Relations of production

“ In every society in which production has developed naturally, to which class that of to-day belongs, the producers do not master the means of production but the means of production dominate the producers. ”

“ Passing now from the purely technical and material side of the problem of production, we come to the human factor, the motives leading men to work, the possibilities of efficient organization of production, and the connection of production with distribution. ”

“ A country which produces for a larger market than its own, can introduce a more extended division of labour, can make greater use of machinery, and is more likely to make inventions and improvements in the processes of production. Whatever causes a greater quantity of anything to be produced in the same place, tends to the general increase of the productive powers of the world. ”

“ Under the stimulus of this the wheels of industry hummed. Factories covered the land. National production grew to a colossal size and the whole outer world seemed laid under a tribute to the great industry. ”

“ We may, therefore, consider the capital of a producer as measured by the means which he has of possessing himself of the different essentials of production: namely, labour, and the various articles which labour requires as materials, or of which it avails itself as aids. ”

“ It will have to take possession of land, factories, mines, means of communication, etc., and besides, it will have to study what products will promote general well-being, as well as the ways and means of an adequate production. ”

“ It is a joint production. Everyone employed in it has contributed something to it. By working and producing they make it possible for the purchasing world to keep coming to that business for the type of service it provides, and thus they help establish a custom, a trade, a habit which supplies them with a livelihood. ”

“ The Requisites of Production. The first thing in industry, as we now see, is to decide what we want; the next thing is to get it, or make it, or, as we shall say, produce it, and we ought obviously to produce it with the least possible labour. To learn how this may be done, we must inquire what is needful for the production of wealth. There are, as is commonly and correctly said, three requisites of production ”

“ The principal thing to ascertain is the number and the nature of the forces that are available, the quantity and nature of the means of production,—the factories, workshops, means of transportation and communication, land—and also their productivity. ”

“ As the productive forces expand, through greater skill on the part of the worker, through discoveries of new raw material and markets, through the invention of new labour processes, tools and machines, and through the better organisation of trade and exchange, so that the material basis or the economic foundation of society is altered, then the old conditions of production cease to promote the interests of production. ”

“ It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is theirs. ”

“ It is thus that agriculture and manufactures are essentially allied in their interests; that unrestrained commerce is equally essential to the real and permanent interests of agriculture and manufactures; that capital and labour are equally united in their interests, whether applied to agriculture, manufactures, or commerce; that the producer and the consumer are equally united in their most essential interest, which is, that there should be cheap production. ”

“ The development of large scale factory production, the benefit of combination in the competitive struggle, and the tremendous advantage of concentration in securing possession of the unoccupied opportunities, were so great that vast accumulations of capital became the normal agency of the industrial world. ”

“ There are four fundamental facts connected with the subject, viz., the points of production, places of consumption, methods of operation and means of communication. Production is upon the farm, consumption in the cities and towns, methods, to be determined by experience, and the mode and means of conveyance, a government function.
Regarding the first of these divisions, certain facts are apparent. The balance of trade, eight to one is against the farmer at the point of production; he receives very much more than he sends. ”

“ Mines, factories and mills of all kinds, large business houses and stores, together with those farms whose owners would employ hired labor for the production of goods to be sold at profit, would all be looked upon as being among the principal means of production. ”

“ Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical reaction of society against the spontaneously developed form of the process of production, is, as we have seen, just as much the necessary product of modern industry as cotton yarn, self-actors, and the electric telegraph. ”

“ Production is not a fixed but an increasing thing. When not kept back by bad institutions, or a low state of the arts of life, the produce of industry has usually tended to increase; stimulated not only by the desire of the producers to augment their means of consumption, but by the increasing number of the consumers.
We have seen that the essential requisites of production are three—labor, capital, and natural agents; the term capital including all external and physical requisites which are products of labor, the term natural agents all those which are not. ”

“ Capital—raw materials, tools, machines, buildings, equipment, means for transportation and selling, stored products—is absolutely essential to more production, hence may be considered as an independent factor, although it may have been the product of previous labor allied to natural powers. ”

“ That co-operation which is based on division of labour, assumes its typical form in the manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic form of the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing period properly so called. ”

“ The importance of these considerations becomes all the clearer to us when we reflect on the fact that the mere production of commodities, and the production of the means of production, form but a part of the processes which advance, maintain, and indeed constitute civilisation. ”

“ But where, in a given society, the fundamental form of production is that spontaneous division of labor which creeps in gradually and not upon any preconceived plan, there the products take on the form of commodities, whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable the individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. ”

“ Our courts of justice, our financial institutions, our methods of trade, and our schools of all grades are examples of social harmonies which found their form by long conflict, and settled down to smooth action by custom. The financial institutions and the methods of trade belong to the economic system. The system of production is modern and new. ”

“ The passing away from the individual worker of personal control over the raw material and the instruments of production, which has accompanied the advent of the factory system, means that some degree of control corresponding to that formerly possessed by the individual should be assured to the group of workers in the factory or the trade. ”

“ In comparison with a handicraft, productive power is gained, and this gain is owing to the general co-operative character of manufacture. On the other hand, division of labour, which is the distinguishing principle of manufacture, requires the isolation of the various stages of production and their independence of each other. ”

“ We may confine our attention to the system of distribution which is the most complex, and which virtually includes all others—that in which the produce of manufactures is shared between two classes, labourers and capitalists, and the produce of agriculture among three, labourers, capitalists, and landlords.
The characteristic features of what is commonly meant by industrial progress, resolve themselves mainly into three, increase of capital, increase of population, and improvements in production ”

“ THE ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF INDUSTRY The purpose of this chapter is to explain how American industry is organized and how the government has endeavored to regulate this organization in the public interest.
The broad scope of industry. What is Industry?—Industry comprises the whole process of converting raw materials into finished products. It includes the production of goods by hand in the workshops, and by machinery in the factories. Agriculture, mining, and forestry furnish the raw materials; industry works them up; commerce distributes them. ”

“ The three requisites of production, as has been so often repeated, are labour, capital, and land: understanding by capital, the means and appliances which are the accumulated results of previous labour, and by land, the materials and instruments supplied by nature, whether contained in the interior of the earth, or constituting its surface. ”

“ The independent workman with his own tools was superseded by the factory, the small producer has given way in turn to the trust. With the introduction of expensive machinery it became necessary to organize capital on a large scale. Corporations with limited liability were organized for the manufacture of goods, the exploitation of mines, the building of railroads, and the carrying on of trade. As methods of production improved industry became more and more concentrated, and finally huge trusts took over the operation of combined plants. ”

“ In industry it is difficult to recognize, because every civilized nation in a healthy state of development must present an extension of industrial production, for the following four reasons: 1. Because occupations that were formerly domestic in character have been taken over by industry. ”

“ For the production of material things our new society has great factories owned in common, and run by majority vote of the workers, and we place the products of that factory at the disposal of all members of society upon equal terms. ”

“ From this oppressive feeling he found relief in the thought set forth in the opening of the second book of his Political Economy—that, while the conditions of production have the necessity of physical laws, the distribution of what is produced among the various classes of producers is a matter of human arrangement, dependent upon alterable customs and institutions. ”

“ These restrictions also frequently interfere with the processes of manufacture, requiring the producer to carry on his operations in the way most convenient to the revenue, though not the cheapest, or most efficient for purposes of production. ”

“ But no such emancipation is practicable until the powers of industry have been organised and her energies put forth in such a way as to ensure the abundant production of the various commodities of which human beings stand in need. ”

“ The conditions which govern the need of the productive system for labor may be summarized 64 as follows: Firstly, the consumption habits of the community, by which is decided the direction in which the productive powers are employed; secondly, the state of the productive arts, which governs the manner in which the various agents of production are combined for purposes of production; thirdly, the available supply of the agents of production, other than labor. ”

“ Because he possesses not only a pair of hands, but also those means of production without which work is impossible nowadays: factories, land, machines, railroads, mines, ships and steamers, and all kinds of apparatus and instruments. ”

“ Obviously, therefore, it is indispensable that more be [132] produced every year than is necessary for the support of those engaged in production and distribution; enough must be produced to support also those engaged in building roads, factories, etc. ”

“ Furthermore, although it may seem a very simple thing to provide that those who do the manual work shall have all the product, it is plain, so soon as we reflect upon the complicated combinations of labor which are involved in any case of production, and also upon the complicated character of modern "products" and the way in which they contribute to, and depend upon each other, that it would be impracticable to divide the products among those who have done the labor part of production. ”

“ But the difficulties of the organization of production and circulation can be diminished in other directions as well as by a decrease in the number of plants. Production can be divided into two great fields; those in which the production is for consumption and those in which production is for production. The production of means of production, thanks to the extensive division of labor, has become to-day the most important portion of production and it continues to increase steadily. ”

“ I acknowledge there may not be adequate motives for production, and therefore things will not be produced; but I cannot allow first that with these inadequate motives commodities will be produced, and secondly that, if their production is attended with loss to the producer, it is for any other reason than because too great a proportion is given to the labourers employed. ”

“ What is true of the forces of production is also true of the development of production. This development is always influenced by certain naturally and historically different conditions, which result in different economic structures among different peoples. ”