Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

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C H A P T E R VII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE-SCALE MACHINE
INDUSTRY
I. THE SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTION OF THE FACTORY
AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF “FACTORY” STATISTICS148 Before dealing with large-scale machine (factory)
industry, we must first establish the fact that the scientific
conception of the term does not correspond at all to its
common, everyday meaning. In our official statistics, and
in literature generally, a factory is taken to mean any more
or less big industrial establishment with a more or less
considerable number of wage-workers. According to Marx’s
theory, however, the term large-scale machine (factory)
industry applies only to a definite stage of capitalism in
industry, namely, the highest stage. The principal and
most important feature of this stage is the employment of a
system of machines for production.* The transition from
the manufactory to the factory signifies a complete technical
revolution, which does away with the craftsman’s
manual skill that has taken centuries to acquire, and this
technical revolution is inevitably followed by the most
thoroughgoing destruction of social production relations,
by a final split among the various groups of participants
in production, by a complete break with tradition, by an
intensification and extension of all the dark aspects of
capitalism, and at the same time by a mass socialisation of
labour by capitalism. Large-scale machine industry is
thus the last word of capitalism, the last word of its
“elements of social progress”** and regress.
From this it is clear that the transition from the manufactory
to the factory is particularly important when we
* Das Kapital, I, Chapter 13 [Chap. 15, Eng. ed.—Ed.].
** Ibid., I 2 , S. 499. 149