Economic discourses in documentation

Now that we’ve looked at the economic documentation, it’s time to make an attempt at performing an analysis of the economic discourses which they contain. It goes without saying that this type of analysis makes no intention of perfectly describing the economic system in which the Vapor Vell participated. For one thing, the system itself was imperfect-- like a board game, many of the rules would be negotiated along the way and sometimes they would be sneakily circumvented, or outright disregarded. Even so, the exercise of modeling the economic discourses according to stakeholders, objects, concepts, objectives and values is enlightening in its own way. For example, one of the results that I’ve found is that it is easiest to divide this discourse analysis into three distinct yet interrelated systems according to three different types of markets in which the Vapor Vell participated: the textile market, the national market, and the labor market. Each of these three “games” operates at a different scale and invokes the realization of different economic objects and identities.

Textile Market: Business discourse

The first discourse we will analyze is that in which the business Güell, Ramis and Co.

is reified as a stakeholder in the economic system of the textile market. This is what I will call, simply, the business discourse. Besides Güell, Ramis and Co., which in these documents is represented as the primary stakeholder, other stakeholders include both competing corduroy producers as well as corduroy consumers, both of which affect the market supply/demand dynamic which Joan Güell describes in his responses to the industrial survey in 1848. Arguably, there is a third type of stakeholder represented in the business discourse which plays the role of a moderator in the textile market game. This is the public administration to which the company paid taxes in exchange for its help in materializing the economic relations necessary for industrialization (e.g. the Commission Regia, the municipality of Sants, protocols of Barcelona) as well as enforcing order within this economic system.

The relationship between producers/consumers and the public administration, as it is represented in these documents, appears to have been negotiable. The industrial survey, for example, opens a direct line of communication between Joan Güell and the state, which Güell uses to lobby the government for a five-year privilege of production for corduroy in Spain.

100 In Barcelona in general, the public administration would be heavily lobbied by producers, including Joan Güell, advocating for protectionist policies to stimulate the market of national production. In Madrid, on the other hand, the opposite occurred-- consumers lobbied for free market principles which would open the borders to trade and stimulate a buyers market.

Market interests divided stakeholders according to economic roles of producer and consumer, and this would play a role later on in politically polarizing Catalonia and Madrid as competing stakeholders within the national textile market (this will be discussed further in section 2.3).

The objects of this business discourse include both the economic objects which constitute the business itself and the textile market in which it participated; for example, the capital which Joan Güell acquired in Cuba and with which he founded the business in collaboration with Domènec Ramis and the rest of the company. This capital was used in order to purchase the means of production, including the land for the factory, its construction, the machinery, etc. In turn, this means of production was brought to life by another economic object-- labor-power, which was rented out through a wage-labor system.

The concepts of this discourse include the strategies which Joan Güell would employ in order to control market phenomena. These would include matters like cost/benefit analysis and supply/demand dynamics which Güell would eventually succeed in exploiting, primarily through his acquisition of a state privilege of sale which gave him a monopoly on the domestic market for five years. These business strategies sought to decrease the supply of corduroy and establish a “sellers market”, which would allow prices of corduroy to go up, generating more profit for the business.

This, after all, is the primary objective of the business discourse: to become profitable and achieve economic success within the market. Furthermore, we know from Argullol’s account of Joan Güell’s motivations in launching this business that he hoped to promote a national production and achieve Spanish independence from relying on foreign imports. This brings us to the next type of discourse related to this international market; but first, let’s diagram the business discourse as we have described it so far:

Business Discourse

Stakeholders Objects Concepts Objectives Values

Producers, Consumers, (State)

Capital, means of production, Labor-power...

Market strategies Business profit National production

101 International Market: Imperialist discourse

If we expand the business discourse to the international scale, we get what we might call the imperialist discourse. Instead of reifying a business as an economic object competing in the textile market, the imperialist discourse reifies the nation as an economic object which competes in international markets. These are not markets defined by products but by the territory they control, and rather than seek individual business profit, they compete with other nations in order to achieve profitability of the national economy. It is at the scale of the imperialist discourse that the economics of colonialism and protectionism come in to play:

protectionism blocks a territory from being exploited by foreign nations, whereas, on the other hand, colonialism secures a territory for exploitation by the colonizing nation, similar to a monopoly. The motivating value of the imperialist discourse appears to be somewhat self-referential-- for the glory of the empire.

Imperialist discourse

Stakeholders: Objects Concepts Objectives Values

National economic territories

National production/

consumption

Market strategies (protectionism, colonialism , etc.)

National economy

Empire

For the Barcelonian bourgeoisie, participation in the Spanish empire was an important part of their economic strategy.⁵⁰ In the first place, Catalonia's industrial markets relied on the exportation of products to be sold in other Spanish regions. This included the Spanish colonies-- the two main destinations for Catalan exports were Cuba and modern-day Puerto Rico. Secondly, Catalonia needed Spanish protectionism in order to have space to incubate a domestic national production if they were ever going to be able to compete with French and British exploitation of the textile market. In Joan Güell’s case, the importance of Spanish imperialism was also related to the origin of his fortune, which he secured in Cuba by exploiting the Colònial shipping markets. For these reasons, it was no surprise that, despite their differences, Catalan industrialists tended to view Catalonia not as an antagonist to Spain but as the leader of a freer, more prosperous Spain, and were, as Daniele Conversi puts it in his study of Spanish nationalisms, “unconditionally pro-Spanish at heart.”⁵¹ In his palace in Comillas, Joan Güell received the royal family every summer. He was also deputy of the

50 For an overview and historical analysis of the development of economic Catalanism, see: Vilar, Pierre. (1980). Spain and Catalonia. Review (Fernand Braudel Center). Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 527-577. (551).

51 Conversi, Daniele. (1997). The Basques, the Catalans and Spain: Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation. Hurst: 18-20.

102 Liberal Union of O'Donnell from 1857 to 1858 where his political influence was decisive when the conservatives mobilized for protectionism.⁵²

The business and imperialist discourses worked hand in hand, at different scales, to assemble a network of economic actors and create new identities and relationships. The founding of the Vapor Vell occured at a time when Spain’s economic system was in transition, or perhaps even in revolution. The reification of the business Güell, Ramis and Co., and, on a larger scale, of the Spanish empire, involved the creation of new forms of ownership (privatization of land, capital-based shareholding), new identities (i.e.

shareholder, wage-laborer), new means of production (i.e. steam engines, self-acting spinning mills, labor-power), and new market strategies (i.e. state privilege of sale, protectionism). The Vapor Vell disrupted the old Barcelonian textile market, and would eventually triumph over the old system and become a leader in the establishment of the new system of capitalistic production.

The labor market and its discourse

In this section we will complete our discourse analysis with a look at the labor market, and along the way we will also give attention to an assortment of alternative, anti-capitalist economic discourses which circulated in Barcelona at this time.

Capitalistic production is the term Marx used to describe socio-economic systems based especially on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the labor force.⁵³ In the case of Güell, Ramis and Co, for example, the land, the factory building, machinery, and the raw materials (in other words, the means of production) was all owned by business shareholders. The workers, on the other hand, were not owned (which would have been a type of slavery), but instead, rented out their work to the business as wage-laborers.

This economic system arrived in Catalonia in force with the appearance of steam-powered textile factories.⁵⁴ This is because these machines were huge, technically challenging and prohibitively expensive for the majority of textile producers to own.

Incorporating steam-power required a new factory-organization of work. This built on a process which had already begun in Barcelona through the Calico industry, beginning in the 18th century.⁵⁵ These proto-factories employed large numbers of women and children, and

52 Farràs, Andreu. (2016). Els Güell. La història d’una de les famílies més influents a Catalunya els últims dos segles. Edicions 62.

53 Marx, Karl. (1867). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. (Trans. Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin, 1990.)

54 See: Nadal Oller, Jordi. (1975). El fracaso de la revolución industrial en España, 1814-1913.

Editorial Ariel.

55 See: Thomson, James K.J.. (1992). A distinctive industrialization: Cotton in Barcelona, 1728-1832.

Cambridge University Press. More recently, the Museu d'Història Barcelona has curated an exhibition on this

103 supplanted the earlier craft workshops and cottage industries. The Bonaplata Mill, established in Barcelona’s Raval neighborhood in the 1830’s, was the first to introduce steam power in Spain. It was a rocky start. In 1833 the machinery had yet to be installed, and already in 1835 the factory was attacked and burned down in an attack on industrialization and mechanization carried out by Luddites, a movement which viewed the new machines as a threat to the economic and social order.⁵⁶ The Luddites didn’t accept the new economic objects and relationships proposed by capitalistic production and responded with direct action against the machines themselves which they viewed as the incarnation of these evils.

This is how they demonstrated their rejection of participating in this new economic system.

It is revealing that, soon after the factory was destroyed, Jose Bonaplata, on behalf of the company, submitted a claim for compensation to the Spanish government amounting to 2,696,625 reals, claiming that the burning had occurred as a result of "political upheavals that the political and military authorities did not know how to contain.”⁵⁷ Industrialists like Bonaplata lobbied the state to adopt a stronger pro-factory stance through positioning itself as moderator and enforcer of order on behalf of this new and disruptive economic system.

Self-employed spinsters, unable to compete in the new game and unable to overthrow it, were forced by necessity to abandon their spinning wheels and seek out factory jobs, taking on in the process the new identity of “wage-laborers.”

The power of the capitalists was in their private ownership of the means of production; but their weakness was their dependence on workers to run the machines. The solution was labor-power. The magic of labor-power was how it reified the abstract quantity of “labor” in such a way that made it real and measurable, as a commodity which could be bought and sold by the hour.⁵⁸ The buying and selling of labor-power by the business owners (employers) and workers (employees), respectively, constituted a type of market-- the labor market-- and, like the textile and international markets, it too became the site of a specific kind of economic discourse which we will call the labor discourse.

The primary location of the labor discourse is employment, including the employee-employer relationship as well as the range of strategies used by both of these stakeholders in order to manipulate the labor market. For the employer, for example, as a purchaser of the labor-power, the incentive is to create a buyers’ market. This can be done first of all by ensuring that there is a large supply of labor available. This reduces demand and increases competition between workers for the limited jobs, allowing wages to drop. As labor-power

topic (MUHBA. (2012). Indianes. (Exhibition) Museu d'Història de Barcelona. Accessed November, 2020:

https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/museuhistoria/indianes/ca/)

56 Nadal Oller, Jordi; Maluquer de Motes, Jordi. (1985). Catalunya, la fàbrica d'Espanya (1833-1936).

Ajuntament de Barcelona.

57 Nadal, Jordi. (1983). Los Bonaplata: Tres generaciones de industriales en la España del siglo XIX.

Revista de Historia Económica = Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, N.1. p. 86..

(Accessed November, 2020: http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/handle/10016/1567/RHE-1983-I-1-Nadal.pdf?sequence=1)

58 See: Thompson, E.P.. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class. (Reprinted, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980).

104 consumers, employers are united by these shared labor-market incentives. For the employee, on the other hand, as a producer of labor-power, the incentive is to create a sellers’ market by ensuring a low supply and increased demand of their labor-power, promoting competition between employers for the limited amount of workers and causing wages to increase.

Workers, likewise, are incentivized to organize amongst themselves in order to manipulate the labor market according to their shared interests as labor-power producers.

Similar to the way that Catalan textile producers lobbied for the regulation of the international textile market through protectionism, the regulation of the labor-market (for example, through establishing a minimum wage and maximum work day) was seen as beneficial to the employees. Specifically, this was the position held by a political party operating in Spain at this time called the Progressives. On the other hand, the Moderates represented a political party advocating for deregulation of the labor-market, a position which was viewed as beneficial to employers. Thus, at the level of state regulation, the labor discourse pits employers and employees against each other as rival stakeholders, members of competing teams in the labor market game. Regardless of this rivalry, the labor discourse represented workers as free agents who entered into a contract with an employer of their own volition. Just as the employer could hire and fire employees as they wished, the employees could accept the job or quit the job as they wished.

In terms of objectives, the employees participation in the labor market is motivated by wages, often presented in terms of ensuring a minimum quality of life. From the perspective of the employers, on the other hand, the objective of labor has to do with making the business profitable. The issue of profit is where a certain disequilibrium is manifested in the labor discourse-- the employers are the only ones who receive this profit, although this is justified as fair because the business constitutes their private property. We can model the labor discourse as follows:

Labor Discourse

Concepts: Objects: Stakeholders: Objectives: Values:

Labor market phenomenon

Labor-power, wages

Employees → Wages → Quality of life Employers → Labor → Business Profit