1. Britain's emergence The Second World War was a fully
industrialised war, where factories were re-tooled to produce
armaments. The industrial system was more than a century old in
1939. Since 1815 British mill owners had learned to make money
by setting men to work at industrial production. It was a
profitable business that led quickly to British domination of
the world market in manufactured goods, putting rivals out of
business, reducing the developing world to the role of a
supplier of raw materials. The social basis of the factory
system was capital accumulation. The representation of labour in
the value of the product allowed capitalists to commandeer
output for a new, and expanded, round of production. The surplus
value that workers produced over and above their wages, fell to
the employers as profit - a ready source of reinvestment. Its
dynamism, though, was based on conflict. With each expansion of
the factory system, a new regiment of labourers was dragooned
into service. British history throughout