ABSTRACT
It is now commonplace to note that the growth of the factory had a profound effect in changing people’s work habits and experiences. There was some shift from an orientation to task towards an orientation to time (see Thompson 1967). However, it is also clear that the growth of the factory did not result in a direct increase in the social control that capital exercised over labour. What Marx called the ‘real subsumption’ —of the labourer-was not simply brought about by the factory system. There is widespread evidence that before the development of ‘scientific management’ in its various forms the labourer was not generally placed under conditions of real subsumption by capital. There were three alternative bases of control: first, that exercised by skilled craft workers-as Nelson says, ‘the factory of 1880 [in the USA] remained a congeries of craftsmen’s shops rather than an integrated plant’ (1975:4; and see Braverman 1974; Montgomery 1979: Ch. 1 on union rules and mutual support); second, that effected by ‘foremen,’ especially through ‘driving’ the workers via authoritarian rule and physical compulsion (see Nelson 1975: Ch. 3 on the ‘foreman’s empire’); and third, that produced through ‘internal contracting’ by which contractors hired and fired their own employees, set their wages, disciplined them and determined the production methods to be used (see Littler 1978, 1982b: Ch. 11; Larson 1980: Ch. 3; Stark 1980).
