Hanagan - Artisan and Skilled Worker

8/13/2019 Hanagan - Artisan and Skilled Worker

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International Labor and Working-Class Inc.

Artisan and Skilled Worker: The Problem of DefinitionAuthor(s): Michael HanaganSource: International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 12 (Nov., 1977), pp. 28-31Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27671221.

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ARTISAN AND SKILLED WORKER: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION

Social historians of the working class often use terms such as artisan and skilled workerbut rarely define them. It is rather late to attempt to attach a precise significance to words so overlaid with meaning, but it is appropriate to ask that, whatever definition historians choose, it be a considered one and consistently maintained. In this essay Iwant to survey briefly some definitions ofthese terms and elaborate on one series of definitions with which I have worked. I do not intend toargue that any particular group of definitions is superior to others, but that alternative definitionsilluminate different aspects of working class history and that our choice of definition should flowfrom the particular issues we are addressing.

One of the most commonly used systems of occupational classification comes from Marx'sCapital Marx considers the artisan as one portion of the petty bourgeoisie. Following thisdefinition, the artisan lives off his own labor but also off the labor of other workers who work inhis shop and use his tools. This definition has the advantage of describing a more or less clearlyobservable section of the population. Also, it is part of a much larger definitional scheme whichMarx uses to analyze the crises of overproduction and the falling rate of profit in capitalist society.Other definitions, such as that of the industrial worker who produces surplus value and the white collar or transportation worker who does not, flow from this overall system. For the historian, these

particular definitions are helpful in placing early modern industrial structures in relation to those ofamodern capitalist society.1

But this definition of artisan as petty bourgeois is not the only one provided by Marx. Inhis historical works, Marx never hesitated to subdivide or redefine his large class categories to fitwith actual historical observations. Engels' and Lenin's definition of the labor aristocrat pointsin a different direction. Toward the end of the nineteenth century in England, Engels noted thegrowth of a privileged stratum of workers whose position depended on their skill, craft organization,and the super profits of British imperialism.2 This group played an important role in Lenin'stheory of the formation of a conservative trade union bureaucracy in advanced capitalist countries.

The key word here is privilege. In a brilliant essay, E.J. Hobsbawm sets down the six major criteriafor defining this group: (1) the level and regularity of the workers* earnings; (2) his prospects ofsocial security; (3) his conditions of work; (4) his relations with the social strata above and belowhim; (5) his general conditions of living; and (6) his prospects of future advancement, and those ofhis children. This definition is serviceable for explaining the conservative trade union strategiesadopted by skilled workers whose preeminent position in the workplace was secure and unchallengedOur third definition is also derived from Marx via modern social historians and sociologists.4 Itfocuses on workers' possession of skill and collective control over the conditions of employmentand emphasizes the continuing struggle between machine manufacture and hand production whichwas still being fought out inside large factories in the late nineteenth century. Long after the artisanal worker had been deprived of his independent shop, his craft organization was still able tocontrol a monopoly of skills and limit the scope of the free labor market. While the concept ofthe labor aristocracy captures one aspect of the skilled workers' existence, it neglects the struggles of many artisanal workers who were fighting to maintain their control of production against thegrowing offensive of employers seeking to assert their control on the workshop floor.

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Let us look at this third definition more closely, for it needs to be clearly defined and placedin a proper historical context. It includes as an artisan any worker who was highly skilled,possessed a wide range of skills, and exercised some control over the admission of workers into histrade. We will look at each of these three elements separately. Skill is defined as a scarce ability

which it takes time and effort to acquire. The definition of skill is a broad one which includes themanual dexterity of the wood joiner and the shoe laster as well as the extraordinary physical capacityof the forger. In any case it is frequently difficult to evaluate the relative share of dexterity andcapacity in determining skill. Should the source of the puddler's skill be located primarily in hisknowledge about metal working or in his facility in performing demanding physical labor in a difficult environment? Our definition says that if any reasonably strong man could perform the jobit should be considered unskilled while if it required really unusual muscular development it may beconsidered skilled.

Following logically from our definition, these are two basic ways in which skill levels mightchange; skill levels could be affected by changes in either the supply of skilled workers or in thedemand for skill. Both types of changes occurred in the nineteenth century European economy.The outstanding feature of labor supply in the whole European continent in the late nineteenthcentury was the increased supply of manual labor caused by the declining numbers of workersemployed in agriculture and the collapse of rural industry. At times, rural migrants did possess someskills and a great deal of seasonal migration occurred as skilled carpenters, sawyers, and masonsleft rural areas after the harvest to work in the city. But most rural migrants were not so fortunateas to have received training in a specific craft?or their skill was no longer in demand due to thespread of urban industry?and so they possessed only the physical strength and stamina which theydeveloped in farm labor. Together the urbanization of industry and the mechanization of agriculture created a vast surplus of manual labor which was to characterize the whole period of thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

On the demand side, the major change in the market for skill labor in the nineteenth centurywas caused by mechanization and the concentration of capital. While mechanization directly attacked workers' skills, the growing employer monopoly over the means of production was an even

more insidious threat. The growing capital requirements of heavy industry gave a handful of employers great power to enforce their will. Large employers used their ownership of the tools andthe workplace to increase the division of labor and lessen their d?pendance on the skilled worker.

They further attempted to introduce new work rules and a new work administration whichreplaced the worker-controlled craft organization of labor with a new employer-controlled hierarchy of foremen and supervisors.

A second important characteristic of artisanal industry was that workers learned a variety ofvaluable skills. In artisanal industry, the employers specialized their product while, in contrast, theworkers generalized their skills. As he passed from shop to shop the artisan would find a largenumber of work situations, each demanding different technical skills. Apprenticeship programsprepared the workers for the needs of the whole industry by specifying that they had to be proficient in many aspects of the trade. This requirement provided the employer with a workman whocould be assigned almost anywhere in an emergency situation, but, by increasing the potential

market for the workers' skill, it also strengthened his bargaining power vis-?-vis his employer. The

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ouvrier aux Usines Renault (Paris, 1955).Some interesting contributions to the discussion of occupational classification and changes inwork structurehave been made by students of social mobility: Clyde Griffin, Occupational Mobility inNineteenth CenturyAmerica: Problems and Possibilities, Journal of Social History, 5 (Spring, 1972); Michael B. Katz, Occupational Classification in History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 3(Summer, 1972); and Bruce Laurie,Theodore Hershberg, and George Alter, Immigrants and Industry: The Philadelphia Experience: 1850-1880,Journal of Social History, 9(Winter 1975).

5. On the education of artisanal workers, George Sturt, The Wheelwrights Shop (Cambridge, (1923) 1974).6. American labor historians have generally emphasized the restrictive quality of craft unionism, particularly

emphasizing its bias against industrial workers, John R. Commons, American Shoemakers 1648-1895: ASketch of Industrial Evolution, Labor and Administration (New York, 1913) and Sumner Slichter, UnionPolicies and Industrial Management (Washington, D.C, 1941) chs. 7-9. Alan Dawley has argued persuasivelythat the opposition between craft and industrial workers in nineteenth century has been overdrawn, Class andCommunity: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, 1976). David Montgomery has also argued alongsimilar lines, Workers' Control of Machine Production in the Nineteenth Century, Labor History 17 (Fall1976).

7. See Arthur Stinchcombe, Bureaucratic and Craft Administration: A Comparative Study, AdministrativeScience Quarterly 4 (Sept. 1959) and Maurice Garden, Ouvriers et artisans au XVIIIe si?cle. Revue d'Histori??conomique et sociale 48 (1970).

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Hanagan - Artisan and Skilled Worker

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