Early capitalism and the inculcation of work habits.

 

The German sociologist Max Weber, noted that wherever modern capitalism has sought to increase productivity of human labour by increasing its intensity, it has encountered stubborn resistance from pre-capitalistic labour.

It was Josiah Wedgewood's aim to "Make such machines of men as cannot err." In 19th century Britain, we know from historical accounts that some working-class children were literally worked to death by employers. Many factory children sustained terrible injuries. As the historian E.P Thompson notes, "The exploitation of children on this scale and intensity, was one of the most shameful events in Britain's history."

The exploitation of labour is not about pitting younger workers against older workers or males against females, or black against white, it has always been a feature of the capitalist system and the exploiters and exploited.  The pre-capitalistic worker rebelled against the notion of week after week of highly disciplined labour and considered waged labour an indignity. To them the factory was the 'Bastille.'

People are not born as factory hands but have to be turned into factory hands using a combination of the carrot and stick. What is required is an "inner compulsion", the "labourer must be turned into his own slave driver."