Smith and Marx on the Division of Labour

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Smith and Marx on the Division of Labour"

Elfrieda Malone
6 years ago
Views:

1 Smith and Marx on the Division of Labour Luke Scicluna Adam Smith and Karl Marx, as two of history's most important economists, have both dealt with the subject ofthe division oflabour in their writings. The first chapter of Smith's The Wealth of Nations (Cahn, 2012, pp ) consists of an exposition of this phenomenon, and the role that Smith attributes to it is, according to Schumpeter, that of being no less than "the only factor in economic progress," (Rosenberg, 1965, p. 128). It is precisely this utilitarian attitude towards the division of labour that Smith takes. Marx demonstrates a similar appreciation for the effects on production that the division of labour brought about, and accusations of romanticism for the previous era of artisan work are rendered hollow by his view that the division of labour represents a step forward, by creating a class of workers who are aware that their labouring is but a part of the greater relations of production of society (Gorz, 1989, p. 24). Although Smith begins by discussing the division of labour itself before proceeding to an elaboration of its origins, I shall take the reverse approach by beginning from Smith's view of the origin of the division of labour (Cahn, 2012, p. 667). For Smith, the division of labour originates from the "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another," a principle which he identifies as most likely being "the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech," (Cahn, 2012, p. 667). Smith argues that the human being possesses a tendency which no other animal possesses - the tendency to exchange the fruit of his or her labour for that of 104

2 another - and the organised division of labour that one finds within his contemporary society is the result of the maximum development of this tendency. Whilst he claims that a man's natural talents are not of extreme significance in determining what he is best at, some men are better at certain tasks than others, presumably for reasons of nurture or necessity. Thus, in a tribal society, a man who is good at making arrows but not at hunting trades his arrows for meat, in order to have more to eat than he would have had if he had gone hunting himself(ibid., p. 668). On a social scale, this manifests itself as the specialisation of the members of society into roles; much like the historical fletcher or carpenter would have devoted themselves to the cultivation of their respective abilities, in the industrial society that Smith is examining, pin-makers devote themselves to pin-making, butchers to slaughter, bakers to baking &c, with the efficiencies of production increasing as work grows more and more specialised, leading to a society which grows wealthier and wealthier and can provide better living standards for its citizens. On the scale of individual labour processes, this manifests itself as the shift from all-round workers (pin-makers, machinists) to specialised workers (wire-straighteners and head-buffers, welders and drillers). The advantages that can be gained from such arrangements are, according to Smith, extreme, and these advantages are mainly given in Chapter I of Book I of The Wealth of Nations. By means of the division of labour, "each person, therefore, [... ] might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day," where they ordinarily "could not each of them have made twenty," (Cahn, 2012, p. 664). The reasons he gives for such a rise in 105

3 productivity are threefold: firstly, the workman's concentration on one task would improve his dexterity at accomplishing the said task; secondly, time is saved which would otherwise be spent in moving from one type of work to the other; thirdly, the division of the labour process into simpler, individual tasks would make it more likely for workers to come up with more efficient methods of accomplishing their role, whether through mechanisation or otherwise. Throughout Chapter I, Smith seems to assume that it is all the same for the worker, whether making pins from start to fmish or whether straightening wire for the selfsame pins. Thus, whilst lauding the effects that the division oflabour has on productivity, he fails to account for the psychological effects on the worker, who formerly used to use all of his ingenuity in crafting each pin from start to fmish but is now reduced to the status of a mere cog in the machine. Marx makes much ofthis issue. In The German Ide%gy, he identifies that underlying the division of labour whereby a man becomes a pin maker, a butcher, or a baker - and more so than that, becomes a wire straightener, a feather plucker, or a dough kneader - there is the true division of labour, "from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears," (ibid., p. 875). At the moment where pure theory gets separated from practice, the division of labour comes into its full. The theorists gain the power of distributing the labour of others, and begin using this power to forcibly divide labour; the others gain the responsibility of making their labour available to be crystallised into value. Whilst a worker might choose his or her trade, it is impossible for them to choose which part of a divided process they perform - this is the role of 106

4 somebody who knows the details of the entire process, and who is responsible for its execution. This separation between co-ordinator and co-ordinated is taken to its extreme in the Industrial Revolution. Through the enforced division of labour, workers become more and more alienated from their work - in Marx's words, "as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him," (Cahn, 2012, p. 876), with 'naturally' referring to the division as it exists within the 'natural society', where ''the division oflabour implies the contradiction between the interest ofthe separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals," (Cahn, 2012, p. 876). So far, Marx's view of the division of labour has been presented as though he were completely opposed to its existence. Yet Marx's standpoint is that of a scientific observer, whose role is to analyse the material conditions of capitalism, and not that of a utopian socialist who bases his writings on ethical concerns. As such, his conception of the division of labour is situated within his framework of the development of human history. In Capital, Marx identifies, following Smith, that "division of labour allows, conditions and induces mechanisation and technical progress," (Ricoy, n.d., p. 5). Moreover, Gorz identifies Marx's view on the division of labour as being that dehumanising, debilitating, idiotic, exhausting labour nevertheless represents a form of objective progress to the extent that it substitutes 'general workers' [... ] for private producers, thus giving birth to a class for whom work is directly social labour determined in its contents by the functioning 107

5 of society as a whole and which, consequently, has a vital overriding interest in taking over the social process of production in its totality (Gorz, 1989). As such, Marx's view of the division of labour does not diverge entirely from Smith's, but builds upon it, situating it within a defmite set of historical conditions - within its world-historicity. Indeed, as Marx himself acknowledges, Smith was not completely oblivious to the implications of the separation of mental and material labour. Rosenberg identifies that, in actual fact, "Smith [did indeed visualise] the worker as becoming increasingly stupid and ignorant as a result of further division oflabour," but did not see this as being an impediment to the development of society as a whole (Rosenberg, 1965, p. 135). Whilst Smith took this societal development to be a mere quantitative one, however, with mankind gaining access to more technologies, accumulating more knowledge, and learning how to produce more goods at faster speeds, Marx held that the contradictions brought about by the division of labour and other elements of capitalism would eventually bring about a qualitative development in society.. For Marx, this development would be the resolution of the contradictions between labourer and his labour, between false common interest and false self-interest, within a communist society. This would happen through the rise to consciousness of the proletariat - a class created by the transformation of work caused by the division of labour itself, as identified by Gorz above - which would subsequently be followed by the end of domination and of coercive division of labour (Cahn, 2012, pp ). 108

6 It is important to avoid a superficial conception ofthis ideal as the heart-throb of a romantic, at odds with Marx's usually meticulous analysis. The need for communist society to be free of 'exclusive spheres of activity' can be understood (although not necessarily agreed with) if one follows Marx's dialectical method. According to Marx, communism must be born from capitalism, and be a development of it, retaining the huge strides forward in securing greater levels of production ofthe material needs of humanity than ever before. It must also, however, use these advancements to restore to mankind the dignity and autonomy which capitalist forms of production have torn awayl (Gorz, 1989, p. 25), and thus resolve the contradictions between labourer and labour and common interest and self-interest - "the machine has taken the place of the slaves," (Gorz, 1989, p. 165). That said, Marx's conceptualisation has its critics. He would himself drop his notion of a society without the division of labour altogether, on the basis of the failure of one of the presuppositions behind it (ibid., p. 27). Gorz identifies the flawed presupposition informing the passage from the German Ideology as being that ''the physical rigidities and constraints of the social machine can be eliminated," (Gorz, 1989, p. 27) or, in other words, that society could free itself from needing to obtain material necessities, which would prevent it from having to maintain itself in a managed way. In the third volume of Capital, Marx states, to the contrary, that whilst the rational organisation of labour by socialised individuals 1 This tearing away of dignity and autonomy from the labourer is most excellently exemplified in the factory scene of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (Modem Times, 1936). 109

7 (and not capital) is not the "true realm of freedom" (Marx, 2010, p. 571), "it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity," (Marx, 2010, p. 571). In many ways, this is a return to the economic basis of Marxism as an approach to society as primarily driven by the need for man to "wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life," (Marx, 2010, p. 571). In comparing Smith and Marx on this issue, one reaches the conclusion that they are not as opposed as one might expect. The main difference emerges from the fact that whilst both were in their ways analysts of capitalism, Marx's reading of He gel attuned him to its world-historicity as something located within a defmite space and time, which would eventually progress into a new form of society as its internal contradictions came into conflict. For both Smith and Marx, the division of labour (and, for Marx, its later mechanisation) was the key element in the great leaps forward in mankind's control of nature. For Marx, however, it was also that which would give birth to a new class and, through exposing the interdependency of all workers, reveal the essentially social nature of production. ~ References Cahn, S 2012, Classics of political and moral philosophy, Oxford University Press, New York. Gorz, A 1989, Critique of economic reason, Verso, London. Harman, C 2008, A people's history of the world, Verso, London. 110

8 Marx, K 2010, Capital: a critique of political economy - volume 111. [pdf] Marxists.org, p.571. Available at: apital-volume-iii.pdf [Accessed Nov. 2014]. Modern Times, 1936, [film] United States of America: Charlie Chaplin. Ricoy, C n.d., Marx on division of labour, mechanisation and technical progress. 1 st ed. [pdf] Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. Available at: ec. unipi. it/paperslricoyc. pdf [Accessed Nov. 2014]. Rosenberg, N 1965, Adam Smith on the division of labour: two views or one?, Economica, 32(126), p.127. Available at: [Accessed Nov. 2014]. Smith, A 2000, Chapter 1: on the division of labour. [online] Marxists.org. Available at: smithadamlworks/wealth-of-nations/booko 1/chO 1.htm [Accessed Nov. 2014]. Smith, A 2000, Chapter 2: on the principle which gives occasion to the division of labour. [online] Marxists.org. Available at: archivel smithadaml works/wealth-of-nations/booko lich02.htm [Accessed Nov. 2014]. 111

Chapter 2: Karl Marx Test Bank

Chapter 2: Karl Marx Test Bank Multiple-Choice Questions: 1. Which of the following is a class in capitalism according to Marx? a) Protestants b) Wage laborers c) Villagers d) All of the above 2. Marx