Fullerton College Marxist Economics Discussion

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short response.1. What distinct and special role does the division of labor play in a capitalist system? Respond briefly on basis of the Braverman Reading2. On the basis of the Moody reading briefly discuss the possible source of vulnerability and limits to lean production systems

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The Division
Chapter 3
The Division of Labor
The earliest innovative principle of the capitalist mode of
production was the manufacturing division of labor, and in
one form or another the division of labor has remained the
fundamental principle of industrial organization. The division
of labor in capitalist industry is not at all identical with the
phenomenon of the distribution of tasks, crafts, or specialties of
production throughout society, for while all known societies
have divided their work into productive specialties, no society
before capitalism systematically subdivided the work of each
productive specialty into limited operations. This form of the
division of labor becomes generalized only with capitalism.
This distinction is made clear, for instance, in Herskovits’
description of the division of labor in primitive societies:
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Only rarely is any division of labor within an industry–or, as
it might be termed, subdivision of labor-encountered among
nonliterate folk. Such intra-industrial specialization would be
encountered only in the production of such larger capital goods
as houses, canoes, or fish-weirs. * Even here, it is the rule in such
* Herskovits here performs the customary economic miracle of transforming “houses, canoes, or fish-weirs” into “capital goods,” in accordance with
the bourgeois-centric view which unself-consciously projects backward and
forward throughout history the categories specific to capitalist production,
70
if Labor
71
cultures that an arrangement of this sort is temporary; moreover, each worker devoting himself to a part of a specific task is
most often competent to perform other phases of the work
besides that on which he may at the moment be engaged . . . .
Thus in groups where the primary division of labor is along sex
lines, every man or woman not only will know how to do all
those things that men or women habitually do among them, but
must be able to do them efficiently. As we move to societies of
somewhat greater economic complexity, we find that certain
men may spend a larger proportion of their time than others
doing wood-carving or iron-working, or certain women making
pots or weaving cloth; but all the members of the groups will
have some competence in the techniques controlled by those of
a given sex. In still other non literate societies, certain men and
women specialize not only in one technique, but in a certain
type of product, as, for instance, where one woman will devote
her time to the production of pots for everyday use and another
make pottery exclusively for religious rites. It must again be
stressed that, except under the most unusual circumstances, we
do not find the kind of organization where one woman
characteristically specializes in gathering the clay, another in
fashioning it, and a third in firing the pots; or, where one man
devotes himself to getting wood, a second to roughly blocking
out the proportions of a stool or figure, and a third to finishing
it l
Herskovits gives us here a picture of a division of labor into
crafts, a differentiation which in the beginning owes much to
sex roles. By and large, however, there is no division of tasks
within the crafts. While men or women may habitually be
connected with the making of certain products, they do not as
a rule divide up the separate operations involved in the
making of each product.
This form of division of labor, characteristic of all societies,
and according to which houses become “capital” even when they were only
structures people built as dwellings.
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Labor and Monopoly Capital
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is, if we follow Marx’s terminology, called the social dlvzslon if
labor. It is a derivative of the specific character of human work:
“An animal forms things in accordance with the standard and
the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows
how to produce in accordance with the standard of every
species.” 2 The spider weaves, the bear fishes, the beaver builds
dams and houses, but the human is simultaneously weaver,
fisherman, builder, and a thousand other things combined in a
manner which, because this takes place in, and is possible only
through, society, soon compels a social division according to
craft. Each individual of the human species cannot alone
“produce in accordance with the standard of every species”
and invent standards unknown to any animal, but the species
as a whole finds it possible to do this, in part through the social
division of labor. Thus the social division of labor is apparently
inherent in the species character of human labor as soon as it
becomes social labor, that is, labor carried on in and through
society.
As against this general or social division of labor, there
stands the division of labor in detail, the manufacturing
division of labor. This is the breakdown of the processes
involved in the making of the product into manifold operations performed by different workers.
The practice of regarding the social and the detailed
divisions of labor as a single continuum, a single abstract
technical principle, is by far the greatest source of confusion in
discussions of this subject. * The division of labor in society is
characteristic of all known societies; the division of labor in the
workshop is the special product of capitalist society. The social
division of labor divides society among occupations, each
adequate to a branch of production; the detailed division of
* “But, in spite of the numerous analogies and links connecting them,”
Marx warned, “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.” 3
The Division oj Labor
73
labor destroys occupations considered in this sense, and
renders the worker inadequate to carry through any complete
production process. In capitalism, the social division of labor is
enforced chaotically and anarchically by the market, while
the workshop division of labor is imposed by planning and
control. Again in capitalism, the products of the social division
of labor are exchanged as commodities, while the results of the
operation of the detail worker are not exchanged within the
factory as within a marketplace, but are all owned by the same
capital. While the social division of labor subdivides society,
the detailed division of labor subdivides humans, and while the
subdivision of society may enhance the individual and the
species, the subdivision of the individual, when carried on
without regard to human capabilities and needs, is a crime
against the person and against humanity.
The view which ignores the distinction between the social
and detailed divisions of labor is given typical expression in
the following comments: “Social differentiation and division of
labor are universal attributes of human society. Contrary to
the view persisting into the recent past that primitive man
lives in completely homogeneous and amorphous groups,
modern knowledge of primitive and peasant communities
reveals much complexity and specialization. . . . Modern
specialization cannot therefore be contrasted with an assumed
society or period having no division of labor. The difference is
one of degree and not of kind.” 4 Wilbert Moore here forces us
to assume that the division of society among trades, crafts,
professions “cannot be contrasted” with the breakup of those
occupations, that there is no difference “in kind” between the
practice of farming, cabinetmaking, or blacksmithing, and the
repeated tightening of a single set of bolts hundreds of times
each day or the key punching of thousands of cards each week
throughout a lifetime of labor, because all are expressions of
the “division of labor.” On this level of abstraction, obviously,
nothing can be learned about the division of labor, except the
74
The Division of Labor
Labor and Monopoly Capital
banal and apologetic conclusion that being “universal,” each
of its manifestations is probably inevitable. Needless to say,
this is precisely the conclusion that bourgeois society prefers.
It is for this reason that the popularity of Emile Durkheim’s
work, The Division of Labor in Society, has grown as its
applicability to the modern world has dwindled. Durkheim
adopts just such a level of abstraction in his approach: “The
only way to succeed in objectively appreciating the division of
labor is to study it first in itself, entirely speculatively, to look
for its use, and upon what it depends, and finally, to form as
adequate a notion as possible of it.” 5 He proceeds in this
fashion, determinedly avoiding the specific social conditions
under which the division of labor develops in our epoch,
celebrating throughout his proposition that “the ideal of
human fraternity can be realized only in proportion to the
progress of the division of labor,” 6 until in the last tenth of his
work he discovers the division of labor in the factories and
offices of modern capitalism, and dubs them “abnormal
forms.” But, as has been noted by a recent critic, M. C.
Kennedy, “when we inspect these abnormal forms throughout
the world, it becomes difficult to find one clear-cut case of the
normal division of labor.” Kennedy is absolutely right when
he calls Durkheim’s “normal” form of the division of labor
“the ideal of a moralistic sociologist and not a sociologist of
morals.” 7 *
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* Georges Friedmann says that had Durkheim lived to see the further
development of the division of labor, “he would have been obliged to
consider ‘abnormal’ most of the forms taken by labour in modern society,
both in industry and in administration, and even more recently in commerce
(I am thinking of the American supermarkets).” 8 The idea that anyone
writing several generations after the Industrial Revolution, and after Adam
Smith, Babbage, Ure, Marx, and countless others, needed to wait for the
“American supermarkets” to learn about the division of labor in capitalism
is not convincing. But in general, Friedmann’s gingerly handling of
Durkheim, whom–despite the fact that in his succeeding pages he finds
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Our concern at this point, therefore, is not with the division
of labor in society at large, but within the enterprise; not with
the distribution of labor among various industries and occupations, but with the breakdown of occupations and industrial
processes; not with the division of labor in “production in
general,” but within the capitalist mode of production in
particular. It is not “pure technique” that concerns us, but
rather the marriage of technique with the special needs of
capital.
The division of labor in production begins with the analysis
is to say, the separation of the work of
production into its constituent elements. But this, in itself, is
not what brings into being the detail worker. Such an analysis
or separation, in fact, is characteristic in every labor process
organized by workers to suit their own needs.
For example, a tinsmith makes a funnel: he draws the
elevation view on sheetmetal, and from this develops the
outline of an unrolled funnel and its bottom spout. He then
cuts out each piece with snips and shears, rolls it to its proper
shape, and crimps or rivets the seams. He then rolls the top
edge, solders the seams, solders on a hanging ring, washes
away the acid used in soldering, and rounds the funnel to its
final shape. But when he applies the same process to a
quantity of identical funnels, his mode of operation changes.
Instead of laying out the work directly on the material, he
makes a pattern and uses it to mark off the total quantity of
funnels needed; then he cuts them all out, one after the other,
rolls them, etc. In this case, instead of making a single funnel
in the course of an hour or two, he spends hours or even days
on each step of the process, creating in each case fixtures,
if the labor process-that
little of value in the book-he calls “the most vigorous mind that has ever
worked on this great problem,” testifies to the inflated reputation of
Durkheim’s contribution.
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Labor and Monopoly Capital
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clamps, devices, etc. which would not be worth making for a
single funnel but which, where a sufficiently large quantity of
funnels is to be made, speed each step sufficiently so that the
saving justifies the extra outlay of time. Quantities, he has
discovered, will be produced with less trouble and greater
economy of time in this way than by finishing each funnel
individually before starting the next.
In the same way a bookkeeper whose job it is to make out
bills and maintain office records against their future collection
will, if he or she works for a lawyer who has only a few clients
at a time, prepare a bill and post it at once to the proper
accounts and the customer statement. But if there are
hundreds of bills each month, the bookkeeper will accumulate
them and spend a full day or two, from time to time, posting
them to the proper accounts. Some of these postings will now
be made by daily, weekly, or monthly totals instead of bill by
bill, a practice which saves a great deal of labor when large
quantities are involved; at the same time, the bookkeeper will
now make use of other shortcuts or aids, which become
practicable when ‘Jperations are analyzed or broken up in this
way, such as specially prepared ledger cards, or carbon forms
which combine into a single operation the posting to the
customer’s account and the preparation of a monthly statement.
Such methods of analysis of the labor process and its
division into constituent elements have always been and are to
this day common in all trades and crafts, and represent the
first form of the subdivision of labor in detail. It is clear that
they satisfy, essentially if not fully, the three advantages of the
division of labor given by Adam Smith in his famous
discussion in the first chapter of The Wealth oj Nations:
This great increase in the quantity of work, which, III
consequence of the division of labour, the same number of
people are capable of performing, is owing to three different
circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every
The Division of Labor
77
particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is
commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another;
and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines
which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do
the work of many.9
The example which Smith gives is the making of pins, and
his description is as follows:
One man draws out the wire, another straightens it, a third
cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving
the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct
operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins
is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper;
and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner,
divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some
manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in
others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of
them.!O
In this example, the division of labor is carried one step
further than in the examples of the tinsmith and the bookkeeper. Not only are the operations separated from each other,
but they are assigned to different workers. Here we have not just the
analysis of the labor process but the creation of the detail
worker. Both steps depend upon the scale of production:
without sufficient quantities they are impracticable. Each step
represents a saving in labor time. The greatest saving is
embodied in the analysis of the process, and a further saving,
the extent varying with the nature of the process, is to be found
in the separation of operations among different workers. *
* The distinction between the analysis of the labor process and the
creation of the detail worker may be seen in these lines from a special report
presented by George Wallis to the House of Commons about the American
worker of the nineteenth century: ” … the American working boy develops
rapidly into the skilled artizan, and having once mastered one part of his
business, he is never content until he has mastered all. Doing one mechanical
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Labor and Monopoly Capital
The worker may break the process down, but he never
voluntarily converts himself into a lifelong detail worker. This
is the contribution of the capitalist, who sees no reason why, if
so much is to be gained from the first step-analysis-and
something more gained from the second-breakdown among
workers-he should not take the second step as well as the
first. That the first step breaks up only the process, while the
second dismembers the worker as well, means nothing to the
capitalist, and all the less since, in destroying the craft as a
process under the control of the worker, he reconstitutes it as
a process under his own control. He can now count his gains in
a double sense, not only in productivity but in management
control, since that which mortally injures the worker is in this
case advantageous to him. *
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operation well, and only that one, does not satisfy him or his employer. He is
ambitious to do something more than a set task, and, therefore, he must
learn all. The second part of his trade he is allowed to learn as a reward for
becoming master of the first, and so on to the end, if he may be said ever to
arrive at that. The restless activity of mind and body-the anxiety to improve
his own department of industry-the facts constantly before him of
ingenious men who have solved economic and mechanical problems to their
own profit and elevation, are all stimulative and encouraging; and it may be
said that there is not a working boy of average ability in the New England
States, at least, who has not an idea of some mechanical invention or
improvement in manufactures . . . .
” . . . Nor does this knowledge of the two or three departments of one
trade, or even the pursuit of several trades by one individual, interfere so
much with the systematic division of labour as may be supposed. In most
instances the change of employment is only made at convenient periods, or
as a relief to the workman from the monotony of always doing one thing,
. . . There is, however, one drawback to this otherwise successful violation of
the economic law of sub-division. It is unfavourable to that perfect skill of
hand, and marvellous accuracy, which is always to be found associated with
the constant direction of attention and practice of the workman to one
thing; and this is often very apparent in most of the manufactured articles of
America.” II
* “We have much studied and perfected, of late, the great civilised
invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not,
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79
The effect of these advantages is heightened by still another
which, while it is given surprisingly little mention in economic
literature, is certainly the most compelling reason of all for the
immense popularity of the division of tasks among workers in
the capitalist mode of production, and for its rapid spread. It
was not formulated clearly nor emphasized strongly until a
half-century after Smith, by Charles Babbage.
In “On the Division of Labour,” Chapter XIX of his On the
Economy of
and Manufactures, the first edition of which
was published in 1832, Babbage noted that “the most
important and influential cause [of savings from the division of
labor] has been altogether unnoticed.” He recapitulates the
classic arguments of William Petty, Adam Smith, and the
other political economists, quotes from Smith the passage
reproduced above about the “three different circumstances” of
the division of labor which add to the productivity of labor,
and continues:
Now, although all these are important causes, and each has
its influence on the result; yet it appears to me, that any
explanation of the cheapness of manufactured articles, as
consequent upon the division of labour, would be incomplete if
the following principle were omitted to be stated.
That the master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into
different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or afforce, can
truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: divided into mere
segments of men-broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all
the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a
pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of
a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a
day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were
polished-sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be
discerned for what it is-we should think there might be some loss in it also.
And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than
the furnace blast, is all in very deed for this-that we manufacture
everything there except men . . . ” Thus Ruskin,12
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The Division of !Jlbor
Labor and Monopoly Capital
81
purchase exactly that precise quantity qf both which Is necessary jor each
process; whereas, if the whole work were executed by one workman, that
person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and
sufficlent strength to execute the most laborious, qf the operations into which
the art is divided. 13
Let us add another and later example, taken from the first
assembly line in American industry, the meatpacking conveyor (actually a disassembly line). J. R. Commons has
realistically included in this description, along with the usual
details, the rates of pay of the workers:
To put this aU-important principle another way, in a society
based upon the purchase and sale of labor power, dividing the
craft cheapens its individual parts. To clarify this point,
Babbage gives us an example drawn, like Smith’s, from pin
manufacture. He presents a table for the labor employed, by
type (that is, by age and sex) and by pay, in the English
manufacture of those pins known in his day as “Elevens.” 14
It would be difficult to find another industry where division of
labor has been so ingeniously and microscopically worked out.
The animal has been surveyed and laid off like a map; and the
men have been classified in over thirty specialties and twenty
rates of pay, from 16 cents to 50 cents an hour. The 50-cent man
is restricted to using the knife on the most delicate parts of the
hide (floorman) or to using the ax in splitting the backbone
(splitter); and wherever a less-skilled man can be slipped in at
18 cents, 181, cents, 20 cents, 21 cents, 221, cents, 24 cents, 25
cents, and so on, a place is made for him, and an occupation
mapped out. In working on the hide alone there are nine
positions, at eight different rates of pay. A 20-cent man pulls off
the tail, a 221,-cent man pounds off another part where good
leather is not found, and the knife of the 40-cent man cuts a
different texture and has a different “feel” from that of the
50-cent man. 16
Drawing wire
Man
3s. 3d. per day
Straightening wire
Woman
Girl
Is.0d.
Os.6d.
Pointing
Man
5s.3d.
Twisting and cutting
heads
Boy
Man
Os. 41zd.
5s.41zd.
Heading
Woman
Is. 3d.
Tinning or whitening
Man
Woman
6s.0d.
3s.0d.
Papering
Woman
Is.6d.
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It is clear from this tabulation, as Babbage points out, that if
the minimum pay for a craftsman capable of performing all
operations is no more than the highest pay in the above listing,
and if such craftsmen are employed exclusively, then the labor
costs of manufacture would be more than doubled, even if the
very same division oj labor were emplf!Yed and even if the craflsmen
produced pins at the very same speed as the detail workers. *
* Not all economists have missed this point. Alfred Marshall called it
“Babbage’s great principle of economical production.” 15 But Marshall, after
Babbage’s principle is fundamental to the evolution of the
division of labor in capitalist society. It gives expression not to
a technical aspect of the division of labor, but to its social
aspect. Insofar as the labor process may be dissociated, it may
be separated into clements some of which are simpler than
others and each of which is simpler than the whole. Translated
into market terms, this means that the labor power capable of
performing the process may be purchased more cheaply as
dissociated elements than as a capacity integrated in a single
worker. Applied first to the handicrafts and then to the
mechanical crafts, Babbage’s principle eventually becomes the
all, wrote at a time when economists were still interested in the way things
worked in the real world.
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underlying force governing all forms of work in capitalist
society, no matter in what setting or at what hierarchical level.
In the mythology of capitalism, the Babbage principle is
presented as an effort to “preserve scarce skills” by putting
qualified workers to tasks which “only they can perform,” and
not wasting “social resources.” It is presented as a response to
“shortages” of skilled workers or technically trained people,
whose time is best used “efficiently” for the advantage of
“society.” But however much this principle may manifest itself
at times in the form of a response to the scarcity of skilled
labor-for example, during wars or other periods of rapid
expansion of production-this apology is on the whole false.
The capitalist mode of production systematically destroys
all-around skills where they exist, and brings into being skills
and occupations that correspond to its needs. Technical
capacities are henceforth distributed on a strict “need to
know” basis. The generalized distribution of knowledge of the
productive process among all its participants becomes, from
this point on, not merely “unnecessary,” but a positive barrier
to the functioning of the capitalist mode of production.
Labor power has become a commodity. Its uses are no
longer organized according to the needs and desires of those
who sell it, but rather according to the needs of its purchasers,
who are, primarily, employers seeking to expand the value of
their capital. And it is the special and permanent interest of
these purchasers to cheapen this commodity. The most
common mode of cheapening labor power is exemplified by
the Babbage principle: break it up into its simplest elements.
And, as the capitalist mode of production creates a working
population suitable to its needs, the Babbage principle is, by
the very shape of this “labor market,” enforced upon the
capitalists themselves.
Every step in the labor process is divorced, so far as possible,
from special knowledge and training and reduced to simple
labor. Meanwhile, the relatively few persons for whom special
The Division
if Labor
83
knowledge and trammg are reserved are freed so far as
possible from the obligations of simple labor. In this way, a
structure is given to all labor processes that at its extremes
polarizes those whose time is infinitely valuable and those
whose time is worth almost nothing. This might even be called
the general law of the capitalist division of labor. It is not the
sole force acting upon the organization of work, but it is
certainly the most powerful and general. Its results, more or
less advanced in every industry and occupation, give massive
testimony to its validity. It shapes not only work, but
populations as well, because over the long run it creates that
mass of simple labor which is the primary feature of populations in developed capitalist countries.
Notes
1. Melville J. Herskovits, Economic Anthropology: A Study in Comparative Economics (2nd ed.; New York, 1960), p. 126.
2. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts oj 1844, edited
and with an introduction by Dick J. Struik (New York, 1964),
p. 113.
3. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I (Moscow, n.d.), p. 334.
4. Wilbert E. Moore, “The Attributes of an Industrial Order,” in
S. Nosow and W. H. Form, eds., Man, Work, and Society (New
York, 1962), pp. 92-93.
5. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Soclety (Glencoe, Ill.,
1947), p. 45.
6. Ibid., p. 406.
7. M. C. Kennedy, “The Division of Labor and the Culture of
Capitalism: A Critique” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New
York at Buffalo, 1968, pp. 185-86; available from University
Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich.).
8. Georges Friedmann, The Anatomy oj Work (London, 1961, and
Glencoe, Ill., 1964), p. 75.
9. Adam Smith, The Wealth oj Nations (New York, 1937), p. 7.
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Labor and Monopoly Cap/tal
10. Ibid., pp. 4-5.
II. New York Industrial Exhibition, Special Report of Mr. George
Wallis, in Nathan Rosenberg, ed., The American System of
Manufactures (Edinburgh, 1969), pp. 203-204.
12. John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, section II, chapter VI; quoted
in Ken Coates, Essays on Industrial Democracy (London, 1971), pp.
44-45.
13. Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
(London, 1832; reprint cd., New York, 1963), pp. 175-76.
14. Ibid., p. 184.
15. Alfred Marshall, Industry and Trade (1919; reprint ed., London,
1932), p. 149.
16. J. R. Commons, Qyarterly journal of Economics, vol. XIX, p. 3;
quoted in F. W. Taussig, Pnnciples of Economics (New York, 1921),
p.42.
Chapter 4
Scientific Management
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The classical economists were the first to approach the
problems of the organization of labor within capitalist relations of production from a theoretical point of view. They may
thus be called the first management experts, and their work
was continued in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution
by such men as Andrew Ure and Charles Babbage. Between
these men and the next step, the comprehensive formulation of
management theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, there lies a gap of more than half a century during
which there was an enormous growth in the size of enterprises,
the beginnings of the monopolistic organization of industry,
and the purposive and systematic application of science to
production. The scientific management movement initiated by
Frederick Winslow Taylor in the last decades of the nineteenth century was brought into being by these forces.
Logically, Taylorism belongs to the chain of development of
management methods and the organization of labor, and not
to the development of technology, in which its role was
minor. *
* It is important to grasp this point, because from it flows the universal
application of Taylorism to work in its various forms and stages of
development, regardless of the nature of the technology employed. Scientific
85

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