Page:The Evolution of Modern Capitalism.djvu/39

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MODERN CAPITALISM. 19


§ 9. The existence of accumulated wealth, and of a large population dependent on the sale of their labour power could not, however, generate the system of modern in- dustrial capitalism unless the industrial arts had attained a high development. The capitalism of the ancient, and even of the medizeval world, exhibiting a few rare instances of large organisation of workers under a single control, working on wages for the profit of their employers, differed in one important respect from modern industrial capitalism. Whether in the great serf agriculture of the early Roman Empire, or in the mines of Thrace or Sicily, or still earlier in the great building operations of Egypt, Babylon, or India, the element of “fixed” capital was very small, con- sisting of simple tools or relatively slight and unimportant “machinery”: the capital by which employment was afforded consisted of food and raw materials, which were “advanced” to the labourers.

Early accumulations of “capital” consisted in (a) treasure, (£2) raw materials and a store of food; or from the standpoint of the individual capitalist, in either a or f. Though the financial capitalism of the money-lender or banker making loans or advances to farmers and artificers, and the commercial capitalism of merchants giving out raw materials to workers, collecting, purchasing, and marketing their manufactured products, are, as we shall see, important stages in the evolution of the capitalist structure, the business organisation they imply differs essentially from the structure of the great factory, ironworks, railroad, mine, or shipping firm in which modern industrial capitalism finds its typical expression.

The concrete basis of modern industrial capitalism is its large complex structure of “fixed” factors, plant and machinery, the mass of expensive instruments to assist labour in furthering processes of production. The economy of expensive machinery, and the development of indirect or “roundabout” methods of production were the chief instruments in the industrial revolution of manu- factures. It is strange how slow this discovery and application of machinery was, and how little progress was made from ancient times up to the middle of the eighteenth century. To those who regard evolution as essentially the product of “accidental variations,” the inventions of in-

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