ABSTRACT
This chapter examines whether a different commodity form can be discerned in the Low Countries. The Low Countries’ ceramic and glass industry entered the capitalist era with the birth of the Regout factory “Sphinx” in Maastricht in 1836. Richard Biernacki has mainly analyzed the emergence of the commodity form of labor in industrializing Britain and Germany. The value of Biernacki’s approach is that he points to the variety of commodity forms of labor and, even more importantly, to the discursive nature of the related processes of disciplining and subjectivation. Capitalism requires commodified labor to be the substance of value in any good. Commodified labor sold on the market while being integrated in a capitalist factory system became dominant during the nineteenth century in Europe. The factory apparatus is the quintessential site of production of the commodity form of labor.
