Labour

Family labour was critical to the working of the land in all peasant societies and, as in India, was central to the management of many enterprises in the mercantile, manufacturing and later the industrial spheres. In industry the system made different demands on employees and employers, on workers and owners. Employers often co-operate in a ‘joint family’ whereas workers may be rewarded for their individual labour, rarely sharing their wages with anyone outside the conjugal family. The entrepreneurs and employers may exercise some individual choice in economic affairs, while their labour force had to accept a work discipline and a subjugation of independence much greater than that required in peasant life. And sometimes they needed to be prepared to be mobile, whereas the owners are often linked to stationary resources around which they establish family seats.

The family was not of course the only source of available labour. In India the caste and guilds systems provided for a whole variety of specialised tasks for the local community as well as for wider, marketorientated trade and commerce. Some of this labour was based upon the internal exchanges of the jajmani system, some hired over the short or the long term. Is there any evidence that the existence of these forms of labour inhibited or prevented the shift to new forms of production?

While political economies are often characterised by a dominant form of labour, the notion that the dominance of one particular relationship could be an absolute bar to the adoption of others, or even of industrial modes of production, as Weber and others have suggested, seems highly questionable.