The present work is a theoretical investigation on the development through time, as a consequence of human learning, of a ‘pure labour’ economy, i.e., an economy in which production activity is carried out by labour alone – labour unassisted by any intermediate commodity. The theoretical scheme of a pure labour economy is obviously an abstraction, yet it is aimed at grasping basic features of the industrial economies of our time.

Economists have long since discovered that the long-term movements of industrial economies have at their roots two basic phenomena – capital accumulation and technical progress. But a sort of privileged position has always been given to capital accumulation. For decades, economic theories have been elaborated concerning a process of capital accumulation that takes place without technical progress; the idea being that technical change could be introduced later. But this later introduction of technical change has never been easy, and has given rise to endless difficulties.

In the present work, I am taking a reversal of this approach. I am assigning technical progress the central rôle, leaving the introduction of capital accumulation to later investigation.

The main justification is of course analytical – to take advantage of the full potential of a new approach, without at the outset facing too many complications. But other, subsidiary, justifications reinforce the main one. Capital accumulation seems to have lost recently that pre-eminent and absolutely crucial rôle that it played in the early stages of industrialization.