Two forms of technological development were in competition in the 19th century:

1. Craft production: machines and processes could augment the craftsman’s skill, allowing workers to embody their knowledge in more varied products (expanding craftsman’s creativity)
2. Mass production: the cost of making any particular good could be dramatically reduced by replacing human skill with machinery (decomposition of tasks, increased accuracy and output)

Mass Production as Modern Times
Examining theories of economic growth that relate changes in the market to changes in the use of technology and labor (i.e. classical theory of economic development)

Classical tenet 1: increased productivity depends on increased specialized use of resources

• Smith: increased specialization = increased efficiency/output but increased product rigidity (it became harder to switch resources to alternative uses)
• Marx: agreed with Smith, and the mechanization of work is the key; a revolutionary development in the reversal of relations between the worker and production (subordination of former to latter)

Classical tenet 2: the transition from the agrarian world of peasants and lords to the industrial world of capitalism (i.e. the emergence of the US and UK as great industrial powers)

• Smith: Western feudalism undermined by alliance b/w crown and merchants against feudal lords
• Marxists: crucial alliance b/w peasants and urban merchants

Steps toward specialization:

1. putting-out system: entrepreneurs bought raw materials and distributed them to manufacturers; then, they marketed the finished product (paying manuf. per piece)
2. concentration of operations
3. mechanization of production/decomposition of tasks

Classical tenet 3: the inevitability of specialization
For both Smith and Marx, “the triumph of mass-production capitalism was proof that humankind was constrained to play out a paradoxical drama in history” (25)
Greater efficiency meant greater restrictions; liberation with the cost of subjugation; progress as inevitable and uncontrollable
The classical synthesis dominates historical accounts and research agendas (e.g. Chandler)

The Limits of the Classical View: Industrial Dualism
Classical view can’t explain the persistence of small firms and short production runs
Attempt to explain: theory of industrial dualism: a second and contrary form of production is inherent in the logic of mass production; general goods cannot be specialized enough to meet needs of firms engaged in mass production: “the special-purpose machinery required for mass production cannot itself be mass-produced” (27)…should lead to revitalization of craft sector
Craft production, revitalized as a complement of mass production, is used to preserve the classical view with a slight amendment to account for the exception of small firm survival

The Limits of Industrial Dualism: Flexible Specialization
Evidence suggests that a craft alternative to mass production as a model of technological advance exists and accounts for inconsistencies in classical theory:
Small firms often used new technology without becoming larger
Not all large firms produced standardized goods
Craft production shown not to be the traditional or even subordinate form of production
“Successful industrial districts”: (i.e. production cooperatives) 3 characteristics:

1. districts’ relation to the market: wide range of products, continually altered to meet tastes
2. flexible use of technology (e.g. Jacquard loom)
3. creation of regional institutions that balanced cooperation + competition --> innovation

1. Municipalism: a form of territorially dispersed production centered on and coordinated by an urban seat; predominant when productive units were small and capital requirements modest; variability of demand met through subcontracting overflow; municipalities guaranteed mobility of resources (protection from market shocks, access to skills/knowledge, policing competition, etc.); these political institutions were key to stabilizing the industry
2. Welfare Capitalism/Paternalism: production in large factories, but actually groupings of artisans’ shops under one roof; this type of framework provided many of the same institutions and supports as under municipal governments
3. Familialism: emerged in intermediate cases where production was neither concentrated or dispersed; family ties helped forge alliances of medium and small sized firms specializing in the component manufacturing operation; financial/emotional ties made for reliable partners

The Survival, Submergence, and Self-suffocation of the Craft Economies
The histories of the industrial districts highlights the technological vitality of craft economies
Survived up to WWII, after which governments encouraged or forced mass production
State-Imposed Mass Production
§ federations broken up (e.g. France) as small firms subsumed by multinationals

Self-Imposed Mass Production
Craft producers either lost ability for innovation or were drawn into mass production (fear of narrow markets, fear of mechanization)
Obstacles to mechanization on craft lines were due to an unfavorable political, institutional, and economic environment, not some inherent blockage in this model of development; the craft sector could have played a stronger role in economic development

Branching Points, Markets, and Technology
Must think of a world that might have turned out differently…viable alternatives can be seen

Postulates:

1. any body of knowledge about the manipulation of nature can be elaborated and applied to production in various ways
2. technological possibilities that are realized depend on the distribution of power and wealth
3. technological choices entail large investments in equipment and know-how, whose amortization discouraged subsequent different choices

Contrasting roles of competition in the two views

• classical view: competition yields best solution
• new view: competition pits one potential way of combining machines and skills against another

On Innovations in US (e.g. cars, planes, computers): typically, an exercise of economic power ended the impasse of variations, competing technologies, etc.; had to have enough capital to cover the costs of mistakes while having enough control over the market to ensure demand
In US, UK, France, “economic developments in the 19th century can be interpreted as competing attempts to elaborate a distinct variant of industrial technology suited to the particularities of national circumstance"
Political factors gave markets form --> profit-maximizing firms adapted technology in differing patterns in the countries --> constraints of competition obstructed the full development of flexible systems of production --> abandonment of viable alternatives
Determinants of levels of mass production in each country: labor supply, organization level of labor (e.g. guilds), and availability of raw materials (US conditions=greatest mass production)
This analysis reveals a coherence among diverse national developments denied by classical view
Crucial aspect of tech. evolution: technology does not arise spontaneously from market transactions; immigration flows made labor supply abundant, which according to the market determination theory of tech. development would hold back mass production developments; this didn’t happen, and it is more likely that technology shaped the use of labor, not the availability of labor shaping the use of technology

Mass Production as a Technological Paradigm
Building from Kuhn’s work on paradigms: an understanding of the world embodied in or defined by an explicit theory about nature; to Kuhn, “a scientific revolution occurs when proponents of a new paradigm oust the advocates of orthodoxy from university chairs and editorial boards of professional journals” (44)
How explain the coexistence of distinct, stable national types of technology in the 19th c.? “The constellation of factors that prevailed at the branching point of a national economy’s technological history continue to shape developments--even when those factors start to change and technological progress itself creates the possibility for a divergent line of development” (44)
But, political or economic shocks can pit technological paradigms against each other, until a realization emerges that the abandoned paradigm was a misstep and the victor the right way --> this is “a fuller explanation for the eclipse of craft production as a coherent system of resource deployment, and it is an explanation for the surprise that met every rediscovery of craft production’s continued practice” (45)
By the 1920s in the US the sheer material success of mass production made it almost irresistible as a paradigm; mass production won out in the realm of ideas as it won out in the realm of practice (47); craft production became the discredited paradigm despite its survival