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 Manu- facture, 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; 1 "It (the divisioQ 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 in- dividual 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, 1. c, p. 319.)
2 * ' 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.)
Y SS^ Capitalist Production.
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 pro- ducts. If, therefore, the same labourer has, day after day, to perform the same operation, there must be a difierent number of labourers for each operation; for instance, in type manufac- ture, 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 emploj^ment of many doing the same thing; only now, this principle is the expression of an oi-ganic relation. The division of labour, as carried out in Manufacture, not only simplifies and multiplies the qualitatively different parts of the social collec- tive 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 developes, 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 experi- mentally 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 particu- lar group.'' There is this to boot, that the same individual can ' 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.
2 " When (from the peculiar nature of the produce of each manufactory), the num- ber 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 establish- ments." (C. Babbage. " On the Economy of Machinery," 1st ed. London, 1832.
Division of Labour and Manufacture. 339 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 ele- ments, 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 com- ponents 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 ?^N^ 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 1 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.
340 Capitalist Prodtution.
production, the furnace, causes it to be more economically con- sumed. 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 workmeii requisite for the preparatory and final stages.
Finally, just as Manufacture arises in part from the combina- tion of various handicrafts, so, too, it developes into a combina- tion 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 manu- facture 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 articlea 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, especi- ally 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 tlie ores was effected by stamping mills.^ The Roman Empire had handed 1 This can be seen from W. Petty, John Bellers, Andrew Yarranton, "The Ad- vantages of the East India Trade," and J. Vanderlint, not to mention others.
3 Towards the end of the 16th century, mortars and sieves were still used in France for pounding and washing ores.
Division of Labour and Manufacture, 341 down the elementary form of all machinery in the water- wheel.i 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 compari- son 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 char- acteristic 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 produc- tion, lay claim to him in various wa3^s. 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 isol?«ted 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, Manu- facture, once introduced, developes 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 1 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 " miihle " 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.
2 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, how- ever, 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 ot modern mechanical in- dustry to the polemic of Lauderdal*-, 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, handicraftsmen, and even peasants (Brindley), who play a part.
/ 342 Capitalist P reduction, excellence, all the qualities requisite for production, and ex- pends 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 me- chanism 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, de- velopes a hierarchy of labour-powers, to which there corres- ponds 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 manip- 1 " 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. 1. c, ch. xviii.)
2 For instance, abnormal development of some muscles, curvature of bones, &c.
3 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.)
4 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 pole- mical 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 me- chanical industry from the standpoint of manufacture alone. Ure says, " This appro- priation...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, charac- terises the whole manufacturing system as " a system for the division or gradation of labour," as "the division of labour into degrees of skill," &'\ (Ure, 1. c. pp. 19-2.^ passim.)
Division of Labour and Manufacture, 343 ulations, which every man is capable of doing. They too are now severed from their connexion with the more preg- nant moments of activity, and ossified into exclusive func- tions 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 developes 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 disap- pearance or diminution of the expenses of apprenticeship, im- plies 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 OP 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 J *' Each handicraftsman being...enabled to perfect himself by practice in one point, became...a cheaper workman." (Ure, 1. c, p. 19.)
344 Capitalist Production, 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, developes itself, just as does the division of labour in manufacture, from opposite starting points. Within a family,^ and after further develop- ment 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 clivision enlarges its materials by the expansion of the com- munity, 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 indi- viduals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent footing. Different communities find different means of pro- duction, and different means of subsistence in their natural en- vironment. Hence, their modes of production, and of living, and their products are different. It is this spontaneously de- veloped difference which, when different communities come in contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the 1 *' 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 ^ un certain degre de civilisation trois genres de divisions d'industrie: la premiere, que nous nommerons g6nerale, amene la distinction des producteurs en agriculteurs, manu- facturiers et commer^ans, elle se rapporte aux trois principales branches d'industrie nationale; la seconde, qu'on pourrait appeler speciale, est la division de chaque genre d'industrie en especes...la troisierae division d'industrie, celle enfin qu'on devrait qualifier de division de la besogne ou de travail proprement dit, est celle qui s'etablit dans les arts et les metiers separes...qui s'6tablit dans la plupart des manufactures et des ateliers." (Skarbek. 1. c. pp. 84, 85.)
2 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 primi- tive 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. (Ed. 3rd ed.)
Division of Labour and Manufacttire. 345 consequent gradual conversion of those products into com- modities. 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 commodi- ties 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 inde- pendent; in the other case, the making independent what was before dependent.
The foundation of every division of labour that is well de- veloped, and brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation between town and country.^ It may be said, that the whole economical history of societ}^ 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 popula- tion, 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.
1 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 JNIalthus 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.
2 "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, 1. c. p. 50.) *' As the number of labourers increases, the productive jjower of society augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multi- plied by the effects of the division of labour." (Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. pp. 125, 126.)
34^ Capitalist Production.
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 Tndia.^ 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 developes and multiplies the latter. Simultaneously, with the differentiation of the in- struments of labour, the industries that produce these in- struments, become more and more differentiated.^ If the manufacturing system seize upon an industry, which, pre- viously, 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 pro- duction 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 con- sists merely of a number of parts fitted together, the detail operations may re-establish themselves as genuine and sep- arate handicrafts. In order to carry out more perfectly the division of labour in manufacture, a single branch of pro- duction 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 1 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 famins, the defective means of communication not permitting the failure of rice in one district to be compensated by importation from another.
2 Thus, the fabrication of shuttles formed, as early as the 17th century, a special branch of industry in Holland.
Division 0/ Labour and Manufacture, 347 were woven, and, in Avignon, it was law, that " every appren- tice 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 economical, but every other sphere of society, and everywhere lays the foundation of that all engrossing system of specialis- ing 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."^