Modern day conceptions of factory and the interpretation of historical industrialization
Initially the term ‘factory’ meant an establishment that housed traders. Soon it was transformed into a site of manufacturing on a large scale. Still further down the history factory meant a place where clothes were manufactured. Still later factory represented the construction which was into manufacturing non-agricultural products. However, gradually, industrialization came into existence and factory was the site where mechanized production with skilled labors was operational. This is the modern conception of the term ‘factory’. (Prude, 2006)
It should be noted that industrialization of today has an adverse effect on our interpretation of historical industrialization. This is because with specialized factories operational on specialized products and huge production rates made it possible to misinterpret the concept of historical industrialization where production was carried on a smaller scale and there was involvement of several different productive units in a single factory. Rigid production line of today, which is the general norm of a modern factory, makes it difficult to understand the sustainability of historical industrialization and the conceptualization of factory. The aspects of historical industrialization were based on rural capitalism of the North-West regions and the co-existence of nonprofit factories along with private properties makes it difficult to understand the milieu of the factory of the past and affect our interpretation of historical industrialization by a great margin.
Coming of factories as a representation of progress
Coming of factories as a representation of progress is a truth in the context of developing capitalism and emerging market economy. The factories played their parts in the development of modern capitalism with specialized production units and developing the skill levels of labors along with constructing a skill based wage pattern. This was made possible by the mechanized production units that excelled the output volume by a huge margin. The additional volume of merchandize helped the harvesting of capital and that generated enough potential to enforce a modern market economy induced society and this can be regarded as a huge leap of civilization. Thus, coming of factories as a representation of progress as it was the factories that made this development possible. (Jones, 2001)
Is progress always necessarily positive?
There is a huge scope of debate on the issue whether progress always is necessarily positive. The impact of the factories in the early society was fundamentally cultural. The division of labor created a division of class based on economic differences within the general masses. This was due to the structural wage differences between skilled and unskilled labor forces. This created a serious paradigm of labor market. The paradigm of the labor market holds that people were divided by capitalism into two major classes. At first there were the capitalists who were the owners of factories and machineries, i.e. the forces of production, and the proletariat comprising the wage earners who could only sell their labor and thus, did manual labor for wages.
The capitalists were continuously able to exploit the proletariat since the state along with its numerous coercive institutions, like courts and police, supported the capitalists, keeping them in power as the ruling class. The Marxist paradigm of labor market wanted the abolition of private property so that a radical egalitarian economy could be established. This paradigm believed that all through our human history we have seen the different social classes struggle with each other for power. (Grantham & MacKinnon, 2002) This class struggle is not very healthy for a society and thus even though the factories brought progress, it was not necessarily always positive.
References
Grantham, G. & MacKinnon, M. (2002). Labour market evolution: the economic history of market integration, wage flexibility, and the employment relation. NY: Routledge.
Jones, M. T. (2001). Mainstream and radical theories of the multinational enterprise: Complementary approaches? The International Executive, 35(4), 339-356.
Prude, J. (2006). Capitalism, industrialization, and the factory in Post-revolutionary America Wages of Independence. In Capitalism in the Early American Republic. Paul A. Gillie. (ed.) NY: Madison House. Pp. 81-100.