I am going to repost John Milios' very valuable OPE-L 7440 because
the way in which it is formatted in the archive makes it near
impossible to read, and it would shame if it were not read for that
reason. I hope that this will be easier to read in the archive.
John, didn't you write a paper in Rethinking Marxism on this topic?
Perhaps you could provide the cite; I would be happy to receive the
paper offline if this is possible; or I'll track it down in the
library next time I am there.
All the best, Rakesh
From: "jmilios" <jmilios@hol.gr>
To: <ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu>
Subject: [OPE-L:7440] The buyer-up as informal owner of the artisan's
M. o. Production
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 20:49:16 +0300
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Following Rakesh and Gil, I would like to add some thoughts on the
putting-out system discussion and to stress the contribution of
Lenin's early economic writings to the subject.
So long as the artisan or the farmer could sell his
commodities to different merchants he/she could retain the economic
status of an independent commodity producer. However, the
diversification of demand and consequently of production, along with
the need to produce not for a local but for various distant markets,
historically made the producer increasingly dependent on one merchant
in particular, who would supply him with raw materials and become
thus BUYER-UP of the producer's total output. Since the buyer-up is
now the economic agent who places the product on the different
markets, he determines the type of product, and the quantity of
products, that each artisan or farmer working for him is to produce.
He places advance orders for the wares he requires, and in many cases
begins to supply the direct producer with raw materials.
In this way the buyer-up in effect acquires control over
the production process of the individual producers, I.E. OF THEIR
MEANS OF PRODUCTION. It is he who decides the extent of output and
its degree of diversification as well as establishing the division of
labor among the separate producers who are under his control,
according to productivity criteria which he sets and changes in
demand which he follows. The buyer-up can now lower the prices of the
commodities he purchases (buys up) from direct producers to a level
which yields for the producer an income not higher than a worker's
wage.
There thus emerges what Rubin in his HISTORY OF ECONOMIC
THOUGHT (1989) calls "the cottage or domestic or decentralized system
of large-scale industry" which "paved the way for the complete
reorganization of industry on a capitalist basis" (p. 155).
It was Lenin who clearly comprehended and pointed out
firstly the capitalist character of an economy based on the buyer-up:
"Nothing could be more absurd than the opinion that working for
buyers-up is merely the result of some abuse, of some accident, of
some 'capitalization of the process of exchange' and not of
production. (Š) In the scientific classification of forms of industry
in their successive development, work for the buyers-up belongs to a
considerable extent to capitalist manufacture, since 1) it is based
on hand production and on the existence of many small establishments;
2) it introduces division of labor between these establishments and
develops it also within the workshop; 3) it places the merchant at
the head of production, as is always the case in manufacture, which
presupposes production on an extensive scale, and the wholesale
purchase of raw material and marketing of the product; 4) it reduces
those who work to the status of wage-workers engaged either in a
master's workshop or in their own homes (Š) This form of industry,
then, already implies the deep-going rule of capitalism, being the
direct predecessor of its last and highest form - large scale machine
industry. Work for the buyer-up is consequently a backward form of
capitalism, and in contemporary society this backwardness has the
effect of seriously worsening the conditions of the working people,
who are exploited by a host of middlemen (the sweating system),
are disunited, are compelled to content themselves with the
lowest wages and to work under the most insanitary conditions
and for extremely long hours, and -what is most important- under
conditions which render public control of production extremely
difficult" (LCW Vol. 2, pp. 434-35).
Lenin considers the social relations created when the merchant
takes control of the craftsmen's production to be already capitalist
relations of production, i.e. a preliminary form of piece-wage labor,
a preliminary form of surplus-value extraction. According to his
approach, by taking control over the craftsmen's production process,
merchant capital takes control over their means of production, albeit
in an informal or indirect way. Consequently, Lenin conceives
industrialization as a transition from one (the underdeveloped)
capitalist form to another (the developed).
I believe that Marxist development economics has much to gain if
it takes seriously into consideration this theoretical interpretation
of the producer-merchant class relations: the enormous spread of
cottage industries and sub-contracting relations in most LDCs (but
also the rise in façon-production and sub-contracting in the
developed capitalist countries, as on the one hand "labor
flexibility" rises, while on the other an increasing number of
enterprises engage primarily in marketing commodities produced for
them by sub-contractors) can in many cases comprehended as
alternative (to formal wage-labor relations) forms of capitalist
exploitation.
John
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