Title: Factory System | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Factory System
Factory System
Factory System
BIBLIOGRAPHY
factory system
factory system

Content: This system, whereby the owners of the factories could, through the labor process, transfer the value of the worker ’ s productivity into the value of a commodity, established the efficient yet exploitative mode of capitalist production that is still with us today. The factory system was not only the foundation for the development of capitalism; it also radically shifted many aspects of social organization and daily life. Agricultural families were largely disenfranchised by this process, and in many cases were required to move to industrial centers in order to survive. They were thrust into the system of wage labor, fundamentally changing relationships between men and women. Whereas in preindustrial societies, all members of the family were involved in production work, the advent of the factory system created a gendered division of labor for middle- and working-class families, whereby men went to work for a wage and women were relegated to household work. In poor and nonwhite families, women worked for a wage outside the home in both formal and informal settings. Men were nearly always wageworkers, while women were either relegated to unpaid work to support the work of the men in their families or themselves worked for wages as a means of survival. The link of the wage system to factory production created not only a different work process and a gendered division of labor, but also a new form of work. Whereas work under preindustrial forms of organization was often exploitative, particularly under systems of slavery and feudalism, the development of the factory system as a defining feature of capitalism created alienated work for the first time.