Das Kapital

DIVISION OF LABOUR AND MANUFACTURE

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Fourteen
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Fourteen: Division of Labour and Manufacture
Contents
Section 1 - Two-fold Origin of Manufacture
Section 2 - The Detail Labourer and his Implements
Section 3 - The Two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture:
Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture
Section 4 - Division of Labour in Manufacture,
and Division of Labour in Society
Section 5 - The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture
SECTION 1
TWO-FOLD ORIGIN OF MANUFACTURE
That co-operation which is based on division of labour,
assumes its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic
form of the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing
period properly so called. That period, roughly speaking, extends from
the middle of the 16th to the last third of the 18th century.
Manufacture takes its rise in two ways:
(1.) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control of a single
capitalist, of labourers belonging to various independent handicrafts,
but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion.
A carriage, for example, was formerly the product of the labour of a great
number of independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers,
tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers, glaziers, painters,
polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of carriages, however, all
these different artificers are assembled in one building where they work
into one another’s hands. It is true that a carriage cannot be gilt before
it has been made. But if a number of carriages are being made simultaneously,
some may be in the hands of the gilders while others are going through
an earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain of simple co-operation,
which finds its materials ready to hand in the shape of men and things.
But very soon an important change takes place. The tailor, the locksmith,
and the other artificers, being now exclusively occupied in carriage-making,
each gradually loses, through want of practice, the ability to carry on,
to its full extent, his old handicraft. But, on the other hand, his activity
now confined in one groove, assumes the form best adapted to the narrowed
sphere of action. At first, carriage manufacture is a combination of various
independent handicrafts. By degrees, it becomes the splitting up of carriage-making
into its various detail processes, each of which crystallises into
the exclusive function of a particular workman, the manufacture, as a whole,
being carried on by the men in conjunction. In the same way, cloth manufacture,
as also a whole series of other manufactures, arose by combining different
handicrafts together under the control of a single capitalist.
(2.) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this –
namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number
of artificers, who all do the same, or the same kind of work, such as making
paper, type, or needles. This is co-operation in its most elementary form.
Each of these artificers (with the help, perhaps, of one or two apprentices),
makes the entire commodity, and he consequently performs in succession
all the operations necessary for its production. He still works in his
old handicraft-like way. But very soon external circumstances cause a different
use to be made of the concentration of the workmen on one spot, and of
the simultaneousness of their work. An increased quantity of the article
has perhaps to be delivered within a given time. The work is therefore
re-distributed. Instead of each man being allowed to perform all the various
operations in succession, these operations are changed into disconnected,
isolated ones, carried on side by side; each is assigned to a different
artificer, and the whole of them together are performed simultaneously
by the co-operating workmen. This accidental repartition gets repeated,
develops advantages of its own, and gradually ossifies into a systematic
division of labour. The commodity, from being the individual product of
an independent artificer, becomes the social product of a union of artificers,
each of whom performs one, and only one, of the constituent partial operations.
The same operations which, in the case of a papermaker belonging to a German
Guild, merged one into the other as the successive acts of one artificer,
became in the Dutch paper manufacture so many partial operations carried
on side by side by numerous co-operating labourers. The needlemaker of
the Nuremberg Guild was the cornerstone on which the English needle
manufacture was raised. But while in Nuremberg that single artificer performed
a series of perhaps 20 operations one after another, in England it was
not long before there were 20 needlemakers side by side, each performing
one alone of those 20 operations, and in consequence of further experience,
each of those 20 operations was again split up, isolated, and made the
exclusive function of a separate workman.
The mode in which manufacture arises, its growth out of handicrafts,
is therefore two-fold. On the one hand, it arises from the union of various
independent handicrafts, which become stripped of their independence and
specialised to such an extent as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial
processes in the production of one particular commodity. On the other hand,
it arises from the co-operation of artificers of one handicraft; it splits
up that particular handicraft into its various detail operations, isolating,
and making these operations independent of one another up to the point
where each becomes the exclusive function of a particular labourer. On
the one hand, therefore, manufacture either introduces division of labour
into a process of production, or further develops that division; on the
other hand, it unites together handicrafts that were formerly separate.
But whatever may have been its particular starting-point, its final form
is invariably the same – a productive mechanism whose parts are human beings.
For a proper understanding of the division of labour in manufacture,
it is essential that the following points be firmly grasped. First, the
decomposition of a process of production into its various successive steps
coincides, here, strictly with the resolution of a handicraft into its
successive manual operations. Whether complex or simple, each operation
has to be done by hand, retains the character of a handicraft, and is therefore
dependent on the strength, skill, quickness, and sureness, of the individual
workman in handling his tools. The handicraft continues to be the basis.
This narrow technical basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any
definite process of industrial production, since it is still a condition
that each detail process gone through by the product must be capable of
being done by hand and of forming, in its way, a separate handicraft. It
is just because handicraft skill continues, in this way, to be the foundation
of the process of production, that each workman becomes exclusively assigned
to a partial function, and that for the rest of his life, his labour-power
is turned into the organ of this detail function.
Secondly, this division of labour is a particular sort of co-operation,
and many of its advantages[*] spring from the general character of co-operation,
and not from this particular form of it.
SECTION 2
THE DETAIL LABOURER AND HIS IMPLEMENTS
If we now go more into detail, it is, in the first
place, clear that a labourer who all his life performs one and the same
simple operation, converts his whole body into the automatic, specialised
implement of that operation. Consequently, he takes less time in doing
it, than the artificer who performs a whole series of operations in succession.
But the collective labourer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture,
is made up solely of such specialised detail labourers. Hence, in comparison
with the independent handicraft, more is produced in a given time, or the
productive power of labour is increased. Moreover, when once this fractional work is established as the exclusive function
of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The workman’s continued
repetition of the same simple act, and the concentration of his attention
on it, teach him by experience how to attain the desired effect with the
minimum of exertion. But since there are always several generations of
labourers living at one time, and working together at the manufacture of
a given article, the technical skill, the tricks of the trade thus acquired,
become established, and are accumulated and handed down.
Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer,
by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop,
the naturally developed differentiation of trades which it found ready
to hand in society at large. On the other hand, the conversion of fractional
work into the life-calling of one man, corresponds to the tendency shown
by earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify them
into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual
a tendency to vary in a manner incompatible with the nature of castes,
to ossify them into guilds. Castes and guilds arise from the action of
the same natural law, that regulates the differentiation of plants and
animals into species and varieties, except that, when a certain degree
of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and the exclusiveness
of guilds are ordained as a law of society.
“The muslins of Dakka in fineness, the calicoes and other
piece goods of Coromandel in brilliant and durable colours, have never
been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital, machinery, division
of labour, or any of those means which give such facilities to the manufacturing
interest of Europe. The weaver is merely a detached individual, working
a web when ordered of a customer, and with a loom of the rudest construction,
consisting sometimes of a few branches or bars of wood, put roughly together.
There is even no expedient for rolling up the warp; the loom must therefore
be kept stretched to its full length, and becomes so inconveniently large,
that it cannot be contained within the hut of the manufacturer, who is
therefore compelled to ply his trade in the open air, where it is interrupted
by every vicissitude of the weather.”
It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to generation, and transmitted
from father to son, that gives to the Hindu, as it does to the spider,
this proficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindu weaver is very complicated,
compared with that of a manufacturing labourer.
An artificer, who performs one after another the various fractional
operations in the production of a finished article, must at one time change
his place, at another his tools. The transition from one operation to another
interrupts the flow of his labour, and creates, so to say, gaps in his
working-day. These gaps close up so soon as he is tied to one and the same
operation all day long; they vanish in proportion as the changes in his
work diminish. The resulting increased productive power is owing either
to an increased expenditure of labour-power in a given time i.e., to increased
intensity of labour or to a decrease in the amount of labour-power unproductively
consumed. The extra expenditure of power, demanded by every transition
from rest to motion, is made up for by prolonging the duration of the normal
velocity when once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one
uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man’s animal spirits,
which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.
The productiveness of labour depends not only on the proficiency
of the workman, but on the perfection of his tools. Tools of the same kind,
such as knives, drills, gimlets, hammers, &c., may be employed
in different processes; and the same tool may serve various purposes in
a single process. But so soon as the different operations of a labour-process
are disconnected the one from the other, and each fractional operation
acquires in the hands of the detail labourer a suitable and peculiar form,
alterations become necessary in the implements that previously served more
than one purpose. The direction taken by this change is determined by the
difficulties experienced in consequence of the unchanged form of the implement.
Manufacture is characterised by the differentiation of the instruments
of labour – a differentiation whereby implements of a given sort acquire
fixed shapes, adapted to each particular application, and by the specialisation
of those instruments, giving to each special implement its full play only
in the hands of a specific detail labourer. In Birmingham alone 500 varieties
of hammers are produced, and not only is each adapted to one particular
process, but several varieties often serve exclusively for the different
operations in one and the same process. The manufacturing period simplifies,
improves, and multiplies the implements of labour, by adapting them to
the exclusively special functions of each detail labourer. It thus creates at the same time one of the material conditions for the
existence of machinery, which consists of a combination of simple instruments.
The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest elements
of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a whole.
SECTION 3
THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF MANUFACTURE: HETEROGENEOUS MANUFACTURE, SERIAL MANUFACTURE
The organisation of manufacture has two fundamental
forms which, in spite of occasional blending, are essentially different
in kind, and, moreover, play very distinct parts in the subsequent transformation
of manufacture into modern industry carried on by machinery. This double
character arises from the nature of the article produced. This article
either results from the mere mechanical fitting together of partial products
made independently, or owes its completed shape to a series of connected
processes and manipulations.
A locomotive, for instance, consists of more than 5,000
independent parts. It cannot, however, serve as an example of the first
kind of genuine manufacture, for it is a structure produced by modern mechanical
industry. But a watch can; and William Petty used it to illustrate the
division of labour in manufacture. Formerly the individual work of a Nuremberg
artificer, the watch has been transformed into the social product of an
immense number of detail labourers, such as mainspring makers, dial makers,
spiral spring makers, jewelled hole makers, ruby lever makers, hand makers,
case makers, screw makers, gilders, with numerous subdivisions, such as
wheel makers (brass and steel separate), pin makers, movement makers, acheveur
de pignon (fixes the wheels on the axles, polishes the facets, &c.),
pivot makers, planteur de finissage (puts the wheels and springs in the
works), finisseur de barillet (cuts teeth in the wheels, makes the holes
of the right size, &c.), escapement makers, cylinder makers for cylinder
escapements, escapement wheel makers, balance wheel makers, raquette makers
(apparatus for regulating the watch), the planteur d’échappement
(escapement maker proper); then the repasseur de barillet (finishes the
box for the spring, &c.), steel polishers, wheel polishers, screw polishers,
figure painters, dial enamellers (melt the enamel on the copper), fabricant
de pendants (makes the ring by which the case is hung), finisseur de charnière
(puts the brass hinge in the cover, &c.), faiseur de secret (puts in
the springs that open the case), graveur, ciseleur, polisseur de boîte,
&c., &c., and last of all the repasseur, who fits together the
whole watch and hands it over in a going state. Only a few parts of the
watch pass through several hands; and all these membra disjecta come together
for the first time in the hand that binds them into one mechanical whole.
This external relation between the finished product, and its various and
diverse elements makes it, as well in this case as in the case of all similar
finished articles, a matter of chance whether the detail labourers are
brought together in one workshop or not. The detail operations may further
be carried on like so many independent handicrafts, as they are in the
Cantons of Vaud and Neufchâtel; while in Geneva there exist large
watch manufactories where the detail labourers directly co-operate under
the control of a single capitalist. And even in the latter case the dial, the springs, and the case, are seldom made in the factory itself. To carry
on the trade as a manufacture, with concentration of workmen, is, in the
watch trade, profitable only under exceptional conditions, because competition
is greater between the labourers who desire to work at home, and because
the splitting up of the work into a number of heterogeneous processes,
permits but little use of the instruments of labour in common, and the
capitalist, by scattering the work, saves the outlay on workshops,
&c. Nevertheless the position of this detail
labourer who, though he works at home, does so for a capitalist (manufacturer,
établisseur), is very different from that of the independent artificer,
who works for his own customers.
The second kind of manufacture, its perfected form, produces articles
that go through connected phases of development, through a series of processes
step by step, like the wire in the manufacture of needles, which passes
through the hands of 72 and sometimes even 92 different detail workmen.
In so far as such a manufacture, when first started, combines
scattered handicrafts, it lessens the space by which the various phases
of production are separated from each other. The time taken in passing
from one stage to another is shortened, so is the labour that effectuates
this passage. In comparison with a handicraft, productive power is gained, and this gain is owing to the general co-operative character
of manufacture. On the other hand, division of labour, which is the distinguishing
principle of manufacture, requires the isolation of the various stages
of production and their independence of each other. The establishment and
maintenance of a connexion between the isolated functions necessitates
the incessant transport of the article from one hand to another, and from
one process to another. From the standpoint of modern mechanical industry,
this necessity stands forth as a characteristic and costly disadvantage,
and one that is immanent in the principle of manufacture.
If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw
materials, of rags, for instance, in paper manufacture, or of wire in needle
manufacture, we perceive that it passes in succession through a series
of stages in the hands of the various detail workmen until completion.
On the other hand, if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw
material in all the stages of its production at the same time. The collective
labourer, with one set of his many hands armed with one kind of tools,
draws the wire, with another set, armed with different tools, he, at the
same time, straightens it, with another, he cuts it, with another, points
it, and so on. The different detail processes, which were successive in
time, have become simultaneous, go on side by side in space. Hence, production
of a greater quantum of finished commodities in a given time. This simultaneity, it is true, is due to the general co-operative form of the process as a whole; but Manufacture not only finds the conditions
for co-operation ready to hand, it also, to some extent, creates them by
the sub-division of handicraft labour. On the other hand, it accomplishes
this social organisation of the labour-process only by riveting each labourer
to a single fractional detail.
Since the fractional product of each detail labourer is, at the
same time, only a particular stage in the development of one and the same
finished article, each labourer, or each group of labourers, prepares the
raw material for another labourer or group. The result of the labour of
the one is the starting-point for the labour of the other. The one workman
therefore gives occupation directly to the other. The labour-time necessary in each partial process, for attaining the desired effect, is learnt by
experience; and the mechanism of Manufacture, as a whole, is based on the
assumption that a given result will be obtained in a given time. It is
only on this assumption that the various supplementary labour-processes
can proceed uninterruptedly, simultaneously, and side by side. It is clear
that this direct dependence of the operations, and therefore of the labourers,
on each other, compels each one of them to spend on his work no more than
the necessary time, and thus a continuity, uniformity, regularity, order,
and even intensity of labour, of quite a different kind, is begotten than is to be found in an independent handicraft
or even in simple co-operation. The rule, that the labour-time expended
on a commodity should not exceed that which is socially necessary for its
production, appears, in the production of commodities generally, to be
established by the mere effect of competition; since, to express ourselves
superficially, each single producer is obliged to sell his commodity at
its market-price. In Manufacture, on the contrary, the turning out of a
given quantum of product in a given time is a technical law of the process
of production itself.
Different operations take, however, unequal periods, and yield
therefore, in equal times unequal quantities of fractional products. If,
therefore, the same labourer has, day after day, to perform the same operation,
there must be a different number of labourers for each operation; for instance,
in type manufacture, there are four founders and two breakers to one rubber:
the founder casts 2,000 type an hour, the breaker breaks up 4,000, and
the rubber polishes 8,000. Here we have again the principle of co-operation
in its simplest form, the simultaneous employment of many doing the same
thing; only now, this principle is the expression of an organic relation.
The division of labour, as carried out in Manufacture, not only simplifies
and multiplies the qualitatively different parts of the social collective
labourer, but also creates a fixed mathematical relation or ratio which
regulates the quantitative extent of those parts i.e., the relative number
of labourers, or the relative size of the group of labourers, for each
detail operation. It develops, along with the qualitative sub-division
of the social labour-process, a quantitative rule and proportionality for
that process.
When once the most fitting proportion has been experimentally
established for the numbers of the detail labourers in the various groups
when producing on a given scale, that scale can be extended only by employing
a multiple of each particular group. There is this to boot, that the same individual can do certain kinds of work just as
well on a large as on a small scale; for instance, the labour of superintendence,
the carriage of the fractional product from one stage to the next, &c.
The isolation of such functions, their allotment to a particular labourer,
does not become advantageous till after an increase in the number
of labourers employed; but this increase must affect every group proportionally.
The isolated group of labourers to whom any particular detail
function is assigned, is made up of homogeneous elements, and is one of
the constituent parts of the total mechanism. In many manufactures, however,
the group itself is an organised body of labour, the total mechanism being
a repetition or multiplication of these elementary organisms. Take, for
instance, the manufacture of glass bottles. It may be resolved into three
essentially different stages. First, the preliminary stage, consisting
of the preparation of the components of the glass, mixing the sand and
lime, &c., and melting them into a fluid mass of glass. Various detail labourers are employed in this first stage, as also in the final one of removing the bottles from the drying furnace, sorting and
packing them, &c. In the middle, between these two stages, comes the
glass melting proper, the manipulation of the fluid mass. At each mouth
of the furnace, there works a group, called “the hole,” consisting of one
bottlemaker or finisher, one blower, one gatherer, one putter-up or whetter-off,
and one taker-in. These five detail workers are so many special organs
of a single working organism that acts only as a whole, and therefore can
operate only by the direct co-operation of the whole five. The whole body
is paralysed if but one of its members be wanting. But a glass furnace
has several openings (in England from 4 to 6), each of which contains an
earthenware melting-pot full of molten glass, and employs a similar five-membered
group of workers. The organisation of each group is based on division of
labour, but the bond between the different groups is simple co-operation,
which, by using in common one of the means of production, the furnace,
causes it to be more economically consumed. Such a furnace, with its 4-6
groups, constitutes a glass house; and a glass manufactory comprises a
number of such glass houses, together with the apparatus and workmen requisite
for the preparatory and final stages.
Finally, just as Manufacture arises in part from the combination
of various handicrafts, so, too, it develops into a combination of various
manufactures. The larger English glass manufacturers, for instance, make
their own earthenware melting-pots, because, on the quality of these depends,
to a great extent, the success or failure of the process. The manufacture
of one of the means of production is here united with that of the product.
On the other hand, the manufacture of the product may be united with other
manufactures, of which that product is the raw material, or with the products
of which it is itself subsequently mixed. Thus, we find the manufacture
of flint glass combined with that of glass cutting and brass founding;
the latter for the metal settings of various articles of glass. The various
manufactures so combined form more or less separate departments of a larger
manufacture, but are at the same time independent processes, each with
its own division of labour. In spite of the many advantages offered by
this combination of manufactures, it never grows into a complete technical
system on its own foundation. That happens only on its transformation into
an industry carried on by machinery.
Early in the manufacturing period, the principle of lessening
the necessary labour-time in the production of commodities, was accepted and formulated: and the use of machines, especially for certain simple first processes that have to be conducted on a very large scale,
and with the application of great force, sprang up here and there. Thus,
at an early period in paper manufacture, the tearing up of the rags was
done by paper-mills; and in metal works, the pounding of the ores was effected
by stamping mills. The Roman Empire had handed
down the elementary form of all machinery in the water-wheel.
The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of
the compass, of gunpowder, of type-printing, and of the automatic clock.
But, on the whole, machinery played that subordinate part which Adam Smith
assigns to it in comparison with division of labour. The sporadic use of machinery in the 17th century was of the greatest importance, because it supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a practical
basis and stimulant to the creation of the science of mechanics.
The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a number
of detail labourers, is the machinery specially characteristic of the manufacturing
period. The various operations that are performed in turns by the producer
of a commodity, and coalesce one with another during the progress of production,
lay claim to him in various ways. In one operation he must exert more strength,
in another more skill, in another more attention; and the same individual
does not possess all these qualities in an equal degree. After Manufacture has once separated, made independent, and isolated the various operations, the labourers are divided, classified, and grouped according to their predominating
qualities. If their natural endowments are, on the one hand, the foundation
on which the division of labour is built up, on the other hand, Manufacture,
once introduced, develops in them new powers that are by nature fitted
only for limited and special functions. The collective labourer now possesses,
in an equal degree of excellence, all the qualities requisite for production,
and expends them in the most economical manner, by exclusively employing
all his organs, consisting of particular labourers, or groups of labourers,
in performing their special functions. The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer become perfections when he
is a part of the collective labourer. The habit
of doing only one thing converts him into a never failing instrument, while
his connexion with the whole mechanism compels him to work with the regularity
of the parts of a machine.
Since the collective labourer has functions, both simple and complex,
both high and low, his members, the individual labour-powers, require different
degrees of training, and must therefore have different values. Manufacture,
therefore, develops a hierarchy of labour-powers, to which there corresponds
a scale of wages. If, on the one hand, the individual labourers are appropriated
and annexed for life by a limited function; on the other hand, the various
operations of the hierarchy are parcelled out among the labourers according
to both their natural and their acquired capabilities. Every process of production, however, requires certain simple manipulations, which every man is capable of doing. They too are now severed from their connexion with the more pregnant moments of activity, and ossified into
exclusive functions of specially appointed labourers. Hence, Manufacture
begets, in every handicraft that it seizes upon, a class of so-called unskilled
labourers, a class which handicraft industry strictly excluded. If it develops
a one-sided speciality into a perfection, at the expense of the whole of
a man’s working capacity, it also begins to make a speciality of the absence
of all development. Alongside of the hierarchic gradation there steps the
simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled. For the
latter, the cost of apprenticeship vanishes; for the former, it diminishes,
compared with that of artificers, in consequence of the functions being
simplified. In both cases the value of labour-power falls. An exception to this law holds good whenever the decomposition of the labour-process begets new and comprehensive functions, that either had no place at all,
or only a very modest one, in handicrafts. The fall in the value of labour-power,
caused by the disappearance or diminution of the expenses of apprenticeship,
implies a direct increase of surplus-value for the benefit of capital;
for everything that shortens the necessary labour-time required for the
reproduction of labour-power, extends the domain of surplus-labour.
SECTION 4
DIVISION OF LABOUR IN MANUFACTURE, AND DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY
We first considered the origin of Manufacture, then
its simple elements, then the detail labourer and his implements, and finally,
the totality of the mechanism. We shall now lightly touch upon the relation
between the division of labour in manufacture, and the social division
of labour, which forms the foundation of all production of commodities.
If we keep labour alone in view, we may designate the separation
of social production into its main divisions or genera — viz.,
agriculture, industries, &c., as division of labour in general, and
the splitting up of these families into species and sub-species, as division
of labour in particular, and the division of labour within the workshop
as division of labour in singular or in detail.
Division of labour in a society, and the corresponding tying down
of individuals to a particular calling, develops itself, just as does the
division of labour in manufacture, from opposite starting-points. Within
a family, and after further development within
a tribe, there springs up naturally a division of labour, caused by differences
of sex and age, a division that is consequently based on a purely physiological
foundation, which division enlarges its materials by the expansion of the
community, by the increase of population, and more especially, by the conflicts
between different tribes, and the subjugation of one tribe by another.
On the other hand, as I have before remarked, the exchange of products
springs up at the points where different families, tribes, communities,
come in contact; for, in the beginning of civilisation, it is not private
individuals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent
footing. Different communities find different means of production, and
different means of subsistence in their natural environment. Hence, their
modes of production, and of living, and their products are different. It
is this spontaneously developed difference which, when different communities
come in contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the consequent
gradual conversion of those products into commodities. Exchange does not
create the differences between the spheres of production, but brings what
are already different into relation, and thus converts them into more or
less inter-dependent branches of the collective production of an enlarged
society. In the latter case, the social division of labour arises from
the exchange between spheres of production, that are originally distinct
and independent of one another. In the former, where the physiological
division of labour is the starting-point, the particular organs of a compact
whole grow loose, and break off, principally owing to the exchange of commodities
with foreign communities, and then isolate themselves so far, that the
sole bond, still connecting the various kinds of work, is the exchange
of the products as commodities. In the one case, it is the making dependent
what was before independent; in the other case, the making independent
what was before dependent.
The foundation of every division of labour that is well developed,
and brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation between
town and country. It may be said, that the whole economic history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis.
We pass it over, however, for the present.
Just as a certain number of simultaneously employed labourers
are the material pre-requisites for division of labour in manufacture,
so are the number and density of the population, which here correspond
to the agglomeration in one workshop, a necessary condition for the division
of labour in society. Nevertheless, this density is more or less relative. A relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed
means of communication, has a denser population than a more numerously
populated country, with badly-developed means of communication; and in
this sense the Northern States of the American Union, for instance, are
more thickly populated than India.
Since the production and the circulation of commodities are the
general pre-requisites of the capitalist mode of production, division of
labour in manufacture demands, that division of labour in society at large
should previously have attained a certain degree of development. Inversely,
the former division reacts upon and develops and multiplies the latter.
Simultaneously, with the differentiation of the instruments of labour,
the industries that produce these instruments, become more and more
differentiated. If the manufacturing system seize upon an industry, which, previously, was carried on in connexion with others,
either as a chief or as a subordinate industry, and by one producer, these
industries immediately separate their connexion, and become independent.
If it seize upon a particular stage in the production of a commodity, the
other stages of its production become converted into so many independent
industries. It has already been stated, that where the finished article
consists merely of a number of parts fitted together, the detail operations
may re-establish themselves as genuine and separate handicrafts. In order
to carry out more perfectly the division of labour in manufacture, a single
branch of production is, according to the varieties of its raw material,
or the various forms that one and the same raw material may assume, split
up into numerous, and to some extent, entirely new manufactures. Accordingly,
in France alone, in the first half of the 18th century, over 100 different
kinds of silk stuffs were woven, and, in Avignon, it was law, that “every
apprentice should devote himself to only one sort of fabrication, and should
not learn the preparation of several kinds of stuff at once.” The territorial division of labour, which confines special branches of production to special districts of a country, acquires fresh stimulus from the manufacturing
system, which exploits every special advantage.
The Colonial system and the opening out of the markets of the world, both
of which are included in the general conditions of existence of the manufacturing
period, furnish rich material for developing the division of labour in
society. It is not the place, here, to go on to show how division of labour
seizes upon, not only the economic, but every other sphere of society,
and everywhere lays the foundation of that all engrossing system of specialising
and sorting men, that development in a man of one single faculty at the
expense of all other faculties, which caused A. Ferguson, the master of
Adam Smith, to exclaim: “We make a nation of Helots, and have no free citizens.”

But, in spite of the numerous analogies and links connecting them,
division of labour in the interior of a society, and that in the interior
of a workshop, differ not only in degree, but also in kind. The analogy
appears most indisputable where there is an invisible bond uniting the
various branches of trade. For instance the cattle-breeder produces hides,
the tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoemaker, the leather
into boots. Here the thing produced by each of them is but a step towards
the final form, which is the product of all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker with the means of production. Now it is quite
possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference between the above
social division of labour, and the division in manufacture, is merely subjective,
exists merely for the observer, who, in a manufacture, can see with one
glance, all the numerous operations being performed on one spot, while
in the instance given above, the spreading out of the work over great areas,
and the great number of people employed in each branch of labour, obscure
the connexion. But what is it that forms the bond between the independent labours of the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and
the shoemaker? It is the fact that their respective products are commodities.
What, on the other hand, characterises division of labour in manufactures?
The fact that the detail labourer produces no commodities. It is only the common product of all the detail labourers that becomes a commodity. Division of labour in society is brought about by the purchase and sale of the products of different
branches of industry, while the connexion between the detail operations
in a workshop, is due to the sale of the labour-power of several workmen
to one capitalist, who applies it as combined labour-power. The division
of labour in the workshop implies concentration of the means of production
in the hands of one capitalist; the division of labour in society implies
their dispersion among many independent producers of commodities. While
within the workshop, the iron law of proportionality subjects definite
numbers of workmen to definite functions, in the society outside the workshop,
chance and caprice have full play in distributing the producers and their
means of production among the various branches of industry. The different
spheres of production, it is true, constantly tend to an equilibrium: for,
on the one hand, while each producer of a commodity is bound to produce
a use-value, to satisfy a particular social want, and while the extent
of these wants differs quantitatively, still there exists an inner relation
which settles their proportions into a regular system, and that system
one of spontaneous growth; and, on the other hand, the law of the value
of commodities ultimately determines how much of its disposable working-time
society can expend on each particular class of commodities. But this constant
tendency to equilibrium, of the various spheres of production, is exercised,
only in the shape of a reaction against the constant upsetting of this
equilibrium. The a priori system on which the division of labour,
within the workshop, is regularly carried out, becomes in the division
of labour within the society, an a posteriori, nature-imposed necessity,
controlling the lawless caprice of the producers, and perceptible in the
barometrical fluctuations of the market-prices. Division of labour within
the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over men,
that are but parts of a mechanism that belongs to him. The division of
labour within the society brings into contact independent commodity-producers,
who acknowledge no other authority but that of competition, of the coercion
exerted by the pressure of their mutual interests; just as in the animal
kingdom, the bellum omnium contra omnes
[war of all against all – Hobbes] more or less preserves the
conditions of existence of every species. The same bourgeois mind which
praises division of labour in the workshop, life-long annexation of the
labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital,
as being an organisation of labour that increases its productiveness – that
same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt
to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an
inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted
play for the bent of the individual capitalist. It is very characteristic
that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more
damning to urge against a general organisation of the labour of society,
than that it would turn all society into one immense factory.
If, in a society with capitalist production, anarchy in the social
division of labour and despotism in that of the workshop are mutual conditions
the one of the other, we find, on the contrary, in those earlier forms
of society in which the separation of trades has been spontaneously developed,
then crystallised, and finally made permanent by law, on the one hand,
a specimen of the organisation of the labour of society, in accordance
with an approved and authoritative plan, and on the other, the entire exclusion
of division of labour in the workshop, or at all events a mere dwarflike
or sporadic and accidental development of the same.
Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of
which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common
of the land, on the blending of agriculture and handicrafts, and on an
unalterable division of labour, which serves, whenever a new community
is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of
from 100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole producing
all it requires. The chief part of the products is destined for direct
use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a commodity.
Hence, production here is independent of that division of labour brought
about, in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities.
It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a portion of even
that, not until it has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands
from time immemorial a certain quantity of these products has found its
way in the shape of rent in kind. The constitution of these communities
varies in different parts of India. In those of the simplest form, the
land is tilled in common, and the produce divided among the members. At
the same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary
industries. Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the
same work, we find the “chief inhabitant,” who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer
in one; the book-keeper, who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers
everything relating thereto; another official, who prosecutes criminals,
protects strangers travelling through and escorts them to the next village;
the boundary man, who guards the boundaries against neighbouring communities;
the water-overseer, who distributes the water from the common tanks for
irrigation; the Brahmin, who conducts the religious services; the schoolmaster,
who on the sand teaches the children reading and writing; the calendar-Brahmin,
or astrologer, who makes known the lucky or unlucky days for seed-time
and harvest, and for every other kind of agricultural work; a smith and
a carpenter, who make and repair all the agricultural implements; the potter,
who makes all the pottery of the village; the barber, the washerman, who
washes clothes, the silversmith, here and there the poet, who in some communities
replaces the silversmith, in others the schoolmaster. This dozen of individuals
is maintained at the expense of the whole community. If the population increases, a new community is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on
unoccupied land. The whole mechanism discloses a systematic division of
labour; but a division like that in manufactures is impossible, since the
smith and the carpenter, &c., find an unchanging market, and at the
most there occur, according to the sizes of the villages, two or three
of each, instead of one. The law that regulates
the division of labour in the community acts with the irresistible authority
of a law of Nature, at the same time that each individual artificer, the
smith, the carpenter, and so on, conducts in his workshop all the operations
of his handicraft in the traditional way, but independently, and without
recognising any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisation
for production in these self-sufficing communities that constantly reproduce
themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up
again on the spot and with the same name –
this simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies,
an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution
and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty.
The structure of the economic elements of society remains untouched
by the storm-clouds of the political sky.
The rules of the guilds, as I have said before, by limiting most
strictly the number of apprentices and journeymen that a single master
could employ, prevented him from becoming a capitalist. Moreover, he could
not employ his journeymen in many other handicrafts than the one in which
he was a master. The guilds zealously repelled every encroachment by the
capital of merchants, the only form of free capital with which they came
in contact. A merchant could buy every kind of commodity, but labour as
a commodity he could not buy. He existed only on sufferance, as a dealer
in the products of the handicrafts. If circumstances called for a further
division of labour, the existing guilds split themselves up into varieties,
or founded new guilds by the side of the old ones; all this, however, without
concentrating various handicrafts in a single workshop. Hence, the guild
organisation, however much it may have contributed by separating, isolating,
and perfecting the handicrafts, to create the material conditions for the
existence of manufacture, excluded division of labour in the workshop.
On the whole, the labourer and his means of production remained closely
united, like the snail with its shell, and thus there was wanting the principal
basis of manufacture, the separation of the labourer from his means of
production, and the conversion of these means into capital.
While division of labour in society at large, whether such division
be brought about or not by exchange of commodities, is common to economic
formations of society the most diverse, division of labour in the workshop,
as practised by manufacture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode
of production alone.
SECTION 5
THE CAPITALISTIC CHARACTER OF MANUFACTURE
An increased number of labourers under the control
of one capitalist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation
generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division of labour
in manufacture makes this increase in the number of workmen a technical
necessity. The minimum number that any given capitalist is bound to employ
is here prescribed by the previously established division of labour. On
the other hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only
by adding to the number of workmen, and this can be done only by adding
multiples of the various detail groups. But an increase in the variable
component of the capital employed necessitates an increase in its constant
component, too, in the workshops, implements, &c., and, in particular,
in the raw material, the call for which grows quicker than the number
of workmen. The quantity of it consumed in a given time, by a given amount
of labour, increases in the same ratio as does the productive power of
that labour in consequence of its division. Hence, it is a law, based on
the very nature of manufacture, that the minimum amount of capital, which
is bound to be in the hands of each capitalist, must keep increasing; in
other words, that the transformation into capital of the social means of
production and subsistence must keep extending.
In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collective
working organism is a form of existence of capital. The mechanism that
is made up of numerous individual detail labourers belongs to the capitalist.
Hence, the productive power resulting from a combination of labours appears
to be the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only subjects
the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital,
but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves.
While simple co-operation leaves the mode of working by the individual
for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it,
and seizes labour-power by its very roots. It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts; just as in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his
tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals,
but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional
operation, and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised. If, at first, the workman sells his labour-power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labour-power
refuses its services unless it has been sold to capital. Its functions
can be exercised only in an environment that exists in the workshop of
the capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently,
the manufacturing labourer develops productive activity as a mere
appendage of the capitalist’s workshop. As the
chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so division
of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.
The knowledge, the judgement, and the will, which, though in ever
so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman,
in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the
exercise of his personal cunning these faculties are now required only
for the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production expands in one
direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the detail
labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual potencies of the material
process of production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power.
This separation begins in simple co-operation, where the capitalist represents
to the single workman, the oneness and the will of the associated labour.
It is developed in manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail
labourer. It is completed in modern industry, which makes science a productive
force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital.

In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer, and
through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must
be made poor in individual productive powers.
“Ignorance is the mother
of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject
to err; but a habit of moving the hand or the foot is independent of either.
Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted,
and where the workshop may ... be considered as an engine, the parts of
which are men.”
As a matter of fact, some few manufacturers in the middle of the 18th century preferred, for certain operations that
were trade secrets, to employ half-idiotic persons.
“The understandings of the greater part of men,” says Adam
Smith, “are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose
whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations ... has no occasion
to exert his understanding... He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant
as it is possible for a human creature to become.”
After describing the stupidity of the detail labourer he goes on:
“The uniformity of his stationary
life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind... It corrupts even the
activity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting his strength
with vigour and perseverance in any other employments than that to which
he has been bred.
His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this
manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial
virtues. But in every improved and civilised society, this is the state
into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must
necessarily fall.”
For preventing the complete deterioration of the great mass of the people by division of labour, A.
Smith recommends education of the people by the State, but prudently, and
in homeopathic doses. G. Garnier, his French translator and commentator,
who, under the first French Empire, quite naturally developed into a senator,
quite as naturally opposes him on this point. Education of the masses,
he urges, violates the first law of the division of labour, and with it
“our whole social system would be proscribed.” "Like all other divisions
of labour,” he says, “that between hand labour and head labour is more pronounced and decided in proportion as society (he rightly uses this word, for capital, landed property and their State) becomes richer.
This division of labour, like every other, is an effect of past, and a
cause of future progress... ought the government then to work in opposition
to this division of labour, and to hinder its natural course? Ought it
to expend a part of the public money in the attempt to confound and blend
together two classes of labour, which are striving after division and separation?”

Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from division
of labour in society as a whole. Since, however, manufacture carries
this social separation of branches of labour much further, and also, by
its peculiar division, attacks the individual at the very roots of his
life, it is the first to afford the materials for, and to give a start
to, industrial pathology.
“To subdivide a man is to execute him, if he deserves the sentence,
to assassinate him if he does not... The subdivision of labour is the assassination
of a people.”
Co-operation based on division of labour, in other words, manufacture,
commences as a spontaneous formation. So soon as it attains some consistence
and extension, it becomes the recognised methodical and systematic form
of capitalist production. History shows how the division of labour peculiar
to manufacture, strictly so called, acquires the best adapted form at first
by experience, as it were behind the backs of the actors, and then, like
the guild handicrafts, strives to hold fast that form when once found,
and here and there succeeds in keeping it for centuries. Any alteration
in this form, except in trivial matters, is solely owing to a revolution
in the instruments of labour. Modern manufacture wherever it arises – I do
not here allude to modern industry based on machinery – either finds the
disjecta membra poetae ready to hand, and only waiting to be collected
together, as is the case in the manufacture of clothes in large towns,
or it can easily apply the principle of division, simply by exclusively
assigning the various operations of a handicraft (such as book-binding)
to particular men. In such cases, a week’s experience is enough to determine
the proportion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the various
functions.
By decomposition of handicrafts, by specialisation of the
instruments of labour, by the formation of detail labourers, and by grouping
and combining the latter into a single mechanism, division of labour in
manufacture creates a qualitative gradation, and a quantitative proportion
in the social process of production; it consequently creates a definite
organisation of the labour of society, and thereby develops at the same
time new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist form –
and under the given conditions, it could take no other form than a capitalistic
one – manufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative surplus-value,
or of augmenting at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital –
usually called social wealth, “Wealth of Nations,” &c. It increases
the social productive power of labour, not only for the benefit of the
capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but it does this by crippling
the individual labourers. It creates new conditions for the lordship of
capital over labour. If, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself
historically as a progress and as a necessary phase in the economic development
of society, on the other hand, it is a refined and civilised method of
exploitation.
Political Economy, which as an independent science, first sprang
into being during the period of manufacture, views the social division
of labour only from the standpoint of manufacture, and sees in it only the means of producing more commodities with a given quantity of labour, and, consequently, of cheapening commodities and hurrying
on the accumulation of capital. In most striking contrast with this accentuation
of quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of classical
antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use-value. In consequence of the separation of the social branches of production, commodities are better made, the various bents and talents of men select
a suitable field, and without some restraint no
important results can be obtained anywhere. Hence both product and producer are improved by division of labour. If the growth of the quantity produced is occasionally mentioned, this is only done with reference to the greater abundance of use-values. There is not a word alluding to exchange-value or to the cheapening of commodities. This aspect, from the standpoint of use-value alone, is taken as well by
Plato, who treats division of labour as the foundation on which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xenophon,
who with characteristic bourgeois instinct, approaches more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato’s
Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative
principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealisation of the Egyptian
system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country
to many of his contemporaries also, amongst others to Isocrates, and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Roman Empire.
During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period during
which manufacture is the predominant form taken by capitalist production,
many obstacles are opposed to the full development of the peculiar tendencies
of manufacture. Although manufacture creates, as we have already seen,
a simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled, simultaneously
with their hierarchic arrangement in classes, yet the number of the unskilled
labourers, owing to the preponderating influence of the skilled, remains
very limited. Although it adapts the detail operations to the various degrees
of maturity, strength, and development of the living instruments of labour,
thus conducing to exploitation of women and children, yet this tendency
as a whole is wrecked on the habits and the resistance of the male labourers.
Although the splitting up of handicrafts lowers the cost of forming the
workman, and thereby lowers his value, yet for the more difficult detail
work, a longer apprenticeship is necessary, and, even where it would be
superfluous, is jealously insisted upon by the workmen. In England, for
instance, we find the laws of apprenticeship, with their seven years’ probation,
in full force down to the end of the manufacturing period; and they are
not thrown on one side till the advent of Modern Industry. Since handicraft
skill is the foundation of manufacture, and since the mechanism of manufacture
as a whole possesses no framework, apart from the labourers themselves,
capital is constantly compelled to wrestle with the insubordination of
the workmen.
“By the infirmity of human nature,” says friend Ure, “it happens that the more skilful the workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is apt to become, and of course the less fit a component of a mechanical
system in which ... he may do great damage to the whole.”
Hence throughout the whole manufacturing period there runs the complaint of want of discipline among the workmen. And had we not the testimony of contemporary writers, the simple facts, that during the period between the 16th century and the epoch of Modern Industry, capital
failed to become the master of the whole disposable working-time of the
manufacturing labourers, that manufactures are short-lived, and change
their locality from one country to another with the emigrating or immigrating
workmen, these facts would speak volumes. “Order must in one way or another
be established,” exclaims in 1770 the oft-cited author of the “Essay on
Trade and Commerce.” “Order,” re-echoes Dr. Andrew Ure 66 years later,
“Order” was wanting in manufacture based on “the scholastic dogma of division
of labour,” and “Arkwright created order.”
At the same time manufacture was unable, either to seize upon
the production of society to its full extent, or to revolutionise that
production to its very core. It towered up as an economic work of art,
on the broad foundation of the town handicrafts, and of the rural domestic
industries. At a given stage in its development, the narrow technical basis
on which manufacture rested, came into conflict with requirements of production
that were created by manufacture itself.
One of its most finished creations was the workshop for the production
of the instruments of labour themselves, including especially the complicated
mechanical apparatus then already employed.
A machine-factory, says Ure, “displayed the division of labour in manifold gradations – the file, the
drill, the lathe, having each its different workman in the order of skill.”
(P. 21.)
This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufacture,
produced in its turn – machines. It is they that sweep away the handicraftsman’s
work as the regulating principle of social production. Thus, on the one
hand, the technical reason for the life-long annexation of the workman
to a detail function is removed. On the other hand, the fetters that this
same principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall away.
Footnotes
1. To give a more modern instance: The silk spinning and weaving of Lyon and Nîmes “est toute patriarcale; elle
emploie beaucoup de femmes et d’enfants, mais sans les épuiser ni
les corrompre; elle les laisse dans leur belles valises de la Drôme,
du Var, de l’Isère, de Vaucluse, pour y élever des vers et
dévider leurs cocons; jamais elle n’entre dans une véritable
fabrique. Pour être aussi bien observé ... le principe de la division
du travail s’y revêt d’un caractère spécial. Il y a
bien des dévideuses, des moulineurs, des teinturiers, des encolleurs,
puis des tisserands; mais ils ne sont pas réunis dans un même
établissement, ne dépendent pas d’un même maître,
tous ils sont indépendants” [... is entirely patriarchal; it employs a large number of women and children, but without exhausting or ruining them; it allows them to stay in their beautiful valleys of the Drôme, the Var, the Isère, the Vaucluse, cultuvating their silkworms and unwinding their cocoons; it never becomes a true factory industry. However, the principle of the division of labour takes on a special character here. There do indeed exist winders, throwsters. dyers, sizers, and finally weavers; but they are not assembled in the same workshop, nor are they dependent on a single master; they are all independent] (A. Blanqui: “Cours, d’Econ. Industrielle.”
Recueilli par A. Blaise. Paris, 1838-39, p. 79.) Since Blanqui wrote this,
the various independent labourers have, to some extent, been united in
factories. [And since Marx wrote the above, the power-loom has invaded
these factories, and is now 1886 rapidly superseding the hand-loom. (Added
in the 4th German edition. The Krefeld silk industry also has its tale
to tell anent this subject.) F. E.]
2. “The more any manufacture of much variety shall be distributed and assigned to different artists, the same must needs be better done and with greater expedition, with less loss of time and labour.” (“The Advantages of the East India Trade,” Lond., 1720, p. 71.)
3. “Easy labour is transmitted skill.” (Th. Hodgskin,
“Popular Political Economy,” p. 48.)
4. “The arts also have ... in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection. For it is the only country where artificers
may not in any way meddle with the affairs of another class of citizens,
but must follow that calling alone which by law is hereditary in their
clan.... In other countries it is found that tradesmen divide their attention
between too many objects. At one time they try agriculture, at another
they take to commerce, at another they busy themselves with two or three
occupations at once. In free countries, they mostly frequent the assemblies
of the people.... In Egypt, on the contrary, every artificer is severely
punished if he meddles with affairs of State, or carries on several trades
at once. Thus there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling....
Moreover, since, they inherit from their forefathers numerous rules, they
are eager to discover fresh advantages” (Diodorus Siculus: Bibl. Hist.
I. 1. c., 74.)
5. “Historical and descriptive account of Brit. India, &c.,” by Hugh Murray and James Wilson, &c., Edinburgh
1832, v. II., p. 449. The Indian loom is upright, i.e., the warp is stretched
vertically.
6. Darwin in his epoch-making work on the origin of species, remarks, with reference to the natural organs of
plants and animals: “So long as one and the same organ has different kinds
of work to perform, a ground for its changeability may possibly be found
in this, that natural selection preserves or suppresses each small variation
of form less carefully than if that organ were destined for one special
purpose alone. Thus, knives that are adapted to cut all sorts of things,
may, on the whole, be of one shape; but an implement destined to be used
exclusively in one way must have a different shape for every different
use.”
7. In the year 1854 Geneva produced 80,000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the production in the Canton of Neufchâtel. La Chaux-de-Fond alone, which we may look upon as a huge watch manufactory,
produces yearly twice as many as Geneva. From 1850-61 Geneva produced 720,000
watches. See “Report from Geneva on the Watch Trade” in “Reports by H.
M.’s Secretaries of Embassy and Legation on the Manufactures, Commerce,
&c., No. 6, 1863.” The want of connexion alone, between the processes
into which the production of articles that merely consist of parts fitted
together is split up, makes it very difficult to convert such a manufacture
into a branch of modern industry carried on by machinery; but in the case
of a watch there are two other impediments in addition, the minuteness
and delicacy of its parts, and its character as an article of luxury. Hence
their variety, which is such, that in the best London houses scarcely a
dozen watches are made alike in the course of a year. The watch manufactory
of Messrs. Vacheron & Constantin, in which machinery has been employed
with success, produces at the most three or four different varieties of
size and form.
8. In watchmaking, that classical example of heterogeneous manufacture, we may study with great accuracy the above-mentioned differentiation and specialisation of the instruments of labour caused by the sub-division of handicrafts.
9. “In so close a cohabitation of the people, the carriage must needs be less.” (“The Advantages of the East
India Trade,” p. 106.)
10. “The isolation of the different stages of manufacture, consequent upon the employment of manual labour,
adds immensely to the cost of production, the loss mainly arising from
the mere removals from one process to another.” (“The Industry of Nations.”
Lond., 1855, Part II, p. 200.)
11. “It (the division of labour) produces also an economy of time by separating the work into its different branches,
all of which may be carried on into execution at the same moment.... By
carrying on all the different processes at once, which an individual must
have executed separately, it becomes possible to produce a multitude of
pins completely finished in the same time as a single pin might have been
either cut or pointed.” (Dugald Stewart, l.c., p. 319.)
12. “The more variety of artists to every manufacture... the greater the order and regularity of every work,
the same must needs be done in less time, the labour must be less.” (“The
Advantages,” &c., p. 68.)
13. Nevertheless, the manufacturing system, in many branches of industry, attains this result but very imperfectly,
because it knows not how to control with certainty the general chemical
and physical conditions of the process of production.
14. “When (from the peculiar nature of the produce of each manufactory), the number of processes into which
it is most advantageous to divide it is ascertained, as well as the number
of individuals to be employed, then all other manufactories which do not
employ a direct multiple of this number will produce the article at a greater
cost.... Hence arises one of the causes of the great size of manufacturing
establishments.” (C. Babbage. “On the Economy of Machinery,” 1st ed. London.
1832. Ch. xxi, pp. 172-73.)
15. In England, the melting-furnace is distinct from the glass-furnace in which the glass is manipulated. In
Belgium, one and the same furnace serves for both processes.
16. This can be seen from W. Petty, John Bellers, Andrew Yarranton, “The Advantages of the East India Trade,”
and J. Vanderlint, not to mention others.
17. Towards the end of the 16th century, mortars and sieves were still used in France for pounding and washing ores.
18. The whole history of the development of machinery can be traced in the history of the corn mill. The factory
in England is still a “mill.” In German technological works of the first
decade of this century, the term “Mühle” is still found in use, not
only for all machinery driven by the forces of Nature, but also for all
manufactures where apparatus in the nature of machinery is applied.
19. As will be seen more in detail in the fourth book of this work, Adam Smith has not established a single new
proposition relating to division of labour. What, however, characterises
him as the political economist par excellence of the period of Manufacture,
is the stress he lays on division of labour. The subordinate part which
he assigns to machinery gave occasion in the early days of modern mechanical
industry to the polemic of Lauderdale, and, at a later period, to that
of Ure. A. Smith also confounds differentiation of the instruments of labour,
in which the detail labourers themselves took an active part, with the
invention of machinery; in this latter, it is not the workmen in manufactories,
but learned men, handicraftsman, and even peasants (Brindley), who play
a part.
20. “The master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity
of both which is necessary for each process; whereas, if the whole work
were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill
to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most
laborious of the operations into which the article is divided.” (Ch. Babbage,
l.c., ch. xix.)
21. For instance, abnormal development of some muscles, curvature of bones, &c.
22. The question put by one of the Inquiry Commissioners, How the young persons are kept steadily to their work, is
very correctly answered by Mr. Wm. Marshall, the general manager of a glass
manufactory: “They cannot well neglect their work; when they once begin,
they must go on; they are just the same as parts of a machine.” (“Children’s
Empl. Comm.,” 4th Rep., 1865, p. 247.)
23. Dr. Ure, in his apotheosis of Modern Mechanical Industry, brings out the peculiar character of manufacture more
sharply than previous economists, who had not his polemical interest in
the matter, and more sharply even than his contemporaries Babbage, e.g.,
who, though much his superior as a mathematician and mechanician, treated
mechanical industry from the standpoint of manufacture alone. Ure says,
“This appropriation ... to each, a workman of appropriate value and cost
was naturally assigned, forms the very essence of division of labour.”
On the other hand, he describes this division as “adaptation of labour
to the different talents of men,” and lastly, characterises the whole manufacturing
system as “a system for the division or gradation of labour,” as “the division
of labour into degrees of skill,” &c. (Ure, l.c., pp. 19-23 passim.)
24. “Each handicraftsman being ... enabled to perfect himself by practice in one point, became ... a cheaper workman.”
(Ure, l.c., p. 19.)
25. “Division of labour proceeds from the separation of professions the most widely different to that division,
where several labourers divide between them the preparation of one and
the same product, as in manufacture.” (Storch: “Cours d’Econ. Pol.,” Paris
Edn. t. I., p. 173.) “Nous rencontrons chez les peuples parvenus à
un certain degré de civilisation trois genres de divisions d’industrie:
la première, que nous nommerons générale, amène
la distinction des producteurs en agriculteurs, manufacturiers et commerçants,
elle se rapporte aux trois principales branches d’industrie nationale;
la seconde qu’on pourrait appeler spéciale, est la division de
chaque genre d’industrie en espèces ... la troisième division
d’industrie, celle enfin qu’on devrait qualifier de division de la besogne
on de travail proprement dit, est celle qui s’établit dans les arts
et les métiers séparés ... qui s’établit dans
la plupart des manufactures et des ateliers.” [Among peoples which have reached a certain level of civilisation, we meet with three kinds of division of labour: the first, which we shall call general, brings about the division of the producers into agriculturalists, manufacturers, and traders, it corresponds to the three main branches of the nation’s labour; the second, which one could call particular, is the division of labour of each branch into species. ... The third division of labour, which one could designate as a division of tasks, or of labour properly so called, is that which grows up in the individual crafts and trades ...
which is established in the majority of the manufactories and workshops] (Skarbek, l.c., pp. 84,
85.)
26. Note to the third edition. Subsequent very searching study of the primitive condition of man, led
the author to the conclusion, that it was not the family that originally
developed into the tribe, but that, on the contrary, the tribe was the
primitive and spontaneously developed form of human association, on the
basis of blood relationship, and that out of the first incipient loosening
of the tribal bonds, the many and various forms of the family were afterwards
developed. [F. E.]
27. Sir James Steuart is the economist who has handled this subject best. How little his book, which appeared
ten years before the “Wealth of Nations,” is known, even at the present
time, may be judged from the fact that the admirers of Malthus do not even
know that the first edition of the latter’s work on population contains,
except in the purely declamatory part, very little but extracts from Steuart,
and in a less degree, from Wallace and Townsend.
28. “There is a certain density of population which is convenient, both for social intercourse, and for that combination
of powers by which the produce of labour is increased.” (James Mill, l.c., p. 50.) “As the number of labourers increases, the productive power of society augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multiplied by the effects of the division of labour.” (Th. Hodgskin, l.c., pp. 125, 126.)
29. In consequence of the great demand for cotton after 1861, the production of cotton, in some thickly populated
districts of India, was extended at the expense of rice cultivation. In
consequence there arose local famines, the defective means of communication
not permitting the failure of rice in one district to be compensated by
importation from another.
30. Thus the fabrication of shuttles formed as early as the 17th century, a special branch of industry in Holland.
31. Whether the woollen manufacture of England is not divided into several parts or branches appropriated to
particular places, where they are only or principally manufactured; fine
cloths in Somersetshire, coarse in Yorkshire, long ells at Exeter, soies
at Sudbury, crapes at Norwich, linseys at Kendal, blankets at Whitney,
and so forth.” (Berkeley: “The Querist,” 1751, § 520.)
32. A. Ferguson: “History of Civil Society.” Edinburgh, 1767; Part iv, sect. ii., p. 285.
33. In manufacture proper, he says, the division of labour appears to be greater, because “those employed in
every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same
workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those
great manufactures, (!) on the contrary, which are destined to supply the
great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of
the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to
collect them all into the same workhouse ... the division is not near so
obvious.” (A. Smith: “Wealth of Nations,” bk. i, ch. i.) The celebrated
passage in the same chapter that begins with the words, “Observe the accommodation
of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilised and thriving
country,” &c., and then proceeds to depict what an enormous number
and variety of industries contribute to the satisfaction of the wants of
an ordinary labourer, is copied almost word for word from B. de Mandeville’s
Remarks to his “Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits.”
(First ed., without the remarks, 1706; with the remarks, 1714.)
34. “There is no longer anything which we can call the natural reward of individual labour. Each labourer produces
only some part of a whole, and each part, having no value or utility in
itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and say: It is
my product, this I will keep to myself.” (“Labour Defended against the
Claims of Capital.” Lond., 1825, p. 25.) The author of this admirable work
is the Th. Hodgskin I have already cited.
35. This distinction between division of labour in society and in manufacture, was practically illustrated to
the Yankees. One of the new taxes devised at Washington during the civil
war, was the duty of 6% “on all industrial products.” Question: What is
an industrial product? Answer of the legislature: A thing is produced “when
it is made,” and it is made when it is ready for sale. Now, for one example
out of many. The New York and Philadelphia manufacturers had previously
been in the habit of “making” umbrellas with all their belongings. But
since an umbrella is a mixtum compositum of very heterogeneous parts,
by degrees these parts became the products of various separate industries,
carried on independently in different places. They entered as separate
commodities into the umbrella manufactory, where they were fitted together.
The Yankees have given to articles thus fitted together, the name of “assembled
articles,” a name they deserve, for being an assemblage of taxes. Thus
the umbrella “assembles,” first, 6% on the price of each of its elements,
and a further 6% on its own total price.
36. “On peut... établir en règle générale, que moins l’autorité préside à la division du travail dans l’intérieur de la société, plus la division du travail se développe dans l’intérieur
de l’atelier, et plus elle y est soumise à l’autorité d’un seul. Ainsi l’autorité dans l’atelier et celle dans la société, par rapport à la division du travail, sont en raison inverse l’une de l’autre.” [It can ... be laid down as a general rule that the less authority presides over the division of labour inside society, the more the division of labour develops inside the workshop, and the more it is subjected there to the authority of a single person. Thus authority in the workshop and authority in society in relation to the division of labour, are in inverse ratio to each other] (Karl Marx, “Misère,” &c., pp. 130-131.)
37. Lieut.-Col. Mark Wilks: “Historical Sketches of the South of India.” Lond., 1810-17, v. I., pp. 118-20. A good
description of the various forms of the Indian communities is to be found
in George Campbell’s “Modern India.” Lond., 1852.
38. “Under this simple form ... the inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries
of the villages have been but seldom altered; and though the villages themselves
have been sometimes injured, and even desolated by war, famine, and disease,
the same name, the same limits, the same interests, and even the same families,
have continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about
the breaking up and division of kingdoms; while the village remains entire,
they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it
devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged.” (Th. Stamford Raffles,
late Lieut. Gov. of Java: “The History of Java.” Lond., 1817, Vol. I.,
p. 285.)
39. “It is not sufficient that the capital” (the writer should have said the necessary means of subsistence and of
production) “required for the subdivision of handicrafts should be in readiness
in the society: it must also be accumulated in the hands of the employers
in sufficiently large quantities to enable them to conduct their operations
on a large scale.... The more the division increases, the more does the
constant employment of a given number of labourers require a greater outlay
of capital in tools, raw material, &c.” (Storch: “Cours d’Econ. Polit.”
Paris Ed., t. I., pp. 250, 251.) “La concentration des instruments de production
et la division du travail sont aussi inséparables l’une de l’autre
que le sont, dans le régime politique, la concentration des pouvoirs
publics et la division des intérêts privés.” [The concentration of the instruments of production and the division of labour are as inseparable one from the other, as are, in the political sphere, the concentration of public powers and the division of private interests.] (Karl Marx, l.c., p. 134.)
40. Dugald Stewart calls manufacturing labourers “living automatons ... employed in the details of the work.” (I. c., p. 318.)
41. In corals, each individual is, in fact, the stomach of the whole group; but it supplies the group with nourishment, instead of, like the Roman patrician, withdrawing it.
42. “L’ouvrier qui porte dans ses bras tout un métier, peut aller partout exercer son industrie et trouver des moyens de subsister: l’autre (the manufacturing labourer) n’est qu’un accessoire qui, séparé de ses confrères, n’a plus ni capacité, ni indépendance, et qui se trouve force d’accepter la loi qu’on juge à propos de lui imposer.” [The worker who is the master of a whole craft can work and find the means of subsistence anywhere; the other (the manufacturing labourer) is only an appendage who, when he is separated from his fellows, possesses neither capability nor independence, and finds himself forced to accept any law it is thought fit to impose] (Storch, l.c., Petersb. edit., 1815, t. I., p. 204.)
43. A. Ferguson, l.c., p. 281: “The former may have gained what the other has lost.”
44. “The man of knowledge and the productive labourer come to be widely divided from each other, and knowledge, instead
of remaining the handmaid of labour in the hand of the labourer to increase
his productive powers ... has almost everywhere arrayed itself against
labour ... systematically deluding and leading them (the labourers) astray
in order to render their muscular powers entirely mechanical and obedient.”
(W. Thompson: “An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth.”
London, 1824, p. 274.)
45. A. Ferguson, l.c., p. 280.
46. J. D. Tuckett: “A History of the Past and Present State of the Labouring Population.” Lond., 1846.
47. A. Smith: “Wealth of Nations,” Bk. v., ch. i, art. ii. Being a pupil of A. Ferguson who showed the disadvantageous
effects of division of labour, Adam Smith was perfectly clear on this point.
In the introduction to his work, where he ex professo praises division
of labour, he indicates only in a cursory manner that it is the source
of social inequalities. It is not till the 5th Book, on the Revenue of
the State, that he reproduces Ferguson. In my “Misère de la Philosophie,”
I have sufficiently explained the historical connexion between Ferguson,
A. Smith, Lemontey, and Say, as regards their criticisms of Division of
Labour, and have shown, for the first time, that Division of Labour as
practised in manufactures, is a specific form of the capitalist mode of
production.
48. Ferguson had already said, l.c., p. 281: “And thinking itself, in this age of separations, may become a
peculiar craft.”
49. G. Garnier, vol. V. of his translation of A. Smith, pp. 4-5.
50. Ramazzini, professor of practical medicine at Padua, published in 1713 his work “De morbis artificum,” which
was translated into French 1781, reprinted 1841 in the “Encyclopédie
des Sciences Médicales. 7me Dis. Auteurs Classiques.” The period
of Modern Mechanical Industry has, of course, very much enlarged his catalogue
of labour’s diseases. See “Hygiène physique et morale de l’ouvrier
dans les grandes villes en général et dans la ville de Lyon
en particulier. Par le Dr. A. L. Fonteret, Paris, 1858,” and “Die Krankheiten,
welche verschiednen Ständen, Altern und Geschlechtern eigenthümlich
sind. 6 Vols. Ulm, 1860,” and others. In 1854 the Society of Arts appointed
a Commission of Inquiry into industrial pathology. The list of documents
collected by this commission is to be seen in the catalogue of the “Twickenham
Economic Museum.” Very important are the official “Reports on Public Health.”
See also Eduard Reich, M. D. “Ueber die Entartung des Menschen,” Erlangen,
1868.
51. (D. Urquhart: “Familiar Words.” Lond., 1855, p. 119.) Hegel held very heretical views on division of labour.
In his “Rechtsphilosophie” he says: “By well educated men we understand
in the first instance, those who can do everything that others do.”
52. The simple belief in the inventive genius exercised a priori by the individual capitalist in division of labour, exists now-a-days only among German professors, of the stamp of Herr Roscher, who, to recompense the capitalist from whose Jovian head division of labour sprang ready formed, dedicates to him “various wages” (diverse Arbeitslöhne). The more or less extensive application of division of labour depends on length of purse, not on greatness of genius.
53. The older writers, like Petty and the anonymous author of “Advantages of the East India Trade,” bring out the capitalist character of division of labour as applied in manufacture more than A. Smith does.
54. Amongst the moderns may be excepted a few writers of the 18th century, like Beccaria and James Harris, who
with regard to division of labour almost entirely follow the ancients.
Thus, Beccaria: “Ciascuno prova coll’esperienza, che applicando la mano
e l’ingegno sempre allo stesso genere di opere e di produtte, egli più
facili, più abbondanti e migliori ne traca risultati, di quello
che se ciascuno isolatamente le cose tutte a se necessarie soltanto facesse....
Dividendosi in tal maniera per la comune e privata utilità gli uomini
in varie classi e condizioni.” [Everyone knows from experience that if the hands and the intelligence are always applied to the same kind of work and the same products, these will be produced more easily, in greater abundance, and in higher quality, than if each individual makes for himself all the things he needs ... In this way, men are divided up into various classes and conditions, to their own advantage and to that of the commodity.](Cesare Beccaria: “Elementi di Econ: Pubblica,” ed. Custodi, Parte Moderna, t. xi, p. 29.) James Harris, afterwards Earl
of Malmesbury, celebrated for the “Diaries” of his embassy at St. Petersburg,
says in a note to his “Dialogue Concerning Happiness,” Lond., 1741, reprinted
afterwards in “Three Treatises, 3 Ed., Lond., 1772: “The whole argument
to prove society natural (i.e., by division of employments) ... is taken
from the second book of Plato’s Republic.”
55. Thus, in the Odyssey xiv., 228, [“Alloς gar talloisin aner epiterpetai ergoiς” For different men take joy in different works] and Archilochus in Sextus Empiricus, [“alloς allw ep ergo kardihn iainetai.” men differ as to things cheer their hearts]
56. [“Poll hpistaio erga, cacwς d hpistano panta.” He could do many works, but all of them badly – Homer] Every Athenian considered himself superior as a producer
of commodities to a Spartan; for the latter in time of war had men enough
at his disposal but could not command money, as Thucydides makes Pericles
say in the speech inciting the Athenians to the Peloponnesian war:
[“swmasi te etoimoteroi oi autonrgoi twn anthrwpwn h crhmasi polemein” people producing for their own consumption will rather let war have their bodies than their money] (Thuc.:
1, I. c. 41.) Nevertheless, even with regard to material production,
[autarceia self-sufficiency],
as opposed to division of labour remained their ideal,
[“parwn gar to, eu, para toutwn cai to autaresς.” For with the latter there is well-being, but with the former there is independence.] It should be mentioned
here that at the date of the fall of the 30 Tyrants there were still not
5,000 Athenians without landed property.
57. With Plato, division of labour within the community is a development from the multifarious requirements, and the limited capacities of individuals. The main point with him is, that the labourer must adapt himself to the work, not the work to the labourer; which latter is unavoidable, if he carries on several trades at once, thus making one or the other of them subordinate. [“Ou gar ethelei to
prattomenon ten tou prattonios scholen perimenein, all anagke ton prattonta
to prattomeno epakoloothein me en parergou merei. Anagke. Ek de touton
pleio te ekasta gignetai kai kallion kai raon, otan eis en kaia physin
kai en kairo scholen ton allon agon, pratte.”] [For the workman must wait upon the work; it will not wait upon his leisure and allow itself to be done in a spare moment. — Yes, he must,— So the conclusion is that more will be produced of every thing and the work will be more easily and better done, when every man is set free from all other occupations to do, at the right time, the one thing for which he is naturally fitted.] (Rep. 1. 2. Ed. Baiter,
Orelli, &c.) So in Thucydides, l.c., c. 142: “Seafaring is an art
like any other, and cannot, as circumstances require, be carried on as
a subsidiary occupation; nay, other subsidiary occupations cannot be carried
on alongside of this one.” If the work, says Plato, has to wait for the
labourer, the critical point in the process is missed and the article spoiled,
“ergou cairon diollutai.” [If someone lets slip ...] The same Platonic idea is found recurring in the protest of the English bleachers against the clause in the Factory
Act that provides fixed mealtimes for all operatives. Their business cannot
wait the convenience of the workmen, for “in the various operations of
singeing, washing, bleaching, mangling, calendering, and dyeing, none of
them can be stopped at a given moment without risk of damage ... to enforce
the same dinner hour for all the workpeople might occasionally subject
valuable goods to the risk of danger by incomplete operations.” Le platonisme
où va-t-il se nicher! [Where will Platonism be found next!]
58. Xenophon says, it is not only an honour to receive food from the table of the King of Persia, but such food
is much more tasty than other food. “And there is nothing wonderful in
this, for as the other arts are brought to special perfection in the great
towns, so the royal food is prepared in a special way. For in the small
towns the same man makes bedsteads, doors, ploughs, and tables: often,
too, he builds houses into the bargain, and is quite content if he finds
custom sufficient for his sustenance. It is altogether impossible for a
man who does so many things to do them all well. But in the great towns,
where each can find many buyers, one trade is sufficient to maintain the
man who carries it on. Nay, there is often not even need of one complete
trade, but one man makes shoes for men, another for women. Here and there
one man gets a living by sewing, another by cutting out shoes; one does
nothing but cut out clothes, another nothing but sew the pieces together.
It follows necessarily then, that he who does the simplest kind of work,
undoubtedly does it better than anyone else. So it is with the art of cooking.”
(Xen. Cyrop. I. viii., c. 2.) Xenophon here lays stress exclusively upon
the excellence to be attained in use-value, although he well knows that
the gradations of the division of labour depend on the extent of the market.
59. He (Busiris) divided them all into special castes ... commanded that the same individuals should always carry
on the same trade, for he knew that they who change their occupations become
skilled in none; but that those who constantly stick to one occupation
bring it to the highest perfection. In truth, we shall also find that in
relation to the arts and handicrafts, they have outstripped their rivals
more than a master does a bungler; and the contrivances for maintaining
the monarchy and the other institutions of their State are so admirable
that the most celebrated philosophers who treat of this subject praise
the constitution of the Egyptian State above all others. (Isocrates, Busiris,
c. 8.)
60. Cf. Diodorus Siculus.
61. Ure, l.c., p. 20.
62. This is more the case in England than in France, and more in France than in Holland.
* MECW and Progress Publishers’ editions have “disadvantages,” but the Ben Fowkes translation in the Penguin edition has “advantages.” The original German is “Endlich ist diese Teilung der Arbeit eine besondre Art der Kooperation, und manche ihrer Vorteile entspringen aus dem allgemeinen Wesen, nicht aus dieser besondren Form der Kooperation.” — M.I.A.
Transcribed by Hinrich Kuhls
Html Markup by Stephen Baird (1999)
Next: Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry
Capital Volume One- Index