The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815–1848

by Maxine Berg

For those who lived through it, Britain's Industrial Revolution was experienced as the Machinery Question. It was far from clear to contemporaries whether the first forms of mechanized factory production heralded an inevitable economic revolution, or were but one course among several which might be modified or eventually rejected altogether, Opinion about the necessity or beneficence of machines was profoundly divided at all levels of society; the often acrimonious debate that arose reverberated through economic, political, cultural and intellectual life. Crucially important for the development of this debate, because it was the source of the very terms of discussion, was the new discipline of Political Economy. The major contention of this book is that the Machinery Question was also the making of Political Economy. Dr Berg argues that technical change was one of the foremost theoretical concerns of Ricardo and his successors, and the foundation for their distinctly optimistic view of the future. She shows how the Machinery Question fostered the social conditions in which the status of Political Economy as a discipline was established, and concludes that by the 1840s the divisions over machinery were firmly embedded in the great rival creeds of the future, liberalism and socialism. The book will interest teachers and students of British social and economic history, the history of economic thought and the history of science and technology.

Genres: Economics

389 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 1980

About the author

Professor of History at the University of Warwick, where she has taught since 1998. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society.

Reviews

[JC]

Found this book referenced in a footnote of a chapter written by Margaret Schabas in the edited volume Victorian Science in Context. I read this book for a paper I wrote on Owenite socialism’s engagement with science and technology. This book was largely an economic history of machinery in the first half of the 19th century, and underscored how central machinery became to the diverging economic theories of liberalism and socialism, which Berg saw epitomized by John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Engels respectively.

I knew Ricardo was big for Marx before, mainly from the free online lectures of Anwar Shaikh that I've benefitted from a lot. I recall Marx was once jokingly referred to as a “minor post-Ricardian”, but I didn’t know how important Ricardo’s engagements with machinery were to that influence. Also was not aware that Ricardian socialists were a thing. Some interesting stuff on the "scientific movement" as well as how the Mechanics Institutes were part of these debates over machinery. It's worth noting one of the most famous Owenite socialists, Alfred Russell Wallace, was first introduced to the ideas of Owen as a child visiting the Mechanics Institute in London. Anyway, this book provided fascinating historical accounts of how Owenite socialism interacted with Ricardo’s theories, and the diverse range of radical economists that were involved in Owenite socialism. An excerpt:

“They were responding to the working-class movements of Owenism and political radicalism which had absorbed this 'popular' political economy. Hodgskin, Thompson and Bray may not have been, in themselves, a great national influence, but the doctrines of political economy which they systematised were widespread ones in the radical leadership. Behind such doctrines there were political movements, hence the concern of political economists to meet the challenge of their critics.

Furthermore, the doctrines of popular political economy and the politics of Owenism and political radicalism were not systematic. Many different groups of workers, artisans, and small shopkeepers could find something of appeal in such doctrines and politics. This was particularly the case in Owenism… For, as E. P. Thompson has reminded us, the imprecision of Owenite theory allowed for the co-existence of different intellectual traditions, and its vision of an alternative society could be modified to suit very different industrial situations.”

Berg also emphasizes that much of what is today attributed to Marx and Engels was already elaborated on quite extensively by various Owenite socialists:

“Thus far, Engels echoed the issues of debate in the machinery question. His analysis of surplus population, fluctuations and the tendency to technical progress was an old one to Owenism. The central focus he gave to technology and production was, of course, already integral to classical political economy. But it was also apparent in Owenite political economy and in Tory radicalism. It cannot be argued that Engels accomplished a shift in focus in radical thought from a concern with competition to production. For the Owenites had managed to keep both in the fore, and Engels did so too in a very similar way.”

The distinction Berg makes is this:

“Engels went beyond the Owenites and Chartists in the breadth of his analysis of the connections between technological change and the emergence of new class dimensions. He did not just look into the attributes of labour or the situations of particular groups of workers. His was not a sectional study of industrial and working conditions, but a broad analysis of the working class as a whole. Engels's broad survey of many sections of the working class offered a comparative perspective over its different parts - the people's living conditions and the types of exploitation to which they were subject. His purpose in doing this was to draw together the common threads of this experience, to show how modern industry aggrandised all sectors of the economy and subjected not some but all workers to the intensive exploitation which could be achieved through mechanisation, the division of labour, and harder work through longer hours and a faster pace of production. The recognition of the common exploitation of the labouring and artisan classes would create the basis for a unified working-class movement.”

I found this comment by Marx on the factory system very interesting, in as much as it reflected how entire families were employed in factory work, yet maintained particular divisions of labour on the production floor:

“The factory, in turn, as Ure demonstrated, found its most sympathetic analogue in war, and the division and discipline of labour in military hierarchy and authority. Marx was later to make this explicit in his comment on the factory system : men were 'the sergeants', women and children, 'the soldiers of the line’”

And Engels commented on the way machinery was changing this division of labour within factories:

“Engels re-emphasised the workers' claims that machinery led to wage reductions by unduly lowering piece rates. The self-acting mule and the power loom were his special targets. Engels also commented on the old issue of the displacement of skill by machinery. He pointed out that mechanisation so changed the various branches of industrial activity that a whole new matrix of skills was required. But the skills needed were manual ones easily acquired by women and children. Engels concluded, as did many conservatives and radical writers, that mechanisation would introduce to the factory a sexual division of labour which would be a complete reversal of the family division of labour.”

Some very scattered excerpts. I read this one in a hurry because I was really short on time while trying to finish up my paper. But I feel I will likely return to this one again. Lots of very good stuff in here that I will have to read more carefully some time.

[Allan Olley]

This careful academic work is based on the author's PhD thesis. Among other things it contextualizes Ricardo's famous chapter on machinery in terms of the various debates and studies of the machine occurring at the time. A notable example of this is the work of Charles Babbage on the economics and organization of machinery in factories that although now obscure had substantial impact for some time. In addition to providing much interesting context for people's ideas and reactions to industrial developments for the period such as the development of the Mechanics Institute, Owenite social plans and so on it urges a revaluation of Ricardo's economics with its apparent focus on things like the steady state (no growth economy) as means to advocate for more immediate concerns rather than mere theoretical obsessions.