Products, Processes and Incomes: Cotton Clothing in India

Developing countries are characterized by the coexistence of forms of production which originate in entirely different historical periods. A significant proportion of the production structures of these economies comprises production modes which belong to the period of pre-capitalist economic formations. In this period, as noted in the previous chapter, ‘the greater part of the products are produced for the satisfaction of the immediate needs of the community not as commodities’,1 in contrast to the later capitalist mode of production which turns ‘the commodities formerly produced as immediate use-values into exchange values’.2 The genesis of the relationship between products, processes and incomes thus lies in communities where the production mode exists to provide essential commodities for the subsistence requirements of the community. The survival of these earlier modes in developing countries reflects the fact that vast numbers still live at the subsistence level of income and thus require the type of commodity appropriate to that of the earlier period. The organized sector of these economies by contrast operates on the basis of imported processes of production developed for the incomes and product requirements of advanced economies.3 This chapter attempts a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between the processes of different modes of production, the nature of commodities produced and the income levels of consumers in the Indian cotton clothing industry. The cross-section results are interpreted in the light of the historical dynamics of technology in the industry.