Welcome to All That Is Common

All That Is Common takes its name from a case study of the Daumonbois watchcase factory. In the years following the Second World War, Daumonbois established itself as a communitarian enclave in a French border town near Switzerland. The guiding principle of the factory was that the ‘distinction between employer and employee would be abolished.’ For this purpose, the original compagnons, as they were called – a husband and wife – sought out a group of workers who were as yet untrained in industrial manufacturing. As the story goes, this included a barber, a sausage maker and a waitress. In their manifesto, ‘All that is Common’, the allusive barber, sausage maker and waitress inscribed the dictum that they should sing together. Increased labour productivity would translate into more time outside the factory (rather than increased profits or wages), the relationship between social and professional aims would be scrutinised at general assembly meetings, and resources would be pooled for funding scholarly and artistic pursuits. They set up production in a barn with only two skilled workers. Suppliers refused to sell them anything on credit. But still, the company began selling after two months. The company eventually included 90 workers and their kin. But it is true that, at least in the proverbial sense, no one knows what became of the Daumonbois labourers. Like the dinosaurs, they either disappeared entirely at the hand of a violent cosmic cause or took to living amongst us in a scantly recognisable form.