Through examining bonded service relations in Britain; slavery and neo-slavery in the U.S.A., Tsarist Russia, and Southern Africa; and what is normally perceived as `migration', it is shown that ascriptive constraint and non-wage coercion increases with the expansion of capitalism and, moreover, that this is not a feature of `early stages' but crucial to such `high technology' areas as the European motor car industry. Closes by arguing for the recognition of `migration' as the circulation of a commodity (labour power) and for the primacy of relations of production, in the combination of relations and forces which define particular production modes.
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References
1.
This is a revised version of a paper given to the Political Economy Group, Durham, 13 May 1975. I would like to thank members of that Group, particularly Gavin Williams, for their assistance. The revised version has also benefited from discussions with Jason Ditton and Val Gillespie, and editorial comments from Philip Abrams. Eric Wolf originally encouraged me to revise the first version.
2.
L. Matthew , `Ascription in Modem Societies' , Sociological Inquiry, 38 (1968), 120 .
3.
R. Aufhauser , `Slavery and Scientific Management', J . Economic Hist.33 (1973), 812 .
4.
P. Laslett , `The Balance Sheet of Slavery' , Listener, 4 July 1974, 25 .
5.
I. Wallerstein , `American Slavery and the Capitalist World Economy' , American J. Sociology, 81 (1976), 1200 .
6.
P. Worsley , `Proletarians, Sub-proletarians, Lumpenproletarians, Marginalidados, Migrants, Urban Peasants and Urban Poor' , Sociology, 10 (1976), 133 .
7.
A survey of how false models of capitalism persist is D. Horowitz , `Textbook models of American economic growth' , Hist. Political Economy7 (1975), esp. 247 f
8.
cf., M. Burawoy , `The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labour: Comparative Material from Southern Africa and the United States' , American J. Sociology81 (1976), 1050-1054 .
9.
Cf P. Corrigan and D. Sayer , `Moral relations, political economy and class struggle' , Radical Philosophy, 12 (1975).
10.
T. S. Ashton and J. Sykes , The Coal Industry in the Eighteenth Century ( Manchester University Press , 1929), 99.
11.
A different comment on the same consensus comes in R. Bendix , `Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered' , Comparative Studies in Society and Hist. 9 (1967), part III.
12.
Ideology and Utopia ( Routledge , 1960), 249 f
13.
and W. Lazonick , `Karl Marx and enclosures in Britain' , Rev. Arican Political Economy6 (1974).
14.
Sayer , `Method and Dogma'.
15.
and V. Allen , `The Origins of Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration' , Int. Rev. Social Hist. 9 (1964).
16.
and E. P. Thompson , `Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism' , Past & Present, 38 (1967).
17.
In 1881 service occupations accounted for around a third of the paid employed population, about the same as manufacturing. The last three groups to be recognized as independent wage workers (all in the mid- or late-thirties of this century) were young workers, agricultural workers, and domestic servants. Until such recognition they were precisely of `the family' as they are in the statistical profiles of King, 1688 and Coloquhoun, 1801.
18.
The figure only falls below 20 per cent in that annus mirabilis for British workers, 1940, when unemployment fell below one million for the first time since 1919, thus neatly confirming Marx's point about the interconnectedness of active and surplus populations, Capital, i. 640 f.
19.
Davidoff, `Mastered for Life', and consider the following remark by an official in the Registrar General's Department in a preface to a Census volume: in 1851 `the English family, in its essential type, is composed of husband, wife, children and servants; or less perfectly but more commonly, of husband, wife and children.'
20.
and `State Intervention and Moral Reform', ch. 12 in P. Hollis (ed.), Pressure from Without ( Leeds, Arnold , 1974).
21.
Qu. N. Branson and M. Heinemann , Britain in the 1930's ( Weidenfeld & Nicholson , 1971), 65.
22.
and for shopworkers W. Whittaker , Victorian and Edwardian Shopworkers... ( Newton Abbot, David & Charles , 1973).
23.
and `Sociological Models of Mining Communities' , Sociological Rev.23 (1975).
24.
and B. Duckham's Introduction to the reprint of R. Galloway, History of Coal Mining in Great Britain ( Newton Abbot, David & Charles , 1969).
25.
The relevant debate here is whether this serfdom continued agrarian serfdom or was of a new type; Barrowman argues the latter view.
26.
`Slavery in Modem Scotland' , Edinburgh Review189 (1899), 144 .
27.
Ibid. 148, quoting Bald's studies of 1803.
28.
For organisations of the Coalmasters cf. P. Sweezy , Monopoly and Competition in the English Coal Trade, 1500-1850 ( Harvard, University Press , 1938).
29.
and for an excellent internal account see J. Davison , Northumberland Miners, 1919-1930 ( Newcastle upon Tyne, Harold Hill for the National Union of Mineworkers , 1973).
30.
Davison , Northumberland Miners, p. 202, refers to the miners' coal company houses as `tied cottages'.
31.
and I. Carter , `Agricultural Workers in the Class Structure: A Critical Note' , Sociological Rev.22 (1974).
32.
Photographic evidence is available in R. Gard , Northumberland at the Turn of the Century ( Newcastle upon Tyne, Oriel , 1970).
33.
S. Yeo , `On the Uses of "Apathy"' , Archives Europe'enes de Sociologie, 15 (1974).
34.
for a critical comment see H. Newby , letter, Sunday Times, 2 Dec. 1974.
35.
D. Leich , `Can the Government ever settle the "feudal relic" of tied cottages?' , The Times, 14 Mar. 1975.
36.
D. Barnett , `Allotments and the Problem of Rural Poverty' in E. L. Jones and G. Mingay, Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution ( Methuen , 1967) who give data on the extent of allotments and allotment gardens in Northumbria.
37.
Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into allotments, H.M.S.O. Cmnd 4166, 1969, Ss. 358, 15. Note: `The readiness of the mining companies to provide allotments was due to a number of factors. Most of the rows of terrace houses provided for the miners had little or no garden space and the provision of land for allotments was the obvious alternative' (ibid. Ss. 331). Why `obvious'? Consider mil-towns, dockworkers' housing, etc. Empirically the statement is also false; long rows of houses with ample gardens can be seen, e.g. in Cambois, North Blyth, Northumberland. As late as 1906 allotments were used to keep wages as low as 2 d. an hour in the High Wycombe furniture industry; Harrison, Alex Gossip, p. 19.
38.
V. Lenin , `The Agrarian Question in Russia...', Selected Works, vol. 1 ( Moscow, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute , 1936), p. 54. This text was not published until 1918; although it was written in 1908.
39.
B. Moore Jr. , The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy ( Penguin , 1969), ch. 7.
40.
A. Kahan , `Notes on Serfdom in Western and Eastern Europe', J . Economic Hist. 33 (1973).
41.
G. Yaney , The Systemmatization of Russian Government, 1711-1905 ( Urbana, University of Illinois , 1974), ch. 4. One aspect of the world relations I have been trying to make visible is exemplified in the contradictory impact within Tsarist Russia of the repeal of two pieces of British legislation: in 1842 on the export of textile machinery, and in 1846 on the import of cheap corn.
42.
provides a perceptive location of Lenin's Development of Capitalism in Russia.
43.
and D. Preston , `Geographers on the Peasants' , Progress in Geography, 6 (1974).
44.
E. Feder , The Rape of the Peasantry ( New York, Anchor , 1971), pp. 114 f
45.
criticized in advance by Frank , Capitalism and Underdevelopment, pp. 135 f
46.
On the dynamic situation of the wage worker under capitalism as a form of debt slavery cf. K. Marx , Capital, ii ( Lawrence & Wishart , 1970), 377 f.
47.
He stresses (pp. 82 f) how this applies to migrant labour in general whether from Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Europe. Cf. Burawoy , `The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labour' for similar emphasis.
48.
note the critical praise of this work in E. Genovese , In Red and Black ( New York, Vintage , 1972), pp. 345 f
49.
and E. Genovese , Roll, Jordan, Roll ( New York, Pantheon , 1974).
50.
as to credit, see Marx , Capital, i. 754 f
51.
reprinted in Labour Monthly, 54 (1972).
52.
A. Zable , `Neocolonialism and Race Relations' , Race, 14 (1973). Particular significance attaches to the relationship between the size of the Indian market and the rate of English capital growth.
53.
Negro Hist. (1975).
54.
R. Starobin , Industrial Slavery in the Old South ( New York, Oxford University Press , 1970). Much of his account invites comparison with, e.g., serfdom in Tsarist Russia.
55.
Cf. D. Montgomery , `Immigrant Workers and Scientific Management' , paper to Immigrants in Industry Conference, November 1973.
56.
E. Rose (ed.), Colour and Citizenship ( Oxford University Press , 1969), p. 652.
57.
N. Brown and M. Reynolds , `Debt Peonage Re-examined' , J. Economic Hist.33 (1973).
58.
H. Wolpe , `The "white working class" in South Africa' , Economy and Society, 5 (1976).
59.
T. Rosengarten , All God's Dangers; The Life of Nate Shaw ( New York, Avon , 1973).
60.
J. Meyer , `Comment' (on Engerman, Goldin, and Kahn),J . Economic Hist.33 (1973), 105 .
61.
H. Alavi , `India and the colonial mode of production' , Socialist Register (1975).
62.
Sunday Times, 26 Aug. 1973, p. 6 .
63.
and H. Wolpe , `White Working Class'.
64.
J. Rex , The Compound, the Reserve and Urban Location ( British Sociological Association Conference , 1972), p. 7.
65.
cf. H. Wolpe , `Industrialisation and Race in South Africa', in S. Zubaida (ed.), Race and Racialism ( Tavisock , 1971), and the changes made in his `White Working Class' which is complemented by the theoretical discussion at the start of Burawoy, `Functions and Reproduction'.
66.
The latter taken with almost any issue of The Times or Sunday Times (e.g. 16 May 1976, p. 9 ), reminds us that we can no more understand this peculiarity within Southern Africa than we could by considering slavery in the antebellum South a home-grown product. With respect to white migration I repeat this point below.
67.
cf. Wolpe , `White Working Class'.
68.
Cf. Marx's polemic against Wakefield'sThe Modern Theory of Colonisation in Capital, i, ch. 33.
69.
cf. B. Thomas , Migration and Urban Development ( Methuen , 1972).
70.
and see, e.g., I. Malhotra , `Taking the Beggars to the Jobs', `Beggars Beg to Differ' , Guardian, 2 and is Mar. 1976. I am grateful to Jason Ditton for drawing these items to my attention.
71.
and contrast Burawoy , `Functions and Reproduction'.
72.
and E. Richards , `Structural Change in a Regional Economy: Sutherland and the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1830' , Economic Hist. Rev.26 (1973).
73.
H. Lind , `Internal Migration in Britain', in Jackson, Migration.
74.
There were, by about 1850, some half a million Irish men and women in England. In the 1971 Census it is shown that there were 480,000 Irish born and 653,000 `new /i.e. black/Commonwealth' born amongst the economically active population. Since 1945 Britain has been a net exporter of people; in some years the outflows were at the proportional level of Italy.
75.
M. Fullam , `Provisional Providers' , New Society, 1 Jan. 1976.
76.
S. Terkel , Working ( New York, Avon , 1975).
77.
J. Eyles , `Social Theory and Social Geography' , Progress in Geography, 6 (1974).
78.
C. Erickson , Invisible Immigrants... ( Coral Gables, Florida, University of Miami Press , 1972).
79.
cf. the section `Migrant workers' in Social and Labour Bulletin of the I.L.O. ; the statistical series MN issued by O.P.C.S. Monitors covering both inter- and intranational movements.
80.
other groups being less than 100,000. Cf. data in Europa, 4 Feb. 1974, p. vi.
81.
there have been two referenda in Switzerland, in 1970 and 1974, neither of which achieved the repatriation sought for. In 1974 there were 1,100,000 migrant workers out of a total population in Switzerland of 6,400,000.
82.
`Distributing the Profits of Migrant Labour' , The Times, 30 May 1973.
83.
For the slavery of high technology see H. Beynon , Workingfor Ford ( Penguin , 1973).
84.
`Notes towards a General Theory of Migration in Late Capitalism' , Race and Class, 17 (1975).
85.
f., is as close to my `general theory' as any text. Marx noted similar internal relations when he quoted from the Medical Officer's Report to the Privy Council (1863): `The young people migrate to the eastern mining districts of Glamorgan and Monmouth. Carmarthenshire is the breeding ground of the mining population and their hospital', Capital, i. 681 f.
86.
and Sunday Times, 19 May 1974.
87.
and the exceptional film Shaft in Africa.
88.
Nikolinakos , `Notes towards a General Theory'.
89.
T. Hagerstrand , `On the Definition of Migration', in E. Jones, Readings in Social Geography ( Oxford University Press , 1975), p. 208.
90.
cf. P. Worsley , `The State of Theory and the Status of Theory' , Sociology, 8 (1974).
91.
and the `Jobs on the Fence' supplement , The Times, 24 Apr. 1975, on the Manpower Services Commission. Participant observation during spells of unemployment verifies the rigidity of the segmentalization practised by special offices for different qualities of labour-power.
92.
and the studies in W. O'Neill , Insights and Parallels ( Minneapolis, Burgess , 1973), especially that by Grimsted.
93.
J. Scott and L. Tilly , `Women's Work and the Family in Nineteenth Century Europe' , Comparative Studies in Society and Hist.17 (1975).
94.
E. Wigham , `Protecting the Army of Home Workers from Exploitation' , The Times, 4 May 1976.
95.
That is, `black workers in Britain are bearers of the underdeveloped economies from which they have come... an inverted form of imperialism', McGreal and Corrigan, `Ideology in "Colour and Citizenship"'. Cf. Marx on slavery in the context of `The genesis of the industrial capitalist', Capital, i. ch. 31. As he says, p. 752, n. 1, `This subject one must study in detail, to see what the bourgeoisie makes of itself and the labourers, wherever it can, without restraint, model the world after its own image.'
96.
and recent data in New Society, 10 and 17 Apr. 1975.
97.
The Eta fraction of the Burakumin exemplify much of what my remarks are about. On `caste' see C. Meillassoux , `Are there castes in India?' , Economy and Society, 2 (1973).
98.
Aufhauser , `Slavery and Scientific Management', p. 820, is right to stress that both the lash and the threat of firing `result from a violation of established rules...'; in other words, `the practical content of discipline does not vary much between labour regimes.'
99.
Cf. A. Gorz (ed.), Critique de la division du travail (Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1973).
100.
Contrast B. Hoselitz , `Karl Marx on Secular and Social Development' , Comparative Studies in Society and Hist.6 (1963), a paper read to the conference on which Thorner, `Marxian theory', reports.
101.
Marx , Grundrisse, pp. 609-610.
102.
Cf. R. Mishra , `Marx and Welfare' , Sociological Rev.23 (1975).
103.
and in Wage Labour and Capital ( Moscow, Progress Press , 1952).
104.
On the circulation of labour as a commodity, cf. Capital, ii, ch. 5, and on the coercion of `free' wage labour, iii, part vii.
105.
H. Hill , `Peripheral Capitalism...' , Australian and New Zealand J. of SociologyII (1975).
106.
and Gorz , `Immigrant Labour'.
107.
Cf. Nikolinakos , `Towards a General Theory'.
108.
Wallerstein , `American Slavery', p. 1212.
109.
C. Bettelheim , `Theoretical Comments', in A. Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange ( New Left Books , 1972), pp. 293 f.
110.
Corrigan, `Historical Experience', `Politics of Production', Corrigan and Sayer, `Moral relations'.
111.
cf. R. Williams , `Social Darwinism' , Listener, 23 Nov. 1972.
112.
Oxfam'sWhose Right to Work? (May 1976) also wishes to enforce the international division of labour.
