proletarianisation.
In Italy where the peasants in the greater part of its territory had freed themselves of feudal bondage at a relatively early time, earlier than in the rest of Europe, there began the expropriation of peasants who had not yet consolidated their title to land. The specific •conditions of feudal reaction and Italy's economic stagnation checked the trend towards the consolidation of capitalist relations. The process of "primary accumulation" again intensified in the 18th •century. It was expressed in an allout offensive of signers on the peasant common lands and administrative organisation of village communes. Enclosures of private landed estates became a veritable •calamity for the peasants. In the Papal State almost one-sixth of the population was pauperised and lived on charity.
In the German states the process of "primary accumulation" substantially affected the peasants and the mass of the craftsmen as early as the late 15th century. It developed vigorously in a situation of growing production for the market throughout the first half of the 16th century, particularly in the areas of cattle-breeding, winegrowing and industrial crops. Impoverished peasants often left their native places for good. The expropriation in the cities proceeded against the background of the disintegration of guilds and growing differentiation within them. The same process went on in the mining industry---differentiation within miners' associations and proletarianisation of part of their membership.
In the Ost-Elbe lands of Germany, as well as in other countries of •Central and Eastern Europe the "second feudal enslavement of peasants" meant not only the preservation of the traditional landlord-serfdom system, but also its triumph in forms most oppressive for the peasants. Such was the prevailing tendency in this region although it was concurrent with a slow, hidden process of a different order, namely, the partial, incomplete expropriation of peasants and the •appearance of wage labour in a number of districts in some fields •of the economy. The yoke of serfdom of the mass of the peasantry both in the agricultural production of fiefs and in forced labour manufactories made "primary accumulation" almost impossible. The .gradual liberation of peasants from feudal bondage accompanied by their partial or complete dispossession of land began east of the Elbe AS late as the end of the 18th century.
The periods, rates, methods and specifics of this process in different countries of this region are the subject of discussions. In Poland it must have begun in the late 18th century when the differentiation of the peasantry resulted in the expropriation of a large proportion of it: in Rzecz Pospolita (except the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) at that time 16 per cent of the peasants were already landless and about 33 per cent, land-hungry; in Little Poland landless and land-hungry peasants accounted for 87 per cent and in Great Poland, for 61 per cent. In Czechia in the late 18th century (1780) there were more than 400,000 landless and land-hungry peasants, and in 1840 there were 700,000 agricultural workers with their own land holdings, the total population being 4 million. In Moravia in the 1830s the number of landless peasants dispossessed by enclosures was 132,492, and that of farm hands, 155,000. In Russia it was not until the 19th century that "primary accumulation" became a more or less continuous, if only slow, process whose main distinction was the retention of certain means of production in the hands of peasants subject to metayage.
On the whole, the region under review was characterised by yet another distinction: the emancipation of peasant serfs---a sine qua non of "primary accumulation"---was effected here by higher authority, by means of legislative reforms in the late 18th and the 19th century: the peasants were emancipated in some parts of the Austrian monarchy---Czechia, Krajuna, Moravia, Galicia (in 1781); in Denmark (in 1788); in individual German lands---Baden (1793), Westphalia (1807), Prussia (1807-1811); in Austria, Hungary (1848); in Russia (1861), in Rumania (1864). After the abolition of serfdom by this undemocratic method the peasantry was doomed to undergo the agonising process of slow abolition of feudal relations in the countryside and the development of capitalism after the Prussian fashion (dearth of land for the peasants, enslaving terms of leasehold, a system of workoffs on landlords' farms and other semi-feudal forms of exploitation), entailing the ruin, impoverishment, complete or partial expropriation of the mass of the peasantry.
In the countries of South-East Europe "primary accumulation" was impeded by the feudal system of the Ottoman Empire. The most intensive period of expropriation of the peasants and craftsmen in Bulgaria was the last two decades of the 19th century. Here and in the neighbouring Balkan countries the process of "primary accumulation" was speeded up by the abolition of the Turkish feudal regime. In Serbia this expropriation was incomplete, failing to lead to the final eviction of peasants from the land and occurring mostly by way of differentiation according to the property status. A similar process was characteristic of the craftsmen's guilds in Bulgarian towns (where differentiation in the stratum of craftsmen had begun already under the Turkish rule).
4-0715
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51The distinctions of "primary accumulation" in Britain's American colonies were largely determined by the fact that they were within the economic orbit of the metropolitan country and under the powerful influence of its socio-economic development. If this factor is overlooked, much will seem inexplicable in the emergence of American capitalism in the colonial period. Whereas in Europe the essence of "primary accumulation" was the deprivation of the producer of the means of production, in America, according to the hypothesis suggested by Soviet historians, this process was distinctive in that the ruling quarters sought to prevent the conversion of colonists, dispossessed in their homelands (Britain or other countries of the Continent), into landowners. These immigrants were mostly socalled servants. According to the US historian A. E. Smith, in 17th-century colonial America with its legends of "free and easy" access to the land, only just over 4 per cent of the total number of immigrating servants actually staked out a claim to a land plot.^^1^^
Another distinction in the economic development of Britain's American colonies, which affected the process of "primary accumulation" was the broad exploitation of black slaves (along with "White slaves"---servants), which, as Marx said, "precludes free wage-- labour".^^2^^ Plantation slavery---"a second edition of slavery"---was a revival of the slave-owners' methods of exploitation in conditions of "primary accumulation" and the genesis of capitalism.
Thus, as it follows from the foregoing, the working population was expropriated by a variety of ways and means in chronological periods differing from region to region and from country to country. For all that, on a worldwide scale the development of this process in the advanced societies of Europe in the 16th-18th centuries may be described as fundamental. The expropriation of the people "is written in the annals of mankind in the letters of blood and fire" (Marx).3 Many pages in these chronicles are well explained by contemporaries of those events---authors of most diverse ideological affiliations. Thomas More wrote of the tragedy of peasants: "Away they trudge... out of their known and accustomed houses...''^^4^^ Jean de La Bruyere, a bold critic of the vices of his age, recreated a scene of the excruciating indigence of 17th-century French peasants, "sallow-faced, sunscorched", stooped over the land, supporting their lives with rye bread,.
water, and edible roots.^^1^^ The Spanish economist Luis Ortiz described in his treatise facts of the disastrous impact of the state fiscal policy on the masses in the 16th century. Peasants ruined by the burden of heavy taxes weighing on "the shoulders of the poor" abandoned the land and craftsmen deprived of their economic independence also turned proletarian.^^2^^ Contemporaries compared the life of Tuscany peasants in the 18th century to that of animals, while the Italian Enlightener Pietro Verri described the fate of the pauperised peasants of Lombardy as follows: "The wretched peasant, bare-footed, in rags, with nothing but bread of rye and millet to eat ... his bed is a litter of straw, his home an ugly hovel, his life misery and his work drudgery...''^^3^^ S. Tesedik, a progressive Slovak economist, described in 1784 the results of the property differentiation in the villages, the appearance of rich peasants, whom he called ``vampires'': "Vampires and despots are to be found among the peasants as well; influential and well-to-do peasants seek to appropriate all privileges and profits and to impose all obligations and burdens on the poorest part of the population....''^^4^^ Contemporaries with a keen sense of social justice, while failing to comprehend the essence of the expropriation of the masses they witnessed, did not, nevertheless, overlook the characteristic events of their time and described in their numerous works the hard lot of the peasants and craftsmen who had lost their former material basis.
The second of the logically separate stages of "wage slavery" in the process of "primary accumulation" was connected with the further destinies of the expropriated when they, torn out of their habitual conditions of work and life, often found themselves en masse out of work and without any means of subsistence. Naturally, not infrequently a toiler of precapitalist society immediately turned into a wage worker. As evidenced by a 16th-century author, an English miner was often over head and ears in debt to the money-lender and, being veritably in his net, preferred to work for hire. The ruined craftsmen of an English town accurately defined the simple change of their economic status: they had been small masters, now they became work-
~^^1^^ Les caracteres ou les moeurs de ce siecle par La Bryere, Paris, Charpentier Librairie-editeur, 1853, pp. 290-291.
~^^2^^ See E. E. Litavrina, "A Memorial by the Spanish Economist Luis Ortiz and Protectionist Ideas Originated in Spain in the 16th Century".---In: Sredniye veka, Issue XIX, Moscow, 1961, p. 144 (in Russian).
~^^3^^ Cesare Spellanzon, Storia del Risorgimento e delVunita d'ltalia, Vol. I, Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1933, p. 22.
~^^4^^ Quoted from: A. I. Ozolin, I. I. Udaltsov, A. M. Kharkova, "The Disintegration of the Feudal-Serfdom System and the Development of Capitalist Relations in Agriculture in the Czech and Slovak Lands in the Late 18th and the Early 19th Century", The History of Czechoslovakia, Vol. I, Moscow, 1956, pp. 321-22 (in Russian).
A*
~^^1^^ Abbot Emerson Smith, "The Indentured Servant and Land Speculation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland." In: The American Historical Review, April 1935, Vol. XL, No. 3, p. 470.
~^^2^^ See Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, Part II, Progress Publishers,. Moscow, 1975, p. 303.
» Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 669.
~^^4^^ Thomas More, The Utopia, D. van Nostrand Company, Inc., Princeton, New York, 1947, p. 34.
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53ers themselves.^^1^^ In the London bakers' company completely impoverished masters immediately became hired workers for its rich masters. In the latter half of the 16th century many French printshop craftsmen were ruined and hired as wage workers by printshop owners. Similar evidence is found in materials on the history of Sweden and a very different part of Europe---the Austrian provinces of Croatia and Slavonia.
On the whole, however, the capitalist forms of production did not emerge and widen as rapidly as the process of expropriation. In other words, proletarians dumped onto the labour market were absorbed by the emerging manufactory by no means as fast as they appeared. The capacious labour market formed as a result of "primary accumulation", therefore, was simply a potential market.
Many other causes were also responsible for the slow growth of capitalist relations for all the opportunities dormant in the immensely increased labour market. Not the least of them was the sum of free capital often too modest in the period under review, the need for experience and specialised skills in handling manual tools still prevailing---qualities often lacking in new proletarians, and the inability of peasants and craftsmen immediately to adapt themselves to new conditions of existence and their unwillingness to submit to the new discipline of labour.
By virtue of the above-mentioned objective and subjective reasons, "in most cases from stress of circumstances",^^2^^ Marx said, the expropriated existed for long periods as outlawed beggars, vagrants, homeless persons with no settled abode or livelihood. Vagrancy in Europe---this veritable social disaster---has become a "general and permanent appearance".^^3^^ In Britain the enactment of the act on the poor in 1601 meant in effect official consent to the results of the expropriation, although it was tacit consent, because as the wellknown English radical William CobbBtt commented, the authors of this act were ashamed of stating its motives publicly and hence it was published without any preamble contrary to all customs.^^4^^ In France similar acts on the poor also acknowledged the existence of an enormous number of "mendicant beggars". In the mid-17th century the homeless in Paris even set up their own community known as the "kingdom of vagrants". In Brittany's capital city of Rennes there were a few thousand paupers in the mid-18th century. They hailed not
only from the villages and towns of Brittany itself but also from Normandy and Maine. In the Netherlands and Spain the problem of vagrancy also arose in its full magnitude, as was evidenced by the laws on the poor enacted there.
Eyewitnesses were astounded by the mass of "idle rabble" in Europe in the 16th-18th centuries. "For this is sure---that in nocountry of Christendom, for the number of people, you shall find so many beggars as be here in England,"^^1^^ a 16th-century English author remarked bitterly. In the Netherlands pauperism became so widespread that the authorities of the cities of Leiden, Amsterdam, and Hondshoot issued special badges to ``idle'' poor people which entitled them to ask for alms. Vagrancy and beggary were the seamy side of "primary accumulation" in Germany as well. The above-quoted Spanish economist Ortiz complained that the cities of Toledo, Burgos, and Valladolid swarmed with poor people who had fled their villages and were out of work.
Vagrancy, which worried the propertied classes so much as a factor disturbing the atmosphere and a source of unrest, called to life a series of statutory acts, which Marx described as "bloody legislation".^^2^^ This legislation not only admitted in effect the existence of pauperism but also officially described the expropriated toilers as idle vagrants. It ruthlessly punished unfortunate proletarians for idleness, declaring it hypocritically to be the cause of all misfortunes of paupers. In England in the 16th-18th centuries dozens of statutes were enacted, which constituted in toto a complete system of assessing "criminal offences" of the poor and a corresponding scale of penalties, including capital punishment, slavery, flogging in public, branding and many other methods of punishment. In the 17th-18th centuries the colonial authorities in America sought to imitate the laws of England against vagrant, idle and dissolute persons (a Virginia act of 1672; the resolution of the legislature of Rhode Island in 1750 to introduce into the colony all the British statutes "related to the poor and relating to masters and their apprentices, so far as they are applicable in this colony"^^3^^). Similar laws began to be passed in France from the 1540s. The later legislative acts of 1551, 1553, 1555, 1558, etc. contained threats and prescribed cruel penalties: flogging, imprisonment, galley slavery, capital punishment. The ordinance of 1777 prescribed hard labour for any able-bodied pauper of 16 to 60 years of age. In addition to statutory laws, city authorities issued injunctions against "vagrants
~^^1^^ Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue Between Reginald Pole & Thomas Lupset, Chatto & Windus, London, 1948, p. 89.
~^^2^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 686.
~^^3^^ Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, Columbia University Press, New York, 1947, p. 6.
* Quoted from: SPD, 1637, p. 64.
* Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 686.
~^^8^^ Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p. 69.
* William Cobbett, Histotre de la ``RSforme'' protestante, en Angleterre et en Irlande, Louvain, Chez Vanlinthout et Vandenzande, 1826, p. 576.
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55and beggars". A decree passed in Lyons in 1561 ordered all beggars and vagrants to leave the city on pain of death by hanging summarily. Cruel penalties against ``idle'' poor people were also prescribed by the statutory laws in the Netherlands in the 16th century, and later by the national laws and ``proclamations'' of city magistratures of 17th-century Holland, a model capitalist state. In Sweden in the 17th century a pauper who did not work for hire was penalised as a ``vagrant''.
The plight of the masses attending "primary accumulation" is what makes the ``mystery'' of the prehistory of capitalism. Bourgeois science is loath to unravel this ``mystery'', because this would mean recognition of what was by no means the immaculate conception of the capitalist society and its main classes---the wage workers and the capitalist expropriators. To explain the origins of these antagonistic classes, bourgeois historiography has evolved hundreds of theories, all of which, however, ignore the main fact necessary for a correct understanding of this process---the expropriation of the people. In the last two decades the scientific interpretation of the historical prerequisites for the emergence of the proletariat have been opposed perhaps in the most outspoken and primitive manner by the American economic historian and sociologist F. A. Hayek. He vehemently attacked the Marxist-Leninist conception of this problem as a myth of expropriation, alleging that the latter term "is especially misleading when, as is often the case, it is connected with the idea of the rise of the propertyless proletariat, which by some devious process have been deprived of their rightful ownership of the tools for their work." Instead he proposed a Malthusian interpretation of the origins of the proletariat, which "was an additional population", while "the horrors of early capitalism" experienced by the masses are a legend based on "the opinions of some of the contemporaries" which are "indeed the main sources of the present beliefs". Hayek did not attempt to substantiate his arguments let alone support them with documentary evidence.^^1^^
Wage slavery which predetermined the development of capitalist relations served as the starting point of development that led eventually to the enslavement of the expropriated toiler. What methods were used to subjugate destitute people to the new form of exploitation?
;te^In what way were outlawed paupers turning into wage workers? How was the system of wage labour taking shape?
In the aforesaid we have pointed out one of such ways---"a simple change of form". The commodity producer deprived of his economic
independence immediately came under the yoke of capitalist exploitation as a wage worker. In the rural areas the "simple change of form" amounted to the direct substitution of capitalist for feudal exploitation. The ways of subjugating the impoverished village or city craftsmen to the capitalist land speculator were well described by Marx and Lenin. That was a gradual transformation of formerly independent small masters into economically dependent workers. Outwardly, the capitalist relations between the worker and the employer took the form of contractual terms: on the pay rates, the quantity of produce, the deadlines for delivery, etc. This method of enslavement of labour by capital may also be listed under the "simple change of form''.
In addition to the "simple change of form", there was a widespread system of forming a capitalist relation between the seller of labour power and the owner of capital through various contracts on the ``free'' market concluded not immediately after the expropriation but after some time. In 16th-century France, for instance, a worker's employment by a printshop owner was usually written down in a contract stipulating the work time (1 to 3 years, as a rule) and pay, which was partly in cash and partly in kind (meals). In England the population of some counties knew well on which days contracts between workers and employers were concluded on the local market: In Rufford (Nottinghamshire) these days were October 16 and 26 of each year; Watlington (Oxfordshire) such contracts were made at the autumn fair late in September. Interesting information on labour contracts is to be found in documents on the history of Croatia and Slavonia of the late 18th century. The wily and successful tannery owner Zarija Stojanovic regularly entered the terms of such contracts into his ledger. In Poland's manufactories free workers were also engaged on a contract. It was concluded for a long period and virtually assigned the hired worker to the manufactory. In Russia in the second quarter of the 19th century "free men" from among landlords' or state peasants on quitrent or exiles seeking jobs at gold mines in Siberia and the Urals concluded contracts directly with the management. Peasants were recruited by brokers to work by contract on government ship convoys, on grain carriers and other river craft. Violations of contractual obligations were subject to investigation by local authorities (in England, for instance, at quarterly hearings of justices of the peace). In the American colonies, where an acute manpower shortage always existed, there were widespread practices of entangling the workers with various gratuities, small tips, and special terms to tie the worker to the employer (the so-called ``kick-back'' system), so that the hired worker was unable to leave his master upon the expiry of the labour contract.^^1^^ The
^^1^^ Richard B Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, p. 214.
~^^1^^ F. A. Hayek, "History and Politics".---In: Capitalism and the Historians, Ed. by F. A. Hayek, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1954, pp. 10, 15, 16.
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57workers in 17th-century Sweden were bound by the labour contract, since they did not dare to leave their jobs as long as they received their wages, i.e., as long as this was profitable to their employer. In Russia the law of 1835 specifically emphasised that hired workers were forbidden to leave their jobs until the expiry of the contract. As pointed out above, the expropriated peasants and craftsmen could not quickly adapt themselves to the new conditions of work and life. They were unwilling to submit to the new labour discipline and, hence, often preferred to be vagrants. Arguing against bourgeois theoreticians, Marx wrote ironically that great labours had to be exerted to provide the conditions for the free operation of the "eternal laws of Nature" of capitalism extolled by apologetical science. For this it was necessary not only to deprive the producers of the tools for their work but also "to transform, at one pole, the social means of production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite pole, the mass of the population into wage-labourers, into 'free labouring poor', that artificial product of modern society".1 In the epoch of the establishment of the system of wage labour one more way of forming capitalist relations assumed great importance. Here the factor of non-economic coercion---a powerful tool for creating the new mode of production---was brought into full play. Whereas the first two ways of those pointed out above were based on a ``voluntary'' contract eventually characteristic, as Lenin underscored, of ``ideal'', i.e., developed capitalism, the last way was based on violence, on direct coercion. In Lenin's metaphor, noneconomic coercion is the "discipline of the bludgeon", whereas the ``voluntary'' contract principle of forming the "mutual relationship" between worker and master implies the "discipline of hunger".^^2^^
When the capitalist structure was in the process of formation, consolidation and expansion, still existing wholly in the atmosphere of feudalism (the Netherlands, England, France, and other countries before the bourgeois revolutions) or even when it was winning and manufactory capitalism was gradually turning into the predominant mode of production (the Netherlands and England after the bourgeois revolutions), the mechanism of subjugation of labour to capital worked not only in consequence of the effect of the "dull compulsion of economic relations" (Marx)^^3^^, but also due to direct coercion. The emergent or newly formed relations of production could function only with the aid of an additional lever---coercion.
The non-economic coercion inherited from feudalism in the epoch of "primary accumulation" and early capitalism was applied by the
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 711.
~^^2^^ See V. I. Lenin, "Agrarian Question in Russia", Collected Works, Vol. 15, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1963, p. 84; Vol. 29, p. 419.
~^^3^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 689.
state. State power legislatively established the ``normal'' dependenceof labour on capital and realisation of this ``norm'', i.e., extraction of surplus value by the emerging bourgeoisie. The statutes against the expropriated, in addition to the refined and detailed system of punishment of paupers for their ``addiction'' to vagrancy and ``idleness'', also expressed the ``concern'' of the state for forcing the ``idle'' population to work, although no conditions for it as yet existed. English legislation is most typical in this respect. At the very outset of the mass expropriation in England the law of 1495 was adopted, which started a series of brutal and at the same time hypocritical acts. It proclaimed the duty of paupers to work, gave vaguely worded advice to local authorities to help poor people find work, to teach working skills to their children. The statute on apprentices enacted in 1562 enjoined paupers and especially their children to undergo apprenticeship, i.e., in fact, to work for hire, because apprenticeship at that time was nothing but a camouflaged form of, capitalist exploitation.
After the bourgeois revolution of the mid-17th century the English parliament started to encourage new methods of coercive policy. Among them one should mention in the first place the establishment of work houses prescribed by the law. Although bourgeois researchers go out of their way to accentuate the ``charitable'' role of work houses, in reality they were primarily a means of compulsory involvement of paupers into the orbit of new exploitation, a peculiar form of capitalistically organised enterprises.
In the arsenal of means of non-economic coercion to work in the new capitalist conditions of England the law on settlement of 1662 was applied on the widest scale. It required local authorities to secure the settlement of paupers. It tied, in effect, poor people to parishes and thereby served the interests of the entrepreneurs who needed a guaranteed supply of manpower. Local authorities sent at their discretion some paupers either to apprenticeship or to work for hire, others to work houses, still others to reformatories and jails.
The situation in the country created by legislation on the poor oppressed by the arbitrary rule of justices of the peace and entangled in a net of injunctions, cavils, and coercive acts fully dovetailed with the picture of the non-economic coercion of the people by a variety of methods that Lenin described at a later date.^^1^^
Legislation on compulsory employment was also enacted in other European countries, although only in England was it developed into a detailed system. In France work houses also began to be opened from the mid-16th century. They became widespread in the Nether-
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, ``Famine'', Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 528
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59lands as well. Here forcible attachment of children from city orphanages to manufactories on a contract became common practice. In France concern for this was also shown by Colbert, who prescribed inspectors of ``royal'' manufactories in 1680 and later to compile lists of children of poor families (from the age of 10 years) so as to put them to work. The policy of the French state in general was intended to ``chain'' the workers to the manufactories. In Spain in the first half of the 16th century the authorities also attempted to turn vagrants and beggars into wage labour. In 1551 the Cortes of Castilla submitted a petition proposing that an official be appointed to each community with more than 1,000 residents to detain all vagrants and force them to work in industry. Forcible assignment of labour to capitalist enterprises was also practised in Sweden in the 17th-18th centuries. In Prussia, as well as in France, it was a matter of routine to hand over to enterprises convicted vagrants who were thereby turned into workers. We know of cases of instituting " spinning schools" for the poor in America of the colonial period (for instance, in Boston in 1769). In Austria, Prussia and a number of other countries in the 18th century various ``schools'', asylums, orphanages supplied entrepreneurs with manpower almost free under the guise of sending children into apprenticeship. In Hungary the law on the poor of 1775 provided for the establishment of special workshops to which beggars were confined forcibly. In 1780 about 20,000 poor people were ``employed'' in this manner. In the late 18th century handicraft workshops were set up in the guise of orphanages. From the end of the 18th century capitalist enterprises made wide use of compulsory labour of beggars and orphans in Poland as well. In 1768 a fulling mill in Warsaw used forced labour of orphans and inmates of reformatories. The Krakow charitable society supplied beggars to a fulling mill in the city. In Warsaw and Zelenki 300 orphans worked at the manufactory of the merchant entrepreneur Paschalis, and 200 beggars at Regon's manufactory in Warsaw. There is no need to elaborate on the theme of the complete, unchallenged operation of non-economic coercion in these and other countries where coercion to labour was a matter of course not only in the period of serfdom but also after its abolition.
Which of the ways of forming capitalist relations was the most widespread in historical reality? In each concrete period each country used this or that way to a different extent, depending on many circumstances. It can be stated quite definitely, however, that noneconomic coercion had a fairly significant role to play everywhere.
In this way complicated processes superimposed one upon another in real life ("primary accumulation", expansion of the labour market at the expense of the expropriated, outlawed proletarians and, finally, their subordination to the new, capitalist exploitation) led
•to the establishment of a system of wage labour as the basis for the growth and consolidation of capitalist production.
What does modern bourgeois thought oppose to the MarxistLeninist conception of the origin of the proletariat? Besides scholars of the Hayek type acting in this field as dilettantes, there is a large group of researchers studying the concrete socio-economic problems of the genesis of capitalism. The main and most typical interpretation they give of the origins of wage labour and the proletariat boils down to the idea of the division of labour. True, different economic historians imply by this either the differentiation of the labour functions in the sphere of handicraft production in the late stage of feudalism or the demarcation between commercial and production functions. In either case, however, the main idea is that in the course of the "natural division of labour" there emerged ``employers'', who assumed the functions of production management. The lot that fell to the main mass of the toilers was to carry on an activity to which they were best adapted, i.e., manual work. In consequence of peaceful evolution the "control of industry was vested in the hands of the employers of labour who stood outside the ranks of the manual craftsmen".^^1^^ This lop-sided conception completely ignores the objective composite historical processes discussed above. It abstracts itself from the main thing---the expropriation of the masses, the relations in the sphere of property. It may be said that the ideological basis for solving this problem by modern bourgeois science has not become stronger compared to the 19th-century conceptions criticised by Marx.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EMERGING PROLETARIAT
The system of wage labour implies the existence of a relatively large number of workers exploited capitalistically at enterprises of various kinds. Industrial establishments of a large size for that time played an economically decisive role in England in the 16 th17th centuries: in the fulling industry which produced for the home and foreign markets; in mining and metal-working, where large investments were required; in ship-building, in the glass-blowing industry and paper manufacture, as well as in many industries connected with foreign markets. They were less noticeable in the traditional crafts which produced for the local market (shoe-makers,
~^^1^^ E. Lipson, A Short History of Wool and Its Manufacture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1953, p. 69; The Economic History of England, Vol. II, London, 1943, p. 4. For an analysis of similar views see N. M. Meshcheryakova, "The Formation of the Proletariat as Described by K. Marx and His Modern Bourgeois `Critics'".---In: Moscow University Bulletin. History, 1968, No. 3, pp. 26-39 (in Russian).
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61hatters, glove-makers, etc.). Large fulleries employed hundreds of workers. The capitalistically organised manufactory of Briggs and Robinson in the coal-mining industry of Yorkshire employed 500 workers. The capitalist Spillman, a successful paper manufacturer, exploited 600 hired workers and Mansell in the glass-blowing industry, up to 4,000. Of course, such a large number of workers in one enterprise was a rare exception at that time. The number of enterprises which employed thousands of workers had considerably grown in England by the mid-18th century. A total of 1,500 weavers manned the looms of one large silk manufacturer, who had subsidiaries in London, Dorset, Cheshire, and Gloucestershire. Up to 3,275 workers were concentrated in the dockyards of Kent alone. In the coal industry centre of Newcastle there were up to 40,000 miners, dockers, and other workers. In prosperous Lancashire there were at least 30,000 workers concentrated in the cotton mills. Up to 10,000 workers were employed in the ceramic industry of Staffordshire and about 45,000 in the metal-working plants of growing Birmingham.
Taking a look at the countries of continental Europe, the picture of the prevalence of wage labour may be illustrated with the following data. A large printshop in 16th-century Antwerp employed up to 100 workers. The textile mills of Amsterdam had hundreds of workers, just as in England. In Utrecht one silk-weaving mill employed 500 workers. The total number of workers in the young bourgeois republic of Holland reached half a million.
The textile mills, cannon works and arsenals of France exploited hundreds of workers in the 16th-17th centuries. In the Lyons printshops of the mid-16th century the number of hired workers was about 1,500. The silk-weaving mills in Lyons employed 12,000 workers, in Tours, 40,000. In the mid-18th century more than 5,000 textile workers were engaged in the linen factories of Rennes, Brittany.
In Spain in the first half of the 16th century a capitalist owning a fullery exploited 200-300 workers. In the late 18th century 300,000- workers were employed in the country's manufactories. A similar picture was observed in 18th-century Italy. In the silk crafts of Piedmont 7,108 workers were engaged in the first half of the century and 16,143 in the second half. Individual silk-mills had 70-120 employees. In Milan one entrepreneur in the wool industry employed 2,500 workers, but ordinary mills had 300-400 workers. In the porcelain industry near Florence some capitalists engaged a few hundred workers. In the first half of the 18th century the city industries of Sweden employed about 11,000 hired workers (from 15 years of age).
In America of the colonial period the biggest iron works had more than 100 workers. An interesting document has survived: records kept by a capitalist organising a foundry: to smelt 500 tons of iron
he had to hire 144 workers of different trades. In 1775 a cotton manufactory in Philadelphia employed 400 women.
A similar situation prevailed in the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century in the European countries of the late genesis of capitalism. In Czechia thousands of workers laboured in textile manufactories. Between 1785 and 1788 the number of weavers in the flax industry rose from 54,894 to 71,979 and that of spinners, from 180,066 to 234,000. In the late 18th century 200 hired workers laboured in Leitenberger's manufactory in Prague alone. Chorgot's manufactory in Prague exploited 140 workers, and Steirer's, 300. In Hungary there were quite a few large manufactories in the second quarter of the 19th century. For instance, the manufactory in Mosonmagyarovar had more than 3,300 workers. In Poland, the well-known manufactory of Dangel in Warsaw employed 300 workers. In Wroclaw there were 22,500 manufactory workers in 1792. In Lodz the cotton manufactories had a total of 11,500 workers in 1830.
In Russia, in the last three to four decades of the 18th century, when the capitalist structure had begun to take shape, the number •of hired workers in the spinning mills alone increased from 45,000 to 110,000. The total of hired workers in the late 18th century was roughly equal to 500,000. True, most of them were peasants employed in industry as seasonal workers. The development of the capitalist manufactories based on wage labour led to the ouster of manufactories using compulsory serf labour. From the late 18th century this process became irreversible. The cotton industry was a typical •capitalist business. In 1804 it exploited 8,100 workers, in 1820, 36,000, hired workers accounting for 85 and 96 per cent respectively. Other thriving capitalist industries were silk manufacture (in 1804---74 per cent; in 1825---83 per cent of hired labour) and linen manufacture, in which wage labour accounted for two-thirds of the total. Towards 1825 the number of hired workers in industry reached :210,600.
In the iron works of the Urals, that citadel of serfdom, wage labour began to gain ground in the first half of the 19th century. In 113 works of Yekaterinburg, Perm, Orenburg, Vyatka, Kazan, and Tobolsk 3 per cent of the work force were wage workers, who were used, it is true, on auxiliary jobs in their overwhelming majority. A large number of workers were employed at the Verkh-Iset works <2,500), the Rezhevsk works (2,000), the Sysert works (1,000).
All these data are essential for the following two reasons. First, they give a graphic idea of what the system of wage labour looked like in reality and, second, they indicate the exact number of workers at individual, most promising enterprises. The question of labour •distribution between the different kinds of enterprises is even more
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important. The answer to it makes it possible to determine the structure of the proletariat which was then in its formative stage.
Simple capitalist co-operation, the manufactory in its centralised, scattered and combined forms are the historically evolved progressive forms of industrial organisation in the early stage of capitalism.
Co-operation, which was in itself the basis for all forms of capitalist production, failed to become stable and typical in its primordial, simple form. It is identifiable in sources describing, for instance, the enterprises of a master who employed many spinners to produce large batches of yarn for the market, or a master of weavers " putting to work", to use the usual phrase of contemporaries, a few hands to weave cloth.^^1^^ In both the first and second cases economic common sense dictated to the entrepreneur the need to improve his business as soon as he had enough capital. The first master engaged in his workshop weavers and workers of other specialities in cloth manufacture, whereas the second one subordinated to his capital the labour of workers engaged in operations preparatory to weaving. At any rate, the economic common sense of the capitalist converted simple co-operation into co-operation with the division of labour inside the workshop, i.e., into a manufactory. The simple form survived only where special circumstances prevailed, for instance, in work houses (the difficulty of training paupers in various crafts, inadequate capital, etc.).
The stable, characteristic form of progressive organisation of industry was the manufactory, which prevailed in the developed societies of Western Europe from the 16th century to the last third of the 18th century, and in others---until the middle and even to the end of the 19th century (in these cases it already combined with a factory). It was precisely the manufactory that swallowed up the expropriated victims of "primary accumulation". What was the manufactory? Examination of its organisation is exactly what helps comprehend the characteristics of the manufactory proletariat of that epoch.
First of all, in all European countries the scattered (or decentralised) and the combined (or mixed) manufactories assumed great importance among capitalist enterprises. The uncombined (or anonymous, as it is sometimes called in the literature) manufactory came to be established in cities, especially new ones, where no guild associations existed, or in old cities---on the basis of the disintegration of the corporate system. This manufactory, however, struck the strongest roots in the rural localities. Wool-weaving, carpetweaving and other scattered manufactories were set up on the basis
~^^1^^ Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1634-1635, London, 1865, p. 272; ibid., 1633-1634, London, 1863, pp. 150-51.
of the rural industries in the Netherlands. They were a conglomeration of home craftsmen's workshops united by individual capital. In France from the 16th century the basis for the wide spread of such composite manufactories was the rural industries---fulleries, tanneries and other businesses which flourished mostly around cities. Near Paris, Bordeaux, Rouen, Toulouse and other centres there sprang up whole districts where scattered manufactories developed (for instance, silk-weaving). In Normandy, Picardy, Poitou, and Languedoc territorially scattered cloth manufactories also prevailed. Such manufactories were established at an early time in the production of linen as well. Capitalist exploitation of home workers in the villages had become the most widespread in France on the eve of the revolution. A whole army of home workers served city merchant entrepreneurs in Dophine, Touraine and the above-- mentioned localities of the country.
In Spain in the first half of the 16th century decentralised textile manufactories formed in the environs of Toledo, Segovia, Seville, and Cuenca and later, after a long interval, already in the 18th century, they arose in Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque country. In the latter half of the 18th century textile manufactories (of the decentralised type) again sprang up in Italy: in Lombardy, Peidmont, and other places. In 18th-century Sweden scattered workshops also became the predominant form of manufactory. They were known to exist in the textile industry, and even the Nortalje armoury was organised on the principle of deconcentrated production. The home crafts of peasant spinners became the basis for scattered manufactories in different lands of 18th-century Germany: in the Bhine regions, in Wurttemberg, Thuringia, Westphalia, and Silesia. Austria was not an exception: in the 18th century capital subordinated here the rural home crafts both in the textile and other industries. In Czechia scores of thousands of spinners and weavers working at home were subjected to capitalist exploitation in a system of scattered manufactories. In the late 18th century the well-known cotton manufactory in Prague exploited more than 4,000 spinners who lived in the city's environs. New Czech glass manufactories (22 enterprises) used thousands of hired home workers. In Poland the decentralised manufactory also developed from the late 18th century. In Silesia linen and cotton production in the villages followed the pattern of a scattered capitalist manufactory. In Galicia the peasant crafts provided the basis for setting up scattered manufactories. The same picture was observed in Hungary in the late 18th and the early 19th century, particularly in the textile and iron industries. In Pest and Buda hosiery production was organised within a system of decentralised manufactories. The biggest textile manufactory of Cholic in 1807 exploited 2,000 home workers in 30 villages.
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65Materials on the history of Bulgaria also evidence the wide spread of scattered home production.
In Russia such manufactories became conspicuous in the textile industry over the last few decades of the 18th century. They sprang up in wood-working, shoe-making and other fields. Precious material on the decentralised manufactory in post-reform Russia is to be found in Lenin's works.^^1^^
The mixed manufactory was typical of all countries without exception: scattered production was supplemented here with a more or less sizeable workshop, in which the completing operation in manufacturing a certain commodity was performed, as a rule. In the textile industry scattered everywhere such final processes in manufacturing broadcloth, linen, silk and cotton fabrics were usually weaving or dying or dressing. It was these operations that were often concentrated in workshops included in scattered manufactories and gathering weavers or dyers or dressers under one roof. That was how the mixed manufactory came into being, which was a combination of scattered workshops of home workers and a larger workshop of the master. This manufactory was a transitional form between a scattered and a centralised one. The biggest cloth manufactory of Sasvar in Hungary exploited 9,325 workers, of whom 8,462 worked at home and only a small proportion were gathered under one roof.
The centralised manufactory, which was connected for its economic structure with the organic process of production, gathered under one roof workers performing various partial operations. It was set up usually in new industries, which in the 16th-18th centuries were glass and paper production, printing, etc. Successful entrepreneurs, however, could afford to organise a large combined workshop with the division of labour within it also in such fields traditional to all European countries as the textile industry. In England, for instance, centralised manufactories existed in such an ancient industry as fullery. Towards the mid-18th century many such enterprises were established practically in all industries. The ``royal'' centralised manufactories in France are well known. These were mostly enterprises manufacturing mirrors and carpets, cannon foundries (iron works in Toulon and Brest, carpet manufactories at Bovet, tapestry workshops in Paris, etc.). Moreover, in France amalgamated enterprises existed in ship-building, in glass and paper production, as well as in individual branches of the ancient textile industry. In the latter half of the 16th century printshops in France had five to seven printing presses manned by 20-25 hired workers.
In the Netherlands book-printing was organised in centralised manufactories as early as the 16th century. The famous printshop of Plantin in Antwerp, which had 15-22 printing presses, assumed all-European significance. In the 17th-century Republic of the United provinces such enterprises were set up in both the new industries (sugar-refining, glass-making, cotton-printing) and in the old, textile ones. In Spain in the first half of the 16th century amalgamated workshops were known to mint coins in Seville, Granada, and Burgos. Large printshops in the German cities of Basel, Strasbourg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Leipzig in the early 16th century were similar manufactories. The printshop in Nuremberg had 24 printingpresses and 100 hired workers. Glass manufacture in Hesse and Thuringia was also carried out in amalgamated enterprises. In the 18th century a certain enlivening of economic life was manifest, in particular, in the development of centralised manufactories in Berlin (for instance, wool-processing) and in Krefeld (silk production). At the same time, centralised enterprises sprang up in the Austrian lands proper: in Vienna (manufacture of expensive fabrics), in Linz and other cities (textile, as a rule). Towards the end of the 18th century in Northern Italy amalgamated workshops consolidated their positions in the silk, wool and flax industries, in the production of ceramics, paper and in ship-building.
Nevertheless, there were only dozens of centralised manufactories (for instance, in France under Colbert---113), whereas scattered enterprises were numbered by the hundreds. Moreover, a distinctive feature of the centralised manufactories also was the extensive use of home production, capitalist exploitation of home workers. Lenin emphasised that the latter "is met with at all stages of the development of capitalism in industry, but is most characteristic of manufacture.''^^1^^ The main workshop had ramifications to a multitude of workshops of home workers performing, as a rule, primary, preliminary operations (in the textile branches---tearding and spinning). The manufactory, particularly in the villages "is ... interwoven with the conditions of life of a great mass of individuals.,.".^^2^^
Relatively large groups of workers concentrated in individual enterprises, the data on which have been presented above, were by no means distributed in exactly the same numbers between centralised shops either in an amalgamated or a mixed manufactory. It is not accidental, therefore, that in the sources and the literature we find little information on the concentration of workers in one production building. Only a part of the workers, and a much smaller part for that matter (dozens or hundreds at most) worked under one
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 441.
~^^2^^ See Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 71.
5-0715
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", Collected Works, Vol. 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, pp. 386-427.
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67 66CHAPTER 1
roof: the printshop of Plantin had 60-100 workers; French and German printshops in the 16th century---,10-20 workers; French manufactories in the latter half of the 17th century---10-100 workers;, a fullery in 17th-century England---120 workers; English knitting shops in the first half of the 18th century---up to 50 hired hands. The majority of the workers (sometimes thousands, as has been pointed out above) were exactly home workers economically dependent on the main, central workshop as its appendages but retaining at the same time a semblance of independence in their home
workshops.
Capitalist exploitation of home workers, that invariable characteristic of the manufactory, was based on a widely ramified network of workshops in advanced England, even in the first half of the 18th century. It formed the actual background against which larger workshops loomed more or less conspicuously. The latter predominated in the country's economic life, although numerically their proportion within the multitude of small home workshops was naturally small. Moreover, the manufactory developed in an environment of small commodity production---the "broad foundation", as Marx said, of the entire economic edifice in that epoch.^^1^^ For instance, in France in the latter half of the 16th century the majority of printshops were small handicraft workshops with one or two printing presses. In Lyons a typical proportion was observed: 10-15 typographic manufactories for 90-100 small artisan printshops. The same proportion was characteristic of Paris.
Small workshops in city crafts and in village sideline crafts had! partly preserved their small-commodity type and had partly been drawn into the capitalist orbit. It has been estimated that of the 1099 printshops which had existed in Europe in the 15th century, only 210 survived in the next century, whereas the others had closed down as their owners came to ruin. The poorest city and village craftsmen were gradually, step by step, subjugated to the capitalist entrepreneur and often turned into home workers ("simple change of form"). And conversely, successful owners of small workshops employed additional manpower and by expanding their production in this way turned into small proprietors of the petty-bourgeois kind. Such workshops had a few hired workers, not more than five,, as a rule, and often even fewer.
Imagining this "broad foundation", i.e., small-commodity production, in combination with the indispensable and quantitatively tangible appendage of large-scale production---homework for the capitalist, one can fully comprehend the well-known metaphor of Marx who wrote of the manufactory as an "economic work of art".^^2^^ '
l Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 347.
a See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 347,.
;
The aforesaid suggests a conclusion of prime significance. The socialisation of labour on the basis of manufactory capitalism made a long step forward from the guild organisation of medieval crafts. On the relative historical plane, however, it had not yet attained a high level. The concentration of wage labour can be discussed seriously only as regards the centralised manufactory, which was conspicuous precisely as an ``islet'' in a sea of small artisan workshops. This means, in turn, that in the structural respect only an insignificant proportion of the emerging class of wage workers was concentrated in more or less sizeable industrial establishments, while the bulk of it was as yet dispersed, territorially scattered. The proletariat in the period of manufactory capitalism was mostly dissociated in the process of production, deconcentrated between small workshops, which were either of the petty-bourgeois type or constituted the ``home'' component of the manufactory.
The workers concentrated in the amalgamated manufactory existed under conditions which differed widely from those of the remaining mass of dissociated proletarians. It is important to emphasise the greatest development of the capitalist relations of production within it. It was precisely in the centralised manufactory that the real subordination of labour to capital was established for the first time, "the whole real image of the mode of production changes and the specifically capitalistic mode of production arises",^^1^^ and along with it the corresponding relations of production between the capitalist and wage labour. The centralised manufactory is exemplified by the enterprise of a 17th-century English fullery owner. In his large workshop 120 persons were engaged: these were ``partial'', ``detail'' workers (spinners, carders, weavers, shearers, etc.). They were supervised by a superintendent, who was "very skellfull in all things apperteyninge to his trade of clothinge." The proprietor who was thoroughly familiar with the production process determined the distribution of the work force, the size and structure of the enterprise, the quantity and type of the raw materials to be used, personally hired hands, and fixed the rates and form of payment. In other words, he directly and frankly presented himself to the workers as the owner of capital and employer.^^2^^
In the centralised manufactory capitalist relations are so developed that they are fixed, as Lenin put it, "in sharp oppositions betweenthe groups participating in production".^^3^^ The gulf between the owner of the means of production at one pole and the hired workers at the
~^^1^^ The Archives of Marx and Engels, Vol. II (VII), p. 99.
~^^2^^ "Historical Manuscripts Commission. 14th Report, Appendix", pt. IV, The Manuscripts of Lord Kenyan, London, 1894, p. 572.
~^^3^^ See V. I. Lenin, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", Collected Works, Vol. 3, p, 543.
5*
€8
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other pole widens to a considerable extent at such an enterprise. For the first time in the history of capitalist relations the workers as a collective body become aware of their identical working conditions. It is here that they become proletarians in the true socio-economic sense of !the word. They are opposed to the capitalist directly without any illusory partitions. The division of labour, detailed, ``partial'' specialisation ensure intensive exploitation and the extraction of relative surplus value by the entrepreneur.
Such ``pure'' proletarians, however, constituted an insignificant proportion within the system of wage labour. A much more typical worker figure was a home worker or a hired worker (including apprentices) of a small workshop. In a decentralised enterprise or an industrial business of the petty-bourgeois type no real subordination of labour to capital existed. Subordination was merely formal. Capital subordinated the traditional, already existing forms of production, and the relation of formal subordination of labour to capital arose between the entrepreneur, on the one hand, and the workers, on the other, insofar as this relation, as Marx wrote,"merely formally differs from the earlier modes of production" and " surplusvalue can be created only by way of lengthening working time, that is, in the form of absolute surplus-value".^^1^^ Thus, with the formal subordination of labour to capital the distinctive features of the exploitation of the workers are predetermined by other methods of extracting surplus-value than those used with real subordination: with the former we have relative, and with the latter we have absolute
surplus-value.
The root cause of this difference lies in the extent of the alienation of the objective and subjective conditions of work (i.e., the means of production and the means of subsistence) from the direct producer and in their opposition to him as alien property, as capital. The greater the alienation, the more complete is the formal subordination of labour to capital, which is, in turn, the precondition and basis for real subordination.
What did all this look like in historical reality? In the most developed manufactory the degree of the aforementioned alienation was almost complete, and the proletarian appeared in a relatively "pure form". In other words, he was deprived of the means of production, worked in a building and with tools owned by the entrepreneur. It was only seldom and partly that the worker retained some collateral means of subsistence, such as his home and land-holding but more commonly he lived in an outhouse of the manufactory.
A different picture shaped in the event of formal subordination of labour to capital. Here the distinctive feature of the living and
working conditions of hired workers was work at home or in the employer's small workshops. Outwardly, the home workers did not differ from independent masters. In addition to their own house and workshop, they often retained possession of their tools. The availability of a land-holding enabled home workers living in a rural locality to devote some of their time to agriculture. This lent a semblance of independence to the working conditions of home workers. The principal characteristics of their economic status--- their dependence on their wages, their inability to dispose of the results of their work, the absence of links between them and the market---were the direct and obvious signs of their enslavement by the employer and evidenced the illusory character of their independence. It is significant that despite their territorial dispersion and the different specialisations the home workers felt they were elements of a single mechanism. Their awareness of their dependence was augmented by the fact that the craftsmen of a village or a whole locality often used the services of one travelling agent (the so-called ``rider'' in Britain),^^1^^ who collected the finished products, inspected their quality and paid wages. In the American decentralised manufactories of the colonial period a different scheme was employed. For example, an advertisement in a New York paper of May, 1766, announced "that due attendance will be given every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, in the afternoon, to give out flax and receive in yarn....''^^2^^ In any event the home workers realised their dependence on one and the same master, submitting common petitions about the deterioration of their situation during industrial depressions and for other reasons. Their material conditions, however, were by no means identical. Part of the home workers (spinners and carders, as a rule) possessed their own tools, the others (usually weavers) were supplied with working tools by the employer. Therefore, although the economic nature of home workers was identical, the degree of their dependence varied, which determined their different pay rates (other things being equal). The material helplessness of the ``independent'' master and his enslavement by capital were thoroughly veiled by his work at home, the availability of his own workshop, a tiny plot of land and often working tools. Nevertheless, Marx noted that the subordination of labour to capital in the home work system was already visible quite clearly: "The difference in the character of the relation of domination and subordination, without reference to the mode of production itself, manifests itself most of
~^^1^^ The Victoria History of the County of Suffolk, Vol. II, London, 1907, p. 259.
~^^2^^ Richard B. Morris and William Greenleaf, U.S.A. The History of a Nation, Vol. I, Rand McNally and Company, Chicago, 1969, p. 159.
The Archives of Marx and Engels, Vol. II (VII), pp. 101, 95.
f
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71all where the agricultural and home by-work ... turns into an independent capitalist branch of labour.''^^1^^
The relations of domination and subordination were less developed in workshops of the petty-bourgeois type. The employer and three to five hired workers entered into relations of production where the opposition between the two poles---capital and labour---was expressed as yet quite inadequately. "Neither big capital nor extensive proletarian strata as yet exist,"^^2^^ Lenin wrote. The hired workers were often simply apprentices who had become ``permanent'' or trainees, while small capitalists in such artisan workshops "differed but little from the workers themselves".^^3^^ The slightly expressed contradiction in the relations of production was veiled with ``family'' relations. The greater the number of workers employed by one master, the more naked and frank and the less patriarchal the relations of exploitation.
Thus, in the stage of manufactory capitalism the proletariat was characterised by dispersion, deconcentration in production. The manual tools, which formed the basis of production at that time, set a limit to the continued ``perfection'' of relations of production and to the deepening of the antagonism between labour and capital.
Nevertheless, in Marx's definition, the amalgamated workshop with a division of labour within it was the "perfected form" of the manufactory^^4^^, because its organisation yielded the greatest production effect. The dependence of the workers on one another with the division of labour inside a workshop, Marx wrote, "compels each one of them to spend on his work no more than the necessary time, and thus a continuity, uniformity, regularity, order, and even intensity of labour, of quite a different kind"^^5^^. The workers gathered in such manufactories were pat in the specifically capitalist social relations in the process of production. In this sense they can be regarded as the most progressive section of the proletariat of that period. Numerically, however, they constituted a tiny minority.
Another characteristic feature of the proletariat of that period was the different working and living conditions of its different contingents and groups. In the system of home production the ``partial'' workers of the manufactories differed in status substantially not only from the same ``detail'' workers of the centralised manufactories but also from one another (within the framework of one enterprise), because they preserved a connection, if only illusory, with property,
which varied in kind and size from home worker to home worker. The workers employed in production of the petty-bourgeois type constituted a separate group.
Naturally, in the countries of the "second edition of serfdom" the differences in the positions of the workers in production were immeasurably greater. Here capitalist combined with feudal exploitation, the latter being based on dependence of a wide variety of hues. At the same time, the workers of the 19th-century capitalist manufactory often coexisted with factory workers. The well-known historian W. Kula justly notes that the emerging working class in the Polish lands was not yet monolithic. "The proletarianising artisan weaver in the Lodz district differed from the semi-peasant working at an iron works of the Staropolska basin; for his part, the latter differed from the worker of the mines and works of Dombrowa or Upper Silesian basins already detached from the village to a greater extent.''^^1^^
In Russian industry from the end of the 18th century the emerging proletariat was on the whole represented by two contingents of workers. Hired workmen were peasants on quitrent and wage workers in the true sense of the word. The latter were in greater numbers in the manufacturing industries and fewer in the mining industry. The emerging proletariat in Russia included, just as in other countries, workers of petty-bourgeois enterprises, manufactories of various kinds (not only centralised but also predominantly scattered), as well as factories (from the thirties and forties of the 19th century).
Thus, the proletariat of the manufactory period was everywhere not only a deconcentrated, dissociated but also an extremely heterogeneous mass structurally. This circumstance is extremely important for understanding the essence of the new class, for an analysis of the forms of its exploitation and the class struggle in that period.
In the views on the proletariat as a social category there is a clearcut differentiation between the Marxist position and that of the bourgeois scholars. The latter ignore the difference between the newly formed proletariat (as the main product of the Industrial Revolution) and the sections of hired workers formed into a class under manufactory capitalism. Typical of the bourgeois literature is the following interpretation of the problem (with reference to England): "The factory clothiers of the late eighteenth century have their precedents in the clothiers of the sixteenth and even fourteenth century, who set up factories and gathered servants and looms under •one roof...." And further: "The Industrial Revolution, therefore, did not create any new form of industrial organisation, though it
~^^1^^ The Archives of Marx and Engels, Vol. II (VII), pp. 103-04. ~^^8^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", Coll -.tc.'J. Works, Vol. 3, p. 543.
~^^8^^ See the Archives of Marx and Engels, Vol. II (VII), p. 103. ~^^1^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 325. ? Ibid., p. 326.
~^^1^^ W. Kula, Kastaltoioanie sis kapitaltsnu w Polsce, Warszawa, 1955, s. 114.
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73made the factory the predominant form.''^^1^^ Hence the thesis on the formation of the factory proletariat as early as the 14th century. The results of the industrial revolution, however, are interpreted merely as quantitative: before the revolution factories were few, after it they began to predominate. The economic aspect of this interpretation is based on the confusion of different stages in the development of capitalism---the manufactory and factory stages, of which Engels and Lenin wrote in their time.^^2^^ Lenin called attention to the socio-political aspect of the bourgeois interpretation of the question. And today bourgeois socio-economic literature fully reveals as before its practical tendency to obliterate the very concept ``class'' -nd "to eliminate the very idea of the class struggle".^^3^^
The development of productive forces in the centralised manufactory was performed by means of the physical and mental crippling of the worker doomed to monotonous, uniform activity. Adam Smith pointed out that the dexterity and skill of the worker in his^ speciality were achieved by dulling his mental faculties and intelligence. "But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall....''^^1^^ The performance of the same movements during a detailed operation made the workers look like animals. Therefore, workers of certain trades, for instance, in French printshops were given characteristic nick-names: pressers were called ``bears'' because their operations required great muscular strength and compositors were called ``monkeys'' for the deftness and quickness of movements required in their work.^^2^^ Even before Adam Smith, A. Montchretien, a well-known French economist of the early 17th century, who, incidentally, owned an iron-making manufactory and had a remarkable business acumen, had written as follows: "He who has managed to use this living instrument, this moving tool capable of any mastery and skill can boast that he has arranged his business in the best possible way.''^^3^^
The well-known amalgamated manufactory of D angel in Warsaw (the late 18th century) was described by a contemporary as follows: "In a large building and workshops on Senator Street there were various craftsmen required for making carriages: wheel-makers, blacksmiths, saddlers, varnishers, harness-makers, painters, fitters, etc. Working in a team they could make a carriage in an unusually short time.''^^4^^
The worker of a manufactory by force of his habit to perform only one operation perfected only the ability required for a given function (dexterity, attentivenessr etc.), which led to a strict classification of workers according to their abilities. Hence another distinction of the position of the workers created by the manufactory---"a hierarchy of labour-powers, to which there corresponds a scale of wages".5 For example, in the manufactory printshops of 16th-century France the compositors and proof-readers were paid higher wages than the workers of all other trades.
THE CONDITION OFfjTHE PROLETARIAT
Considerable differences conditioned by the heterogeneous composition of the proletariat were seen in the economic status of individual labour contingents. The workers of amalgamated manufactories working under one roof were fully aware of the oppression of this form of industrial organisation as a tool for "a refined and civilised method of exploitation".^^4^^ Manual tools and the division of labour inside a workshop for the first time created a ``partial'', ``detail''' worker, who performed only one operation, which had not existed in the feudally organised crafts.
Watch-making in such a manufactory consisted of more than thirty special operations, needle-making---about ninety, and clothmanufacturing---up to twenty-five. "Anarchy in social division of labour and despotism in that of the workshop" (Marx)^^5^^ developed to the extreme the productive potentials of manual work in the interest of the entrepreneur rather than the worker and at the latter's expense for that matter. An anonymous English author wrote in the first half of the 18th century, i.e., in the hey-day, classical period of the manufactory, that the greater the division of functions in the complex manufactory between the different workers, the better and quicker the product and the smaller the loss of time and labour.8 One may add to this: the greater the profit of the entrepreneur who extracted relative surplus value in this way.
~^^1^^ Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature' and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. IV, Basil, Paris, 1801, p. 92.
~^^2^^ Paul Mellottee, Historic Economique de I'imprimerie, Paris, Librairie Hachette & C'e., 1905, p. 262.
~^^8^^ A. de Montchretien, [Traite de Voeconomie polittque dedie en 1615, Paris, 1889, p. 25.
~^^1^^ Quoted from: 0. E. Ivanova, D. L. Pokhilevich, "The Rise in Trade and Industry. Serf and Capitalist Manufactory", The History of Poland, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1956, p. 364 (in Russian).
~^^6^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 330.
~^^1^^ E. Lipson, The Economic History of England, op. cit. pp. 4, 85. A Short History..., pp. 69, 72.
~^^2^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pp. 14-16; V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 454.
~^^3^^ See V. I. Lenin, "The Agrarian Question and the 'Critics of Marx'", Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 193.
* See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 344.
~^^5^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 337.
~^^6^^ The Advantages of the East-India Trade, London, 1720, p. 71.
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75In addition, such a manufactory created for the first time completely untrained workers, which had been absolutely excluded in medieval shops. The reason was that in a single centralised enterprise simple operations were inevitable. Therefore, in addition to skilled workers, who were valued extremely highly in manual production (as is evidenced by the practices of enticement of experienced •craftsmen by entrepreneurs), the manufactory permitted the exploitation of even physically handicapped persons. An English manufacturer wrote in the early 17th century, "...though they be lame they may pick and free wool".^^1^^ In the latter half of the 16th century a category of untrained labourers (alloue) appeared in French printing manufactories for the first time. The above-mentioned Montchretien carefully discriminated in his treatise (and in practice, of course) between skilled and unskilled labour. From this followed another feature of the manufactory proletariat: the manufactory paved the road towards the industrial exploitation of women and children. "Though they be children," the same English author reasoned, "they may spin and comb wool." In Germany children were "trained to work a Mttle" from the cradle, a fact which delighted another English author of the late 17th century.^^2^^ In France, Colbert issued a special circular (1683) in which he demanded an increase in the number of women and children in the manufactories. The entrepreneurs regarded women's and children's labour as "more profitable", because these "inferior workers" were eligible to wages from one-half to a quarter of those paid to adult men. Children were taught to work from the age of eight years and even earlier. In one of the textile manufactories of France there worked a large number of children "including toddlers".^^3^^
Under the strict supervision of the employer's superintendent the workers of a centralised manufactory worked in conditions of great intensity which an early bourgeois economist called "the orderliness and regularity" of the process.^^4^^
The situation of the home workers who served a centralised manufactory or were workers of a decentralised or mixed manufactory was different. The distinctive working conditions of these quasi-independent workers seemed to be of a dual] character. On
the one hand, outwardly they created the false impression of more tolerable working conditions, because of the absence of meticulous control over ``home'' production, the possibility to work at home, in habitual surroundings, and, on the other hand, one cannot but recall what Lenin wrote precisely about the outward aspect of this ``liberal'' type of exploitation: an extremely unhygienic environment, the combination of dwelling and working rooms, which turned the dwelling of home workers into a hotbed of health hazards and occupational diseases.^^1^^ The main characteristic of the position of home workers was their dispersion. It placed them in the most unfavourable conditions in relation to the entrepreneur, enabled him to reduce their wages, and enmesh them in a web of additional fettering (terms. The dispersion of home workers tremendously intensified rivalry and fomented competition among them.
The division of labour expressed in the ``home'' system less saliently than in the complex manufactory ensured high intensity of working efforts here too. Workers of one trade spurred on, as it were, workers of another. For the timely fulfilment of orders from their employer, who was interested in the continued interaction of all the elements of his production mechanism, home workers drew into work all members of their families, including young children. The working day was practically unlimited.
Finally, another distinction of the exploitation of home workers. Relieved of expenses on production buildings and tools (which were inescapable in a centralised enterprise), the employer was in a position either to widen or to narrow very flexibly the scale of production with an eye to the market situation. Therefore, the position of home workers was less definite, less stable and permanent than that of the workers of centralised manufactories. In Devonshire, England, the clothier Helen Maning, as it follows from the source, for many years employed 300 or 400 people depending on the market demand literally from week to week.^^2^^
Periods of depression were particularly distressing for the home workers. Frequently recurring stagnation in industry instantly entailed a sharp reduction in employment, primarily among home workers. For example, in the period of depressions in the first half of the 17th century in England the clothier R. Webb of Gloucestershire wound up his business and left 500 persons out of work. In 1630 in the County of Surrey, 1,400 workers---spinners, fullers, and weavers---were left without work. As the source describes it,
~^^1^^ Quoted from: The Victoria History of the County of Warwick, Vol. II, tendon, 1908, p. 166.
~^^2^^ A Discourse on the Necessity of Encouraging Mechanic Industry, London, 1690, p. 13.
~^^3^^ Y. K. Novozhilov, "The Working Conditions at the Centralised Manufactories in France in the Latter Half of the 17th Century", Transactions of the Archangel State Pedagogical Institute, Issue 2. 1958, pp. 104, 106 (in Russian) .
~^^4^^ The Advantages of the East-India Trade, p. 68.
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 443.
a Acts of the Privy Council, 1621-1623, London, 1932, p. 314.
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77they asked for work "with sobs and tears" lest they starve to death^^1^^.
As pointed out above, simple capitalist co-operation was a less widespread form of organisation of industry.
In England, for example, numerous workhouses were organised in their majority precisely on this principle. Leaving aside the specifics of exploitation in the workhouses (prison conditions, etc.) we shall emphasise only some characteristic features of the workers' position within them typical of co-operation of capitalistically exploited labour. Although there was no division of labour in simple co-operation (which made it different from the manufactory), here, however, everything was also done to exploit the worker as much^as possible. This goal was attained by different methods of intensifying labour: the enforcement of a fixed work quota raised with a worker's age (co-operation included children and old people), the scale of wagerates and even inducements. Those who coped with a high quota of yarn production, as was laid down in the statute of one workhouse, were allowed at "the first time they desire it to have leave to go out one whole day".^^2^^ Women's labour was widely used, and that of children on a still wider scale. The entrepreneurs of a workhouse in Bradford wrote with satisfaction: "Our advantage is that in the clothing business we can employ all from 7 years old to 80".^^3^^ In the so-called hospital for the poor in Paris there worked 1,591 women and only 260 men.
A different position was occupied by workers of small workshops owned by well-to-do village craftsmen or townsmen (among the latter guild masters having their own workshops constituted a sizeable proportion for a long time, up to the early 19th century and in certain countries even longer). Two or three workers employed in such workshops usually lived with the family of the rich craftsman. The relatively patriarchal character of such relations was emphasised particularly by the fact that master himself worked along with the members of his family. Apprentices and trainees in such small capitalist workshops were used precisely as hired workers although they retained their traditional guild names. Apprenticeship in the 16th century (and even earlier) meant not so much vocational training required for work with manual tools as a channel for attracting children from poor families under the yoke of capitalist oppression. Numerous sources have brought down to us scenes of the bitter plight of apprentices cruelly exploited by their masters. An appren--
tice was not always paid wages, and whatever sum he was eligible to was withheld until the expiry of a specified period. The terms of maintenance of the apprentice by the master stipulated in the contract remained, as a rule, unfulfilled, and the apprentices eked out ^ miserable existence. This explains their frequent complaints of unbearably hard work instead of learning, of corporal punishment, mutilations, and, finally, the impossibility to start a family ( although the period of apprenticeship sometimes lasted for twenty years, i.e., practically until the age of 32).
West European sources contain information on apprenticeship similar to that Lenin referred to later in his analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia: "Under the general conditions of commodity economy and capitalism this gives rise to the worst forms of personal dependence and exploitation.''^^1^^ The characteristic features of the position of apprentices who worked in the ``patriarchal'' atmosphere of a small workshop reflected, in fact, the conditions of other hired workers in establishments of this kind, whether apprentices or workers whose status was not masked by guild names.
For all the differentiation between the positions of different sections of the proletariat and the dissimilarity of the methods of their exploitation in the manufactory period the main thing was clearly obvious---"the nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped form".^^2^^
The position of the workers also differed noticeably as a result of a number of additional factors. For example, with manual tools special significance went with the character of a craft and the branch of industry. The most valued craftsmen, in 17th-century England in particular, were carpenters, tin-smiths, glass-blowers, woodworkers, and some others (category I). Rated below them were brick-layers, colliers, stone-masons (category II). Still lower were dyers, brewers, tanners, flax weavers (category III). At the bottom level were shoe-makers, leather workers, cloth weavers, fullers, shearers, bakers, knife-makers, blacksmiths, and many others (category IV). In the County of Wiltshire the scale of wages corresponded to the categories of craft, for instance, in the following manner: workers in the first category crafts were paid what were considered high wages at the time (10-11 pence a day without board), in the second category---7-8 pence, etc. A similar differentiation was to be found in the industries of some provinces of the Austrian monarchy (Croatia, Slavonia). The artisan specialities here were divided into low-paid and profitable.
The condition of the rural workers in turn differed substantially
~^^1^^ Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1629-1631, London, Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860, p. 391.
~^^2^^ St. Sepulchre, Workhouse Committee Minute Books, 1727-1729 (Guildhall Library, MS 3137/1).
~^^3^^ An Account of Several Work-Houses for Employing and Maintaining the Poor, London, 1732, p. 105.
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, op. cit., Vol. 3, pp. 427-28. » Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 272.
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from that of the city workers. Municipal authorities in England inthe early 17th century often complained that the entrepreneurs morewillingly hired home workers in the countryside than in towns because they paid them smaller wages. In the villages around Lincoln a weaver was paid 3 pence a day by a clothier, and in the city, 4 pence. The same was in the French manufactories: in the cities in the latter half of the 17th century a worker was paid 8 to 15 sous a day, and in the rural localities, from 4-5 to 8-10 sous.
In the rural localities a worker had a land-holding, as a rule, which was naturally a help to his family. At the same time, this meant toa varying degree his continued dependence on the feudal lord or a bourgeois landowner (in the Netherlands and England after the revolution). A dual form of exploitation arose. The yoke of land relations was particularly onerous in the mining industry.
The dual exploitation of workers was still more severe in thecountries of late genesis of capitalism, particularly in scattered manufactories, in the conditions of capitalist employment of home workers in general. The home workers were exploited by the capitalist who posed in the image of land purchaser and distributor and at the same time they continued in their status as a squire's or state serfs. The same is true of hired workers in the mining industry. For example, at the Ural works in Russia the so-called free workers employed by the works owners remained under the sway of the landowners or the state. In Silesia the employer (often a squire) applied the full force of his feudal power to the hired worker of the serfdom period.
In the period when capital was still in the embryo the blind force of economic relations had not yet consolidated its domination over labour and, therefore, the state came to the assistance of capital. Already after the appearance of the rudimentary elements of antagonism between the entrepreneurs and the proletarians, from the 14th century in England and later in France, the Netherlands and Germany statutory acts were promulgated to lengthen the working day and fix the wage rates ``reasonable'' for the employers. Anti-labour legislation incorporated a series of statutes which were in force for over four centuries.
In 14th-15th-century England the working day according to statutes was to last from 5 a.m. to 7-8 p.m. in summer and from 5 a.m. until dark in winter, breakfast, lunch and dinner breaks totalling 3- hours. The statute of 1562 limited the break time to 2.5 hours in summer and 2 hours in winter, i.e., from May to September the working day lasted 11.5-12.5 hours and more due to shorter break time.^^1^^ This law was effective in the 18th century as well.
~^^1^^ The Statutes of the Realm, Vol. II, 1495, London, 1819, pp. 586-87; ibid.. Vol. IV, pt. 1, 1562-1563, London, 1819, pp. 414-22.
The wage rates were also fixed by law. In England the first statuteto this effect was enacted in 1349. While the minimum length of the working day was fixed directly by state authority, the wage rates •were instituted, as a rule, by local authorities, at the quarter-year sessions of justices of the peace. The above-mentioned statute of 1562 stated in detail who, when and on what principles should fix the wage rates for the workers. Justices of the peace, including interested persons from among the clothiers as well as other entrepreneurs, always abused their powers.
However, the statute of 1755, for example, specifically prescribed! that tailor apprentices in London and its environs should not be paid more than 2 shillings 7.5 pence a day.
Legislative regulation of wages, which effectively served theascending bourgeoisie of England in the period of genesis of capitalism still existed in the 18th century. Marx said ironically in this context: they "were unwilling in case of necessity to be without, the weapons of the old arsenal".^^1^^ Laws or local enactments prescribing the conditions of work were also in force in colonial America.
Similar acts were promulgated in France by the state and local authorities. A royal edict of 1539 prescribed the working day for the printers of Paris from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. It was stated in the edict, that "these hours are long established". While in other industries^ the length of the working day varied with the season (it was shorter in winter), in the printshops the working day was always of the same duration: at night the printers worked by candlelight.^^2^^ The weavers of Poitiers laboured from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. and those of Lyons, worked 18 hours a day. According to an eyewitness account, a worker in Lyons workshops "began his work long before sunrise and ended it long after sunset".^^8^^ The duration of the working day in 17th-- century Holland was 12-16 hours. The working masses of capitalistically model Holland in those times "were more over-worked, poorer and more brutally oppressed than those of all the rest of Europe put together".^^4^^ In Germany, particularly after the Thirty-Year War, laws on wage reductions were also enacted. The essence of such labour statutes was aptly described by Adam Smith: "Whenever the law has attempted to regulate the wages of workmen, it has always been rather to lower them than to raise them.''^^5^^
Attempts on the part of government authority to interfere in the relationship between labour and capital, in favour of the latter, of course, were undertaken in Russia also, as soon as the new struc-
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 691.
See M. A. Moldavskaya, op. cit., pp. 110-12.
Quoted from: Y. K. Novozhilov, op. cit., p. 99.
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pp. 705-06.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry..., op. cit., Vol. 1, Bazil, Paris, 1801, p. 204~
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81ture began to grow stronger. The Statute on the Relations Between the Owners of Factory Villages and Workmen Employed There for Hire was issued in 1835. A decree of 1836 on the relations between the ship-owners and the workers laid down special regulations for artels---associations whose formation was compulsory. In 1838 the government issued special decrees one of which regulated the working conditions at private gold mines in the Tomsk and Yenisei provinces, and another, at Yakovlev's manufactory in Yaroslavl. They prescribed the wage rates and the length of the working day. A number of decrees were intended to supply manpower to entrepreneurs. For this purpose, more favourable conditions were provided for the seasonal work of peasants at manufactories and works. At the end of 1811 a draft law was submitted to the government on measures to ease the migration of state peasant serfs to the mines and iron works of the Vyatka province to be employed as hired workers. It was later adopted and extended to the entire area of the mining and iron industry. A simplified order of peasants' migration was approved by the State Council in 1815. It provided for free movement •of peasant seasonal workers and contributed to the growth of wage labour supply to industry. This was also the purpose of the decree of 1816, which forbade industrial entrepreneurs to purchase peasants and served thereby to increase the influx of wage workers on the labour market. The decree of 1822 gave strong impetus to the employment of wage labour in industry. In all cases the feudal state with its full might stood guard over the interests of entrepreneurs.
In consequence of the widespread capitalist exploitation of home workers, as well as hired labour in small workshops in the manufactory period it was not so much the problem of the length of the working day as that of the wage rates that assumed prime importance for the majority of proletarians. This was also true of the workers •of the mining industry. Because of the specific conditions of work in this industry (absence of ventilation, etc.) the working day here was limited. It was precisely the wage rate that was the chief criterion of the economic condition of labour in that period.
Documents coming from the workers themselves often present •complaints of a reduction in wages from earlier years; the workers request their former pay, because they cannot exist on their current •earnings and demand a wage increase. Employers resorted to various methods of cutting wages: they entered into collusions about their rates, preserved the former terms of hire for work deserving higher pay, exacted fines, substituted cash payment by payment in kind •(in particular, with stale, long rotten cloth, spoiled fish, etc.).
The trend of wages in the countries of the early genesis of capitalism during two and a half to three centuries (the 16th to the first half of the 18th century or throughout the 18th century) clearly
exhibits two large cycles. The first of them covers roughly the 16th and the first half of the 17th century. It was connected primarily with the influence of the "revolution in prices", which led to a colossal spiralling of the prices of consumer goods. Research in this field proves conclusively that the level of wages in Europe lagged far behind the rise in prices. For example, in England from 1500 to 1640 (1500=100) the correlation changed as follows:^^1^^ while the price index between 1521-1530 and 1643-1652 rose from 113 to 331, the wage index changed from 93 to 175 over the period. The same occurred in France during the 16th century: prices grew 150 per cent, while wages increased only 25 per cent. The catastrophic decline in the workers' standards of life in that period, which contributed to the ascension of early capitalism, is admitted by the most objective scientists in the West. "Cheap labour may have aided the prosperity of industrial employers.... It meant real hunger and hardship for a substantial number of the working population," the modern historian Peter Ramsey writes, referring to 16th-century England.^^2^^
The next cycle was marked by more balanced price and wage trends. This is indicated by the trend of price and wage increases in England from 1643 to 1702 (1500=100):^^3^^ the price index between 1643-1653 and 1693-1702 rose from 331 to 339, while the wage index changed from 175 to 233 over the period.
Did the wage increase mean a real improvement in the worker's life? The majority of bourgeois historians are prone to exaggerate the rise in the living standards of the proletariat in the latter half of the 17th century. In doing so they refer to a comparison of wages in the first and second cycles. On a relative plane the condition of the workers really improved due to a reduction in the former gap between the price and wage trends. In an analysis of the real situation of the workers, however, it is necessary to take into account new factors which came into play precisely at that time, primarily the origination of the modern taxation system. It was first established in the most advanced country of the 17th century---the Netherlands. A contemporary praised this system as "the best system for making the wage labourer submissive, frugal, industrious and overburdened with labour.''^^4^^
The adverse effect of the fiscal system on the position of wage labour is also evidenced by abundant material on the history of England in the first half of the 18th century. "...I do not know any
~^^1^^ D. Felix, "Profit Inflation and Industrial Growth: The Historic Record and Contemporary Analogies."---In: Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1956, Vol. LXX, No. 3, p. 446.
~^^2^^ Peter Ramsey, Tudor Economic Problems, London, Victor Gollancz. Ltd., 1966, p. 138.
~^^3^^ D. Felix, op. cit., p. 446.
~^^4^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 708.
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83one necessary of life, upon which we have not some tax or another ... yet to a poor labourer or manufacturer, who had not perhaps above 8d. or 1 s. a day, and himself and family to maintain out of it, every one of them must seem grievous, and always will be severely felt...", said a member of parliament in 1737^^1^^. The annual budget of the English worker's family of four in the period under review was roughly equal to 15 pounds sterling on the average. The list of foodstuffs and prime necessities consumed annually, which was compiled by British historians for 1725, contains (taxable goods): 3.25 bushels of malt, 1.5 pounds of sugar, 2.5 pounds of candles, 1 hundredweight of coal; the list does not include soap, leather footwear, and many other necessaries required for the life of a worker family, which were also subject to taxation of various origin (excises, duties, etc.). The salt tax alone cost the worker 4-5 shillings a year. Even if the sum of taxes on each of the other commodities was smaller (for instance, the malt tax was equal to 1 shilling 7.5 pence; on tallow candles, 2.5 pence, etc.) the considerable share of taxation in the worker family budget is obvious.^^2^^
The plight of the workers of France in the late 17th and the early 18th century caused by extortionate taxes was described at length by Pierre Boisguillebert, a well-known economist of that period.^^3^^
In the light of this factor the condition of the proletariat in the second cycle appears to be far from the radiant colours in which it is painted by many Western bourgeois historians.
The condition of the workers also depended on many other circumstances. Frequent crop failures, famines, epidemics struck in the first place at the lower classes, i.e., the wage workers and the jobless, among whom there prevailed the paupers---the social product of "primary accumulation". In England during one century (from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century) crop failures and famine occurred in the following years: 1556-1558, 1571-1574, 1587, 1595-1598, 1620-1625, 1630; in the first half of the 18th century: 1710, 1740, 1766. In France a number of years of bad harvest were observed in the first half of the 16th century alone. In 1529 the country was hit by a terrible famine. In the late 17th century famines occurred in Lyons: in 1692, 1693, 1694, 1697, and 1699.^^4^^
Slumps in commerce and industry had catastrophic consequences for the workers. For example, in the capitalistically organised woollen industry of England from the 16th through the first half of the 18th century historians have revealed 15 periods of depression.^^1^^
According to official statistics, unemployment in England s wollen industry in the first half of the 17th century alone was characterised by the following figures: in Wiltshire in 1622, 8,000 people were out of work, in the County of Surrey in 1630---1,400, in Gloucestershire in 1633---800, etc.^^2^^ In America of the colonial period a jobless worker was often unable to save his children from starving to death and himself from jail. In 1737 the lieutenant-governor of New York observed that many workers in the colony were "reduced to poverty from want of employ.''^^3^^
The plight of the workers of New Jersey in the period of unemployment in 1765 alarmed even the local authorities. The workers of Philadelphia in 1707 protested against the "want of employ". The periods of depression in Lyons industry painfully affected worker families in 1627,1629,1632, 1649, and 1652. On the eve of the French bourgeois revolution of the late 18th century a crisis in commerce and industry played havoc with the clothing industry of Bovet: towards June 1788 only 1,422 workers out of 3,140 retained their jobs.
Frequent epidemics carried away the lives of thousands of proletarians. The plague in London in 1563-1564 took a toll of 20,000 lives, mostly of workers, of course; in 1603---30,500, in 1620-1625--- 35,500, in 1636-1637---10,500. The plague epidemics in France in 1564 and 1567 were equally disastrous.
In the country of the late genesis of capitalism the situation of the workers was aggravated by the long reign of serfdom. It profoundly affected the conditions of work not only of proletarians working under coercion but also of wage labour, the capitalistically exploited workmen, by conserving various kinds of feudal and semi-feudal forms of employment.
Documents coming from representatives of the ruling classes (who in this case can by no means be suspected of exaggeration) present horrifying scenes of the labour of workers in Russia. The
~^^1^^ T. S. Ashton, Economic Fluctuations in England, 1700-1800, Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1959, p. 136; G. D. Ramsay, The Wiltshire Woollen Industry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., London, 1965, pp. 65-69.
~^^2^^ Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series, 1619-1623, London, 1858, p. 382. Op. cit., 1629-1631, p. 391.
~^^3^^ Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. I: From Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor, International Publishers, New York, 1962, p. 25.
~^^1^^ Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England, Vol. X, London, 1812, col. 143-
44.
~^^2^^ E. H. Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, "Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders' Wage-Rates".---In: Essays in Economic History, Vol. II, London, Edward Arnold (Publishers), Ltd., 1962, pp. 179-96.
~^^3^^ Pierre Boisguillebert, Le Detail de la France, sous le regne present, pt, I. (s.l.), 1707.
~^^4^^ For summary data on crop failures and famines in the history of France from 1595 to 1788, see Robert Mandrou, La France aux XVIIe et XVIII* siecles, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1974, pp. 44-69.
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85Governor-General of Western Siberia, P. D. Gorchakov, in 1837 had to investigate the abuses of gold-mine owners and admitted the justice of miners' complaints. In 1835 the Minister of Finance E. F. Kankrin submitted to the tzar a memorandum which was a "reprimand to the Moscow factory owners". He stated that the workers lived and worked on the same factory premises, men and women slept together, young children were exhausted by a much too long working day, payments in kind were made in the form of stale, spoiled food. Gold-mine owners entered into collusions with local authorities for unobstructed exploitation of labour.
Even where the workers were not serfs but were regarded as ``free'' sellers of their labour power (for instance, in the city workshops of a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe), their situation was far from being easy. In the cities of Hungary the working day of apprentices lasted 15 hours, and in one of the manufactories of Pest, 16 hours. In Czechia the working day was usually 16 hours. Night work was a matter of course. Children of 7 to 12 worked for 12 hours at a stretch. Corporal punishment was common practice. In Poland manufactory owners arbitrarily refused to pay wages, and held hired workers against their will after the expiry of the labour contract.
A brief survey of the condition of labour in the formative period of the proletariat in the countries of the early genesis of capitalism reveals definite trends. The former patriarchal conditions of work of the direct producers in the classical period of the feudally organised crafts had receded into the past. True, the manual tools made the manufactory look like a medieval guild. In the process of production, however, the social relations underwent substantial changes. The new, capitalist form of exploitation came to the foreground. In the late 18th century, Jonathan Boucher, a Maryland clergyman, rightly observed that "both employers and the employed ... no longer live together with anything like attachment and cordiality on either side...".^^1^^ The new form of exploitation had already struck root and was in a process of evolution. In the countries of the late genesis of capitalism, however, it had not yet become consolidated, having in mind its proportion, although in the first half of the 19th century it had demonstrated there, almost everywhere, its promising potentialities and its advantages over compulsory labour. Quite different from feudal exploitation, capitalist exploitation radically changed the condition of the worker and lent the conditions of his work and life features uncharacteristic of the position of the medieval crafts-
man. Already in the epoch of manufactory capitalism the new form of exploitation revealed its cruel nature. However, it was still in the period of its youth. Its maturity had yet to be attained. And it did arrive only in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, in the stage of machine-factory capitalism.
In bourgeois historiography many attempts have been made to justify the exploitation of labour in the period of the genesis of capitalism. The position of the entrepreneur is vindicated with this object in mind. The employer allegedly "received a larger share of the profits as compensation for the risks of finding a market for the products", he held the position of a "captain of industry" because "he was responsible, in fact, for the whole series of processes... he bought the raw material and he sold the finished product".1 This is what one can read in the literature. The idea is promulgated to the effect that capitalist production from the very outset was organised on a principle of parity, which later gave the entrepreneur advantages accruing from his special mission. Hence the explanation of the different positions of labour and capital in production and the emphasis on the ``beneficial'' role of the employer.
Apology for entrepreneurship in the epoch of early capitalism had also been present in earlier studies criticised by Marx. Disproving the argument of bourgeois scholars who justified capitalist exploitation by references to business risk, Marx wrote: "If in capitalist production this risk falls to the capitalist it happens only because he had usurped the means of production.''^^2^^ Apology similar to that criticised by Marx keynotes the majority of works by modern bourgeois scholars.^^3^^ Persistent reiteration of this thesis, however, has failed to lend it more veracity.
- LABCUE]jSTRUGGlE AGAINST EXPLOITATION
``Til* contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer," Marx pointed out, "dates back to the very origin of capital."* The first elements of the new antagonism became manifest in the actions of the proletarians against their masters as early as the 14th and 15th centuries. The social enmity between the entrepreneurs and the workers heralded the dawn of the capitalist era in Italy. In Florence in 1345 a wool comber attempted to organise a union of
^^1^^ E. Lipson, The History of the Woollen and Worsted Industries, A. & C. Black, Ltd., London, 1921, p. 41.
~^^2^^ The Archives of Marx and Engels, Vol. II (VII), p. 27.
~^^3^^ See M. A. Barg, "Problems of the Genesis of Capitalism in Modern Bourgeois Historiography".---In: Novaya i noveishaya istoriya, 1969, No. 1,
~^^4^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 402.
~^^1^^ Jonathan Boucher, "A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution", London, 1797, p. 309---In: Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement..., op. cit., p. 69.
,
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87wage labourers. For this he was condemned to death. In protest the workers left the workshops of their masters. In 1371 the workers revolted in Perugia and Siena. In 1378 the famous uprising of the Ciompi flared up in Florence. An analysis of the programmes and plans of actions of the Ciompi shows that the level of their political awareness was high for the 14th century. Demanding a wage raise they claimed at the same time political rights and an organised form of political power of wage labour. In this sense the uprising of the Ciompi was a remarkable phenomenon in the period of the origination of early capitalist relations.
Through the manufactory stage of capitalism proper (16th-18th centuries) the struggle of the workers, as Marx stated, truly ``raged''. The employers and the workers are unhappily at constant war with one another, complained an 18th-century English economist, who, incidentally, was quite sympathetic to the workers. The abovementioned Jonathan Boucher wrote: "The labouring classes, instead of regarding the rich as their guardians, patrons, and benefactors, now look on them as so many over-grown colossuses whom it is no demerit in them to wrong.''^^1^^
Boisguillebert also expressed himself quite definitely on this question: "Just as nothing in the Universe can be brought up to perfection, similarly the interests of the worker and the entrepreneur cannot coincide.''^^2^^
The most widespread active form of labour struggle were strikes, although there were riots and even uprisings. The workers also resorted to passive resistance: escape, manufacturing of commodities by ``fraudulent'' means, etc.
The skilled workers of centralised manufactories showed the greatest unity and organisation in struggle. In Lyons in 1501 printers threatened to down tools if their employer refused to raise their wages. This is one of the earliest if not the first authentic report of a protest by French workers. The first stubborn and longlasting strike of this vanguard contingent of the manufactory proletariat in 1539 continued for five months. The main demands of the Lyons printers were as follows: a wage increase, better meals (part of their earnings were paid in kind), a change in the work schedule (more even distribution of working time, since they had to work 17-18 hours a day during the greater part of the year and idle for about one-third of the year because of the church holidays), and, finally, a restriction on the employment of apprentices, who worked
~^^1^^ Jonathan Boucher, "A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution", London, 1797.---In: Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement..., op. cit., p. 69.
~^^2^^ P. Boisguillebert, Le Detail de la France, sous le regne present, pt. I, 1707, p. 236.
almost unpaid, ousting skilled printers. The latter evidenced the spirit of competition among workers. The Paris printers also went on strike at that time, presenting similar demands. It should be pointed out that the strikes of bakery and butchery workers in Paris concurrent with the printers' strike did not merge into a common cause.
Lyons and Paris printers also went on strike in 1540-1541 and in 1570-1572. A century later the French economist Boisguillebert repeatedly referred in his principal work to the "spirit of rebellion" which prevailed among the workers and worried him. In the economically developed cities, he wrote, "seven to eight hundred workers of one industry suddenly and simultaneously leave their jobs because their daily wage was to be reduced by one sou.''^^1^^ In 1688 the striking workers of a paper manufactory in Amber put forward demands typical of united labour: a shorter working day, better meals, no arbitrary dismissals, etc. The workers of London's arms manufactories waged organised strike struggles. In 1640 their owners received an urgent order for 1,000 muskets. The workers refused to iegin work until their demand for a wage increase was met.
In a situation of stagnation and decline in the industry of the Netherlands in the 18th century the workers of centralised manufactories showed the best fighting spirit. They were capable of putting up collective resistance. Indeed, clothing industry and shipyard workers organised a series of strikes (1718-1719). The strike of 1729 ended in the conclusion of a collective bargaining agreement between the workers and the entrepreneurs. This was evidently one •of the first documents of its kind in the history of labour struggle.
The same phenomena are traceable in the area of the late genesis of capitalism. The best organised contingent of the proletariat of Hungary in the first half of the 19th century were the printers, who were also united by the conditions of their work. In May 1848 it was the printshop workers who achieved the conclusion of the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of proletarian struggle in Hungary. In Czechia the pioneers of proletarian struggle were the textile workers. In 1832 the workers of the amalgamated print works of Brandeis downed their tools in protest against their low wages. That was one of the first strikes in the Czech lands.
In Russia the main foci of the most stubborn labour struggle were the Moscow industrial region with its centralised manufactories and the raining and metallurgical region of the Ural works where unrest, among wage labourers in particular, had the most massive and protracted character. The organised struggle of the workers of Yakovlev's manufactory in Yaroslavl went down in history. The constant
P. Boisguillebert, Le Detail de la France..., pp. 267, 268.
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disturbances during the first few decades of the 19th century among the miners of the Revda, Ufalei, Sysert, and Polevsky works in the Urals, as well as the struggle of wage labourers at privately owned gold-mines in the Tomsk and Yenisei provinces and other mines compelled the management and the government to take special steps to lay down the working conditions for the proletariat. There was frequent and violent unrest among hired ship hands and builders. Purely proletarian demands (for wage increase, a shorter working day) were a new motive for labour actions in the late 18th and in the early decades of the 19th century.
The struggle of home workers was, as a rule, of a massive character everywhere. In Colchester (England) in April and May 1637 about 500 workmen who worked at home for the city's richest entreprenueur, the clothier T. Reynolds, complained of their low wages and payments in kind. After repeated futile petitions to the city mayor, justices of the peace and, finally, to the Privy Council the workers burned down part of their master's house together with the stock of commodities stored there. The damage ran into 500 pounds sterling. Apprehensive of a spread of the struggle the authorities ordered the clothier to end his arbitrary practices and pay the workers the wages fixed by law.
In 1627 a large number of home workers rioted in Lancashire. This was caused by the abuses of an official who inspected the quality of cloth. He had unfairly rejected part of the finished product, with the result that the piece wages of the workers were reduced. In Darnetalle near Rouen in 1697 three to four thousand clothing home workers continued a stubborn struggle during a month.
Apprentices usually acted as an isolated group. In the city of Worcester (England) in 1619 they went on strike in support of their demand for higher wages. The struggle evidently assumed a bitter character: the bishop had to interfere in the conflict. Frightened by the staunchness of the strikers, he advised the employers to raise their wages. In the twenties of the 17th century a demand for a wage increase was voiced by apprentices of Coventry. Actions by apprentices are also known in the history of France. In 1688 band-maker apprentices of Paris struggled for higher wages. In the same year clothier apprentices in Rouen demanded the dismissal of lowpaid and foreign workers (the spirit of competition and ethnic strife!).
In Hungary in the early 19th century there were strikes of cobbler and stone-mason apprentices in Pest in 1802 and 1807 respectively. In the 1830s shoe-maker apprentices went on strike there. In 1835- 1836 more than 600 workers put forward a demand for an improvement of their housing and living conditions, as well as (which is curious!) an improvement in the production, a return to the pat-
riarchal relations which had prevailed at one time in the classical workshops of the Middle Ages.
Junior apprentices, one of the most destitute groups of the proletariat of that period ("limited bondage, called apprenticeship", as one historian put it)^^1^^ also acted in isolation, as a rule. They expressed their protest against exploitation and the hard conditionsof life in unrest and riots, information on which is plentiful. Strikesof junior apprentices also occurred. In the city of Norwich, England, in 1610 one hundred junior apprentices employed in weavers' workshops went on strike in protest against inviting new workers to the workshops whom they regarded as their competitors. The strike grew to a considerable size, involving workers of the city environs. The strikers' resistance, however, was soon put down, and many of them were imprisoned. Big riots of junior apprentices took place in 1617 in Middlesex, mostly in the environs of London. A statement issued by the government said that the rioting and rebellion had caused enormous harm to the peace and tranquillity in the^country. Masters were prescribed not to give the workmen any reason for discontent and strictly watch them to prevent their gatherings in their leisure time. Matters went so far that the Privy Council alerted armed forces.^^2^^ Similar riots occurred in 1624. In view of this, the government issued recommendations repeated in 1625 and 1626 which provided for the maintenance of 800 armed men to frighten the workers. In 1633 junior apprentices revolted at the manufactory of the entrepreneur C. Reesley, in Newcastle. They were joined by workers of other enterprises. The rebels armed with improvised weapons offered resistance to the city home guard led by the mayor, freed their arrested comrades and partly destroyed their master's house and enterprise. The rebellion was suppressed only when armed forces arrived from other cities to assist the authorities.
The passive protest against low wages was expressed in a variety of forms. For instance, spinners who worked at home for piece wages overstated the weight of yarn moistening it with oil or water. In 18th-century colonial America newspapers published announcements about fugitive workers (so widespread was this form of passive resistance). In such cases the fugitives were hunted and severely punished whenever caught. In Germany in the early 18th century workers abandoned cities en masse. French workers emigrated to Germany and Catalonia. It is indicative that^the law of 1739 forbidding emigration from France was motivated by the reluctance to allow production skills to spread to workers of other countries. The emigration of French workers continued in later decades as well.
~^^1^^ Anthony Bimba, The History of the American Working Class, New York, International Publishers, 1927, p. 34.
~^^2^^ Acts of the Privy Council, 1617-1619, London, 1929, p. 38.
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91In the Polish lands fugitive workers were stubbornly hunted, returned to their master and cruelly punished. In Russian capitalist manufactories the workers resorted to such passive forms of protest against their hard living conditions as disobedience, grievances submitted by workers to the management through their representatives delegated for talks, frequent escapes. For example, in 1833 seventy-eight workers escaped from the gold-mines of Ryazanov and Balandin, and about 500 from Popov's.
An analysis of the demands of proletarians fully confirms Marx's conclusion concerning the great significance of the contests "about wages" in that period.^^1^^
The first attempts of industrial entrepreneurs to use machines in manufactories also came up against labour resistance. The workers -expressed their protest against exploitation by crippling manufacturing equipment. In England in the first half of the 17th century the workers opposed, for instance, the introduction of machines to manufacture needles and of wind-driven saw mills. In another case •workers destroyed a limestone kiln. In 1758 an attempt to install the first shearing machine provoked unrest among thousands of workers. In the 17th century there were protests in many European countries against the use of band- and lace-weaving looms. The riots of bandand lace-makers in Danzig, Leiden, Cologne, and Hamburg resulted in an official ban on these machines. Because of "the hostility of the workers" of Lyons in the 18th century a loom for making lacework fabrics invented by Vaucanson found no application.^^2^^
Labour disturbances often flared up because of unemployment. 'The city of Newcastle in England was more than once a scene of the struggle of miners and seamen, who were out of work due to stoppages in the seaborne coal trade. In the twenties of the 17th century England was swept by a wave of protests of woollen industry workers. It was caused by unemployment in the wake of a depression. In the •cloth-producing counties the jobless joined in units, demanding iread and money from the rich, capturing food transports and raiding markets.
While taking part in open protest actions, the workers at the same time tended to associate in unions for defence of their interests. The acts of the Lyons consulate for 1534-1536 mention an attempt by stone-masons, carpenters and day-labourers to unite in the interest of increasing their wages. Typical in this respect were the brotherhoods of apprentices resting on the traditions of the disintegrated guild system. Such brotherhoods were widespread in England.
The earliest report of a labour union in the colonial period of the USA dates back to 1684. This was the draymen's union of New York. In 1763, as it was officially announced, black chimney sweepers in Charleston "had the insolence, by a combination amongst themselves, to raise the usual prices, and to refuse doing their work unless their exorbitant demands are complied with". In 1770 the coopers of New York associated in a union. In 1778 the journeymen printers in New York combined and demanded an increase in wages. They sent a letter to their employers informing them that "as the necessaries of life are raised to such enormous prices, it cannot be expected that we should continue to work at the wages now given...."1 In the nineties of the 18th century the majority of labour unions in the United States were mutual aid associations. Later trade unions began to take shape, which was facilitated by the experience of European immigrant workers.
In France, ``companionages''---mutual aid and labour struggle associations---existed almost in all industries and operated actively in periods of preparations for and during strikes. The `` companionages'' of the Lyons and Paris printers were organised in a military fashion and had elected leaders---captains and lieutenants. They had a common fund and they held secret assemblies. In 17th-century Holland there were brotherhoods of journeymen and manufactory workers' unions. In Germany journeymen's unions organised strikes and boycotts in the early 18th century. In Italy in the latter half of the 18th century workers united in societies---brotherhoods--- whose tasks included preparations for strikes. Associations of journeymen were set up in the Austrian monarchy as well.
In England, labour coalitions, just as strikes, were banned as far back as the 14th century. Numerous repetitions of this ban throughout the manufactory period evidenced that the unions continued to exist and struggle. In the colonial period of US history the legislatures of some states passed laws directed against labour mutual aid associations in the latter half of the 18th century. Here, however, the entrepreneurs were aided in the first place not by drastic laws against association of proletarians but by the courts, which regarded labour unions as illegal conspiracies in the event of a conflict between labour and capital. In France an ordinance issued in Villers-Cotierets in 1539 banned labour organisations and brotherhoods of craftsmen of any trade throughout the country. That was the first anti-- labour law adopted in France. Nevertheless, legislation directed against labour unions and strikes was later repeated many times, which evidenced their viability. A stringent ban on labour organisation was
~^^1^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 404.
~^^2^^ F. V. Potemkin, The Industrial Revolution in France, Vol. I, Moscow, 1971, p. 105 (in Russian).
~^^1^^ Ph S Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, New York, 1972, Vol. I, pp. 69-70.
92CHAPTER 1
ORIGINS OF THE PROLETARIAT
93enacted in the Czech lands as well. The law of 1803 envisaged six months' imprisonment for participation in a proletarian union. The entrepreneurs set up their own unions for struggle against labour strikes. Such a union was formed, for instance, by the clothiers in the Netherlands in 1637. The American state judiciary encouraged employers' associations to be founded in opposition to labour. In 1758 the ship merchants of New York united to reduce the wages of their workers. Six years later a general association of entrepreneurs of this entire colony was founded. Moreover, the entrepreneurs required workers to submit letters of recommendation from their former employers. In France industrial entrepreneurs practised the issue to workers of references attesting their loyalty.
For all that no proletarian class movement in the true sense of the word existed at that time, because the working class itself had not yet formed. Even when labour'struggle took the form of open protest it could not be regarded as a working-class movement. As Marx said, in the manufactory period the struggle of the proletariat "is latent or manifests itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena".^^1^^ Strikes, as Lenin noted, expressed "the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo".^^2^^
Labour protests were spontaneous in the sense that the strikers failed to display an awareness of the socio-economic antagonism between the interests of the workers and the employers. This conclusion is valid also for the struggle of the manufactory workers, i.e., workers of the most developed enterprises where the antagonism between labour and capital became clearly manifest for the first time. The protest actions of such workers reflected the really existing antagonism only spontaneously. Marx underscored that "the contests about wages in manufacture pre-suppose manufacture, and are in no sense directed against its existence".^^3^^ Needless to say, class awareness was absent also in the struggle of those workers who were exploited by the small capitalists, because in their workshops the antagonism between labour and capital had not yet become obvious.
The proletarians waged their struggle in a situation of their division into "worker grades" which was attributable to the heterogeneity of the composition and the hierarchic structure of wage labourers. Sometimes, however, proletarians of different ``grades'' united for joint actions, but more commonly this did not happen. The rivalry between workers was quite stiff, whether they belonged to separate groups employed in one workshop (master craftsmen
and apprentices) or old-timers and newcomers, etc. In addition, there was competition between workers of different nationalities, which was actively encouraged and fomented by the bourgeoisie (German and Croatian workers; Slovaks, Hungarians, Czechs and workers of other nationalities oppressed by the Habsburg monarchy; Polish and German workers in Prussia, English and Irish workers). Marx also pointed out the existence of competition between the labour of women and children, on the one hand, and that of men, on the other.^^1^^
Labour protests in the manufactory period were mostly spontaneous in form as well. They were provoked by concrete abuses on the part of employers and were directed precisely against these abuses. It is only in this sense that one may speak of a labour action `` programme'' in relation to that time. Whenever a protest action had been preceded by preparations they usually took the form of a conspiracy. Even in relatively stubborn and long-lasting uprisings the workers who had revolted were guided and advised by their spontaneous sentiments. Their actions were characterised by narrow localisation and dissociation and never spread beyond one district or
a few cities.
All this, of course, gives no reason to belittle the progressive significance of labour struggle in the early period of capitalism. This significance is determined not only by immediate positive results •of joint actions of proletarians, by the fact that the actions of their individual groups, even the smallest ones, often ended in victory, .and the workers improved for a time their economic condition. The main thing is that labour resistance erected a barrier to continued intensification of their exploitation, and this is the intransient meaning of labour struggle even in its early stages.
Analysing labour resistance to capitalist exploitation in the manu-
iactory period, it is necessary to bear in mind the following cardinal
``feature of^this period. Manual tools were still the basis for capitalist
jproduction. Therefore, complete realisation of all its properties,
including full subordination of labour to capital, was not yet feasi-
:ble. The machine basis of technology required for this was still
non-existent.\The entrepreneurs were unable to enslave the workers
•completely, because the employers themselves and their production
depended on the skilful craftsman. "Capital is constantly compelled
•to wrestle with the insubordination of the workmen", "there runs the
• complaint of want of discipline among the workmen"^^2^^---such is
'the root cause of the peculiar conditions of labour struggle in the
^manufactory stage.
~^^1^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 24.
~^^2^^ See V. I. Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?", Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 375. * See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 404.
~^^1^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 346. * Ibid., pp. 346-47.
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ORIGINS OP THE PROLETARIAT
The specifics of labour resistance to capital in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were determined by the long reign of serfdom and after its abolition by the_ preservation of numerous survivals of feudal bondage, which were very acutely felt by the workers^ For this reason labour struggle here often had a ``conservative'' colour: it was directed against the conversion of the peasant into a factorywage labourer. Wage labour was based in the final analysis also on coercion, and capitalist exploitation at a manufactory or a workshop made the life of the peasant of yesterday by no means easier. In many protest actions of wage labourers, for example, in Russia, this factor, nostalgia of its own kind, was present invariably. To break out of the situation of arduous wage labour and return to the land was a motive behind many labour riots. The main line of labour struggle, however, was indisputably progressive, although it was very distinctive from the struggle waged by the workers in Western Europe. Documents narrating of the struggle of the Russian workers contain more information about disturbances in protest against theyoke of serfdom and feudalism than about protests against purelycapitalist oppression. The system of serfdom continued to inflict painful blows to the labourer, even if he worked for hire. Under the more or less thick veil of serfdom, right up to the reform of 1861, the masses of direct producers, both serfs and wage labourers, were united by their common position in relation to their main feudal oppressor, and therefore, the struggle of all labourers merged, as a rule, into a common cause and brought peasant serfs and wagelabourers closer together.
LABOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE ANTI-FEUDAL MOVEMENTS
Throughout the history of early capitalism purely proletarian economic battles merged into a common struggle of the popular masses against feudalism and reaction. "In every great bourgeois movement," Engels pointed out, "there were independent outbursts of that class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat.''^^1^^
Already in the late feudal society of Western Europe, in the conditions of sporadic emergence of wage labour, proletarians invariably took part in anti-feudal struggle. This was particularly manifest in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries. Here cities opposed the tyranny of feudal power single-handedly. The dramatic pages of the history of the protests of the population in the Italian city communes against the arbitrary rule of the feudal lords cannot be reproduced if one ignores the role played by the first capitalistically exploited
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, p. 116.
workers in the common movement of the people. The significance of the city in medieval Italy was extremely great: feudalism had been undermined here to a definite extent, as Marx wrote, it "has... been broken down by exceptional urban development".^^1^^ During massive uprisings (in the cities of Siena, Perugia, Florence), "fat popolans", i.e., entrepreneurs and other propertied citizens, turned the resentment of wage labourers to their own advantage. The proletarians were becoming an increasingly important factor in the political life of the city-states and often decided the outcome of developments. Already at that time they were struggling for the idea of general equality, if only in the most primitive and Utopian form, the equality of all citizens without differentiation into the poor and the rich.^^2^^
The riots of miners in the quarries of the mountains in Saxony from the 15th century "assumed the character of anti-feudal protests although they included protests against capitalist exploitation".^^3^^
The events during the Miinster commune (Westphalia) will forever remain in the history of the people's liberation struggle. The new government set up in the struggle against the city's feudal seigneur and bishop, Prince Franz von Waldeck, which ruled the city from February 1534 to June 1535 was based on the armed strength of the lower classes, primarily the working people. The struggle had ostensibly religious motives, but its root cause was social, as was evidenced by the egalitarian measures of the commune (obligatory work by all for the common weal, collectivisation of food stocks, confiscation of church and monastery property for the use of the people, and many other reforms). The anti-feudal struggle combined with vaguely expressed egalitarian communistic aspirations, which could be entertained only by proletarian elements of the Miinster commune.
Protest actions by workers of the manufactory period which merged into the common torrent of the anti-feudal struggle were veiled, as a rule, in a religious integument and directed against the dominant church.
A massive workers' and peasants' uprising broke out in the area of the salt mines in Salzkammergut, Upper Austria, and lasted from July 1601 to January 1602. The religious (Protestant) aspect of this uprising was deeply rooted in the profound resentment of the people against feudal and capitalist exploitation (as was evidenced by the
~^^1^^ See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 197TV p. 801.
~^^2^^ V. I. Rutenburg, Early Capitalism. The City Uprisings in the 14th and 15th Centuries", The History of Italy, Vol. I, p. 282, etc. (in Russian).
~^^3^^ M. M. Smirin, The History of Early Capitalism in the German Lands (15 th16th Centuries), Moscow, 1969, p. 326 (in Russian).
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ORIGINS OF THE PROLETARIAT
97workmen's demand for.higher wages). The insurgents armed themselves, put the salt works out of action and stubbornly fought to implement their anti-feudal, religious and economic demands until their defeat by government forces. The uprising of the people, including the workers, in London in May 1640 was frankly directed against the Anglican Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury. In October of the same year in the English city of Sadbury there was a similar, outwardly religious protest action by workers---weaver apprentices and other ``villains'', as it was stated in a report to the government.^^1^^
In England's North American colonies massive popular revolts, with workers taking part, against the oligarchic administration and colonialism took place in Boston in 1688-1689 and in New York in 1688.
In 18th-century Sweden unrest, strikes and revolts of manufactory workers often combined with peasant uprisings. The uprising in Dalarna Province in 1743, which went down in history under the name of the "Great Dalarna Dance", united workers and miners of iron works: both hated the nobility, mine owners and representatives of the bureaucracy. An 8,000-strong armed force advanced on Stockholm so as "to shake the wigs of the nobles". The poorest sections of the city population welcomed the insurgents. The latter advanced political demands, declaring: "We want to dethrone and elect the King in accordance with our rights and law.''^^2^^ The uprising was cruelly suppressed.
In June 1789, in a situation of general political unrest, the workers of Lyons turned out in force against the feudal absolutist authorities, seized the Hotel de Ville for a short time and hoisted a red banner over it.
The wage labourers of Russia inscribed a vivid page in the history of the joint struggle of the workers and peasants against feudalism. As a noticeable social stratum they came on the scene in the 17th century. That was the time of the first manifestations of their activity, which became especially intensive in the 18th century. Of immense interest in this context are the peasant wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, which were a variety of civil wars.^^3^^
In the peasant war of 1606-1607 wage labourers did not yet play a major role. However, already in the second peasant war of 1667- 1671 under the leadership of S. T. Razin, the peasant serfs, who were the main force of the movement, were joined by numerous plebeian
~^^1^^ Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series, 1640-1641,'London, 1882, p. 195.
~^^2^^ Quoted from: G. A. Nekrasov, "The Socio-Agrarian System in the First Half of the 18th Century", The History of Sweden, Moscow, 1974, pp. 293-94 (in Russian).
~^^8^^ See V. I. Lenin, "Socialism and War", Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 299.
elements of the cities, wage labourers of local industries and the water transport, vagrants, etc.^^1^^
The very first march of Razin's detachment on the Volga attracted 160 volunteers from among wage labourers and vagrants. The tzarist government ordered "strong checkpoints to be set up" to prevent the infiltration of volunteers to Razin's insurgent forces. Nevertheless, during Razin's march along the Volga the insurgent army grew to 10,000 men, including wage labourers and later continued to swell due to the influx of such volunteers.
Razin's forces were joined by wage labourers of Astrakhan's salt works and of many other cities. By the time the insurgent army reached Saratov it had been reinforced mostly with vagrants of the Volga valley working at salt mines and by barge haulers of various origin.
When during the siege of Simbirsk there was a shortage of weapons and Razin declared mobilisation of blacksmiths and carpenters hundreds of wage labourers and poor people from towns came to the assistance of the insurgents. They worked day and night, and, as eyewitnesses testified, the glow over the smithies illuminated the city environs like the blaze of fires. The workers of the tzar's salt works at the Tersky Lakes, the Slobodskaya Ukraine, enthusiastically joined the insurgents. Moreover, the plebeian sections of the urban population and wage labourers willingly responded to Razin's appeals for action^^2^^ and assisted the insurgents by various means in the taking of Astrakhan, Tsaritsyn, Saratov, Simbirsk, Penza, and other cities.
Wage labourers showed greater activity in the Third Peasant War of 1707-1708 under the leadership of K. Bulavin: in that period capitalist relations were more and more firmly striking root in the country. Thousands of labourers worked in the areas of the uprising. Spinners, carpenters, scutchers were sent from all parts of Russia to the coast of the Sea of Azov, where a fleet was being built, to procure timber for ships, to process hemp and make ropes. Towards 1701 up to 15,000 workers were employed at the Voronezh shipyards,
~^^1^^ See L. V. Cherepnin, "On the Study of the Peasant Wars in Russia in the 17th and 18th Centuries. (The Theory of the Problem)", The Peasant Wars in Russia in the 17th-18th Centuries: Problems, Quests, Solutions, Moscow, 1974, p. 13. It is necessary to emphasise that because of the diversity of terminology it is difficult to identify wage labourers in the true sense of the word. This refers to the Razin and later peasant wars. More definite estimates are available only for some Ural works. For example, at the time of the Pugachev uprising wage labourers accounted roughly for one-third of the work force at the Satkinsky works. (M. N. Martynov, "The Satkinsky Works at the Time of the Uprising Led by Yemelyan Pugachev", Historical Notes, Vol. 58, Moscow, 1956, p. 243 (in Russian).
.•"•''.
~^^2^^ See The Peasant War Under the Leadership of Stepan Razin, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1959, p. 65 (in Russian).
.
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98CHAPTER 1
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and 7,569 labourers and craftsmen were building the Taganrog harbour. Between 1704 and 1707 26 to 37 thousand workers were annually brought forcibly to the Azov and Troitsk building sites. During the reign of Peter the Great the Alapayevsk and other works of defence importance were expanded: here workmen "mined ores, burned wood to charcoal, and carried firewood". Many labourers and vagrants were hired to work on ships and at fisheries in Astrakhan. In the area of the Northern Donets labourers were exploited at salt mines, and procured timber along the river Khoper. When Bulavin was mustering his insurgent forces wage labourers flocked to his units from all these localities (for instance, up to 10,000 workmen rafting timber on the Khoper). In the course of the uprising Bulavin reposed great hopes in the labourers, and they were justified. For example, in September 1708 a regiment of tzarist troops guarding a transport of arms and ammunition intended for suppression of the uprising was accompanied by about 1,200 labourers. All of them joined the insurgents. Five hundred labourers procuring bast in the Khoper area followed suit.
Wage labourers from the midst of the lower classes of Tsaritsyn, Dmitriyevsk, Borisoglebsk and other towns were quite numerous in the ranks of the insurgents. They gave material aid to Bulavin's forces, and supplied valuable information on the strength and plans of punitive troops.
The Great Peasant War of 1773-1775 under the leadership of Y. I. Pugachev was the best organised, ideologically mature and gigantic in scale. It broke out in the period of consolidation of the capitalist structure and disintegration of the system of feudalism and serfdom. Therefore, the workers played a much more conspicuous part in it than in the earlier uprisings.
It was for the first time that the workers of the Ural and other works were so active as they were among the insurgents led by Pugachev---a circumstance which outlined a perspective of immense historic importance, since the spread of unrest to a large number of works laid a definite basis for unification of the insurgent forces.1 Pugachev and his associates appealed to factory hands with special messages, promising them deliverance from exhausting work and various burdens and abuses ("such that have never been and do not exist even in exile", as workmen complained.)^^2^^
In the course of the struggle the insurgents drew up a remarkable document, which was in effect their political programme for the Ural works. "This appeal," a Soviet historian says, "is distinguished by a broad outlook far from purely local or narrow group interests.
~^^1^^ See L. V. Cherepnin, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
* Quoted from: The Peasant War in Russia in 1773-1775. The Uprising of Pugachev, Vol. II, Leningrad, p. 247 (in Russian).
It covers the common national interests close to the factory hands and peasants. It is pervaded by the idea that all Russia is enslaved and exhausted by the nobility and factory owners. Liberation of Russia from the 'yoke of work' and her prosperity are now turning from a distant dream into the immediate task of the day. The messengers of God's will on earth are 'poor people'....''^^1^^
Workmen circulated Pugachev's manifestos, translated them into the different languages of the insurgents (Bashkirs, Tatars, and others). The peasants of the Trans-Urals in anticipation of Pugachev's arrival joined forces with the workmen of the Ukovsky distillery. "How we wish our protector Pugachev came, so all of us could go into his service," they said hopefully.^^2^^ They called on others to join the insurgents. All workmen of the Zlatoust works enlisted in the insurgent army. "All peasants declared the same desire as the workmen.''^^3^^ In the Chelyabinsk district the workmen of the Satkinsky works sent a delegation to Pugachev's forces and pioneered a mass coming over of the working people of that locality to the side of the insurgents. "Local peasants and workmen met and received an insurgent unit without obstruction.''^^4^^ The workmen handed over to Pugachev's forces 12 cannon, 250 muskets, 5 poods (one pood = 16 kg.---Tr.) of gunpowder, and elected their own ataman (leader) and esauls (officers), confiscated the works cash-box, raided the owner's house and arrested the superintendent. Similar revolts of workmen took place at the Zlatoust, Kyshtym, Kaslin, Nyaze-Petrovsky and other works. During the uprising documents enslaving workmen were burned in the factory offices. For instance, at the Beloretsk works the insurgents "destroyed its office and burned all contracts, records, bondage contracts with hired labourers, and promissory notes of various people....''^^5^^
The workmen supplied the working people's army with arms and ammunition, consolidating thereby the material, and militarytechnological basis for the Peasant War. The insurgent workmen of Isset Province organised the manufacture of cannon balls and caseshot for Pugachev's army. The workmen of the Avzyano-Petrovskjr works placed at the disposal of the insurgents forty cannon, as well as bombs and cannon balls. The workers of the Voskresensk works cast eleven cannon for Pugachev's army. Sabres and lances were
~^^1^^ M. N. Martynov, op. cit., p. 231.
~^^2^^ Quoted from: A. A. Kondrashenkov, "The Peasant War of 1773-1775 in the Trans-Urals", The Peasant Wars in Russia in the 17th and 18th Centuries: Problems, Quests, Solutions, p. 196 (in Russian).
~^^3^^ Quoted from: M. N. Martynov, op. cit., p. 226.
* Quoted from: A. A. Kondrashenkov, op. cit., pp. 198-99. t~^^5^^ Quoted from: I. F, Ushakov, "On the History of the Peasant War under the Leadership of Y. I. Pugachev. Workmen of the Beloretsk Works in the Peasant War."---In: The History of the USSR, 1960, No. 6, p. 133 (in Russian).
7*