The Evolution Of Modern Capitalism - A Study Of Machine Production

With an Excerpt From Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism By V. I. Lenin

John Atkinson Hobson, V. I. Lenin

• Publisher: White Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781528715140
• eBook ISBN: 9781528788977
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1902, "The Evolution Of Modern Capitalism" looks at the effects that the industrial revolution had had on contemporary capitalism, focusing primarily on the introduction of machinery into production. Contents include: "The Structure of Industry Before Machinery", "The Order of Development of Machine Industry", "The Structure of Modern Industry", "The Formation of monopolies in Capital", "Economic Powers of the Trust", "Machinery and Industrial Depression", etc. This fascinating volume will appeal to those with an interest in the history of modern capitalism and is not to be missed by collectors of Hobson's seminal work. John Atkinson Hobson (1858 – 1940) was an English social scientist and economist most famous for his work on imperialism—which notably had an influence on Vladimir Lenin—as well as his theory of underconsumption. His early work also questioned the classical theory of rent and predicted the Neoclassical "marginal productivity" theory of distribution. Other notable works by this author include: "Evolution of Modern Capitalism" (1894), "Problem of the Unemployed" (1896), and "John Ruskin: Social Reformer" (1898). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition together with an excerpt from "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism" by V. I. Lenin.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. Industrial Science, its Standpoint and Methods of Advance.

§ 2. Capital as Factor in Modern Industrial Changes.

§ 3. Place of Machinery in Evolution of Capitalism.

§ 4. The Monetary Aspect of Industry.

§ 5. The Literary Presentment of Organic Movement.

§ 1. Science is ever becoming more and more historical in the sense that it becomes more studiously anxious to show that the laws or principles with whose exposition it is concerned not merely are rightly derived from observation of phenomena but cover the whole range of these phenomena in the explanation they afford. So likewise History is ever becoming more scientific in the sense that facts or phenomena are so ordered in their setting as to give prominence to the ideas or principles which appear to relate them and of which they are the outward expression. Thus the old sharp line, of distinction has slipped away, and we see there is no ultimate barrier between a study of facts and a study of the laws or principles which dominate these facts. In this way the severance of History and Science becomes less logically justifiable. Yet it is still convenient that we should say of one branch of study that it is historical in the sense that it is directly and consciously engaged in the collection and clear expression of facts or phenomena as they stand objectively in place or time without any conscious reference to the laws which relate or explain them; of another branch of study that it is scientific because it is engaged in the discovery, formulation, and correct expression of the laws according to which facts are related, without affecting to give a full presentment of those facts. The treatment in this book belongs in this sense to economic science rather than to industrial history as being an endeavour to discover and interpret the laws of the movement of industrial forces during the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It cannot, however, be pretended that any high degree of exactitude can attach to such a scientific study.

Two chief difficulties beset any attempt to explain industrial phenomena by tracing the laws of the action of the forces manifested in them. The first is that only a limited proportion of the phenomena which at any given time constitute Industry are clearly and definitely ascertainable, and it may always be possible that the laws which satisfactorily explain the statical and dynamical relations of these may be subordinate or even counteracting forces of larger movements whose dominance would appear if all parts of the industrial whole were equally known.

The second difficulty, closely related to the first, is the inherent complexity of Industry, the continual and close interaction of a number of phenomena whose exact size and relative importance is continually shifting and baffles the keenest observer.

These difficulties, common to all sciences, are enhanced in sociological sciences by the impossibility of adequate experiment in specially prepared environments.

The degree of exactitude attainable in industrial sciences may thus appear to be limited by the development of statistical inquiry.

Since the collection of accurate statistics, even on those matters which are most important, and which lend themselves most easily to statistical description, is a modern acquirement which has not yet widely spread over the whole world, while the capacity for classifying and making right use of statistics is still rarer, it is held by some that in a study where so much depends upon accurate statements of quantity little advance is at present possible.

And it is, of course, true that until the advance of organised curiosity has provided us with a complete measurement of industrial phenomena over a wide area of commerce and over a considerable period of time, the inductive science of Economics cannot approach exactitude.

But a study which cannot claim this exactness may yet be a science, and may have its value. A hypothesis which best explains the generally apparent relation between certain known phenomena is not the less science because it is liable to be succeeded by other hypotheses which with equal relative accuracy explain a wider range of similar phenomena. It is true that in studies where we know that there exists a number of unascertained factors we shall expect a more fundamental displacement of earlier and more speculative hypotheses than in studies where we know, or think we know, that most of the phenomena with which we are concerned are equally within our ken: but the earlier scientific treatment, so far as it goes, is equally necessary and equally scientific.

In modern industrial changes many different factors, material and moral, are discernibly related to one another in many complex ways. According as one or other of the leading factors is taken for a scientific objective the study assumes a widely different character.

For example, since the end of Industry is wealth for consumption it would be possible to group the industrial phenomena accordingly as they served more fully and directly to satisfy human wants, or as they affected quantitatively or qualitatively the standard of consumption, and to consider the reflex actions of changed consumption upon modes of industrial activity. Or again, considering Industry to consist essentially of organised productive human effort, those factors most closely related to changes in nature, conditions, and intensity of work might form the centre of scientific interest; and we might group our facts and forces according to their bearing upon this. These points of view would give us different objective scientific studies.

Or, once more, taking a purely subjective standpoint, we might search out the intellectual expression of these industrial changes in the changing thought and feeling of the age, tracing the educative influences of industrial development upon (1) the deliberate judgments of the business world and of economic thinkers as reflected in economic writings; (2) politics, literature, and art through the changes of social environment, and the direct stimulation of new ideas and sentiments. The deeper and more important human bearings of the changes in industrial environment might thus be brought into prominence as well as the reaction by which, through the various social avenues of law, public opinion, and private organised activity, these intellectual forces have operated in their turn upon the industrial structure.

The crowning difficulty of an adequate scientific treatment consists in the fact that each and all of these scientific objects ought to be pursued simultaneously; that is to say, the whole of the phenomena—industrial, intellectual, political, moral, æsthetic—should be presented in their just but ever-changing proportions.

This larger philosophic treatment is only named in order that it may be realised how narrow and incomplete would be even the amplest fulfilment of the purpose indicated in the title of this book.

§ 2. Industrial science has not yet sufficiently advanced to enable a full treatment of the objective phenomena to be attempted.

The method here adopted is to take for our intellectual objective one important factor in modern industrial movements, to study the laws of its development and activity, and by observing the relations which subsist between it and other leading factors or forces in industry to obtain some clearer appreciation and understanding of the structure of industry as a whole and its relation to the evolution of human society. This central factor is indicated by the descriptive title peculiarly applied to modern industry, Capitalism. A clear view of the phenomena grouped together under the head of the Industrial Revolution cannot fail to give prominence to the changes that have taken place in the structure and functional character of Capital. Whatever transformations have taken place in the character of land, the raw material of industrial wealth, and of labour, or those abilities and faculties of man which operate upon the raw material, have occurred chiefly and directly through the agency of the enlarged and more complex use of those forms of material wealth which, while embodying some element of human effort, are not directly serviceable in satisfying human want.

Writers upon Political Economy have brought much metaphysical acumen to bear upon definitions of Capital, and have reached very widely divergent conclusions as to what the term ought to mean, ignoring the clear and fairly consistent meaning the term actually possesses in the business world around them. The business world has indeed two views of Capital, but they are consistent with one another. Abstractly, money or the control of money, sometimes called credit, is Capital. Concretely, capital consists of all forms of marketable matter which embody labour. Land or nature is excluded except for improvements: human powers are excluded as not being matter; commodities in the hands of consumers are excluded because they are no longer marketable. Thus the actual concrete forms of capital are the raw materials of production, including the finished stage of shop goods; and the plant and implements used in the several processes of industry, including the monetary implements of exchange. Concrete business capital is composed of these and of nothing but these.[1] In taking modern industrial phenomena as the subject of scientific inquiry it is better to accept such terminology as is generally and consistently received by business men, than either to invent new terms or to give a private significance to some accepted term which shall be different from that given by other scientific students, and, if we may judge from past experience, probably inferior in logical exactitude to the current meaning in the business world.

§ 3. The chief material factor in the evolution of Capitalism is machinery. The growing quantity and complexity of machinery applied to purposes of manufacture and conveyance, and to the extractive industries, is the great special fact in the narrative of the expansion of modern industry.

It is therefore to the development and influence of machinery upon industry that we shall chiefly direct our attention, adopting the following method of study. It is first essential to obtain a clear understanding of the structure of industry or "the industrial organism" as a whole, and of its constituent parts, before the new industrial forces had begun to operate. We must then seek to ascertain the laws of the development and application of the new forces to the different departments of industry and the different parts of the industrial world, examining in certain typical machine industries the order and pace of the application of the new machinery and motor to the several processes. Turning our attention again to the industrial organism, we shall strive to ascertain the chief changes that have been brought about in the size and structural character of industry, in the relations of the several parts of the industrial world, of the several trades which constitute industry, of the processes within these trades, of the businesses or units which comprise a trade or a market, and of the units of capital and labour comprising a business. It will then remain to undertake closer studies of certain important special outcomes of machinery and factory production. These studies will fall into three classes. (1) The influences of machine-production upon the size of the units of capital, the intensification and limitation of competition; the natural formation of Trusts and other forms of economic monopoly of capital; trade depressions and grave industrial disorders due to discrepancies between individual and social interests in the working of modern methods of production. (2) Effects of machinery upon labour, the quantity and regularity of employment, the character and remuneration of work, the place of women in industry (3) Effects upon the industrial classes in the capacity of consumers, the growth of the large industrial town and its influences upon the physical, intellectual, moral life of the community. Lastly, an attempt will be made to summarise the net influences of modern capitalist production in their relation to other social progressive forces, and to indicate the relatio...

Table of contents

• The Highest Stage Of Capitalism
• PREFACE.
• CHAPTER I.
• CHAPTER II.
• CHAPTER III.
• CHAPTER IV.
• CHAPTER V.
• CHAPTER VI.
• CHAPTER VII.
• APPENDIX I.
• APPENDIX II.
• CHAPTER VIII.
• CHAPTER IX.
• CHAPTER X.
• CHAPTER XI.
• CHAPTER XII.
• APPENDIX.
• CHAPTER XIII.
• CHAPTER XIV.