Even in a post-capitalist, post-consumerist world, you still need to produce goods, as a result of this, you need factories because it is more effective to have a few people making a lot of clothes in a factory than every woman being forced to sit down and spin wool all day.
Some excellent comments here. The problem isn’t the factories that make manufacturing more efficient, it’s that the people working there often have poor working conditions, are only there because they have no better options, and don’t get any real benefit out of their employers’ success. Fix that, and we can absolutely keep the freedom that comes from having people specialise in specific skills, instead of having to do everything needed for individual survival ourselves
It depends on what is being made. For fabric production, yes, for clothing, in the current economic and social landscape, i.e. what consumers are chosing to purchase, not so much. From what I've read lately, a lot of fast fashion is now being outsourced by temu or shein stores to be manufactured in people's apartments in China. Because of the short duration of trends, it takes too long to tool up a massive factory. By the time this happens, the item is already out of fashion. The diversity of influencers also means things are no longer made in massive quantities sold to department stores like it was when our media was dominated by a limited range of channels and magazines that allowed mass production in factories. Things get made in smaller batches now before some other trend displaces them, but also because a smaller market segment is seeing an advertised design. This model is arguably worse in some ways because instead of being exposed to textile fibre dust in a controlled setting, now it's in workers homes. The model is attractive to companies as the brand gets to cut the cost of renting a factory because land is expensive these days. What's more, how can anyone scrutise the workers' conditions if there's no factory?
