For our next talk, Humphrey McQueen will be considering two of the biggest themes in labour history: capitalism and the industrial revolution. His talk, ‘Industrial Revolution or Revolution Inside Capital,’ will cover several topics and present attendees with a chance to discuss each. I’ve attached a document outlining Humphrey’s format, as well as a short excerpt from Raymond Williams’ Keywords he has asked me to circulate.
We will get underway from 6:15 on Tuesday 7 October in Lectorial Room One, RSSS building, ANU, and as usual all are welcome.
All the best
Chris Monnox
Secretary,
Canberra Labour History
Industrial Revolution or Revolution Inside Capital?
The phrase ‘since the industrial revolution’ trips off our tongues as if its birthdate and substance were as given as the end of war in the Pacific. Capitalism, by contrast, is a naughty word, conceived in Ancient Mesopotamia yet not until delivered around 1800 after a 400-year transition from Feudalism.
Pivotal to the paper is that the industrial revolution and capitalism are more than opposing sides of the same coin. To advance that case, the presentation will consider seven aspects:
1. to industrialise is to centralise money-capital in credit-regimes in order to fund concentrations of resources, including conglomerations of labourers whose co-operation
opened the way to workplace divisions-of-labour – all five conditions impelled by oligopolising competition;
2. not a transition to capitalism but a revolution inside capital from steady levels of production to reproduction and exchange on expanding scales;
3. one driving force was a shift from lengthening the working-week to intensifying the application of labour;
4. there is more to industrial than machino-facture – agriculture, construction, mining, transport – and two-fisted commerce; 5. agriculture is as much industrial capital as Lancastrian textile mills, once we think in terms of engrossment more than enclosure;
6. ‘soft’ alongside ‘hard’ technologies – alkali bleaches and bills-of-exchange as well as Whitney’s gin and reciprocating-engines;
7. Europeans furnished the Atlantic chaĴel-slavery trade and the plantations which produced raw materials for processing in Europe, an integration which initiated accumulation on expanding scales.
The evening will be a circle-of-critical-inquiry where I introduce each topic for five minutes, to be followed by two responses from the audience – not a Q&A.
That will total seventy-five minutes. There then can be ten or so minutes for direct questions, followed by much the same time in
general discussion.
Humphrey McQueen