Professional Documents
Culture Documents
76 labour process .
The third section analyses the way in which the application
of information technology in production management not only
gives capital a greater potential control over labour in the large
factory, but also gives it the possibility of coordinating pro-
duction and labour exploitation that is increasingly dispersed in
small production units, artisan workshops and 'home-factories' .
The last part of the paper suggests that decentralisation
has created new divisions in the industrial working class by
increasing the number of workers living and working in condit-
ions that greatly differ from those of the mass-collective worker .
The transformation of the large factory and the rise of small
production units has made collective action considerably more
difficult . The paper ends by asking how both old and new
divisions can be effectively challenged by the labour movement
and the left, with a strategy and organisations that give voice to
the different needs and desires of different parts of the prolet-
ariat, while also giving them a unity that can overcome divisions
rather than exacerbating them .
The large The term `decentralisation of production' has been used in Italy
factory : Is it to describe a number of distinct features of the organisation of
inevitable? production . In general, decentralisation refers to the geographi-
cal dispersal and division of production, and particularly to the
diffusion and fragmentation of labour . However this can take
place in a number of ways :
i) The expulsion of work formerly carried out in large
factories to a network of small firms, artisans or domestic out-
workers .
ii) The division of large integrated plants into small,
specialised production units .
iii) The development of a dense small firm economy in
certain regions such as the Veneto and Emilia Romagna in Italy .
In Italy `decentralisation' has been used to cover all the
above developments . In this paper `decentralisation' is used to
refer to the expulsion of production and labour from large factor-
ies, either in the form of in-house decentralisation (splitting-up)
or inter-firm decentralisation (putting-out) within the domestic
economy . This is because the paper focuses on the way large and
medium firms in Italy have used decentralisation to reduce costs
and increase labour exploitation, rather than on the development
of districts of independent small firms that are not directly sub-
ordinate to larger firms . The analysis of this latter process has
been an important part of the Italian debate on decentralisation
(e .g . Brusco, 1982 ; Paci, 1975 ; Bagnasco et al, 1978) .
Downloaded from cnc.sagepub.com at UNIV CALGARY LIBRARY on May 25, 2015
DECENTRALISATION
Product Type
78
factories and put together at a later date . For example, as argued
in Del Monte (1982 :154-6) at one time televisions were as-
sembled in a linear manner on a long assembly line . The frame of
the television would be put on the line, and individual parts then
added to it . In modular production each module is assembled
separately, and a much shorter process of final assembly is re-
quired . At present modular production is mainly limited to
commodities from the electronics sector, but advances in
product redesign facilitated by the introduction of micro-
electronic components suggest that it will be used elsewhere .
(See the example of Fiat later .) If we recall how the bringing
together of large numbers of workers on assembly lines in the
sixties fuelled workers' spontaneous struggles, modular pro-
duction, plus the increasing automation of the assembly areas
themselves, can serve as important weapons for capital in reduc-
ing worker militancy through decentralisation .
Technology
Product Control
Industrial Relations
State Legislation
Putting-out
C & C 19 -
CAPITAL & CLASS
Splitting-up production 85
Small Firms
tits,
,,,Putting-out
A schematic representation of the decentralisation of production --_
City Factory
dispersion putting-out
0 putting-out
III
sub-putting-out,
, ,
III
Domestic out workers
Downloaded from cnc.sagepub.com at UNIV CALGARY LIBRARY on May 25, 2015
DECENTRALISATION
Within any mode of production the collection, analysis and The Computer
circulation of information is vital . Within capitalism a particular in the
form of factory production has arisen where one of the functions factory
of the factory is the provision of a structure where information
can be collected, co-ordinated and controlled . As communication
technology has developed, the emergence of multi-plant and
multinational enterprises has been made possible . Although tele-
phones, telex and teletransmitters and the like are in no way
determinants of the organisation of production, they have allowed
the centralisation of control over capital to increase with the
internationalisation and geographical dispersion of production .
However, the large factory has remained the basic unit of capital-
ist production .
The structure of the factory has developed, among other
things, to ensure the free flow of information from the bottom of
a pyramidal hierarchy to its top, and the free flow of control from
the top downwards . Information, and access to it, are the key to
formulating and understanding a firm's strategy . For this reason
a firm uses a lot of people to collect and transmit information in
the factory and this information is carefully guarded . The people
who have the greatest amount of information are in a superior
position to judge and make decisions, and they will argue that
they are `objectively' correct because of their access to recorded
Downloaded from cnc.sagepub.com at UNIV CALGARY LIBRARY on May 25, 2015
CAPITAL & CLASS
Olivetti
Benetton
Fiat
97
(1) For other articles on decentralisation in Italy in English see Amin Notes
(1983) Brusco (1982) Goddard (1981) and Mattera (1980) .
(2) "`Small is lovely' says Soviet economist" Financial Times 9 .12 .82 .
(3) Blair (1972) says, p.113
"Beginning with the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution, the
veneration of size has come to take on the character of a mystique, and,
like most mystiques, it has come to enjoy an independent life of its own ."
(4) See Brusco in FLM Bergamo (1975) p .45-7 . Prais (1976) p .52-3
Blair (1972) ch . 5 and 6 and Marx (1976) p .603-4 .
(5) see Marx (1976) p.604-5 for a discussion of the Factory Acts and
the effect they had on domestic industry .
(6) For a typology of small firms see Brusco and Sabel (1981) . They
suggest a lot of small firms in Emilia are relatively independent whereas
Del Monte (1982) is less optimistic about the position of small firms in
the South of Italy (p.125) . And many small firms in Japan are `wholly
dependent on a single buyer' Patrick and Rosovosky (1976) p .509-513 .
(7) In Japan there has been a `rather rapid filtering down' in the form
of numerically controlled machine tools from big to small firms
(Financial Times Survey (1981) . Macrae (1982) cites the example of the
small Japanese firm where a leased, second hand robot system hammers
out components in a 'backshed' workshop .
(8) For work on Britain in this area see Massey and Meegan (1982)
Fothergill and Gudgin (1982) and Lane (1982) .
(9) `us Auto makers reshape for world competition', in Business Week
21 .6 .82 . See also Griffiths (1982) .
(10) See Manacorda (1976) . See also the excellent pamphlet produced
by the Joint Forum of Combine Committees (1982) .
(11) Quote from a union militant in Turin, in Il Manifesto,
special supplement on Cassa Integrazione, 1982 .
(12) Cited in, `Fiat Follows Japan's Production Road Map' Business
Week 4 .10 .82 . See also Sunday Times Business News 10 .10 .82 and Amin
(1983) .
(13) For a discussion of Taylorism, the mass-collective worker and the
changing class composition in Italy see Ferraris (1981) Rieser (1981)
Santi (1982) and Accornero (1979) and (1981) .
(14) This process of marginalisation and division has been aided by
left analysis where `women are seen as marginal workers and hence as
marginal trade unionists' . (csE Sex and Class the labour process debate
has limited its analysis to those labour processes, that are found in big
factories largely employing men . The fact that in Britain, men have
largely theorised this labour process, while women have been largely
responsible for an analysis of domestic outwork is indicative of the
difficulties facing the labour movement and the left . It is vital that left
theorists should avoid reproducing the very divisions they are studying .
Accornero, A . (1979) `La classe operaia nella societa' italiana' Proposte References
n .81
Accornero, A . (1981) 'Sindicato e Rivoluzione Sociale . Il caso Italiano
degli anni '70" Laboratorio Politico n .4.
Amin, A . (1983) `Restructuring in Fiat and the Decentralisation of
Production into Southern Italy' in, Hudson R and Lewis J,
Downloaded from cnc.sagepub.com at UNIV CALGARY LIBRARY on May 25, 2015
C & C 19 - G
CAPITAL & CLASS